The Allied Forces Central Europe Command, once a bastion of Western Europe's defensive line, is reinventing itself to serve as a key element in alliance operations outside its area of responsibility. It is consolidating with another regional command, incorporating two of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's newest members into its structure, and preparing to serve as a parent headquarters to other alliance commands.

The fast pace of change occurring in technology and business today has prompted industry and government agencies to explore innovative approaches to conducting business. While old paradigms are not being discarded, they are being reviewed to determine their effectiveness. Organizations that are willing to venture into uncharted waters are encountering successes and obstacles, but regardless of the outcome, they have learned lessons that both they and others can incorporate into future endeavors.

Technology derived from military signal analysis work is producing testing equipment for wideband applications in the private sector. These devices are capable of both storing and analyzing large amounts of data while generating a variety of broadcast waveforms.

The U.S. Marine Corps Command and Control Battle Laboratory experiment is using modular, easily configured software to achieve visualization and coordination of battlefield radar and communications data. This project provides a picture of ongoing efforts throughout the armed forces to create sophisticated battle management technologies. Designed as a testbed for future air defense and command and control systems, the battle laboratory combines forward-looking new concepts while providing an off-the-shelf hardware and software environment.

A radical approach to semiconductor fabrication may soon lead to supercomputers the size of wristwatches. Scientists are developing logic gates based on molecular oxidation that could allow these building blocks of computers to be constructed of only a few molecules.

New production methods allow constructing semiconductors capable of operating at a fraction of the power of existing devices while delivering comparable or superior performance. These new technologies could lead to extremely efficient electronic devices, from handheld computers to tactical radios and missile warheads. The potential also exists for increased processor speeds in both military and civilian communications and computing applications.

Sophisticated, pattern-recognizing artificial intelligence agents are solving quandaries faced by organizations that are being inundated by massive amounts of information. The design of these technodrones is based on the characteristics of structures that allow the human body to function. It enables systems administrators, both military and commercial, to monitor and pre-empt network catastrophes and allows corporate leaders to tap available data and take advantage of opportunities.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories have developed a new encryption device that promises the security and bandwidth accommodation necessary to scramble various types of data at speeds unmatched by many other encryption technologies.

If anyone can explain the principles behind the flight path of a boomerang, it is Dr. Edward H. Bersoff. Not only is Bersoff president, chief executive officer and founder of BTG Incorporated, a leading information technology company based in Fairfax, Virginia, but he also holds a doctoral degree in mathematics from New York University and is a former U.S. Army officer assigned to the National Aeronautics and Space

A multilayer, multinational research and development network is coming online as a result of recent coalition-focused joint operational demonstrations held in the virtual environment. The combined wide area network, which acted as the conduit for sharing information during the exercise, has been transformed into the combined federated battle laboratories network. The year-round, plug-and-play virtual center will allow international combined and U.S. joint service forces to operate with allied national command and control systems over the U.S. Defense Department's global command and control system.