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The next “shot heard ’round the world” may turn out to be the surreptitious movement of millions of bits and bytes careening through cyberspace. Suspicions already surround the cyberactivity that took place in the weeks before Russia launched a conventional military attack against Georgia last year. And in May 2007, the removal of a bronze statue of a World-War-II-era Soviet soldier from a park in Estonia resulted not in riots in the streets but rather in what has been described as the first war in cyberspace. These incidents may indicate how adversaries—and the United States military—could deploy cyberweapons as the first line of offense prior to traditional kinetic activity.

If you could not attend the Information Assurance event in Washington DC this week, the event is being streamed live here

The U.S. and Japanese militaries are reaffirming their commitment to collaboration with the construction of a Japanese air defense command on a U.S. Air Force base in the Asian country. The move further enhances the bilateral relationship the two nations share and will increase command and control through persistent personal interaction.

While most military planning focuses on how to win wars, a concept developed by forward-thinkers in the joint world is honing methods to prevent them. Dubbed cooperative security, the plan aims at helping countries with struggling governments and economies so they do not fall victim to internal conflict or become tempted to open their doors to terrorists. Its creators willingly acknowledge that not only would it be impossible for the armed forces to bring about the desired stability on its own, it would be foolish for them to even try to go it alone.

U.S. defense planners are redesigning military doctrine and capabilities to adapt to the new realities of insurgent and asymmetrical warfare. To build an effective force in this era, the military may have to empower the 21st century warrior with new capabilities previously limited to higher-level commanders.

As vastly improved surveillance capabilities and long-range, low-observable, precision-guided weaponry proliferates, the nuclear-powered submarine is emerging as the most likely platform to reach congested regions rapidly, to enter them covertly and to survive there for long periods. In today's FORCEnet environment, better near-real-time connectivity with submarines has become a goal of both technical and operational entities within the U.S. submarine force.

The U.S. military is developing a suite of software applications that will allow secure communications between different national computer networks. This capability is essential to both coalition operations and disaster relief missions.

The U.S. military is expanding its options for creating secure wireless networks in urban and remote areas. The capability will increase the speed at which networks can be created in an emergency while reducing the amount of materiel troops need to haul into an area.

The orderly structure of established nations' mighty militaries differs intensely from the structure of terrorist force organizations. In terrorist cells, distinctions between warfighters who trigger improvised explosive devices and those who detonate car bombs are miniscule. Battle cells may comprise as few as two or three people or as many as several dozen. Information sharing takes place incessantly, using everything from the Web to cell phones. As a force, terrorist groups are inherently flexible.

Missile launch teams vital to defending the United States would not think of pushing the fateful button without first double-checking the reliability of their equipment and data. But until recently, the U.S. Air Force Space Command had no way to conduct comparable checks of its vastly distributed information networks. Instead, it had to contact the appropriate person at distant locations to get a handle on the operational capabilities available in approximately 175 stovepiped mission-specific applications and systems.