I then responded back to Ron:

Ron...

Thanks for this analysis. Here are some thoughts I'd have in response:

1. Maybe we need to think of communication devices such as smartphones as consumable commodities rather than hard investments since the technology that they use is so rapidly evolving. This is a good state of affairs since it gives us a chance to contribute and help shape, if we're playing and contributing within the smartphone community of practice, rather than just complain that they don't know what we need.

2. Rather than analyze soldiers who are adapting to the situation in which they find themselves, we might do well to consider their work an operational requirement: communication must be able to move between commercial and dedication communication nodes. Voice over IP is something that we could use with encryption that could give us a way to communicate that can secure all those packets. (BTW, have you seen the piece that says that Google is working to make their Android phone FISMA-compliant? See URL: http://socialbarrel.com/microsoft-wins-fisma-certification-saddened-by-google%E2%80%99s-gsa-contract-win/900/

3. Mission threads and use cases are useful when you're planning but when you're executing an operation, you need flexibility and opportunity. This is where Scott's point about "talk groups" comes in. The squad is one group; its leader is part of the platoon's group and so on. The Secretary and other "6000 mile screwdrivers" can only talk to their subordinates and could be blocked out of talk groups to which they should not communicate---as during the fire fight you mention.

4. Self-organization is what this endeavor is all about and it should serve as a guide for us....listen to the person closest to the firefight and then think about all the things that he might need so that he can have them intuitively, surprisingly just as what one finds using the iPhone! Tribalism is good in that it helps to define speciation just as dogs are different from cats and plumbers are different from electricians. The problem comes when they begin to think that the "way forward" is genocide...then we have to remind them about the ecosystem and the economy!

Thanks again....good thoughts!

r/Dave