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.

Less than three years after the siege of 26/11, the citizens of Mumbai are facing the consequences of another terror attack. It is hardly a surprise that people are using Twitter to communicate, but its use as a tool for crisis communications is evolving. 

Back in 2008, I suggested that an eyewitness tag on Twitter, such as #EW, would help people identify relevant material from the vast torrent of tweets that were being posted about Mumbai.

In 2011, Twitter users have taken things beyond my rather simple idea by organising a number of separate hashtags to relay information.

Rather than only using one hashtag (#Mumbai) as many people did three years ago, today the Twitter users of Mumbai have started posting to:

In particular, the MoD will decide whether to free deployed commanders from aspects of existing constraints which mean their operations are usually communicated through spokespeople.

A more decentralised approach is arguably overdue but not without risk both in terms of operations security and potential political fall out which may limit the impact of any changes. 

The recommendations recognise that greater trust within the organisation needs to be built on the basis of training and the development of doctrine.

By giving staff media training and providing them with a sound understanding of the rationale behind operations, it is hoped the MoD will ‘set the music’ centrally but that their staff will be allowed ‘to find the right notes’.

The risk of empowering more communicators would be offset by discipline to a "guiding narrative".  

At the moment, members of the Armed Forces and civil servants have to obtain prior permission to communicate in public through the chain of command.

This hierarchical approval process is proving cumbersome in an age of instant digital communication.

A more decentralised approach to communication was a key aspect of a recent Joint Doctrine Note on Strategic Communication issued in March this year. 

JDN 1/11 stated:

"Our processes and philosophy must allow us to respond to feedback from audiences and to counter narratives from our adversaries in order to stay ahead in the information environment.  This will require us to decentralise some of our communication activities."  

The proposals are still under review.