The 21st century has brought a lot of new concepts to the battlefield, but none likely have as much impact on everyday soldiers as the potential for a constant connection to the rest of the world via the Internet.
While soldiers in previous wars have relied heavily on phone lines and the postal service for communicating with the home front, it's just as common here on the Forward Operating Bases to see soldiers video-chatting with their husbands and wives via Skype or some other VOIP service as it is to see them in the phone trailer.
Hour-long lines form at the Morale, Welfare, & Recreation center where public Internet terminals allow soldiers to check their email, Facebook, or IM accounts. Signs posted above the computers warn against the sharing of specific information about locations, missions, or technology that could jeopardize operational security.
The signs, in large black type on beat-up laminated paper, stand as a reminder of the military's increasingly difficult task of trying to restrict the flow of information in a world that is increasingly hostile to choke points in the data stream. The Pentagon is trying to find a balance between letting soldiers maintain a connection to the outside world and maintaining control over information about the situation on the ground. It's not yet clear what that balance is, if it exists.
Average Joes aren't the only soldiers who benefit from advances in communications technology in this war. Col. Burt Thompson has a system in his command vehicle that lets him maintain a constant wireless data link to networks across the world. He doesn't always use the system for high-level military communiqués: "I can send emails to my wife," Thompson said wonderingly, "Right from inside my Stryker."
As more and more soldiers from the 3-2 Stryker Brigade show up to relieve the 1-25th, the base's resources are becoming strained. The afternoons recently have seen rolling blackouts as the generators struggle to keep up with the air conditioning's power draw in the heat of the day. As the power came and went, so did the Internet.
Although losing power and air conditioning in the 130-degree heat was unpleasant, the loss of the network was far more onerous for most of the residents of the Public Affairs office from which we filed our stories. Without the communications capacity afforded by the Internet, productivity slowed to a crawl and frustration rose.
Cougar, the resident Iraqi interpreter, joked that he was going to go find the person responsible and solve the problem with his fists.
Internet service eventually returned late in the evening, around midnight. The staff of the PA office had long since given up and gone home, but there was no rest for the base's network operations crew.
At about 3 a.m. two specialists walked into the office to check on the network, and were surprised to find no military staffers present.
Their marathon mission restoring the base's connectivity had left them entirely out of sync with the waking cycles of the rest of the soldiers, and until they thought to look at a clock, they had no frame of reference.
Some things are the same no matter where you are in the world.