Battle command knowledge system

Army Professional Forums were informally implemented by volunteers who wanted to share their knowledge and experience with their peers in order to improve their profession.

These collaboration tools have been widely accepted across the entire enterprise structure, with membership ranging from General Officer to Private, all being able to share their unique knowledge and experience with others on the Professional Forum without regard to rank or position.

[citation needed] NCO Net origins began in the early 1990s with Command Sergeant Major Daniel K. Elder exploring his personal computer and modem with friends.

With a dial up modem hosted in his house and a single phone line, NCOs could log onto "The Old Soldiers BBS" with a local Ft. Knox KY number.

In the earliest days, only one person at a time could connect to the BBS – an era before the internet, before Google, and before military documents were easily accessed.

But once dialed in, the NCO would find relevant files and time saver programs for soldiers, many of them provided by the Command and Control Microcomputer Users Group (C2MUG) at Ft Leavenworth, Kansas.

Anything that would help NCOs of today to stay relevant was provided by CSM Elder and his "merry band" of misfits.

Dedicated and passionate volunteers gave their personal time and resources to develop, grow, and make the NCO site relevant.

[4] In October 2005 the NCO site migrated at the US Army Sergeants Major Academy into the Battle Command Knowledge System.

NCO Net has evolved into a global system of professional forums, knowledge centers, and supporting toolkits for sharing information and experiences, problems solving, improving operational performance and support of the Non-Commissioned Officers Education System (NCOES).

The online NCO facilitator led discussion with context specific thought questions on how the soldiers could handle the situation.