The U.S. Defense Department has developed a software standard that permits organizations to write and share online courses and learning material. Representing the combined efforts of government, industry and academia, the guidelines are part of a larger program that seeks to provide federal personnel with high-quality training delivered any time, anywhere.

While all of the services continue to transform the ways they operate, one of the armed forces' primary institutions for advanced education is leading the way to joint transformation. In recently renovated, technologically advanced classrooms, students delve into the challenges the military faces today to discover innovative joint approaches to tomorrow's problems.

Over the years, ship propulsion has evolved from sail to steam to diesel and gas turbine engines. The U.S. Navy now is transitioning to all-electric ships, which will increase available power throughout a vessel. The benefits will be enhanced ship survivability, improved combat capability, reduced crew size-sending fewer sailors into harm's way-and lowered ship life-cycle costs.

The U.S. Navy and an information assurance tiger team made up of industry and government personnel are tailoring certification and accreditation processes to validate the legacy systems and applications that are transitioning into the Navy/Marine Corps Intranet. The work ensures that fielded systems comply with U.S. Defense Department information security requirements.

The U.S. Navy 7th Fleet is incorporating new technologies for joint and combined exercises and operations that lie at the very heart of the Navy's transformation efforts. The Japan-based fleet often finds itself serving as a floating testbed for new network-centric warfare concepts as it carries out its daily missions in the Pacific and Indian oceans while simultaneously supporting the war on terrorism.

The U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps are in the midst of one of the greatest sea changes in history as they transform from platform-centric into a network-centric fighting force. Several steps will enable this long-term change, beginning with IT-21 and leading to FORCEnet. Right now, the step that is in the spotlight is the Navy/Marine Corps Intranet, or NMCI. It is one of the largest information technology contracts ever let by the government and, as with all major programs, NMCI is generating new challenges as its reach expands throughout the Navy and the Marine Corps.

By manipulating the slippery and elusive qualities of matter's smallest components, scientists have developed a way to encode and send data along unsecured public fiber optic lines. The method relies on the unique nature of atomic behavior-any attempt by an outside party to analyze the coded material changes the atoms' characteristics, rendering the transmission useless.

A combination of faster computing capabilities, lower cost storage and improved software is opening new markets for commercial satellite imagery in the 1-meter and, in the future, 0.5-meter resolution range. Although these images were once reserved for U.S. government and military uses, today a wide range of organizations is purchasing them to support their missions. From monitoring activity in other countries and creating accurate simulation models to mapping underwater environments, pictures taken from space have become a valuable tool and have ushered the world into what some have termed the age of transparency.

The U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency is purchasing commercial remote sensing imagery, some under exclusive use agreements, to support operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Applications can range from mission planning and rehearsal to battle damage assessment and humanitarian airdrops.

New data storage and retrieval techniques are allowing theater air mission planners to call up detailed imagery and mapping data from a laptop computer. Using commercial hardware and software, U.S. forces directed attack and rescue missions during the recent Kosovo conflict by accessing continentwide data contained in a single box.