Our goal in this research is to investigate and determine how to best support a challenging mobile wireless network based in a military operational environment. Since routing protocols used in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) must adapt to frequent or continual changes of topology, while simultaneously limiting the impact of tracking these changes on wireless resources, we focused our initial research on improving the efficiency of route discovery. We proposed and designed a new MAC layer routing protocol that pursues reduced routing overhead, greater interaction of network protocol layers and passive neighbor/path discovery. This algorithm, called Virtual MAC Tag Switching (VMTS), evolved as we implemented a prototype in the ns-2 network simulator and conducted simulation analysis of existing protocols: DSDV, DSR and AODV. Upon analyzing the performance of existing routing protocols using pragmatic metrics not applied in any MANET literature it was found that current MANET models produce unsatisfactory performance. Subsequent analysis of transport layer protocol behaviors pinpointed the causes that undermine the performance of the existing protocols and would have thwarted VMTS as well.