Our revolution in military affairs?

This sure sounds impressive--but it's only a tool, not a Wii wand:

Canada's military has leaped into the 21st century, trading radios and maps dotted with pins for ultra-high-tech war rooms where commanders have access to constant data streams, real-time digitized maps, and live video feeds from drones, satellites and web cameras that travel with combat vehicles hunting the Taliban.

"We may still be in the mud, and the buildings we use may be made of plywood, but what we have now is comparable to a combat battle centre on a frigate -- or the bridge of the Starship Enterprise," said Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie. "This is a huge step forward. In distance, it is light years. In time, we have moved decades with one step. In terms of information, we are right up there with the Americans and British."

To nearly universal rave reviews, several state-of-the art operations rooms have been set up by the Quebec-based Royal 22nd Regiment battle group in southern Afghanistan.

The biggest is a digitized battle suite at the Kandahar Airfield, where soldiers have been working around the clock in shifts. Their eyes are fixed on dozens of small computer screens in a cool, hushed room dominated by several huge computer screens on the walls and a red light on the ceiling that glows when contact with the enemy is expected or has begun, or when there are Canadian wounded or dead.

"If that red light is on, it means 'Go to your battle stations; there is serious business to be done,'" said Maj. Pascal Larose, an armoured officer who gave the first extensive tour for a journalist of the top-secret Provincial Operations Centre. "And that light is on almost every day."..

The Athena Tactical System, which was made entirely in Canada, runs up to 100 times faster than the best Internet connection Canadians have in their homes, Letourneau explained. It combines telephone communication, e-mail and chat rooms for an unlimited number of people online at the same time, as well as video, data and a website loaded with background information. It cannot be hacked into because it is an entirely enclosed system.

A key feature of the new system is a "blue force tracker," which marks the position of every Canadian vehicle. The vehicles, in turn, are fitted with transponders that communicate constantly over global positioning satellites. As friendly fire incidents are known in the military as "blue-on-blue" attacks, that is also the colour used to signify friendly forces.

Other colours and symbols are used to designate the location of enemy forces, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), unexploded ordnance and other threats. All this information can be placed on digitized maps or laid over satellite images. It can also be made instantly available to commanders in their vehicles in the field...

"Before we had to call everyone by radio to know where everyone was," said Lt.-Col. Alain Gauthier, who commands the Van Doo battle group. "This could take an hour and by then everybody had moved, so the picture I got was obsolete. This gives me an instant visual that is much more effective and precise. It gives me the capacity to trace the threat and warn all our vehicles instantly."

Gauthier conceded the digital revolution will "not solve all the problems of Afghanistan."

"It is a tool in decision making. The threat of this insurgency remains real. We still have to dismount [emphasis added]."..