take place and are perceived by sensors and people. Data emerging from the physical domain is transmitted through an information domain. It is processed in a cognitive domain before being acted upon. The process is similar to a "observe, orient, decide, act" loop described by Col. John Boyd of the USAF. Power to the Edge The last publication dealing with the developing theory of network centric warfare appeared in 2003 with Power to the Edge, also published by the CCRP. Power to the Edge is a speculative work suggesting that modern military environments are far too complex to be understood by any one individual, organisation, or even military service. Modern information technology permits the rapid and effective sharing of information to such a degree that "edge entities" or those that are essentially conducting military missions themselves, should be able to "pull" information from ubiquitous repositories, rather than having centralised agencies attempt to anticipate their information needs and "push" it to them. This would imply a major flattening of traditional military hierarchies, however. Power To The Edge'''s radical ideas had been under investigation by the Pentagon since at least 2001. In UIAW, the concept of peer-to-peer activity combined with more traditional hierarchical flow of data in the network had been introduced. Shortly thereafter, the Pentagon began investing in peer-to-peer research, telling software engineers at a November 2001 peer-to-peer conference that there were advantages to be gained in the redundancy and robustness of a peer-to-peer network topology on the battlefield. Network-centric warfare/operations is a cornerstone of the ongoing transformation effort at the Department of Defense initiated by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It is also one of the five goals of the Office of Force Transformation, Office of the Secretary of Defense. See Revolution in Military Affairs for further information on what is now known as "defense transformation" or "transformation". Related technologies and programs The US DOD has mandated that the Global Information Grid (GIG) will be the primary technical framework to support US network-centric warfare/network-centric operations. Under this directive, all advanced weapons platforms, sensor systems, and command and control centers are eventually to be linked via the GIG. The term system of systems is often used to describe the results of these types of massive integration efforts. The topic Net-Centric Enterprise Services addresses the applications context of the GIG. A number of significant U.S. military programs are taking technical steps