Cyber cafes bringing Iraq closer to home SPAWAR-developed systems give soldiers an instant link to loved ones
BY TERRY JOYCE Of The Post and Courier Staff HANAHAN--In the old days, roughly two months ago in an ever-changing Iraq, American GIs had to be assigned to or stationed near a headquarters unit to have any practical chance of getting an e-mail through to the folks back home. YALONDA M. JAMES/STAFF Field Engineer Frederick Bellamy sets up laptops Wednesday in a cyber cafe similar to those being sent to troops in Iraq. But as a series of portable, wireless "cyber cafes" goes up across Iraq, the days of the old snail-mail military are drawing rapidly to a close. These modern communications stations feature Internet e-mail access and satellite telephones and were developed as a morale support tool through a crash program at the high-tech Space and Naval Warfare Systems center at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station. Pentagon plans call for 145 of the stations to serve U.S. forces deployed to Iraq. Each cafe boasts 20 laptop computers and eight satellite phones that provide instant, low-cost, global communications. More than 40 of the cafes already have been set up in Iraq, military and SPAWAR spokesmen say, and they have been an instant hit. "We've lost track of how many (military members) told us they hadn't talked with their wives or parents in months," said Ken Crawley of Summerville, a lead engineer with the SPAWAR project in Iraq. Crawley, together with SPAWAR's Steve Nielsen of Goose Creek and Jim Watson of Pensaco-la, Fla., spoke Wednesday by satellite phone from Anaconda base, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. As they spoke, Brad Hoisington of Goose Creek, a SPAWAR logistics manager, demonstrated a model of the cyber cafe installed inside a 32-foot by 20-foot tent at the weapons station. Crawley, Nielsen and Watson have been setting up the cafes since last month. The cyber cafe nickname is misleading -- there's no espresso being served here. Instead, GIs will see a simple, functional layout. Twenty laptops sit on a row of tables down the center of an air-conditioned tent. Eight phones, with access to the United States through a satellite link, line a side panel. It's a setup that's being repeated all across Iraq, where the military has roughly 130,000 troops stationed. The SPAWAR experts use Anaconda base as a jumping-off point. The cafe there already is getting plenty of action. "We haven't put a sign out front of our tent. If we had, we'd be swamped," Crawley said. "In the evenings, it's standing-room-only." E-mail was largely a curiosity during the first Gulf War, but since 1991 the technology has become widely available among some branches of the military. Sailors aboard Navy ships, for instance, often have reliable access to the Internet. But access was rare for field units, and lower-ranking soldiers were particularly unlikely to have it. Mail call always has been considered an essential component of war-time morale, and over the years, the military has used various types of mobile phone banks to give soldiers a chance to call home. But mail is slow and cumbersome, particularly with modern security concerns, and soldiers who waited hours for a turn on the phone were out of luck if nobody was home to take their call. E-mail solves both those problems, and the U.S. military is certainly accustomed to computers. Virtually everything that moves, from an Abrams tank to a humvee, carries at least one. But computers set up to give common soldiers personal access to the Internet are an entirely different matter. Jim Condon, a senior manager at SPAWAR's office in Stuttgart, Germany, said the idea of cyber cafes for American troops in Iraq emerged in August, based on a request from the U.S. Army's 5th Corps in Europe, the higher headquarters for Army soldiers now in Iraq. Condon, who spoke via phone from Germany, said the idea then was developed in September, with the first shipments of equipment moving from Charleston Air Force Base toward Iraq in October. Between Nov. 1 and Nov. 12, with only a fraction of the cyber cafes operational, GIs logged 310,000 phone-call minutes from Iraq. Crawley, Nielsen and Watson had hoped to have all 145 units in place by Thanksgiving, but obviously that goal has slipped. The staggering amount of equipment involved tells why. According to Hoisington, who's in charge of the project's logistics, the list of equipment shipped from the Air Force base includes: -- 2,950 laptop computers -- 4,000 chairs -- 1,800 tables -- 1,180 phones -- 150 printers -- 585 fluorescent light kits -- 150 power distribution units -- 145 satellite communications units The total cost is roughly $20 million. "We estimate we've shipped over 700,000 pounds of equipment," said Bob Davis, also a SPAWAR manager. "That enough to fill 25 C-17s." The costs to individual soldiers are modest. E-mail is free, Watson said, while phone calls dialed from a cyber cafe are 5 cents a minute. Soldiers can either pay by credit card or ask a family member to pre-pay through a Web site in the United States. Individual military members aren't the only ones to benefit from the cyber cafes. Family members in the United States can get instant updates on the whereabouts of their sons and daughters through phone calls and e-mails. Such contacts can bring relief to thousands who might otherwise worry about their loved ones for days after attacks on American troops. "It's really amazing how technology has changed us since 1991," the year of the first Persian Gulf war, said Army Sgt. Danny Martin, a spokesman for the U.S. military's Combined Joint Task Force 7 in Baghdad. The availability of computers has increased enormously. So much so that ordinary mail may one day become a thing of the past. "So many things have to happen before regular mail gets into the hands of a soldier," Martin said, including the time it takes to move a letter half way around the world, plus the usual examinations by X-rays and drug-sniffing dogs. And while it may seem as if the Army has a computer or a satellite phone available for every soldier, that's simply not the case. "Letters and cards take about seven or eight days to get here," he said. And while that's a big improvement over the several weeks it took for mail to reach Iraq when the war began in March, "with computers and the Internet, it's just point and click. It's going to be great for morale at both ends." Terry Joyce covers the military. Contact him at 745-5857 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ===== I wanted a perfect ending... Now, I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment, and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity. --Gilda Radner __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree _______________________________________________ Sndbox mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sandboxmail.net/mailman/listinfo/sndbox_sandboxmail.net
