Looking for a proponent of the technological advantage in business? Look no further than the US military. Since winning the cold war in the eighties by bankrupting the Soviet Union, the US has concentrated on increasing the technological gap between it and its potential enemies. In Gulf War 1 for example, we got our first look at smart bombs - and the US attacked Iraqi computer networks with viruses. A little over a decade later in Gulf War 2, the US sent Iraqi commanders fake orders via text messaging, launched Hellfire missiles from unmanned aircraft - and managed real time battle movements using Tablet PCs, Microsoft chat and avatars.

While Iraqi commanders were basically fighting blind, US generals could see everything, all the time, real time. Spy satellites able to see through vegetation (with a 10 cm per pixel resolution) looked down from above, while on the ground, special forces placed miniature infrared cameras and seismic sensors to track vehicle movements before calling in GPS targeted air strikes. Cover of darkness was no cover at all. All US tanks and fighting vehicles were fitted with night vision equipment. But more than that, they also had heat sensors. Attacking a convoy at night during a sandstorm, Iraqi soldiers must have assumed the blowing sand and darkness made them invisible - until the US armour switched to heat sensors and annihilated them.

Away from the combat (just) the whole operation was run on a network called a Warfighting Web, powered by arrays of Compaq servers and Cisco switches located in several Tactical Operations Centers that moved with the troops - and had a 75 kilometer wireless network capacity. Interestingly, despite the historic and pivotal significance of the war, military techs used many of the same services available to everyday business users. Asked how he fixed a malfunctioning web browser for his general, a US soldier told Wired magazine he simply consulted Microsoft's online help "we have Premier help," he confirmed.

August 2003