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Creating an army is difficult in peacetime and even more so when a nation is at war. The Iraqi government has done that, standing up a national army that will pave the way for the eventual withdrawal of coalition forces from the country. But modern armies are complex and require many parts to operate efficiently, and signal units constitute a key feature that is missing from the new Iraqi army.

Out with the old (Cold War systems), in with the new: Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta says that ISR, space and cyber will be new priority areas as the Defense Department embarks on a strategy befitting the new global security environment. Speaking at a January 5 Pentagon press conference, Panetta defined the future military as “a smaller and leaner force” with reductions coming in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps. This force will be more agile and flexible, ready to deploy quickly, and it will feature new technologies and other advances.

Operational demands are motivating the U.S. Army to shift troops from low-demand occupations such as field artillery and air defense so it can field more military police, civil affairs and transportation units. These changes are part of an ambitious effort to transform the service from a division-based force to a more mobile one built around brigade-size combat units. Integral to these efforts are programs designed to reset units to the new requirements, to maintain unit cohesion by letting troops spend more time in one unit and to create a stable, predictable rotation and maintenance cycle for active duty, reserve and National Guard forces.

A U.S. organization that is heading efforts to develop a new standard for cryptography may opt for more than one algorithm to serve widely varying global requirements for secure communications in such applications as electronic mail or video. The advanced encryption standard, when it is chosen, will be the successor to a data encryption standard that was developed approximately 20 years ago. It was adopted by users internationally, and the new scrambling code promises to be equally well received.

U.S. Army communicators are focusing on providing key enabling technologies to warfighters who already are exploiting new networking capabilities. The urgencies of warfare, coupled with emerging communications requirements, have mandated that engineers concentrate on the user end of connectivity.