A Technology Approach to Revising History

Have you ever thought about how a certain battle in history might have turned if one side or the other had access to modern technology? What about focusing on information technology and the web vice access to modern weapons?

For those of us that support Department of Defense Customers, the inevitable response from leadership is always "how will this system or web-based solution win future wars....or how will this gadget enable me to think faster, decide faster, and execute faster?" We must put technology into terms that they can understand - warfighter speak.

A great approach to providing this warfighter-focused answer lies in our ability to take a historic battle where we know the sequence of events, the ebb and flow of the fight, and the end result and apply technology, especially Web 2.0 solutions, to one side or the other. How might this access to data and services have changed the course of the battle? How might commanders of old have applied Web 2.0, net-centric concepts, and service-based solutions to gain better access to required information? How might they have gained better awareness and visualization of the emerging battle? How might they have applied this greater access to information and services to inform their decision-making? How might this access provided better opportunities to plan and react to events as they unfolded on the battlefield?

If we can replay a past battle using today's information technology, then we stand a better chance of speaking in warfighter terms. Only in speaking this dialect can we truly tell our defense customers how new gadgets, gizmos, and the ever-expanding web will better enable or rather equip them for the future fight. They can see from a military perspective how to apply new solutions to command, control, and execution capability needs. We must move away from our geek-speak and move into understanding history, revisiting history with today's technology, and proving the value in this technology for future fights.