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Industry, academia and government organizations are collaborating to build a new information superhighway and put commercial homeland security technologies on the fast track. The goal is to accelerate processes and possibly circumvent some of the roadblocks; these roadblocks are slowing down the delivery of viable security solutions to the government agencies that need them. This approach aims at making innovative technologies commercially available two to three times faster than if they had gone the traditional U.S. Defense Department commercialization route.

With the help of commercial technology, 3.1 million of the U.S. Defense Department's most valuable assets, its people, will soon experience transformation from a personal-and personnel-perspective. Work has begun on a departmentwide system that will integrate personnel and pay systems and track each warfighter's career from recruitment to retirement. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines will be able to access their individual records and, in some cases, update information from anywhere, including from the battlefield. In addition, combatant commanders will have personnel data literally at their fingertips.

A wide-ranging commercial hardware and software upgrade initiative for the Defense Logistics Agency offers the promise of greater efficiencies, lower cost and new capabilities that may actually help predict and act on customer needs. The upgrade program is replacing several disparate systems with a single requisition and delivery system using commercial hardware and software with established performance records and familiarity among many agency users.

A U.S. Navy and Air Force program is aiming to place an experimental surveillance platform in the high ground of space at bargain basement prices. If all goes according to plan, a 20-inch-high satellite will be orbited early this year for a series of experiments that could change the way battlefield forces receive surveillance, reconnaissance and situational awareness data.

Soldiers assigned to information operations units in the U.S. Army Reserve Information Operations Command are improving their mission readiness for the latest cybersecurity threats with specialized training developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Network-centric warfare is widely acclaimed to be the centerpiece of military transformation. It has been embraced enthusiastically by the United States and some allied armed forces. However, critics question whether this nascent philosophy is yet fully deserving of star billing. They urge more thoughtful analysis, extensive operational experimentation and testing, and firm budget and procurement commitments before its precepts become frozen into doctrine, organization and strategy.

The ability of the United States to detect and track moving targets and strike with precision using stealthy platforms now is well-known. This operational advantage incorporates numerous cutting-edge technologies and has revolutionized the way the nation prosecutes the fight, shifting the national security paradigm and fueling our drive for the next steps in transformation. U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper, USAF, recently stated, "The day is coming when prompt global strike will be a reality, when the kill chain will be reliably and consistently compressed to minutes instead of hours or days." The nation will provide even quicker and more lethal response when called to action, enabled by technology and our ability to execute an essential Air Force core competency: technology to warfighting.

Many of the same concerns that vex civilian and commercial users of the Internet confront the Atlantic alliance as its militaries embrace Web-based technologies in their ongoing transformations. Yet, the technological changes that are underway offer so many advantages that NATO members must find ways to incorporate them into their military operations.

A great deal has been written about how information technologies represent a new industrial revolution, and many of the changes of that revolution have reached into virtually every corner of our lives. Yet, that two-decade-old transformation is now being changed by a revolution emerging from within: the advent of ubiquitous wireless connectivity.

A recently adopted international standard protects military radar and scientific satellite transmissions against potential interference from wireless local area networks. It provides a toolkit and guidelines for manufacturers to modify their products to switch automatically to alternate channels when these signals are detected.