The future is now—just as new threats emerge.

Everyone—soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and civilians—is a combatant in the Global War on Terrorism. While military personnel take the fight to the enemy overseas, civilians on the home front have their own duties to deny success to extremist evildoers.

While public attention has been focused on Iraq, Afghanistan and other aspects of the Global War on Terrorism, another threat has been building quietly much closer to home. Traffic in illegal drugs has been destabilizing friendly nations in the Western Hemisphere, and it may be joining forces with terrorism to pose a greater danger to democracies throughout the world.

I have been struggling all of January to find something interesting (at least to me ) to write about regarding the IC for this space, but IC related news seems to be dominated by the debate over FISA and the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes. At first I was looking for Lawrence Wright's "NEW YORKER" article on DNI McConnell to bail me out, but 16,000 words later all I found there was Mike's traditional definition of torture and that Jim Clapper has made count down clocks all the rage amongst the IC senior leadership.

Success in the Global War on Terrorism will require effective use of all government and industry resources available to the United States, not just dominant military power—that from the onetime highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military

Future Defense Department Cybersecurity Builds on the Past By Lt. Gen. Harry D. Raduege Jr., USAF (Ret.)

Cybersecurity is becoming a critical issue for both government and industry—and for good reason. A dangerous combination of cyber-related activity is growing daily around us. This includes dependence on technology, skyrocketing cyber crime and terrorism, and vulnerabilities hidden by the complexities of an interconnected, global network. In government, industry and our personal lives, we have growing cyber dependence because that is how we are able to better perform missions, conduct business operations and lead our daily lives.

A number of you in government and industry have told us that AFCEA should provide smaller, more interactive forums focused on critical issues. We have listened and created a new series of events called Solutions. You should have begun to see some communications regarding these new events. I think the introduction of this new series of forums is such a critical milestone for AFCEA and such an opportunity for our membership that I should explain why this series of events is fundamentally different from anything we have done before.

Confusion is common in disaster relief operations. Destruction of infrastructure, inefficient coordination among participating organizations and lack of interoperability between communications systems contribute to the operational fog that surrounds first responders. Crisis management services help abate the confusion in such operations by providing interoperable equipment and software that can be deployed quickly for various scenarios.

The U.S. Air Force is preparing to defend national airspace against a variety of airborne terrorist threats such as hijacking and missile attacks. To achieve this goal, the service has modified its training and simulation software toolkit to model the crowded skies over the United States. This new capability also permits Air Force commands to train jointly with federal and state law enforcement and civil aviation agencies and to simulate operating in a network-centric communications and sensor environment.