Opportunities for International Technology Transfer in the Pacific Rim in Digital Technologies

The US. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and other US. government laboratories are placing substantially increased emphasis on moving technology into their facilities. This reflects the reality that considerable state-of-the-art research done in private sector laboratories is increasingly relevant to a variety of government missions, both defense and civilian. ARL has recently initiated a long term program to develop increased technology interchange in the broad area of digital technologies with individuals and institutions in Pact@ Rim countries. Much of the ARL effort in the near term will be focused on increasing technical interchange in a number of settings (e.g. conferences, workshops, personnel exchanges) with a longer term goal of developing spect$c cooperative eJ?orts. Such technology interchange can also be leveraged by developing a research network on the World Wide Web with supporting databases a “‘Pact& Rim Research Net” leveraging international research eflorts in selected areas. Electronically assisted networks using a combination of workshops and electronic collaboration technology (e.g. Web servers) facilitafed in the US are being used successfully by several international research communities. We believe that such a network initially focusing on digital technologies, could have a strongly catalyzing e#ect on non-proprietary/ unclasst@ed research conducted by government, industry and academia in the U.S. and other Pacific Rim countries. Along with a description of our current approach on international technology transfer, this paper presents some of our exploratory ideas for developing longer term structures for communication and cooperation including a Pacific Rim Research Net.