[walrus01]

> I've never been in a conflict zone but I'd assume securing food and water is #1. Reliable electricity access might be a distant nice

This is very wrong, everything NATO/ISAF related excepting the absolutely smallest temporary COP and FOB in Afghanistan had at minimum one basic VSAT terminal with IP link to the outside world.

You can't have modern C4I systems without data links. Note that a lot of what was implemented was not actually "The internet" as we know it, though there was lots of commercial DIA, there's plenty of ways to use two-way satellite capacity for entirely private networks.

The above was a firm rule and ground truth even 15-17 years ago, in the latter stages of the conflict (before the US lost political will to continue in 2021, Thanks, Trump and Pompeo and Biden...) data links for anything military related were even more crucial.