My original plan for this month's Intelligence Community (IC) color commentary was do a traditional book review on A.J. Rossmiller's recently published STILL BROKEN: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failure from Baghdad to the Pentagon. Given Mr. Rosesmiller's brief experience with DIA, before even reading a word my reaction was that the title was presumptive at best and suggested an agenda. Two hundred and twenty six pages later of mostly anecdotal pap he proved me right. It seems DIA's new hire analysts were consistently producing highly useable intelligence about Iraq only to be thwarted by managers who found their reporting to be unusable because it was too pessimistic to be taken seriously by policy makers. The idea that because something is new to him does not ipso facto make it new to the IC appears to be a condition Rossmiller has not contemplated.

Culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes an organization. Today, I hear leaders complaining that their biggest organizational problems boil down to issues involving that one word. If culture is indeed the problem, it should be addressed and not continually ignored or tolerated.

Web 2.0. Web 3.0. Webinars. Podcasts. Blogs. RSS feeds. Virtual environments. Social networking. This is the language of today’s Internet. It has not been the language of AFCEA, but that is changing. Our younger members are very comfortable in this environment. The rest of us in government and industry are trying to catch up and learn how to apply these technologies and this culture to our work. AFCEA is moving to help.

The Global War on Terrorism is pushing the visibility and value of spectrum to the forefront. Problems encountered during current operations illustrate how devices that find their way onto the battlefield without thorough spectrum requirement vetting are costing lives. Whether the challenge is systems that interfere with each other or equipment that has not been tested in the electromagnetic environment in which it will be used, the consequence could be mission failure instead of success, death instead of life. Military leaders are committed now more than ever to not only keeping spectrum management in the limelight but also continually checking on its progress.

Poland is making military satellite communications a priority for its force modernization. As the former Warsaw Pact member embraces NATO-style network centricity, it is turning its eyes skyward to enable newly mobile forces to interact with headquarters and each other in distant theaters of operation.