Taking a cue from the commercial sector, the U.S. government is changing the way it provides support to its agencies and departments. It is loosening restrictions on where and how these organizations may buy products, and the federal sector is becoming more competitive as procurement and supply offices begin to offer lower costs and better service.

The technology, convenience and purchasing power of point-and-click personal shopping are being put to work for the taxpaying public. After closely examining trends in acquisition reform, a number of commercial enterprises are harnessing the potential of the Internet to deliver the goods better, faster and less expensively than government agencies can. However, some business leaders in this new entrepreneurial community object to competition from the government in the online marketplace. And, according to government guidelines issued by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, they are right.

As AFCEA International looks ahead in the new year, a look back at the past year may help provide a glimpse of the future. The association enjoyed many successes over the past year.

The pace of technological change is relentless. Living in a networked world offers tremendous opportunities to leverage emerging technologies to improve national defense capabilities and the quality of work and life for sailors, Marines and civilians. The advent of the Internet age opened the door for the U.S. Navy to move away from stand-alone solutions to a world of authoritative data sources that are available anywhere, anytime through self-service transactions. It is an age of knowledge, where Web services and portal technologies are allowing dramatically improved productivity and effectiveness, while eliminating the unnecessary cost of building and maintaining duplicate information solutions.

The diverse nature of threats in the 21st century calls for advanced planning strategies and international cooperation. As governments and the private sector face both physical and cyber attacks, organizations must focus not only on defense but also on how to recover after a disaster has occurred.

An electrically conductive resin technology may soon free warfighter and civilian wireless devices from bulky aerials. The proprietary recipe can be added to any of the thousands of polymers used to manufacture cases and components, turning the entire bezel of a cellular telephone or handheld radio into an antenna.

The French army soon may benefit from a prototype command and control system for helicopters that allows low-flying aircraft to share data in a tactical network. The technology features detailed digital terrain maps that can be viewed in the cockpit or from a groundstation before a mission. Mission-planning information and text messaging also can be transmitted via this airborne system.

Researchers are taking optics to new levels by developing the architecture, components and prototype systems for all-optical packet routing that can send and receive up to 100 terabits of data every second. The research is based on the premise that photons can do more than just carry a signal from one point to another; they also can facilitate extremely high-speed switching.

It takes a lot of brains to develop new technologies, and one U.S. Navy project is capitalizing on another type of brainpower. Navy researchers are examining work conducted jointly by the New York University Medical School and Russia's Nizhny Novgorod State University and Institute for Applied Sciences that uses brain activity as the model for controlling movement in unmanned undersea vehicles. The advances culled from this research could support better designs for autonomous underwater vehicles that could hunt mines, deliver and retrieve sensors, track ship movement or gather plume samples.

Researchers at a national laboratory have discovered a way to construct microelectrical systems using magnetic fields to arrange internal structures. The technology already is opening the door to breakthroughs in sensor and magnetic identification systems, and yet-undiscovered capabilities such as realistic artificial limbs and more esoteric applications may lie on the horizon.