It would be kind of interesting to reformat this as it originally appeared -- line by line as IRC messages in mIRC on someone's plywood shack or tent operations center.
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They actually use IRC? That's very interesting to me... Do you know where I could read a bit more about that?
I find it fascinating that these people are typing to each other? Is it to make sure the commands and information is 100% clear? Is IRC the most efficient manner to do it?
Do they use mIRC?
Yes, mIRC on windows xp or vista, backbone of military command and control. It is kind of sad. People in the operations center ("TOC") sit there monitoring HF radios and watching 2-8 mIRC windows for various networks (higher headquarters, medevac, artillery fires, etc.).
http://trout.snt.utwente.nl/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=sh...
http://ircreport.com/blog/20100405170/armed-forces-using-mir...
They also do a lot of crappy conferences using the Adobe desktop VTC product (I think branded as Acrobat), and of course HUGE volumes of Microsoft PowerPoint. Email is sent out as attached powerpoints containing 2-3 lines of text, often, rather than a simple text email.
It is quite possibly the worst IT environment I can imagine.
The irony here is that the information in the wikileaks release (especially on the Guardian site) is now vastly better organized and more accessible than it ever was internally to the military!
http://www.army.mil/-news/2010/02/17/34550-a-tactical-comman...
http://books.google.com/books?id=VQQqDxmpG9IC&pg=PA34...
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Decentralized+fires+in+Afghani...
Email is sent out as attached powerpoints
That's a thing I've noticed in the commercial world too. With most non-technical managers, if you send them a long email, they'll ignore it. Well not quite; they'll see it in Outlook, then their eyes will sort of slide off it and go onto the next one (I have observed this). Sometimes they will even phone the sender and say, you sent me an email, what's it say?
Put exactly the same content in a Word doc or a PDF and in the email just say "please see attached" and they'll perfectly happily read it, or even 10x as much text. Very, very weird.
As an IRC junkie, this is an incredible tidbit of info to find out. So all those wasted years of scripting irc bots could have real-world application at the highest levels of global warfare!
> LET'S PLAY GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR? Y/N
I think it's kind of sad that they don't have bots, usually (they rely on humans to transcribe from voice radio to IRC and back again), and use mIRC vs. something like irssi or even BitchX.
Also I doubt people do channel takeovers, banning, amusing hostmasks, etc. Warrior using IRC != IRC Warrior.
Founding IRC: http://www.mirc.com/help/jarkko.html
Very similar to the birthing of Linux.