US military
US Navy to spend $249 million on “battlespace awareness”
The US Navy has announced that it will spend up to an estimated $249 million on “battlespace awareness”. 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”.
An ocean of data and the future of social media analysis
Data is the future, if it’s not already the present. At a recent press conference announcing US military investment in ‘Big Data’ projects, the acting director for DARPA noted that the Atlantic Ocean contains 100 billion, billion gallons of water. Kaigham Gabriel went on to state that "if each gallon of water represented a byte […]
Wikileaks: cat among pigeons
Download this episode View in iTunes Watch the associated event here. A couple of days ago, I finished a post on Wikileaks by stating that the media organisation that refuses to play by everybody else’s rules is still learning its own game. I promised you more on that and here it is. One of […]
Media round up: Wikileaks releases Afghanistan war logs
Main coverage Wikileaks "The Afghan War Diary [is] an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. "We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and […]
Tracing the first official U.S. military blogs
So yesterday on Twitter I asked a question: when was the first official U.S. military blog started? 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 […]
How Facebook users can report casualties in Afghanistan before the military
Recently Facebook changed its privacy settings which meant that a lot of people’s profile information is now far more public than they might realise. Facebook users who joined with the expectation that their information was only going to be shared with a select group of online ‘friends’ are finding that all sorts of other people […]
Admiral Mullen’s social media strategy
The Public Affairs Office looking after Admiral Mullen has revealed his social media strategy for 2010 by sticking it up on Slideshare. Admiral Mullen is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for US forces and admitted a while ago that his wife reminded him to use his Twitter account. Some interesting bits […]
Wikileaks, journalism and the military
I did mention the possibility of writing a piece on the publication of a US military video by Wikileaks which depicted two Reuters journalists being killed in Iraq in 2007. But one of my colleagues at the War Studies Department, Jack McDonald, has beaten me to it. While not representing my own views, he does […]
WRL: New media, Afghanistan, Iraq and Al Qaeda
A few bits and pieces I’ve spotted recently: 1. Leveraging New Media (pdf): A US military report on the Israeli Defence Force’s use of new media in the conflict in Gaza re-published in the Australian Army Journal. It’s from the middle of 2009 but I’d not picked it up before. It’s authored by Lieutenant General […]
Department of Defense switches default policy on social media to ‘open’
As of last Friday, all US servicemen have been able to update social networks like Twitter and Facebook from non-classified military network computers. The announcement by the Department of Defense is the first time a single policy has been used across all branches of the Armed Forces and effectively reverses a Marine Corps ban on […]
‘Tweetwife’ application reminds US Admiral to use Twitter
The United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says his wife, a regular Twitter user, reminds him to tweet. Admiral Mike Mullen believes Twitter and other social networking sites like Facebook are important forms of communication which enable him to stay in touch with younger members of the US military…(or at least that […]
Reaction on the blogs to US intelligence in Afghanistan
The other day Major General Michael Flynn (et al) published a report which highlighted some fundamental failings of US intelligence operations in Afghanistan. US intelligence, he argued, is overly focussed on the enemy, unable to answer basic questions about local political, economic and cultural dynamics and is "only marginally relevant to the overall strategy". He […]
US military bloggers fall silent in protest
A couple of days ago a number of military bloggers in the US agreed to hold a silent day of protest and more bloggers appear to be joining the campaign. The trigger for the blogging strike was the treatment of blogger CJ Grisham whose chain of command became involved in his row with a local […]
Military blogging: “no longer worth the trouble”
The US military blog, A Soldier’s Perspective, has closed down after six years. In a message which has replaced the entire content of the blog, Iraq veteran and well-known military blogger, CJ Grisham, writes: "Blogging is no longer worth the trouble. Everything is fine as long as the stories are happy and positive. The military […]
WRL: Blogging, Milblogging and the London bombings
(Dusty history section) on the London bombings, 2005. I came across a couple of links on media coverage of the London bombings in July 2005 that I hadn’t previously discovered. Maybe you missed them too. Mike Thelwall did some research into bloggers and the bombings which ‘scratches the surface’ of the use of blogs to […]
Frontline: Obama’s War
I flagged up the preview earlier in the month and now here is the full version of the Frontline documentary, Obama’s War:
DoD Director of New Media: “It’s not about controlling the message anymore”
Continuing what is rapidly turning into an autumnal video season here on the blog, I came across this interview by David Meerman Scott with Roxie Merritt, the Director of New Media Operations at the U.S. Department of Defense. There’s some very interesting stuff in this brief video. A few points for those of you […]
Obama’s War
Worth checking out this preview of an imminent PBS Frontline documentary. Photojournalist Danfung Dennis embeds with Echo Company, US Marines as they push south in Helmand province. More details on the film can be found on the PBS website.
US Army uses wikis to update field manuals
The Small Wars Journal informs us that the US Army is converting the contents of their field manuals into wiki format allowing soldiers to update military doctrine. (It’s wikipedia for the Army.) Lt Gen William Caldwell, a leader in the use of social media in the US military, writes: "By converting manuals into wikis, the […]
“A small price to pay for good relations”
Population-centric approaches to counterinsurgency warfare emphasise the importance of protecting the local people rather than killing the enemy. When war takes place among the people, using military force is problematic so the priority is to win the support of the local population by providing security and services and building relationships with village elders. That’s (a […]
Blog reaction to a new commander in Afghanistan
Lt-General Stanley McChrystal (right) addresses a press briefing on Iraq in 2003. Now he’s in charge of US forces in Afghanistan. (Defenselink.mil) Bill and Bob "Based on Gates’ announcement, it appears that it is a signal that field commanders will be held accountable for the lack of progress in their areas. Gates spoke […]
The evolution of military blogging in the mediasphere
A couple of weeks ago I was at the military blogging conference in Washington DC. (I decided to use the opportunity to spend some time travelling in Virginia and then I was straight onto a new media conference in Athens, so I’m way behind with the blogging.) It was really interesting to meet the milbloggers […]
Blogging military blogging
I came across a blog called Soldiers in the blogosphere recently. It’s run by an active duty US Army Major, Jakob Bruhl, and is part of his graduation requirement from the Air Command and Staff College. Maj Bruhl discusses whether soldiers should be encouraged to write blogs and over the last few weeks he has […]
US military revisits blogging
The US military remains at the forefront of social media and military policy but recently new questions about the value of blogging have been raised. There has been plenty of debate in particular on the US Army Combined Arms Center site about the role of blogs as a means of strategic communication. Apparently, ‘the US […]
Counterinsurgency and new media
The Small Wars Journal has put together a collection of thoughts on the impact of new media on the way the US military has fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Well worth bookmarking, reading, and re-reading. I was going to pick out a ‘best of’, but I was struggling. It’s all very interesting. It includes thoughts […]
