An apparatus, system and method are disclosed for a destination cached routing protocol for data transmission among a plurality of nodes in a mobile ad hoc network. When a routing request is received, an intermediate node transmits a received routing request message to neighboring nodes, and appends its address to and forwards the routing request packet only to other nodes from which a received routing request message was not received during a first predetermined period of time. When a route reply packet is received, the designated data transmission route is stored in memory as a cached data transmission route to the destination node, and a cached route message is transmitted to neighboring nodes, which also store the data transmission route. Upon a link failure, alternative data transmission routes are stored in memory and may be utilized to continue data transmission without additional route discovery.