The Torch: The CF's Kandahar war room

Very interesting:

Capt. Brian Tang runs Canada's top secret war room from dawn to dusk. The Joint Operations Centre, as it is officially known, is the hub for all information and data from the battlefield and a transit point for information and data going to and coming from all Canadian units, to NATO and to the top brass in Ottawa.
Photograph by: Matthew Fisher, Canwest News Service
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — Almost in the dark, under electronic clocks announcing Zulu time and Ottawa time, and surrounded by 100 computer screens and multiple video feeds from the battlefield, Capt. Brian Tang runs Canada's top-secret war room from dusk until dawn.
In a conflict where almost all of Canada's top guns are senior army officers, Tang has a most unlikely appointment.
The 32-year old Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong native is an air force officer and aerospace engineer with two master's degrees. His areas of expertise include water degradation and its effects on the wings of CF-18 Hornet fighter jets [Disclosure: I know Capt. Tang, an RMC graduate and not exactly what I would consider a "Hong Kong native"--as Canadian as I am, an unfortunate choice of words - MC].
"When I showed up for training (with the army) in Edmonton last fall, I thought that I was in another place," said Tang, at the end of one of his12-hour shifts at the Joint Operations Centre. "It requires a different kind of intellect. You have to think on your feet because everything happens in a second and you have to deconflict the battle space."
The centre operates as a hub — where information from across Kandahar flows and where many of the important decisions are made. Its computers provide a two-way link to two NATO headquarters, to top brass in Ottawa and to nearly a dozen Canadian and American outposts in Kandahar...
"This generation of warfare is like video games," said Tang, who spent his teenage years in Scarborough, Ont [exactly]. "You look at a screen and talk to your buddies on a handset while 'chatting' on another screen.
"You need to multi-task...

No asset has been in greater demand than unmanned aircraft — the armed American Predator and Reaper drones, Canadian unarmed drones and other airborne surveillance assets...
Speaking of an incident that had happened on his watch a few days earlier, he said men had been spotted planting bombs on a road and he had to decide whether a U.S. air force B-1 bomber or a U.S. army OH-58 Kiowa helicopter would carry out the mission.
"(We) got the kill. That was a good attack. IED-making materials and phone cards were found. I believe they were on a training mission."..