Under the tide of informationization, information warfare has become the development direction of military transformation. As one of the important signs of the development of information warfare, the tactical data chain overcomes the shortcomings of the traditional warfare platforms and wins the opportunity to master the battlefield situation, improve decision-making efficiency, and enhance the cooperative combat capability. The access control protocol determines how the user sites share the channel resources in the tactical data link system, which has an important impact on system performance and has always been a hot issue in tactical data link research. A multi-level priority polling MAC protocol (MPPMP) is proposed for the actual demand of multiuser multi-priority transmission control in tactical data link systems. The protocol can control the arrival rate of user packets at all levels based on the priority weight matrix named P which based on the user's priority level in the tactical data link system. The simulation results show that the MPPMP can meet the multi-priority transmission control requirements of each user in the system and overcomes the problem that the traditional polling MAC protocol has a single control function. In addition, the design and implementation of MPPMP are implemented by FPGA. The feasibility and correctness of the design are verified by the simulation test and statistical analysis. INDEX TERMS Tactical data chain, priority weight, MAC protocol, polling, FPGA. HONGWEI DING was born in 1964. He is currently a Professor with Yunnan University and a Master Tutor. His main research interests include communication and information systems, network and communication engineering, polling multiple access communication theory, and random multiple access communication systems.