African nations are overcoming the tyranny of distance posed by their massive continent through an exercise designed to increase command, control, communications and computer capacity. Representatives from more than two dozen African countries met in Gabon at the end of last September through the beginning of October to test technology compatibility. The event helps build relationships and enhance interoperability during disaster relief and peacekeeping missions. The most recent effort built off past exercises and included a variety of first-time occurrences. It also identified new areas of need such as the addition of an information assurance technical working group.

The latest combatant command to join the ranks in the U.S. Defense Department has set out on a different mission than its well-established brethren. From its very conception, the U.S. Africa Command has been designed to help the nations in its area of responsibility to help themselves. Since its inception two years later, it has been fulfilling that vision with assistance from other U.S. government agencies in an area that comprises 53 countries that include more than 800 ethnic groups who speak more than 1,000 languages. In essence, it is not a typical combatant command.

While the dust has been kicking up around U.S. Defense Department social networking policies, the Defense Information Systems Agency has been actively pursuing one option that could address many challenges commercial sites pose. Hundreds of military and government personnel have been test-driving DEFStar, a commercially developed colleague network that resembles Facebook. From this pilot program, the agency hopes to find the middle ground between classified-only collaboration and the Wild West environment of the World Wide Web.

A collaborative planning and information-sharing capability is making a key U.S. military strategic command and control system more flexible and responsive to rapidly changing operations. This family of applications allows planners to create mission templates that draw on real-time data such as intelligence, weather and unit status. This information can be shared with other personnel for input and comments before being presented to commanders for approval.

An experiment designed to promote information sharing among U.S. military, government and state organizations has demonstrated that the technical challenges to connecting different groups are easily overcome. The event’s organizers found that the real difficulty lies in changing institutional cultures and attitudes about security and data transfers.

While the push forward for better collaboration and information-sharing capabilities will require technical advances, the experts at a NATO workshop in Brussels, Belgium, in October shared that they are struggling with an even bigger challenge than connecting the bits and bytes. The complex policy, governance and legal issues that a single interoperability level creates must be resolved because real lives are involved. Dag Wilhelmsen, technical director, NATO Communication and Information Systems Services Agency, and workshop moderator, opened the workshop by saying that its purpose was to establish a common language, vision and standards for identity management in a federated environment.

Security and information sharing have prominent and complementary roles in countering asynchronous warfare challenges, but many of today’s defense policies and military forces still are organized for World War II-type threats. NATO is looking ahead at the emerging challenges in light of a wider threat and is seeking a more collaborative environment in response.

If the CIA is your business development target, then it will help to know how to start breaking into their universe (legally, of course!). Here are a few tips, collected from my specific experience as well as general knowledge of the account.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is examining an existing biofeedback technology to help first responders work better on long, round-the-clock disaster relief efforts.

On 23 November 2009, an Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance successfully launched the Intelsat 14 satellite (IS-14). Liftoff of the Atlas V occurred at 1:55 a.m. ET. The satellite separated successfully two hours later. Great launch!