March 2011

For three days following the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan, hardwired telephones offered the only lines of communications between the U.S. military and its forces in Japan and South Korea, according to military officials at the Next-Generation Mobile Technologies Symposium in Washington, D.C., on March 17. In fact, because landline telephones have proven so reliable in times of disaster, the U.S. Marine Corps will not convert entirely to Internet protocol-based communications.

Commercial smart phone capabilities have found their way into the classroom and the battlefield, and the U.S. Army’s Connecting Soldiers to Digital Applications initiative is using pilot programs to determine how these mobile platforms will change the way soldiers communicate and access information in the next 10 years.

Dual-use U.S. technology may be improving other nations’ militaries as a result of efforts by foreign technology workers in the United States, according to a U.S. government report. U.S. government agencies should tighten their processes and monitoring of visas and foreign workers’ access to controlled technologies, the report recommends.

According to Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, the U.S. Defense Department was operating 772 data centers as of July 30. 2010. The Office of Management and Budget defines a data center as any room that is greater than 500 square feet and is devoted to data processing. Kundra called for a 38 percent reduction in the number of data centers by 2015. Though such calls are driven by budget considerations, the metric of counting how many data centers can be eliminated is misleading. From a budget standpoint, only the reductions in the Defense Department’s $36.3 billion fiscal 2011 information technology expenses will matter.

Members of the U.S. Army’s 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team need better communications. Though they feel positive about their mission progress and the abilities of the Iraqis, the soldiers face constant frustration with the status of their information-sharing equipment. Obtaining sufficient support once tools are delivered is an aggravation as well. For troops covering a large geographical area, the “dump it and get out of there” mentality of some providers can result in problems for those who remain behind.

Coalition partners within Afghanistan and Iraq depend on satellite imagery to support their activities; however, much of the military imagery is only available at the secret and above level. Very few partners have access to this classified data, and this limitation hinders collaboration with national security forces, tribal leaders or other local citizens who support the effort. Furthermore, U.S. Army sources say that Internet-based imagery services such as Google Earth do not provide imagery that is current, has consistently high enough resolution or is government-approved for military applications.

The U.S. Marine Corps is shifting its immersive training to reflect the massive relocation of its troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. Although the Corps continues preparing Marines for an urban battlefield, now it also is coaching them in additional tasks critical to fighting and preserving the peace in a country that is as different from Iraq as Idaho is from southern Arizona. Actors and avatars bring so much realism to the training that troops returning from operations say it is enough to make them believe they are back in Afghanistan.

NASA is responding to criticism that it has become insular in its technology investments by opening its future plans for public debate. Core to these discussions are 14 space technology road maps that the National Research Council is vetting. NASA also is asking other government entities, industry and academia to weigh in to determine if or how the agency’s ideas will benefit all stakeholders.