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This month, Capt. Joseph A. Grace Jr., USN (Ret.) likens the state of government technology to that of an 8-track tape player--"now DIACAP-certified, ruggedized, encrypted and able to be thrown out of the car window at 60 miles per hour unharmed"--in an iPod world, thanks to a bloated procurement process.

Patrick Mason has been assigned director, human performance, training and biosystems, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology

Lockheed Martin Corporation, Grand Prairie, Texas, was recently awarded an $18 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide for PATRIOT Advanced Capability-3 software modernizatio

AeroVironment Incorporated, Monrovia, California, was recently awarded a more than $7 million contract for two months of Raven operator training and six months of Raven contractor logistics support.

An automated system for managing and retrieving crime-related intelligence is providing several municipal police forces with the capability to share data in a standard format. This system offers the potential for tracking suspicious activities and alerting officials to potential crimes before they occur, and this counterterrorism application has spurred the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to fund its introduction at the state level.

Basic science and technology research currently underway as part of the U.S. Army’s soldier-as-a-system modernization plan could lead to a wireless personal area network and other technologies that will better integrate the individual soldier into the Army’s tactical network. The Army is developing a host of technologies to improve situational awareness for dismounted platoon and squad leaders, essentially creating a tactical operations center packed on the back. The idea is to increase the knowledge—and therefore the firepower—of the individual soldier.

Fueled by interoperability demands, outsourcing and exports, Sweden’s information technology market is likely to grow over the next few years, according to experts. With Sweden and many other countries increasingly focused on interoperability and outsourcing, Swedish industry is finding new opportunities both at home and abroad and looking forward to a period of surging business.

To improve access to warfighters’ well-being, the military and industry are developing innovative ways to assess and treat them both inside the battlespace and when they return home. Sensors and communication technologies are evolving into capabilities that are as much about saving individual lives as they are about maintaining situational awareness for entire squads. And, in a world booming with social media, help coping with the physical and psychological effects of war now is literally at a warfighter’s fingertips.

The convergence of threats is increasing the requirements for sharing unclassified data that address maritime domain awareness and homeland defense. The U.S. Defense Department’s Executive Agent for Maritime Domain Awareness is coordinating the requirements of combatant commands, the services and the department’s four intelligence agencies to scrutinize the gaps and seams in data-sharing capabilities and technologies. Closing these gaps and tightening these seams is crucial to protecting U.S. shores from, among other dangers, weapons of mass destruction.

The public sector and industry are collaborating to catapult Sweden into becoming one of the world’s most information technology-savvy nations in the world. Contributions to this progress have been coming from all segments of the population. New government leaders are setting substantial technology goals for the country to achieve as a whole. The armed forces not only are preparing their troops with home-grown technologies but also taking part in NATO operations, which requires them to keep up with advances in other nations. And, up-and-coming small- and mid-size businesses are creating innovations that soon-to-be-renovated law will allow them to sell to a longer list of buyers.