information operations
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”.
Social media from the front line
Major Paul Smyth is one of the people responsible for changing the Ministry of Defence’s approach to social media particularly in the context of front line operations. I’ve spoken to him previously for the Frontline Club about his Frontline bloggers project. In this interview with David Bailey, Maj. Smyth talks in some detail about how […]
MSF aid workers shot in Somalia
Associated Press is reporting that two people working for the aid group, Médecins Sans Frontières, have been shot in Mogadishu. At least one person is believed to have been killed. The incident is reportedly related to an internal staffing issue – AP quoted MSF worker Ahmed Ali, who claimed that a recently fired employee was responsible […]
General Richards: The media “frequently draw the wrong conclusion” on Afghanistan
The Chief of the Defence Staff gave an annual lecture to the Royal United Services Institute last night. General Sir David Richards spoke broadly about the global environment, the response of the armed forces and particular strategic challenges. He argued that Britain’s main challenge was economic and emphasised the cultivation of strategic alliances to compensate […]
Five links from 2011: ‘Twitter’
I am picking out a few of the more interesting links from my 2011 delicious bookmarks. On Monday, I selected five from my ‘war reporting’ tag. Today, I’ve selected another five from among the bookmarks I labelled ‘Twitter’ in my delicious account. Enjoy! 1. ‘Visualising the New Arab Mind‘ Computational historian Kovas Boguta visualises the Twitter influence […]
US Navy “burning the boats” to join social media conversation
A speech on the US Navy’s approach to communications by Admiral Gary Roughead has surfaced in my Twitter feed. The Admiral is the US Chief of Naval Operations and he gave these remarks to a Public Relations Strategic Communications Summit in June. The general message is that the US Navy realised it could no longer […]
Ministry of Defence reviewing communication strategy for a networked world
The Ministry of Defence is considering proposals that would empower more members of their staff to communicate so it can compete more effectively in a networked information environment. In particular, the MoD will decide whether to free deployed commanders from aspects of existing constraints which mean their operations are usually communicated through spokespeople. A more […]
The U.S. Navy’s social media manual and (not) “flattening communications”
The U.S. Navy has produced a social media handbook including guidance for sailors and Navy personnel as well as a section for commanders. In the introduction, the Navy’s Chief of Information, Denis Moynihan, suggests the manual is necessary because "the rapid growth of social media platforms and technologies have flattened and democratized the communications […]
A lesson in information operations
That’s what Andrew Exum at the Center for a New American Security thinks the Israeli raid on the Free Gaza flotilla provides.
The blog as a weapon in an era of information war
I’ve been doing some research into the coverage of the Gaza conflict (back end of 2008, front end of 2009) on blogs. One of the English-language blogs that covered the war was the Muqata blog. The Muqata blog was started in 2005 by ‘Jameel’, a Jewish settler who had lived in Chomesh in Gaza before […]
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 […]
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 […]
24/7 media world undermines use of force, says UK Minister
The Armed Forces Minister, Bill Rammell, delivered a speech yesterday in which he expressed his concern that the information age had fundamentally altered the conditions in which Britain could "project power" in the world. Talking at the Institute of Public Policy Research, Rammell noted that there were many positive benefits from the development of "access […]
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 Army blog reaches out to milbloggers
A post has been written on the official US Army blog in an attempt to appease disaffected US military bloggers who held a silent protest last Wednesday. Public Affairs Specialist, Lindy Kyzer, concurs with a number of concerns raised by military bloggers admitting that there are "still areas, and leaders, where blogging in the ranks […]
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 […]
MoD apologises to Michael Yon for “misunderstanding”
Yesterday, I suggested there might be an unlikely rapprochement between Michael Yon and the British Ministry of Defence after the row over the end of the journalist’s embed with the British Army in Afghanistan. And that’s clearly what Nick Gurr, the MoD’s Director of Media and Communications, is trying to achieve with this post. Written […]
More on Michael Yon and British Media Operations
Apologies to those of you who are already in October but I’ve been on holiday and want to wrap a few things up from the back end of September. This is one of those things. So if you read about this last week there’s not much new here. But if you haven’t, hopefully it offers […]
Michael Yon to end Afghanistan embeds and go it alone
Independent war reporter Michael Yon has not so much burnt his military embed bridges as completely obliterated them. He claims that the Ministry of Defence has been trying to have him removed from the area of Regional Command (South) and from Thursday he will be reporting unilaterally from Helmand province. Yon was annoyed that his […]
IDF Twitter feed breaks 179 day silence
Rather intriguingly the Twitter feed for the Israeli Defence Force, @IDFSpokesperson, has offered the world a tweet for the first time in 179 days. Clearly IDF Spokesperson was getting back into the swing of things because the first one was quickly followed by a second at around 6pm Israeli time: "IDFSpokesperson 106 aid trucks and […]
MoD (sort of) “encourages” use of Twitter, blogs, Facebook
The Ministry of Defence has issued a new set of social media guidelines "encouraging" their personnel to "talk about what they do, but within certain limits to protect security, reputation and privacy". In a notable development the policy allows soldiers to dicuss "their work online without prior authorisation from their chain of command" as long […]
Blogging NATO Sec General calls for openness
NATO’s new Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has used a video blog to call for NATO to be "as open and transparent as possible". Fogh Rasmussen, who took up his post on Saturday and has been outlining NATO’s strategic priorities today, said he wants to use the blog "to have a discussion" about the security […]
Truth: The first casualty of the Russo-Georgia War
Today, I’ve been multi-tasking: spending some time spying (with permission, I should add) on the BBC’s news operation, keeping one eye on the tennis, and reading a very interesting paper on the media and the Russian invasion of Georgia. I can’t really talk too much about the former (yet) and I don’t suppose many of […]
Strategic Communications: New Media
Here in the bunker – it is a rather swish conference room but there’s a serious shortage of natural light – we’ve been looking at new media and strategic communications. In a moment, three themes from the session and the morning’s discussion. But if you want a frankly more interesting general overview of what the […]
Strategic Communications: Day 2
If you were following the blog yesterday I decided to enjoy the sunshine… Here’s a photo of Alastair Campbell addressing the conference yesterday. After a question and answer session with Campbell on various topics including Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan, we moved onto a panel discussion on how to make a communications strategy work in places […]
Strategic Communications: Morning session summary
…so there’s been a bit of a delay getting the necessary wireless access, but we’re good to go now. We’re also under the Chatham House Rule so observations will be general rather than specific. This morning we’ve been hearing about how the new media landscape has profound implications for the area of strategic […]
Strategic communications in post-conflict countries
I’ll soon be heading into London for a two-day conference where participants will be discussing strategic communications from various organisational perspectives – military, international, humanitarian, and media. On today’s agenda we have: – A key note from Nik Gowing on the ‘new tyranny of shifting information power in crises‘. – A discussion between General Sir […]
MoD and digital media: “We haven’t gripped it, but we’re getting there”
"I could not write about the past week without mentioning the tragic death of Rifleman Adrian Sheldon. Shelly was a much loved member of the Fire Support Platoon here at FOB [Forward Operating Base] Inkerman and his loss has been extremely hard to come to terms with." In among the stories about political meltdown you […]
NATO must ‘plug in’ to the global conversation
A military officer assigned to NATO says the organisation needs to engage with the new media landscape. In a guest post for Mountain Runner, Tom Brouns argues that NATO’s relevance on the Internet will play an increasingly important role in the extent of success or failure in Afghanistan. He notes that according to some observers […]