The newly created U.S. Cyber Command is starting its first year of operation in a race to secure the vital infostructure before a new generation of cyberattacks causes lasting damage to military, government and commercial information assets. This potential hazard is not theoretical; it already has been realized overseas, and it may be just a matter of time before U.S. cyber assets suffer devastating attacks.

The U.S. Army took the next big step toward deploying flexible displays to soldiers on the battlefield by evaluating prototypes of a wrist-mounted form of the technology during a recent field exercise. Users accessed video feeds and information about firing on targets during the trials of the displays, marking a major shift in the progress of developing this type of tool.

Combat operations in Iraq officially ended last year, but the troops of the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division continued contingency operations, working with Iraqis to overcome remaining challenges and to complete necessary missions. As other units left the battlespace, the division’s signal soldiers inherited responsibility for more geographic area, requiring them to adapt their methods and equipment accordingly, until the division, too, returned home last December.

Participants in a biennial U.S. Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity exercise evaluated the relevance of the U.S. national response plan in an event that featured more players than ever before. Representatives from federal and state government, the private sector and foreign countries all worked together to examine the United States’ ability to handle cybercrises. The personnel also enjoyed the privilege of being the first to employ and review a new center dedicated to coordinating actions during a serious real-world incident. Held in September 2010, Cyber Storm III was the primary vehicle to exercise the National Cyber Incident Response Plan (NCIRP)—the recently created blueprint for cybersecurity incident response. The plan examines the roles, responsibilities, authorities and other key elements of the nation’s cyberincident response and management capabilities. Evaluations by participants will help the government refine the document moving forward.

We are seeing a global trend to provide tighter coordination of defense, intelligence, and security planning and operations. In the United States, people refer to the security function as homeland security, while in other countries around the world this function is simply called security or internal security. In many nations, the law prohibits the integration of defense and security to minimize the use of military forces within the nation’s borders except under specific circumstances. But with the growth of the global terrorism threat and asymmetric warfare, the need to achieve synergies among these assets and the need to attend carefully to the seam between defense and security has become apparent to most.

The public sector and industry are collaborating to catapult Sweden into becoming one of the world’s most information technology-savvy nations in the world. Contributions to this progress have been coming from all segments of the population. New government leaders are setting substantial technology goals for the country to achieve as a whole. The armed forces not only are preparing their troops with home-grown technologies but also taking part in NATO operations, which requires them to keep up with advances in other nations. And, up-and-coming small- and mid-size businesses are creating innovations that soon-to-be-renovated law will allow them to sell to a longer list of buyers.

The convergence of threats is increasing the requirements for sharing unclassified data that address maritime domain awareness and homeland defense. The U.S. Defense Department’s Executive Agent for Maritime Domain Awareness is coordinating the requirements of combatant commands, the services and the department’s four intelligence agencies to scrutinize the gaps and seams in data-sharing capabilities and technologies. Closing these gaps and tightening these seams is crucial to protecting U.S. shores from, among other dangers, weapons of mass destruction.

To improve access to warfighters’ well-being, the military and industry are developing innovative ways to assess and treat them both inside the battlespace and when they return home. Sensors and communication technologies are evolving into capabilities that are as much about saving individual lives as they are about maintaining situational awareness for entire squads. And, in a world booming with social media, help coping with the physical and psychological effects of war now is literally at a warfighter’s fingertips.

West 2011 Online Show Daily, Day 3. "Adaptability often is viewed as a responsive act. However, adaptability and preparation are inexorably linked."--Alfred Grasso, president and chief executive officer, the MITRE Corporation

West 2011 Online Show Daily, Day 2.“We’ve got to get that [continuing resolution limitation] fixed, or it will force the Department of the Navy to make stupid and irrevocable decisions.”—Robert O. Work, undersecretary of the Navy