Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
You know if the Army or Marines would pay. I'd follow a cadre out of bootcamp through their first deployments and chronicle in an anthropological educational system the process and systemic issues. My co-pi Dr. Tyrell and I would travel and train as internal observers using our own gray beard coterie to evaluate our concerns.
IMO, this type of involvement/interaction is one thing that we've missed out on since the country was not mobilized after 9/11. I'm not talking about Vietnam-era draft, but rather WWII style mobilization. As I studied psychological operations during WWII, the military had access to advertisement executives, circus managers, and Hollywood types that intuitively understood propaganda and deception. Furthermore, the university system worked hand-in-hand with the military to work through various problem sets.

Today, this involvement is limited to a handful of departments at NPS, the academies, and some ad-hoc organizations/people. Imagine if that changed, and all a MarcT or Selil had to do was submit a short letter of intent defining scope, cost, and purpose to use their expertise to help us.

I had the opportunity to participate in a couple of working groups at NPS (TRAC-Monterey and CORE Lab). Most of the projects we worked on are secret or classified, but y'all got to see some results like the Salinas gang project. I really think an expansion of these type of research teams and analysis groups into civilian universities would be mutually beneficial. In some cases, SF teams outsourced/tasked master's students to work problems for them. They could travel on-site, communicate via secure email, or talk in person once a week using a webcam. Throughout the course of a year, the master's student had his thesis and the SF team had answers.

I'd like this type of problem solving pushed down to the Marines and Army company commanders in patrol bases. We have the technology. They can use an Ipod phone application (currently being created by some Marines at NPS) to gather the survey data, push it back home station to a Selil or MarcT, and get immediate feedback via a Webcam. Most importantly, the subject matter experts can advise them on the questions and considerations that the commander simply doesn't know to ask or think about.

This is one collaboration solution harnessing the power of the internet. Another is far simpler. It just involves a commander taking the time to pass down his Operational Summaries DOWN the chain to his NCOs/PLs and asking them, "What do you think about this?"

v/r

Mike