According to Upmal and Lackey in “SPEAKeasy, the Military Software Radio” IEEE Communications Magazine (NY: IEEE Press) 1995, the SpeakEasy project was started in 1991 and was the first large-scale software radio. SpeakEasy was motivated in large part by the communications interoperability problems that resulted from different branches of the military services having dissimilar (non-interoperable) radio systems. This lack of communications interoperability can be directly linked to casualties in several conflicts.