The way the U.S. military fights today, information is as important as tanks, ships and aircraft. The Pentagon's strategy requires that data be posted to networks in seconds so troops and analysts can assess it and take action within minutes.

That new warfighting strategy requires advanced sensing, communications and security technologies, which the military's research laboratories often develop.

"Within the walls of academic and government labs, highly skilled researchers are probing the edges of science to uncover technologies that promise to make warfare both more efficient and deadly," writes John Edwards, author of the book "The Geeks of War: The Secretive Labs and Brilliant Minds Behind Tomorrow's Warfare Technologies," published earlier this year.

Edwards writes that these self-professed geeks are rapidly and relentlessly creating the next generation of military technologies. We take a look at a few tools that will enable network-centric warfare.

X-ray vision

The U.S. military needs technology to find targets underground and inside mountains. The Army Battle Command Battle Laboratory at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., considers Subterranean Target Identification technology a capability that could help warfighters and analysts locate ammunition bunkers and track weapons of mass destruction in the war on terrorism.

The sensing and data-processing technology developed by Silicon Graphics Inc. uses sound, infrared, and other wave-producing technologies and seismic sensors to create a visual computer model of underground objects. The company developed a similar capability to help energy companies locate oil and gas reserves.

Paul Temple, senior business development manager at SGI Federal, said the target identification technology will help locate enemies' ammunition bunkers and command centers built by sophisticated tunneling and mining techniques. "Because they are underground, they are hard to find and extremely difficult for the U.S. military to strike," he said.

SGI and the Army's lab received $1 million in March to study and develop the technology and deploy it next year. The contract's funding comes from money allocated under the 2005 Defense Appropriations Act. Congress could provide additional funding for the program in fiscal 2006.