Processes, procedures and technologies currently under development are scheduled to be put into place later this year and in early 2001. Recent operations in Kosovo revealed both procedural and technical shortcomings in air support tasking methods. On-site personnel concocted a patchwork of solutions that successfully met the challenge, but military leaders soon realized that future missions would require more permanent, standardized techniques. Military battlelabs, the incubators for growing ideas into solutions, are cultivating suggestions from the field by providing a discussion forum for subject matter experts, then testing theories in a variety of exercises. Commanders struggle first to gather all of the available data in one location and then to convert it into the knowledge they need to direct the forces.
Information technology is considered one of the armed forces' primary assets.
However, systems that collect useful data from various sources such as radar, sensors and satellites often have their own individual formats. In addition, the variety and number of information centers that manage the information follow their own procedures and processes, which complicates the task of pulling together all of the data for delivery to a specific mission's operations center. The 25-person unit, which is part of the Air Force Aerospace Command and Control and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, examines the feasibility of both technical and business process ideas. Currently, the C2B is working on several ideas to identify innovations available both inside and outside the Air Force that demonstrate near-term military utility. The cycle first includes the planning, then the requirements are identified, the order is issued, and the aircraft and materials are organized and sent.