Last Thursday, the Navy awarded a new contract to five intelligence, computer and security companies to provide both hardware and “the development, integration, and test of intelligence, battlespace awareness, and information operations applications”.

In other words, the US Navy is embarking on a major new project in the area of surveillance, technology and data acquisition to provide military commanders with a detailed understanding of any conflict area.

According to the Department of Defense’s own definition “battlespace awareness” includes an area’s “environment, factors, and conditions”, “the status of friendly and adversary forces, neutrals and noncombatants” and “weather and terrain.”

The addition of “information operations” in the contract suggests the project will go beyond the remit of geospatial intelligence and may have some capability for commanders to organise messaging campaigns in an attempt to influence various actors in an area of operations.

The contract raises questions over exactly what information the US Navy is intending to collect and in which conflict areas.

The investment can be understood in the context of the influence of ‘network-centric warfare‘ on US military thinking which emphasises the value of a digitally connected force as a means of improving situational awareness and military decisions.

A press release earlier in the year from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) calling for ‘big data’ projects noted that:

“the demands for actionable information have spiked as warfighters at every level—whether at the planning table or on patrol—are called upon to make well-informed decisions”.

The battlespace awareness contract was awarded by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center and will initially last until August 2013. The US Navy has options in the contract to extend the work to 2017.

The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center reports directly to the Navy’s Information Dominance Systems Command.

On the one hand, Breivik is gaining another bout of publicity for his crimes.

On the other, the journalist’s role is to document a trial which inevitably has attracted significant public attention.

Although Twitter’s use in court is not new, this is a particularly high profile case which also presents a wealth of potential ethical issues for journalists using the microblogging tool to cover the trial.

I have a new article up at Index on Censorship which explores some of the issues.

Head over there to read more. 

When people in the media industry talk about "embedded journalists" they usually mean journalists embedding with military units.

It is, of course, possible to ’embed’ with other people or organisations and it is perhaps a sign of the times that ‘journalists’ like Jane Ferguson are now embedding with ‘citizen journalists’. 

Although in many ways, this is just an evolution of the journalist’s all important relationship with local fixers who make so much journalism possible. It’s just these days the fixers are documenting and publishing their own material as well.

Many ‘fixers’ from conflicts past undoubtedly deserved the title of ‘journalist’ as well, but in the 21st century it seems even more relevant that these citizens are recognised for the journalism they produce.