National Defense Magazine has an interesting look at the Army's struggle to build a "network-centric" force. The higher-end command and control (C2) technology is reserved for those higher up the command chain. As a result, soldiers on patrol cannot access useful data and can only communicate with their superiors with voice radios. Commanders also are denied real-time tactical information that better C2 technology could provide.
The article also looks at the progress of the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, which the Army seeks to deploy by 2015. FCS is expected to create a totally flat network and provide a single source of operational and tactical data. By doing so, the Army hopes to create a faster, resilient, and adaptable network. However, as Maj. Don Vandergriff notes, creating an adaptable organization requires more than technology. Without giving individual soldiers the initiative required to exploit such data, the Army is wasting its money.
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