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This free app for iPhone and iPad helps soldiers set personal goals and become more resilient in overcoming challenges.

Cmdr. Rick McCarthy, USN, director of administration for the NATO hospital in Kandahar, tells a lot of gory war stories: like the one about the 18-month-old toddler with a bullet wound in one arm. Or the report about the Afghanistan citizen who, following an explosion, had to have rocks picked from his face and lumps of dirt pulled from the tops of his eyeballs. Or the story about the soldier who had his face crushed by the armor-clad body of one of his buddies.

In a relative flurry of activity, the U.S. Defense Department is certifying the security credentials for the iPhone and Android operating systems and some devices that use them. The security accreditations come two years after the Windows Mobile operating system officially was sanctioned and brings the military a step closer to fielding mobile devices across the entire department.

Officials in two areas of Afghanistan—Regional Command–South and Regional Command–East—are engaging in independent efforts to virtualize servers. The combined endeavors mark the first time the practice has been instituted in a theater of operations on such a large scale. And, according to NATO and U.S. sources in Afghanistan, it already is reaping rewards for the warfighters, including saving space, fuel, energy and money, while reducing system downtime and increasing data rates, memory and processing power.

We want partners—not vendors.” All of the government-industry days, procurement updates or program reviews offer the constant call for industry to “be our partner, bring us innovation; work with us to enhance the capability for the warfighter or the ultimate end user.” Yet, partnership is a two-way street. Partnership involves communication, open and transparent management of expectations, honest relationships and decisions that allow both sides to manage their requirements. Partnership is not just a word. It takes work to achieve win-win situations—for each side to treat the other with respect and to make good decisions quickly to minimize cost for both sides.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a unit of the U.S. Department of Justice, has emerged as a leader in the government’s executive branch when it comes to deploying mobile devices among its personnel. The agency’s law enforcement portfolio has given it an edge as a large portion of its work force already uses laptops and handheld devices for work outside of the Washington, D.C., headquarters.

When it comes to the transition from command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) systems to cloud computing architectures, both the challenge—and the promise—boil down to “getting the right information to the right individual at the right time and doing it securely.”

Combining alpine skiing with avionics may not be a standard formula for business success except to Brad Lawrence. The 64-year-old avionics executive is pursuing an aggressive business model that fits with his personal recreational philosophy as he takes his high-technology company forward in an era of tighter defense budgets. Based in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, Lawrence’s Esterline Technologies Corporation is at the forefront of broad new economic imperatives reshaping defense contractors in this time of shifting Pentagon funding priorities.

The world may be on the cusp of Web 3.0. Some of us digital immigrants still are trying to get our arms around Web 2.0. We have been told that Web 2.0 is all about information sharing. Applications, storage and data are Web-enabled. Virtualization has made information easier to use and share. Social networking has created whole new environments for information sharing.

As commercial carriers around the globe begin to offer 4G networks to customers, the U.S. government is looking for similar capabilities in its organizations. A pioneering project is scheduled to move onto the battlefield soon to provide disadvantaged users with 3G capabilities for intelligence dissemination, but even as that moves forward, the next-generation wireless capability will become available.