We draw general lessons in technology deployment and project management from the extreme environment of Iraq. This environment has some unique characteristics – active adversaries, physical insecurity, recently destroyed infrastructure, and a dynamic and uncertain political environment – but also has many universal characteristics, such as a vast potential market, substantial “anchor customers", and technological problems which seem ideally suited to the features of next-generation and almost-there technical solutions, but which demand simplicity and reliability. In deploying these cutting-edge systems in this demanding environment, we have learned many technological and organizational lessons which should greatly assist in similar deployments in more traditional environments throughout the world.