Currently in Doha, Qatar, Lawrence, the director of command, control, communications and computers for the Central Command, has been to the region four times since Operation Iraqi Freedom kicked off. She sees it as a way to stay connected with the boots on the ground.

“This is one of our premier communications positions for a brigadier general,” says Lawrence, who is in charge of networks spanning Iraq and Afghanistan to the Horn of Africa. “I spent a lot of time with the leadership convincing them that I need to be in this job and I have to be in the field with the warfighters.”

She is currently preparing to host a meeting with all of the C4 leaders across the Defense Department and military services to nail down how to do joint configuration management, how to best utilize waning spectrum, how to protect the networks from intrusions and how to share information with coalition forces.

Moving the services and DOD from a service-centric networked environment to a joint, network-centric reality has proven tougher than she initially imagined, Lawrence says.

“We have to recognize that we’ll never operate in a service-centric environment again,” she says. “We have to jointly build our programs. That will provide net-centricity.”

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: Has there been a defining moment in Iraq for you?
LAWRENCE: “I think about when we first kicked off Operation Iraqi Freedom and how amazing it was when the young men and women came and glued a network together. They brought what they had for the war and they just made it work. These young kids can figure it out.”

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