If good intentions could revolutionize an organization, the Defense Department would already be transformed.

For more than a decade, the military services have made incremental steps toward building the joint force of the future. It’s a vision—actually more a mandate from the senior ranks—to transform the services to be faster and more agile and lethal. There are joint documents that reinforce the notion and benefits of building a fully integrated fighting force.

The intent is there, that’s indisputable. But for network-centric operations to take hold, the services need more than a willingness to modernize. They need to execute faster than they have in the past.

The services have a formidable enemy in the insurgents creating havoc in Iraq. The enemy has managed to neutralize widespread military advancements with improvised explosive devices, kidnappings, suicide bombings and an awesome display of adaptive decision-making that hints at sophisticated information sharing.

Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, commander of Strategic Command, put it best when he said: “I have an adversary whose command and control is done on MyYahoo and answers to nobody when they get up in the morning. That’s my worst nightmare.” (To read the Defense Systems interview with the general, turn to Page 12.)

In this issue we not only look at how the services are revamping force structures and systems, we also examine NGA’s efforts to deploy mapping and geographic information systems software, how the restructured intelligence community is beginning to think joint and the status of the Tricare Management Activity’s new electronic pharmacy system.

Essentially, this personnel and force transformation issue is a warning to military personnel to not get so caught up in the goals of transformation that they fail in their execution.

DAWN S. ONLEY
Editor
donley@postnewsweektech.com

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