The SECDEF position sought to exercise general direction, authority and control over the three military service departments, and to serve as the President's principal assistant in national security matters. The Act created a separate Air Force department and replaced the Secretary of War with the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF). The National Security Act of 1947 officially reorganized the defense establishment. While the military service departments wished to remain autonomous, the need for a centralized command structure was recognized early after the war. Thus, a dichotomy of doctrine was established between the supporters of common-user and dedicated-user communication systems and technologies. For this reason, the services began to develop sets of dedicated communications networks to meet the needs of their own individual mission-specific requirements. While requiring the need for worldwide communications systems, the services were leery of common-user systems based upon their WWII experience. With the end of WWII, the United States emerged as the preeminent world power and its military services assumed roles that reflected global responsibilities. However service parochialism tended to nullify order of precedence as users inflated the level of importance or precedence to get their respective messages through, thereby choking the communications systems. Normally, a message's precedence level would determine how fast it would be processed. The main issue was the precedence of the messages. In short, common-user systems necessitated accommodation by the services and this was viewed as undesirable. Most notably the military services were unhappy with common-user systems for the precise reason that they were designed to serve the communications needs of others and were thus not fully under one's own respective control. While common-user communications systems had distinct advantages over those communications systems that were "dedicated" to a single use (and were frequently viewed as inherently limited), not all were in support of the common-user communication systems. armed forces as well as between our forces and those of our allies. The global scale and rapid pace of actions during WWII required large-scale coordination within the U.S. Systems were general purpose in nature, serving the needs of a host of users at a number of geographic locations and capable of sending message traffic of all types and precedence. Military communications of WWII centered on three main technologies: wire, radio (wireless), and radar. The quest for centralization of military communications goes back to World War II (WWII), with a push for the development of military communications that were common-user. THE CREATION OF DCA 1947-1960 POST WORLD WAR II/COLD WAR
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