The U.S. Marine Corps is linking the present to the future with a communications architecture that will allow it to train for new systems even before they are in hand. Using today's technologies, the approach could provide Marines in the field and on the move with the ability to communicate over the horizon by connecting communities of networks through points of presence. The capability effectively emulates many of the network functions that will be available once warfighters are equipped with next-generation

Incidents of fratricide continue to plague the military forces, but the U.S. Marine Corps is examining current technologies that could reduce them by enabling vehicles to identify themselves as friendly in less than one second. By building these types of capabilities to an international standard, joint and coalition forces would benefit, extending protection across the battlespace. The capability is scheduled to be assessed in a coalition combat identification advanced concept technology demonstration during the next fiscal year, and acquisition efforts could begin as early as fiscal year 2006.

Changing market demands have prompted a major satellite telecommunications company to diversify its services. Moving beyond its traditional niche leasing transponder space on its large constellation of spacecraft, the company is branching into new areas such as broadband and cellular services. The Washington, D.C.-based firm also is a major provider of video, data and voice communications to the U.S. government.

After a period of declining revenues, the commercial satellite communications industry is profiting from growing U.S. government and military business. The increased tempo and wide geographic scope of recent U.S. and coalition military activities have caused a surge in commercial leased satellite use. Industry experts predict this additional demand for video, voice and data services to contribute steadily to the market's growth for the next seven to eight years.

An advanced satellite communications program will use lasers and Internet routing technology to provide future warfighters with high-bandwidth connectivity. The lasers will link orbiting spacecraft directly with command centers, reconnaissance platforms and each other. By switching to light-based transmission, the system will free vital radio spectrum for a family of lightweight tactical terminals designed for mobile, over-the-horizon wideband communications.

It's time for us to admit that to achieve interoperability we must establish standards for the information technology community. Only through this mechanism will U.S. and coalition forces achieve true interoperability. And, this mechanism must be switched on at the highest levels of the U.S. Defense Department.

As with other maritime forces, China has been seeking to network disparate assets, and to meet that requirement, it has been establishing signal stations on islands and atolls throughout the South China Sea. These facilities, which range from communications relays to radar units, both demonstrate China's expanding regional reach and provide a rare glimpse of the country's military electronics technologies.

Mix advanced information technology, a rapidly increasing work force and a new architecture for sharing data and you have the recipe for transforming the military intelligence community, if the Defense Intelligence Agency has its way. Lessons learned in Afghanistan and Iraq have only reinforced the targets for change in defense intelligence collection, management and analysis.

The focus of long-term changes underway in China's military is on regional rather than global improvements. This approach includes deploying systems that have only a local reach as well as developing or acquiring advanced technologies for specific military units or elements.

The U.S. Army is looking to radically change the very concept of information management to meet its growing intelligence demands arising from force transformation. This will require a new way of processing and disseminating information in a network that links a rapidly growing number of increasingly diverse sensors and sources.