With our military stretched among three fronts, our volunteer force is bearing a tremendous burden of OPTEMPO, reduced budgets and political posturing. A recent experience I had with our disabled veterans highlighted the reasons why we do what we do. It may be a good reminder to us all.

Unmanned ground systems on the battlefield provide critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data and help counter improvised explosive devices. Now, ground robots are positioned to expand into armed missions in Afghanistan.

Gen. Keith Alexander, USA, director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, is calling for greater international cooperation on cyber defense. “We don’t have a U.S. network, a Canadian network, a Mexican network. It’s all one network. We all operate that, and we have to have international partners to protect it,” Gen. Alexander emphasized.

The story of the technology marketplace in the Netherlands is much like that of other countries in Europe and around the world. The economic downturn has led to slashed government budgets, greater outsourcing and a need for companies to expand internationally. One thing that sets the Netherlands apart, though, is the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency, which has an office in The Hague, as well as in Brussels, Belgium, and offers opportunities not found elsewhere.

China has departed from tradition with a new naval ship design that may be the vanguard of an entirely new class of littoral warships. These corvette-type vessels feature modernized systems that offer China unprecedented flexibility in a range of sea missions.

Since our last sojourn together the Intelligence Community (IC) continues to be a "target rich" environment for controversy and contemplation. As the last MAZINT was being posted Director of National Intelligence DNI) Clapper was being derided and chastised for assessing that the conflict in Libya could devolve into a stalemate. Given how things had transpired in Tunisia and Egypt along with the Obama Administration's policy decision to militarily support the Libyan rebels for humanitarian reasons the DNI was apparently wrong about the facts and in conflict with national policy. This stalemate assessment, however, has turned out to be real a "truth to power" moment that has largely gone unrecognized except for a CNN Op-ed by Mike Hayden.

Four companies pursuing technologies connected to manned orbital spacecraft are receiving $270 million from NASA in the second phase of an effort targeted at building a commercial manned space launch industry. The goal is to develop a launch capability that would replace the space shuttle and lead to commercial exploitation of manned orbital spaceflight.

I was recently treated to a demonstration of a mission-focused IT solution that made me proud of what technologists at FBI can do. What I saw was a best in class integration of search, discovery and analysis tools known as DIVS (Data Integration and Visualization System). DIVS includes a framework that allows multiple tools, COTS and GOTS, to interoperate in ways incredibly supportive of the most significant missions in the national security space.

It may be stating the obvious to say that the hardware you use has a direct impact on the functionality of your IT. That is so fundamental of a statement it really goes without saying. But for some reason decision-makers gloss over the importance of hardware to security design. Why? The hardware you pick has a direct impact on the security of your enterprise.

I was reminded this week (while at the NSA) of a common mistake often made by entrepreneurs in the DoD and IC market. It is tempting to claim that your firm is an expert at two dozen areas of focus. On one level, I understand this because the same personality and intellect that would launch a new business tends to see more, do more and want more… than the average professional. So, I understand (if you're guilty of this tendency) your "reach-of-the starts" mentality. It runs in your blood.