“If We Run Out of Batteries, This War is Screwed.” [Wired] — MUST READ

The US army uses Microsoft instant messaging software in battle and sets up 65 server battle operations centers in three months.This fascinating article reveals both the brilliance of the US military battlefield systems and their weaknesses. Read this article.

The history of warfare is marked by periodic leaps in technology - the triumph of the longbow at CrÈcy, in 1346; the first decisive use of air power, in World War I; the terrifying destructiveness of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, in 1945. And now this: a dazzling array of technology that signals the arrival of digital warfare. What we saw in Gulf War II was a new age of fighting that combined precision weapons, unprecedented surveillance of the enemy, agile ground forces, and - above all - a real-time communications network that kept the far-flung operation connected minute by minute.

…I tracked the network from the generals’ plasma screens at Central Command to the forward nodes on the battlefields in Iraq. What I discovered was something entirely different from the shiny picture of techno-supremacy touted by the proponents of the Rumsfeld doctrine. I found an unsung corps of geeks improvising as they went, cobbling together a remarkable system from a hodgepodge of military-built networking technology, off-the-shelf gear, miles of Ethernet cable, and commercial software. And during two weeks in the war zone, I never heard anyone mention the revolution in military affairs.

… Inside, two soldiers baby-sit three rows of Sun servers. “This is where the Global Command and Control System lives,” Caddell says. GCCS - known as “Geeks” to soldiers in the field - is the military’s HAL 9000. It’s an umbrella system that tracks every friendly tank, plane, ship, and soldier in the world in real time, plotting their positions as they move on a digital map. It can also show enemy locations gleaned from intelligence. “We’re in a whole different ball game from the last Gulf war,” Caddell says. “We had a secure network back in ‘91, but the bandwidth wasn’t there and the applications weren’t there. Now they are.”

…”What’s funny about using Microsoft Chat,” he adds with a sly smile, “is that everybody has to choosean icon to represent themselves. Some of these guys haven’t bothered, so the program assigns them one. We’ll be in the middle of a battle and a bunch of field artillery colonels will come online in the form of these big-breasted blondes. We’ve got a few space aliens, too.”" MORE