Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 46

increasing personal focus on developing shared
SKA “soft power” as well as TCS “hard power.”3
We were backing into information technology
and, as we began to exchange combat information,
also into information management (IM). Reflecting
concern that emerging broad Army IM systems,
particularly Army Knowledge Online (AKO),
were not sufficiently user friendly, I was asked to
become the senior mentor for the IM extension.
Subsequently various prototype user nets employed
in Iraq demonstrated the likely tactical utility of
IT/IM. Simultaneously, as it became more user
friendly, AKO realized gradually its great potential.
But we all sensed that there could and should
be more than IT/IM. Leaders act to make things
happen. The technology was there to form groups
of leaders collaborating to improve job performance
in professional forums—today recognized inter
alia as Facebook and expanding MilSuite on AKO.
Influenced by the power of emerging collaboration
among leaders demonstrated by the Companycommand.mil forum at West Point, I became the senior

(U.S. Marines)

training on tough mandatory armored fighting
vehicle-structured gunnery and maneuver exercises.
Sensitized by the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency to the importance of emerging
information capabilities applied to training, we realized that timely flow of data and information among
and between fighting vehicles could provide decisive battlefield advantage—seriously improving
Battle Command. We established combat data linking and indirectly supported combat leader teaming
with the Inter-Vehicular Information System later
known as Force XXI Battle Command Brigade
and Below (FBCB2) then Blue Force Tracking.
These were clear bottom-up improvements to
existent Army Battle Command Systems. Mission
command followed as we supported development
of Field Manual 6.0, Mission Command