COLORADO SPRINGS The activation of U.S. Northern Command (NorthCom) last week marked the first time a single military commander has been charged with protecting the U.S. homeland since the days of George Washington. The new unit’s creation under the Pentagon’s 2002 Unified Command Plan was prompted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which highlighted Defense Dept, and government interagency weaknesses attributable to no “unity of command” for homeland defense and security.

WASHINGTON Directed-energy technology is ready to be used as weaponry and, in a mature state, one device carried by an unmanned aircraft could attack each of 100 targets with 1,000 pulses of energy in a single sortie, says a former director of the U.S. Air Force’s high-power microwave program.

WASHINGTON Navy officials want to evolve the Cooperative Engagement Capability to be cheaper and to share data such as signals intelligence, but for the program to survive, the most important change could be expanding the user base throughout the military.

WASHINGTON A key, first-night maneuver for an attack on Iraq would involve aggressively pushing E-8 Joint-STARS ground-surveillance radar aircraft well into the western part of the country. During the 1990-91 Persian Gulf war, Joint-STARS orbits were kept inside Saudi Arabia.

WASHINGTON In an effort to reduce interoperability problems, NATO members have devised a set of standards that should lead to the development of unmanned aircraft capable of aiding other NATO militaries. The use of UAVs throughout NATO countries has been growing steadily in recent years, but little progress had been made to ensure the various systems could support coalition partners.

WASHINGTON Having completed the bulk of development for the baseline Cooperative Engagement Capability system, Navy officials are slowly ramping up production to proliferate the network throughout the fleet. One of the biggest challenges developers faced for the emerging airborne application was bringing the 3,200 lb. of CEC equipment used in a ship (USG-2) down to a size that can be packaged into the E-2C Hawkeye.