Thought: limits of technology/war
So for lack of anything better to do (oh, I could have done a load of wash, I suppose), I ended up channel surfing and came across some violent pornography that stands in for educational television. Of course, I speak of the Discovery Channel's Future Weapons. In any event, the episode was hormonally describing the allegedly awe-inspiring elements of DARPA/DOD's FCS/Future Combat System(s) program.
Even the latest New Scientist cover article was referring to this development, with a particular focus on the information management software to try and cue up information for the busy/distracted (e.g. being shot at) user.
But the thing of it is, I still see this all as a colossal waste. Sure, maybe we'll develop some really clever machines, lighter in weight, packing more hit per pound of gear, and clearing up some of that 'fog of war' that's been a lethal nuisance since at least Clausewitz, but I see this opening up whole new opportunities for defeat.
The high-tech counter-measure: At the risk of ripping from Ghost in the Shell, even if there are highly effective 'CRM114 discriminators', there would be plenty of opportunities to turn a totally-networked system against itself. Even if one doesn't get to the stage of actually getting automated weapons to attack its own users, there are more than enough methods to deny its full capabilities (mistargeting, jamming, continuous software reloading, and doing just enough of these things in prolonged combat to make its users distrustful of their own tools).
Hell, how many entry-points into this network will be availed by raiding and hacking gear from the dead? [And if Iraq is any indicator, plenty of DOD-sourced laptops and memory sticks with operational data have made their way to local markets outside the base perimeter. More on this 'human link' later.]
The lower-tech counter-measure: Are the lessons of Iraq being learned? The insurgency uses the very cellphone network the US established to multiply their IED capability. When jammers are brought in, there are plenty of other, effective, detonation methods. Give me a high-tech networked mobile force against ground of the enemy's choosing, and I give that networked force at best even odds (an improvement, I suppose). Even with (and especially with) the bloody mess of Falluja.
The lowest-tech counter-measure: Screw 1:1 complexity, just lay off a cheap EMP (suitably researched & built artillery shell with directed antenna) and move in with knives & clubs* on your high-tech adversary rendered Stone Age in mere seconds.
*Actually, the Kalashnikov remains an awfully good primitive weapon.
The tactical loss, the strategic victory:
Ultimately, the technical sophistication of the US military is eroding the very political and economic sophistication and successes the nation needs.*
Falluja was rated a technical military success, even with disagreement about green Iraqi forces, yet remains a political loss of the first order. It was a propaganda coup for the insurgency...in great part due to the absolutely primitive incapability of Bush and his administration. Consider his dad in Panama? Plenty brutal and messy, but kept short & sharp, and the bodies were quickly buried. Media headlines rapidly grabbed for another military adventure the other side of the world...evil Saddam no less.
Meanwhile, the economic performance of the nation is at increasing risk, and the government's budget is on hawk. The conventional wisdom of China's economy wrapped up in our own due to the very heavy burden of T-Bills in their treasury shouldn't inspire the kind of confidence 'talking heads' seem to indicate. Sure, it may spread out the pain of any given crash in any part of the linked world economy...on the other hand, it's all eggs in the same basket - hoping its not heading to hell.
Meanwhile, the US armed forces continue to be stretched, in some odd budgetary botoxing. So much so that we have Racists entering the armed forces and tagging parts of Iraq with their gang graffiti. Let alone out and out criminals. The Dirty Dozen do not make for a disciplined army...no matter what one thinks of the performance of 77th ID in Argonne.
It's nearly impossible to imagine Iraq turning out well after all this - and it seems to me that this kind of technological-focus (especially at the expense of vital areas of development elsewhere in the military, in foreign policy, in domestic policy) will only repeat these outcomes (well, insofar as China continues to choose to underwrite these idiocies^).
*Even if we limit the scope to the purely military, how can it possibly be a good thing to break with NATO as often as the US has done in the past years? And the Czech and Polish missile defence expansion appears to have been handled entirely irresponsibly vis-a-vis the Russians (even if the Russians choose to be disagreeable - they could at least have received a cut, a benefit, somewhere).
===
^I'm left wondering...from a historical financial perspective, and the chart of empire. The US essentially adopted the British role after being bankrupted by these imperial policies & adventures - a role that was partially adopted through the exchange of credit.
If the Asian loaners are to the US today what the US was to Britain in the last century or so, where does this place the Iraq War? The 2nd Boer War? If the yardstick is national debt#, maybe it's more like the First World War.
#at $8.5-8.8 trillion (thousand billion/thousand thousand million), we'll see if we'll enter a period of "stagflation" at war's financial conclusion.
EDIT: Article on US Army cracking down on desertions
Even the latest New Scientist cover article was referring to this development, with a particular focus on the information management software to try and cue up information for the busy/distracted (e.g. being shot at) user.
But the thing of it is, I still see this all as a colossal waste. Sure, maybe we'll develop some really clever machines, lighter in weight, packing more hit per pound of gear, and clearing up some of that 'fog of war' that's been a lethal nuisance since at least Clausewitz, but I see this opening up whole new opportunities for defeat.
The high-tech counter-measure: At the risk of ripping from Ghost in the Shell, even if there are highly effective 'CRM114 discriminators', there would be plenty of opportunities to turn a totally-networked system against itself. Even if one doesn't get to the stage of actually getting automated weapons to attack its own users, there are more than enough methods to deny its full capabilities (mistargeting, jamming, continuous software reloading, and doing just enough of these things in prolonged combat to make its users distrustful of their own tools).
Hell, how many entry-points into this network will be availed by raiding and hacking gear from the dead? [And if Iraq is any indicator, plenty of DOD-sourced laptops and memory sticks with operational data have made their way to local markets outside the base perimeter. More on this 'human link' later.]
The lower-tech counter-measure: Are the lessons of Iraq being learned? The insurgency uses the very cellphone network the US established to multiply their IED capability. When jammers are brought in, there are plenty of other, effective, detonation methods. Give me a high-tech networked mobile force against ground of the enemy's choosing, and I give that networked force at best even odds (an improvement, I suppose). Even with (and especially with) the bloody mess of Falluja.
The lowest-tech counter-measure: Screw 1:1 complexity, just lay off a cheap EMP (suitably researched & built artillery shell with directed antenna) and move in with knives & clubs* on your high-tech adversary rendered Stone Age in mere seconds.
*Actually, the Kalashnikov remains an awfully good primitive weapon.
The tactical loss, the strategic victory:
Ultimately, the technical sophistication of the US military is eroding the very political and economic sophistication and successes the nation needs.*
Falluja was rated a technical military success, even with disagreement about green Iraqi forces, yet remains a political loss of the first order. It was a propaganda coup for the insurgency...in great part due to the absolutely primitive incapability of Bush and his administration. Consider his dad in Panama? Plenty brutal and messy, but kept short & sharp, and the bodies were quickly buried. Media headlines rapidly grabbed for another military adventure the other side of the world...evil Saddam no less.
Meanwhile, the economic performance of the nation is at increasing risk, and the government's budget is on hawk. The conventional wisdom of China's economy wrapped up in our own due to the very heavy burden of T-Bills in their treasury shouldn't inspire the kind of confidence 'talking heads' seem to indicate. Sure, it may spread out the pain of any given crash in any part of the linked world economy...on the other hand, it's all eggs in the same basket - hoping its not heading to hell.
Meanwhile, the US armed forces continue to be stretched, in some odd budgetary botoxing. So much so that we have Racists entering the armed forces and tagging parts of Iraq with their gang graffiti. Let alone out and out criminals. The Dirty Dozen do not make for a disciplined army...no matter what one thinks of the performance of 77th ID in Argonne.
It's nearly impossible to imagine Iraq turning out well after all this - and it seems to me that this kind of technological-focus (especially at the expense of vital areas of development elsewhere in the military, in foreign policy, in domestic policy) will only repeat these outcomes (well, insofar as China continues to choose to underwrite these idiocies^).
*Even if we limit the scope to the purely military, how can it possibly be a good thing to break with NATO as often as the US has done in the past years? And the Czech and Polish missile defence expansion appears to have been handled entirely irresponsibly vis-a-vis the Russians (even if the Russians choose to be disagreeable - they could at least have received a cut, a benefit, somewhere).
===
^I'm left wondering...from a historical financial perspective, and the chart of empire. The US essentially adopted the British role after being bankrupted by these imperial policies & adventures - a role that was partially adopted through the exchange of credit.
If the Asian loaners are to the US today what the US was to Britain in the last century or so, where does this place the Iraq War? The 2nd Boer War? If the yardstick is national debt#, maybe it's more like the First World War.
#at $8.5-8.8 trillion (thousand billion/thousand thousand million), we'll see if we'll enter a period of "stagflation" at war's financial conclusion.
EDIT: Article on US Army cracking down on desertions