Michael Helfrich, CEO and founder of Boxford, Mass.-based Blueforce Development, has a background in collaboration software, having been at Groove before leaving to found his own company.

He sees the problems of the modern military as essentially about command and control, where his company comes in. "It's about adapting to a stochastic, asymmetric threat." Stochastic means difficult to forecast or partially random so a stochastic threat is not completely illogical—it's just difficult to forecast.

Geeks on the lava field
He describes a test of these standards conducted during July 17 through 22, 2004 on Kona, Hawaii. "We used commercial, off the shelf hardware and software. We dropped 43 geeks onto a lava field and saw how fast they could set up an imaginary disaster response network. 40 organizations from 12 nations participated, including the Red Crescent."

Among various tests, the group tested prefab shelter types in 110 degree heat.

They deployed a mobile base station. There was an Exchange server and IM in the truck. The island had four bases, and the truck made a continuous circuit, delivering and picking up e-mail and IM.

Other tests included using a cantenna to download real time video from a fixed wing Cessna aircraft. The test achieved 15 fps at 700 feet, but was slower as the aircraft went higher.

For convoy security in Iraq, Blue Force is developing and improving a system that delivers a Wi-Fi field that moves with the convoy and gives each driver access to real time video from the front and rear of the convoy, so that if the convoy is attacked, everybody knows what's going on.