The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the military's world wide web for the wars of the future. The goal is to give all American commanders and troops a moving picture of all foreign enemies and threats - "a God's-eye view" of battle.
Buoyed by its decisive win in Iraq, the U.S. is betting billions that the information technology system that helped defeat Saddam Hussein will evolve into a more potent weapon than cluster bombs and howitzers.
An overview of the U.S. military's plans for a future combat system that will utilize unmanned drones, remote sensors, and satellite technology "to increase warfighting capabilities by orders of magnitude."
A detailed feature article on the U.S. military's modernization effort to prepare for 'network-centric warfare'.
The U.S. military is holding a forum to explore what lessons can be learned from MMPORGs for fighting terrorist networks. The hope is that the MMPORG model might provide new insight into how to organize military planning and operations.
Technology is liberating the U.S. Defense Department from the chains of a single location by enabling it to become a network-centric department. The initiative to create a virtual Pentagon calls for taking advantage of advances in networking, Internet protocol, videoconferencing, mass storage and data transmitting technologies. These capabilities would allow military personnel to continue to collaborate and communicate in emergency situations even if systems within the Pentagon are damaged.
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt present a five point plan to re-organize 21st century armies for "netwar" against "bands of swarming 14th century terrorists."
"The United States is at war with a foe that is, as the cliche has it, "a shadowy terrorist network," a multinational private army whose nodes and lines of communication reach invisibly and murderously across national borders. It's centipedal, multiheaded, hard to find, difficult to kill. Don't be fooled by familiar-seeming before-and-after images of bomb damage or shots of jet fighters streaking off the decks of aircraft carriers: This is a new kind of war -- netwar."
The authors argue that Bush's strategy of centralizing anti-terrorist activities under the Office of Homeland Security "cannot work and may make the problem worse."
Military strategists are envisioning future conflicts where U.S. forces execute complex maneuvers on the basis of high-speed data flowing to vehicles and even individuals from unattended sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles.