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.

The Admiral is the US Chief of Naval Operations and he gave these remarks to a Public Relations Strategic Communications Summit in June.

The general message is that the US Navy realised it could no longer afford not to participate in social media despite potential security risks and the challenges of a "dizzying" communications environment.

The speech marks a significant departure from the guidance in the US Navy’s social media handbook issued last year.

The 2010 manual discouraged Navy leaders from allowing too many individual units to set up social media accounts and urged commanders to establish a single "command presence". 

In this speech, Adm. Roughead instead argues that the Navy’s leaders need to understand that they command a "workforce of communicators".

He emphasised a transparent approach so that Navy leaders could listen to their subordinates and connect with the communities they were serving.

The Admiral cited the response to the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan as an example of how local commands could provide speedy updates on the crisis situation and reply to questions from the United States. 

He recognised, however, that the Navy has "only recently started to come to terms with the demand for radical transparency."   

The full speech is available here, but a few other sentences that I think are worth picking out:    

1. "For whether we embrace the fundamental communications changes underway today or not, our talented young workforce not only embraces them, they know nothing else. As leaders, then, it’s not enough that we keep pace with these changes – we must lead the change."

2. "I submit to you that in today’s media environment, as leaders – whether we recognize it or not – we are no longer simply leading a workforce of employees or, in my case, Sailors. We are leading a workforce of communicators."

3. "…it soon became clear to me that opting out [of engaging in social media] neither guaranteed security, nor served our interests in transparency, outreach, and advocacy. Rather than consider whether we could afford to participate, we came to the conclusion that we couldn’t afford not to participate."

4. "So we joined that conversation, and the term that I’ve used is, “we’re burning the boats.” There’s no going back. We’re committed irreversibly, and in the end it was one of the easiest decisions I’ve made as the Chief of Naval Operations."

Of course, long gone are the days when blogs were an unknown quantity, and these days blogs by U.S. soldiers will usually be signed off by a superior meaning they are to some degree ‘official’ but I wasn’t after these individual soldier blogs.

By ‘official’ I meant blogs that were started as deliberate public affairs exercises on behalf of a branch of the services, or individual units as the corporate, the professional, the governmental, the NGO and the military began colonising the blogosphere.

Nobody seemed sure but people like @LindyKyzer, @fieldsteven, @salottimc and @milblogging (who also wrote a blog post about it) pointed me in the direction of various pieces of information or other people I might ask.

Using their information and some link-hopping, what appears below is a list by start of date of official U.S. military blogs.

I have no doubt that it is a far from comprehensive list so if you have any to add or reckon I’ve got the date wrong let me know. I’m aware that some blogs might have been disbanded or restarted.

I’m not sure I can yet conclusively answer the question I posed but I’m further forward.

It has been an interesting exercise. For some reason (and I’m not sure why) I was under the impression that the U.S. military had been officially blogging for longer than it actually has. 

Initially the strategy of the Department of Defense’s New Media Directorate, set up in October 2006, was to work with and engage bloggers rather than start their own blogs.  

(Although @Wodins suggested that official military blogging might have been taking place on ARPANET way before the Internet.)

Official U.S. Military Blogs by Start Date

2004-5 

DoD news article suggests a blog written by Capt Steve Alvarez for Orlando Sentinel as part of his official duties in Iraq was "first official U.S. military blog". (Here is a taster…it appears to be no different from any online article).

2006

October – Department of Defense New Media Directorate established; For the Record (Pseudo-blog: see this written by Steven Field for discussion of whether this is a blog)*

2007

October – Bloggers’ Roundtable

2008

Updates: This post has been updated on several occasions to include several other blogs missing from the original post in response to comments and emails.