If you're looking at systems I can give you some ideas (and heck being the greedy academic I am throw money at me and I'll let you into my lab where we have built the Internet...)

I'm not military but I stayed at a Holiday Day Inn Express...

You're mixing some terms and we can get into specifics if you wish. Distributed in the computer systems world is a buzz word. It takes on a couple connotations. Distributed can mean processing, data, communications, accessibility, etc.. Network enabling can mean "webbifying" an application, putting telemetry on the network, linking entities, or creating applications that share the medium like instant messenger. Distributed and hierarchical when used together create "systems paralysis" where one goal is nearing the polar and contradiction of another stated goal. See some examples that follow. .

If we're talking about network centric warfare using computers for command and control and for situational awareness there are some web2.0 technologies that can accomplish some of this...

Consider tools like Twitter. It allows for instantaneous sentences to pop up asking questions or making statements. Talk about situational awareness. That does mean somebody has to be watching it though.

Consider tools like blogging. If commanders were using a blogging tools rather than a flat file hierarchical tool for writing their reports standard context and heuristic software could search for key phrases and items nearing on instantly. The difference between key search phrases (Google) and heuristic searching (Hakia) is awesome.

To get an idea where in systems design, and how we can get it wrong so many times draw an org chart on a piece of paper. Now draw a network chart of information flows. I'm willing to bet you did both in a 2D space. Information networks are not even 3D they are 4D spaces just like the Internet. Distributed does not taking one silo (vertical data information set) of information and breaking it up into many silo's. You want NO silo's.

Change the terms around a little and start thinking about entities. I'm not into euphemisms an entity is processing, data, communications, rules, etc.. and becomes a "node" that is interlinked to other "nodes" in a "web" rather than flat structure. No entity has the entire information set but any few entities can create a missing entity. This is a key concept for distributed data and processing but you might notice communications is missing.

Similarly high speed, high volume, high availability (the triad) are three key concepts in distributed computing. (We're way up there in concepts so I know there are contrarian examples for experts reading this)... The rule is you can have any two of the triad.

These examples are examples of application space changes rather than actual distributed networks. If you want to get to the systems engineering aspects we have to add the actual communications medium and that is a sticky wicket. You already mentioned security but what kind of security? The MaConahay, Schou Ragsdale model provides us with five key security services (confidentiality, integrity, availability, non-repudiation, and authentication). There are two other dimensions to the model but let's think about this first.

If you have a fully distributed network the architecture makes availability nearing on a zero issue. Common security practices like encryption take care of non-repudiation, confidentiality, and integrity. Fill the distributed network with throttled white noise and ensure a strong authentication mechanism at access points and security becomes less of an issue. The problem is that in the Navy the granularity of an entity is an aircraft carrier or submarine when it should be a sailor. If I take out an entity that has substantial functional components then you've got issues.

Closing items: This knowledge space/area is filled with vendors who haven't got a clue, academicians who don't understand the requirements, and users who are only looking for a solution. When in doubt go more towards the root of the system. For me this area of endeavor has been a no go for research. No money, no interest, owned by the corporations nobody will look at it other than as fundamental theoretical research. If you have any questions let me know, if I'm off base let me know too.