The US military has today embraced
social networking, but the road to achieve the same is interesting not just from a learning standpoint, but also to understand the way other country's
armed forces could embrace the same.
The August 2009, the U.S.
marines corps formalized its ban on marines use of Myspace, Facebook and
YouTube on its networks. The military's concern was the same as with many of us
- phishing, hacking and other security breaches. But the stakes are obviously
much higher. After all, it's one thing if you have to get a new credit card,
since the existing number was hacked while you were buying stuff from an
unreliable ecommerce site; it’s totally another thing when military designs are
stolen or soldier’s lives are taken because confidential plans get leaked.
This is was all logical except
for 2 things: it was already difficult to get people to volunteer for the armed
forces; but morale sank even lower when they were cut off from Facebook friends
and family and friends on other social networking sites. In addition, there
were also some technology benefits that soldiers eyed for such as
access to some smartphone apps - iSnipe and iShooter that help them estimate
bullet trajectories. There are also other apps that could be used to detect
location of friendly soldiers and that of enemy combatant’s updated real time.
In Feb 2010, the U.S. military
embraced social networking in a big way. The military reconfigured its internet
grid (which is the largest private network in the world) to provide soldiers
access to YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Google apps. The army also
began issuing smartphones to soldiers to test the apps effectiveness both in
and out of combat. In war zones, wireless networks on which to run the apps are
brought into the field attached to vehicles, planes or air balloons.
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