Marine Corps wants green IT partnership with Army, industry

 The Marine Corps wants the Army to help the Corps develop green information technology systems that would benefit forces in combat, according to James Craft, deputy chief information officer for the Marine Corps.

Craft said he wants to collaborate with the Army to lessen the logistical loads for soldiers and Marines in the field, including updated technology to substitute for the heavy batteries and generator fuel that service members carry for networking equipment.

The move would make the forces more resilient and save money, Craft said.

Speaking at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) conference in Washington on Oct. 7, Craft also asked industry to help with technical designs and other assistance. “We need to partner with industry – industry has the solutions we need,” he said. “These are opportunities to partner with the Marines. We want to do better.”

He also said, “If we team with the Army, it’s considered joint [operations]. If it’s joint, we get Defense Department and congressional support,” Craft said. “We can’t do it alone anymore,”

The green IT proposal is part of a larger plan, discussed at the AUSA meeting, for the Marine Corps and Army to work together in modernizing networking capabilities under the Global Network Enterprise Construct (GNEC). GNEC is an Army-wide force transformation program to bring together and secure the service's separate information networks and battle command systems and connect them to the Global Information Grid.