Dennis McGinn is a retired vice admiral in the US Navy.

He says we built a Coalition Wide Area Network in the PAcific Rim. It was built with commercial, off the shelf software. Best of all, the Navy moved to rapid prototyping, supplying 60-70% of needs fast, enabling “self-organizing information exchangers” to coordinate themselves. “It broke the old mold of centralized planning and centralized execution.” There was little training provided. “Pretty messy.” But it worked. It was flexible and agile in a world that is chaotic. “If the war’s gonna start in a chatroom, please make sure I’m in that chat room.”

Random points:

In the Network-Centric Innovation Center, people were charged with using existing technology but innovating in organization and tactics.

The military is facing the same problems as the corporate world: Security of information. Need bandwidth on demand.

Common Relevant Operational Picture: People need the same picture/database. For example, if there’s an underwater reef, it should show up in the maps everyone in the fleet uses.

“It’s all about standards. But not about standardization.”

In the Iraqi War, casualties were proportionally lower than ever before, but the proportion of friendly fire casualties was higher, clearly something that better info could help.

Q: COTS won’t do it. Need GOTS (government-generic off the shelf) products because COTS isn’t secure enough.

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