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Force transformation and ongoing military operations are both complementing and competing for new information technology system development. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are validating many concepts and technologies, but requirements emerging from those fronts threaten to derail intricate long-term plans for modernizing the force across network-centric lines.

A broad-based initiative underway in the U.S. Defense Department aims to ensure that all of the data amassed and processed in the future battlespace truly can become useful knowledge to all U.S. forces. This effort is trying to make all data sources, correlators and user interfaces resident on the defense network so that a user could select those best suited for his or her requirements.

The restructuring of U.S. troops into small, agile fighting forces and the multinational, multicultural nature of today's decision making military teams are adding entirely new dimensions to knowledge management and collaboration in the military. Command and control decision makers must discard the strategies that worked for large forces prepared to fight on a designated front line and explore new tactics. Concurrently, they find themselves working in a collaborative environment rife with language barriers, experiential differences and hidden agendas. Technology can help break through some of these barriers, so researchers are examining team decision-making dynamics so they can determine which knowledge management tools are likely to be most effective.

The key to understanding and processing information may lie not in new technologies or advanced system architectures, but instead in the secret of effective storytelling. It also might be found just as easily in the classification of ideas, in the semantics of the Web, or even in the ability to pass personal lessons learned on to others. Or, this key could be an as-yet undiscovered aspect of knowledge management that only now is emerging in this information age.

The installation of a fiber optic network has vastly improved communications capabilities for troops fighting in Iraq. Military expertise, commercial technology, hard work and a bit of creativity have resulted in a reliable infrastructure that warfighters at all levels have come to depend on and expect. And, upgrades at command posts have freed up equipment that can be used at forward operating bases.

A rapidly evolving operational environment and new mission priorities are blurring the distinction between the U.S. National Guard, Reserve and active duty forces. As these units continue to operate together, efforts by the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Defense Department will further integrate the different branches of the military through a common payroll system and an occupational skills database.

An inconspicuous reserve force is combating terrorism with the powerful weapons of experience and expertise. By combining knowledge gained in the areas of advanced technology with skills acquired through time in the field, these low-profile yet dynamic reservists are arming warfighters in current operations with new as well as improved capabilities. From work on undersea and aerial unmanned vehicles to biological threat detection on surface ships, this relatively small band of technology experts is pursuing a multitude of priority projects in nine focus areas.

As with the U.S. military, Canada is transforming its military to enhance network-centric operations and to improve information security. And, also similar to the United States, the Canadian Forces are counting on their reservists to shore up their ranks in current operations as well as in homeland security. Changes taking place today and plans for the future will align reservists better with their active duty counterparts and increase the expertise they bring to the battlespace. Communication reservists, who are already playing an active role, are likely to see their contributions to national security expand in the near future.

If throughout your entire professional life you had gone by a nickname associated with one of the towering giants of American literature, what would you do when you finally retired from the corporate world?

Researchers are demonstrating that good things, in the form of useful amounts of power, can come in small packages. At the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, researchers have been able to produce power with a generator approximately the size of a dime. The device, called a microgenerator, is one aspect of a project to create a microengine that weighs less and lasts longer than batteries used by soldiers in the field today.