One of the most significant events that heralded the Department of Defense's commitment to distance education was the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, which held its kickoff meeting in Washington, DC in 1997. This meeting provided the army and other military services the endorsement that had been lacking relative to implementing distance learning as a means of distributing education and training to the forces. The ADL movement became the voice of change for distance learning, which moved from a primarily paper-based and television delivery format to one that would include the value and benefit of the emerging training technologies, including the Internet. The ADL initiative was undertaken by the Department of Defense, in partnership with the White House Office of Science and Technology. However, just as many people did not know that ARPANET, forerunner to the modern day Internet, grew out of scientific research from the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, many also did not know that one of the most prominent leaders for modern day technology-based distance education was the Department of Defense. The history of distance education is really a long history and goes back to correspondence courses, audio and video, and educational television. It is a history of false starts, lessons learned, cultural shifts, parity of esteem and acceptability issues. The Internet has added a capability for delivering knowledge that even the futurists of 25 years ago would not have envisioned. It has created an innovative environment where technology has started to "spin on its own axis," often irrespective of learning theory and application. If one can think of a technology application, industry seems capable of building the product. People still suffer from a lack of instructional strategies. They still fear the economic impact of closing or under-utilizing traditional classrooms, and they remain defiant about the value of most asynchronous learning applications. The history, however, is ripe for the making. In just 15 years since the U.S. Army started asking the questions of how to take learning to the student, people now have the technological capability to bring just in time, anywhere, anytime learning to any student who can access a computer or personal digital assistant. This article discusses the U.S. Army's impact on the history of distance education. (Contains 2 figures.)