Defense Department Launches Science-related Online Radio Show

By Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg
Special to American Forces Press Service

Jan. 14, 2009 - Defense Department officials today launched "Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military," an online radio show. Armed with Science is a bi-monthly audio webcast, hosted on BlogTalkRadio.com that discusses cutting-edge scientific research and development sponsored by various defense offices, and applications of science and technology to military operations.

Geoff Chester, public affairs officer for the U.S. Naval Observatory, helped to launch the program by discussing the nature of atomic time keeping, the observatory's master clock system, and why a precise time reference is critical to military operations.

"In our business, timing is literally everything," Chester said. "An error of three nanoseconds in timing translates to a position error of one meter for a precision-guided weapon." A nanosecond is three billionths of a second.

Precise timing also is crucial for the transmission of securely encrypted data over large-scale networks at high rates of speed, Chester said. The U.S. Naval Observatory is the exclusive provider of these time-scale references to the Defense Department, he added.

Located at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ArmedwithScience, the audio webcast will feature interviews with scientists, administrators, and operators to discuss the importance of science and advanced technology to the modern military.

"The Armed with Science audio webcast is intended to promote science literacy throughout the Department of Defense," Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, DoD's director of new media, said. "This is a great use of social media to expand the realm of knowledge in scientific areas of concentration."

The next audio webcast is scheduled for Jan. 28. Mike Jeffries, Fleet Survey Team technical director and chief hydrographer, will discuss hydrography and the techniques and tools of ocean-bottom mapping, the use of expeditionary Fleet Survey Teams, and how the data they collect are used to build precise nautical navigation charts.

The full transcript and audio webcast from today's show will be available for downloading at http://www.defenselink.mil/Blogger/Index.aspx.

(Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg serves in the New Media directorate of the Defense Media Activity.)