Just read this article from the New Yorker about the young army majors, captains and lieutenants in Iraq and how they are using the internet to collaborate in real-time.  Very worthwhile read.

The most interesting thing to me though is the part of the story that tells how in 2000 two company commanders started a website on their own time, with their own money, that allows company commanders to collaborate with each other.

In March of 2000, with the help of a Web-savvy West Point classmate
and their own savings, they put up a site on the civilian Internet
called Companycommand.com. It didn’t occur to them to ask the Army for
permission or support. Companycommand was an affront to protocol. The
Army way was to monitor and vet every posting to prevent secrets from
being revealed, but Allen and Burgess figured that captains were smart
enough to police themselves and not compromise security. Soon after the
site went up, a lieutenant colonel phoned one of the Web site’s
operators and advised them to get a lawyer, because he didn’t want to
see “good officers crash and burn.” A year later, Allen and Burgess
started a second Web site, for lieutenants, Platoonleader.org.

The sites, which are accessible to captains and lieutenants with a
password, are windows onto the job of commanding soldiers and onto the
unfathomable complexities of fighting urban guerrillas.

Here’s the amazing thing:  The sites became the go-to resource for officers in Iraq, yet the Army didn’t shut it down.  In fact the it took over hosting the site, put it on West Point’s servers and even launched it’s first homegrown effort, Cavnet on it’s secure net (SIPRNET).  Oh, it is also sending the officers that launched the site to get their PhD. so that they can teach at West Point.

Really, you should read this if you have any interest in subjects like knowledge sharing, distributed learning or management in the "knowledge era."  Also, there’s some really interesting background on the Army’s efforts over the years to create systems for distributing information throughout the command.