US Military Working On 'Optionally-Manned' Bomber 278
An anonymous reader writes "Despite massive budget deficits, the U.S. military is working towards a stealthy and 'optionally-manned' bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The craft is intended to replace the 1960s B-52, 1970s B-1 and 1990s B-2 bombers. The new aircraft is meant to be a big part of the U.S. 'pivot' to the Pacific. With China sporting anti-ship weapons that could sink U.S. carriers from a distance, a new bomber is now a top priority."
Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, more crew than a cruise missile? Multiple targets like a MIRV, ability to recall, and no (pilot/crew) lives at risk... what's not to like?
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The audio system is a bit tinny, I hear, but the nav system is to die for.
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[...] the nav system is to die because of.
You ended that sentence with a preposition... Bastard.
Re:Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey, don't alter my IP!
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[...] the nav system is to die because of.
That appears to be un uncited FTFY. If so, then Grammar Nazi fail.
"Of" is also a preposition.
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The price is not to like. The Pentagon should pay for this new system by deleting some other system. In fact the Pentagon should delete more expenses than this one is currently pretended to cost, to accommodate the inevitable cost overruns of the new system.
We are spending far more than what our security needs to cost us. If we really do have a new "highest priority", the Pentagon should cut enough of its lower priorities to pay for it.
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Of course I'm not in favor of higher unemployment rates. I'm guessing that you're implying that spending on the Pentagon employs people. It does, but it's some of the most wasteful socialism the country indulges in. Spending the $billions elsewhere, instead of through the Pentagon, is a much more powerful stimulus. Unemployment insurance payments are spent locally in the unemployed's economy, which funds local consumption that can reemploy the unemployed. Even a tax cut is more powerful than military spendi
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Re:Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Interesting)
The advantage of the ship-mounted bomb-throwers starts on the second week of a war, when you need the cheapest way to get bomb tonnage on target, not the most effective. But I'm not conviced we'll ever do it - aside form the LDS, we seem unable to settle on a new ship design, with the DDX and CGX programs seemingly discarding every cool new idea they come up with.
I don't know if these new bombers are suppsed to be first-week weapons or not - I guess if they are supposed to replace B2s and cruise missiles they would be, unlike how we currently use B1s and B52s. But B2s have the range to launch from the US and reach any target they need to, without waiting weeks to get the logistics trail in place. I wonder if that's true of these bew bombers?
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BUFFS aka B52s do a pretty good job of reaching anywhere in the world. Barksdale launched BUFFs that dropped weapons on Baghdad in the first Gulf war. Pretty much a PR exercise since we had BUFFS based much closer but they successfully pulled it off.
Re:Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Interesting)
All the current heavy bombers of the USAF have the ability to do the long range missions that the B-2 are famous for, and infect the B-1B regularly does (Libya is a good example).
However, doing those missions still requires a huge support infrastructure to be in place - even the B-2 doesn't carry the fuel load to enable it to hit Iraq from the continental United States without being refueled several times enrolee, which means you still need bases for the KC-135s (or the new replacement) within capable range for a refuelling hookup.
So yes, these new bombers will have the same reach as the current generation.
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The point is, no bases needed.
Re:Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove? (Score:5, Insightful)
to deal with a PRC attack on Taiwan you will wake up in the morning and find a hammer and sickle hanging over taipei, and have to decide if you want to launch an invasion to liberate them from the phillipines or Japan, and if so how in the hell you're going to pull that off with china in control of the whole area at sea.
Unmaned drones are all well and good against enemies who's greatest weapon is a 20 year old shoulder mounted anti aircraft missile you sold them, or a state that has no real interest in putting up a fight, with soldiers who don't want to die for the dipshit in charge. China is none of those things. You will run out of missiles long before china runs out of things worth bombing, and they aren't going to fuck around without electronic warfare capabilities. If they decide to take taiwan by force you're going to be scrambling to source electronic components, because they will control the sea around taiwan, shipping around korea will be treacherous at best, and the same could be said of most of japan and thailand, and it suddenly looks much harder to run a high tech war without reliable access to most of those goods. Possible, but difficult.
not that rail guns are all that much more use. On a good day they're about 100Km range, and you can't get much more than that without assistance (rocket powered) simply because the air has too much of an impact beyond that point (friction, drag, random wind orientation in the intervening space etc.). I suppose if you had a ring around taiwan of rail guns it would give coverage over half the straights with china, but still, going in the other way a good missile will knock a ship out of commission for months at much longer range. Rail guns might be cost effective, but it remains to be seen if the cost savings is worth the tradeoff. It's basically like a new version of a battleship with triple the range, but still against missiles and aircraft carriers with ranges 5x the base, so I'm not sure it gets enough to be a deciding factor.
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if so how in the hell you're going to pull that off with china in control of the whole area at sea.
The process is two step: 1) Isolate and keep isolated Taiwan from mainland China so that they can't supply it any more. 2) Squash whoever is on Taiwan like a bug. The whole thing would depend on achieving step 1. If China is sufficiently well armed or the US isn't willing to commit enough military power to achieve that first step, then China keeps Taiwan, not matter what glitzy technology the US has. If the US does achieve step 1 and keeps it for the course of the conflict, then it doesn't matter if China m
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Rapid fire doesn't do you any good if your platform is flattened before it's in range to rapid fire. That's kinda the problem, the only base relevant to a war with china is at sea (the nearest islands are about 250-300Km away), so you're talking about naval assets, which are, relative to the cost of just the guns, pretty expensive.
Re:Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove? (Score:4, Insightful)
Eliminating chinese control and knowledge that close to its own coast isn't feasible. This isn't libya, which is a very sparse country of only about 6 million people, or Iraq, which was softened up for 12 years.
Re:Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, chinas advantage in this is that they are local, have a huge population, a massive industrial base, control a huge portion of the electronics business (even if they can't utilize it effectively in weapons they deprive their enemies of those supplies), and they are rapidly expanding their technology.
I don't think the PRC is going to waltz over Taiwan tomorrow. Probably 10 years would be pushing their luck. 25 years from now... harder to say. They're not in this for a short term game, this is a long term play, and they may never find it worthwhile to forcibly reintegrate Taiwan. Not because they can't, in the same way the US could take over canada and mexico and there's bugger all we could do about it. It's that it's not worth the cost to business, trade lost lives etc. The US is playing right into chinas hand with a 'pacific first' strategy, so the PRC can use that to further suppress demand for political freedoms 'those people are just in bed with the americans who are trying to keep our people separate!' sort of nonsense.
But as a military matter, if they want Taiwan we'll lose. It's 200Km from their shores, they've got us by the balls on trade and manufacturing and the longer they wait the stronger they become, and the relatively weaker the rest of us become.
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I don't think the problem is flying it without wireless. You put a map in the thing's computer and it can pretty well get there on some combination of inertial guidance, gyroscopes and whatever else instruments you give it.
The problem is stopping it if the crisis is averted between when you launch and when the target is reached and someone wanting to cause WWIII starts jamming the wireless.
No one see's a problem with this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No one see's a problem with this? (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, even consumer grade electronics require you to have physical access to the machine to hack it if it's properly set up. Something this expensive is going to have numerous measures to prevent enemies from gaining physical access in the first place, such as self-destruct. This is why the episode of BSG where they didn't want to network the systems together because of the Cylons hacking in remotely is so laughable (it would take a single firewall rule in that case... deny all incoming traffic) - there's consumer grade encryption available that far exceeds the capability of the most advanced military computers to crack within a practical amount of time. You would only be able to hack these things while they're in the air, and as long as you're within range of it. It's not like a server that's available 24/7 in one spot for you to brute force.
Secondly, I would expect military grade equipment to be fail-secure. That is, even if they did gain physical access, it would brick itself rather than allowing someone to make changes. I would really, really hope start of the art military hardware is more secure than a simple PS3. Not saying it can't be done, just saying you sound like the media hyping it up with FUD that doesn't come close to the real world.
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Military grade doesn't always mean smart.
I was using the PS3 as a general example not as a good one lol.
Here's an example [slashdot.org] of the problem with unmanned drones that don't always carry weapons.
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The Predator does broadcast surveillance footage unencrypted, but that's entirely different to it's control system, which is a directional satellite feed inaccessible from the ground (and encrypted). Surveillance footage is broadcast for the benefit of local ground forces, so they can get intelligence direct from the aircraft overhead in realtime.
Re:No one see's a problem with this? (Score:5, Interesting)
If it were this easy, CIA and .mil wouldn't air gap so many networks. Even so they are vulnerable to hacking.
Also, it seems like the drone that crash landed is Iran had self-destruct mechanisms which didn't work. I'm not saying Iran's claim to have hacked the drone is very credible, but even so, they should have collected a bunch of burned wreckage, not a largely intact, high value, stealth drone.
Third, remember that for a long time (and maybe even to this day) drone camera footage is beamed down from satellites to the drone operators in the US on *unencrypted channels.* The military is frequently lagging industry on digital security issues.
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And that's why Iran never captured one of our drones.
Re:No one see's a problem with this? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why the episode of BSG where they didn't want to network the systems together because of the Cylons hacking in remotely is so laughable
It's a little less laughable when you consider that the Cylons owned most of the electronics manufacturing business on the twelve colonies.
(it would take a single firewall rule in that case... deny all incoming traffic)
That's a nice thought, but it doesn't help when your firewall switches to "allow all" once it sees the right magic packet. Which is exactly what happened in the pilot episode.
there's consumer grade encryption available that far exceeds the capability of the most advanced military computers to crack within a practical amount of time
There sure is. But all it takes is one little "mistake" to turn it from unbreakable into child's play [debian.org].
Imagine a world where one company in, say, China makes more than half of the world's consumer electronics, including parts used for high security applications. In such a world it would be easy to see why people lie awake at night dreaming of Ken Thompson style hacks [bell-labs.com].
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Yes, along with the logic to only use it in a worst-case scenario such as the enemy stealing one. Blowing up a nuke is a hell of a lot less dangerous to the surrounding population than detonating a nuke. Of course, I would also hope they would use the optional crew to flew it whenever possible if carrying an nuclear payload and use the remote/automation when carrying less dangerous payloads.
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As I just posted in reply to your original post...
I highly doubt that anyone is going to be able to order one of these bombers from Amazon for the explicit purpose of hacking it. Regardless of how talented you are, you still need a substantial amount of access to something in order to ascertain its weaknesses.
In other words, would the PS3 still have been hacked if all the hackers had access to was the data flowing over the Internet connection for 8 hours at a time? I doubt it.
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Re:No one see's a problem with this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh and one more thing, think about this folks...the PS3 was hacked by a bunch of talented guys doing it in their FREE TIME . Imagine what they could have done if they were paid to hack into something like a remote control bomber as a full time job!?!
You need to be careful when using a term with such diverse meanings as "hack." The "hacking" of the PS3 you refer to is some people gaining control over their own machines in their possession. Normally, we refer to this as "using" the machine. The fact that the gaining full control over one's own property is now a challenge and considered remarkable is a sad thing indeed.
Gaining control over a remote machine flying through the air at hundreds of miles an hour thousands of feet in the air is a totally different prospect. The USAF has the ability to employ multiple hardware as well as software security measures. They can communicate with their machines via narrow beams transmitted from satellites. On the software side, cryptographic security can actually work when the secret keys remain secret, something which is impossible to guarantee when the attacker has access to the hardware.
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If it helps, they won't be armed with nukes unless we're trying to intimidate China, for whom stealing nuclear weapons would not be a top priority. If you think there's not still a cold war going on, you must be some kind of human being, and not a politician.
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Maybe that's a feature not a bug for the false flag operation to fan the (profitable) flames of war... Someone from Lebanon blew up the other guy's political party convention by taking over onw of our own remotely piloted bombers? Well, we gotta go invade Iran now. Oh you want the details of how they did it? Sorry thats classified citizen, now you're either with us or you're against us...
OTP (Score:3)
A remotely controlled armed weapon should only use a one time pad for secure communications as that is provably secure (or rather as provably secure as putting a pilot in a plane since ground crews could be subverted to steal the pad). Then the threat model is reduced from controlling the aircraft to DOS and other jamming techniques, which is much more acceptable (considering the plane could be designed to self destruct if a watchdog signal is not received).
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Drones I can understand, they're primarily detailed to doing surveillance or limited to small munitions, but now we're talking about a full bomber that could be remote controlled? Seriously? There's nothing that can't be hacked! If it's controllable by something outside of the craft itself, it is vulnerable to hacking! Oh let's give enemies the opportunity to hack our BOMBERS, with a Nuclear option no less!
Friendly fire is currently a big source of US casualties and the right application of automation can decrease it. Current cruise and ballistic missiles can already be remotely controlled. I'm sure the "optionally manned" part is to allow future military leaders to choose the appropriate tradeoffs.
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Current generation drones are usually controlled by satellite feeds - the drone sends responses back to the controller via tight beam to the satellite, so it's still very stealthy and not very susceptible to interference or jamming as you need to get between the aircraft and satellite to jam it.
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That would be quite a feat, considering the orbital dynamics involved.
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the missiles can be launched from thousands of miles away, not like it has to fly over the bomb zone on every mission
the hackers will probably need to be close to the bomber which is going to be very hard considering that the trip is over the pacific, the north pole, russia or some combination.
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Re:No one see's a problem with this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Drones I can understand, they're primarily detailed to doing surveillance or limited to small munitions, but now we're talking about a full bomber that could be remote controlled? Seriously? There's nothing that can't be hacked! If it's controllable by something outside of the craft itself, it is vulnerable to hacking! Oh let's give enemies the opportunity to hack our BOMBERS, with a Nuclear option no less!
Perhaps that's why its optionally manned. If their going to bomb Russia or china, they might man it. If they are going to perform surveying and dropping MREs after a disaster on a humanitarian mission, then they might chose not to man it. Also, the event of a suicide mission, where the Bomber is almost guaranteed to be lost, they can fly it unmanned, ensure it will self destruct.
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I think they are just calling optionally manned because they accidentally built the cockpit on top of some of the bomb bay doors.
Re:No one see's a problem with this? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's nothing that can't be hacked! If it's controllable by something outside of the craft itself, it is vulnerable to hacking! Oh let's give enemies the opportunity to hack our BOMBERS, with a Nuclear option no less!
At the end of the decade long project, I could sign off on the security/reliability of an electro/mechanical (including software) system to be 100% fail-safe LONG before I could make such assertions about a human crew.
It's just that we've been refining human based loyalty systems for millenia, whereas nearly all computer systems to-date have been schedule-compressed out the door before they're fully tested, often before they're even fully specified. Put the same number of man-hours into developing a pilotless bomber control system that we have put into developing and executing our nuclear launch officer recruitment, screening, training and surveillance operations, and you could have the same level of confidence in the system.
Of course, that would require over a decade in development - and lots and lots of talent that's highly valuable for things other than delivering nuclear weapons... seems like what we really need is an education system that produces more of these people.
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Good luck hacking something that you have no access to on a regular basis - seriously, I agree with you in that anything can be hacked, but you have to have a decent amount of access to something in order to actually discover the weaknesses, which I doubt can happen over the course of a single mission for one of these things (even assuming that the control interface link doesn't use rotating encryption keys).
Yes, we have reports of Taliban groups intercepting video streams from current surveillance drones,
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Actually it's commonly accepted within the aviation community (professional, military and otherwise) that the Iranian claim has no basis, and the RQ-170 crashed after a control feed failure rather than being brought down by hacking.
Do you really take Iranian claims at face value?
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Cite or GTFO!
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My pleasure.
http://infosecisland.com/blogview/20203-US-Confirms-Iran-Did-Not-Hack-RQ-170-Stealth-Drone.html [infosecisland.com]
Really, did anyone believe the Iranian claim?
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Drones I can understand, they're primarily detailed to doing surveillance or limited to small munitions, but now we're talking about a full bomber that could be remote controlled? Seriously? There's nothing that can't be hacked! If it's controllable by something outside of the craft itself, it is vulnerable to hacking! Oh let's give enemies the opportunity to hack our BOMBERS, with a Nuclear option no less!
They should just put a little studio apartment in the drone bomber and let the guy live there a few weeks at a time. Fly it from the ground and if something goes wrong he can take over.... actually that's not a bad idea, he can nap on the plane while someone else flies from the ground. Huh, I started this as a joke but why not? "Radio Control this is Alpha Drone, I'm gonna play some PS3 you guys got this for awhile?"
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I guess they will be manned on nuclear missions.
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Conventional payload - might be unmanned
Nuclear payload - you bet your ass it will be manned
that's why it's "optionally-manned"
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This bomber probably doesn't have to be remotely controlled in the unmanned mode. If they are attacking a fixed target the coordinates can be preprogrammed on the ground and the mission can be flown autonomously. In this mode it would be very hard to hack. The thing most vulnerable to hacking/jamming is GPS though that isn't trivial to do, and you can have intertial, digitial elevation or star based navigation as a backup though those lack the precision.
Remote control is only needed for moving targets and
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They have had remote control capabilities with fighter jets for a while. Ever seen the video of a fighter shooting down another to test a new missile system? And no, the pilot doesn't eject because the canopy is still intact before the missile hits. This remote capability is not for real world war applications but for testing it works just fine. And I thought we already had a pilotless nuclear bomber called an ICBM.
Cost? Hah. (Score:4, Funny)
FTFA:
Then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates suspended the bomber development in 2009, citing out-of-control cost and technical ambition.
Soon thereafter, current Secretary Leon Panetta gave the relevant committee members a few good, hard slaps, and they all woke up, shuddered, and went back to shoveling money into the bottomless maw.
Good Lord (Score:2, Funny)
Good Lord, now that China has developed 3rd generational warfare capabilities [wikipedia.org], we might need to redevelop some of the tools we used to defeat the Soviet Union, which was also using 3rd generational warfare capabilities. Oh wait......
Dumb.
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we might need to redevelop some of the tools we used to defeat the Soviet Union
Money? Because you will need to somehow develop much more of that if you want to beat China.
Autonomous killing machines (Score:5, Insightful)
They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They were depriving us of their valuable resources.
Those people were [insert hate group here].
They allowed themselves to be used as human shields.
Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
I envision that in the future, innocent people will be killed and new excuses will be created and they will say it was because their biometrics matched that of the target, or that there was an error in the targeting system, or that they made a hostile gesture at the killing machine that was 'innocently' going about it's business above his house. But never do I expect to see them come straight out and say "We screwed up. Sorry."
No matter how great the technology is, what I want to here isn't about how efficient it is, but how human the people pushing the buttons are. If someone is hurt or killed that wasn't supposed to be, will they admit it? Will they compensate the victim? The families? The rest of the community that was deprived of the loss? Until that happens, all that this new technology will mean is more creative ways for bureuacracy to avoid responsibility, which is, afterall, its primary function.
If war was no more complicated than two societies who couldn't resolve their differences each sending a certain number of soldiers to be incinerated in some machine located on an island, and the country with the biggest number won, then I suspect war would be a lot less common. All these layers of technology and rationalization takes away from the fact that is all war is. Technology just means we have to sacrifice fewer to the machine than the other team does.
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Well, you know what, you have a point there. Back in the days before explosive projectile weapons, when men had to use daggers and swords and spears and javelins, it was a lot more personal and you didn't really have much of an excuse if you slaughtered an entire village or city. Of course, nobody was left to punish you, but that's beside the point. The farther removed you are from the actual killing, the less of an emotional impact it has. I remember seeing a chart, where the ultimate impact was when you k
Re:Autonomous killing machines (Score:5, Interesting)
If an act of killing has so little impact, there is theoretically so little mental resistance to performing the act. There are exceptional people out there who consider the ramifications, but they aren't likely to be the majority.
The overwhelming majority of people responsible for carrying out the final act of ending another human life know it. Whether it's at the end if a knife, or the end of a thousand miles of cable, they know exactly what they just did, and feel it intensely. Those are not the people I am concerned with.
It's the people who have spent their entire lives as upper/ruling class, and who are surrounded with others who provide complex rationalizations for killing, the people who eventually enact the legislation, framework, and power to compel the people at the end of the chain to commit those acts. People who commit those acts knowing that if they don't push the button they could spend the rest of their lives jailed, or be executed for disobeying the order... they aren't the problem. It's those at the top, who ceased viewing people as valuable and instead view them as a means to an end.
This technology means that fewer people will feel that emotional burden of having taken a life, while more will feel justified in having ordered those fewer people to do it. That's the problem: It's not the button pusher at the bottom but the mouth breather at the top. If he had to die for the interests he would send others to die for, then war would be much less common. People wouldn't kill others for trivial things. When we make the process of killing so automated that those outside the process are completely unaware of it, then the risk of one of those mouth breathers at the top using it to satisfy their own emotional needs at the expense of the lives of others becomes too high.
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The bureaucracy aspect of war is nothing new, though. Throughout history we've had kings and dictators and presidents who "went to war", doing exactly what you're saying. The only thing that's new here is the weapon. I'm considering the vehicle in this case a weapon, or perhaps a meta-weapon. It used to be that you weren't involved with the weapon if you were miles away.
People will kill other people without much thought (or will at least feel justified in doing so) if the other people have been dehumanized
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It's the people who have spent their entire lives as upper/ruling class, and who are surrounded with others who provide complex rationalizations for killing, the people who eventually enact the legislation, framework, and power to compel the people at the end of the chain to commit those acts...It's those at the top, who ceased viewing people as valuable and instead view them as a means to an end.
You mean, the people who use terms like "collateral damage?" Yeah, I'm with you. My first thought on reading this headline was, "Awesome. Let's invent yet more ways to kill each other." Don't get me wrong; I'm certainly not a pacifist. I would have absolutely no qualms about pulling the trigger if someone were to break into my home, threatening my family, for example. I don't even have a problem with a standing military force to protect our nation's borders against anyone who would
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The overwhelming majority of people responsible for carrying out the final act of ending another human life know it. Whether it's at the end if a knife, or the end of a thousand miles of cable, they know exactly what they just did, and feel it intensely. Those are not the people I am concerned with.
There is a chasm between hacking someone do death with a stone club and pressing a button knowing that somewhere in some remote country "mission is accomplished". There do exist a handful of conscious people who make the mental connection, but they are far from "overwhelming majority".
The Manning's video of indiscriminately executing civilians from a helicopter (after some crying for permission) brings the point across.
The scientific experiment behind it is theMilgram Experiment [wikipedia.org]: "What made more of a
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If war was no more complicated than two societies who couldn't resolve their differences each sending a certain number of soldiers to be incinerated in some machine located on an island, and the country with the biggest number won, then I suspect war would be a lot less common. All these layers of technology and rationalization takes away from the fact that is all war is.
Or war would be more common with no physical destruction or other lingering signs of war. In either case, congratulations, you've just described the premise of the Star Trek (TOS) episode: A Taste of Armageddon [wikipedia.org] from 1967.
... the entire war between the two planets is completely simulated by computers which launch wargame attacks and counterattacks, then calculate damage and select the dead. Citizens reported as "killed" must submit themselves for termination by stepping inside a disintegration booth.
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All they do now is declare that whoever died was a 'terrorist', 'militant', or 'insurgent', knowing full well that journalists and the American public will swallow that without any difficulties. In a related point, they also seem to have successfully convinced most Americans that the protests in Afghanistan is all over the burning of Korans, whereas if you read reports from journalists who actually talked to protesters, the primary motivation for most of them is US drones killing Afghan children and the Kar
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I see another layer of avoiding responsibility for casualties emerging here. Ignoring the technology's effectiveness or benefits, the industrial-military complex has never been good at taking responsibility.
They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They were depriving us of their valuable resources.
Those people were [insert hate group here].
They allowed themselves to be used as human shields.
Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
All of the above has happened numerous times in the past and will continue to happen regardless of the types of weapons used in war.
I envision that in the future, innocent people will be killed and new excuses will be created and they will say it was because their biometrics matched that of the target, or that there was an error in the targeting system, or that they made a hostile gesture at the killing machine that was 'innocently' going about it's business above his house. But never do I expect to see them come straight out and say "We screwed up. Sorry."
Indeed, those in charge are unlikely to admit making mistakes. They will use whatever excuse they can, which may vary depending on circumstances like the weapons technology.
No matter how great the technology is, what I want to here isn't about how efficient it is, but how human the people pushing the buttons are. If someone is hurt or killed that wasn't supposed to be, will they admit it? Will they compensate the victim? The families? The rest of the community that was deprived of the loss? Until that happens, all that this new technology will mean is more creative ways for bureuacracy to avoid responsibility, which is, afterall, its primary function.
The primary function of a bureaucracy is to perpetuate itself. It will take responsibility for something perceived positive and avoid responsibility for something perceived negative. As citizens, we need to
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I envision that in the future, innocent people will be killed and new excuses will be created
Innocent people are already being killed. It may not be happening in US quite yet, but the number of civilian casualties and children from drone strikes in all those "-stans" is already quite high. There is some debate on exactly how many casualties there were. The humanitarian organizations and observers vary in estimates. The White House position is somewhere between "there are no drone programs" and "precision of drones/intelligence is so awesome that they never kill bad people".
I suppose any polit
outsourcing (Score:2)
The military-industrial complex is saved! (Score:2)
See, sending most of our production capacity over to China was part of a brilliant deep game. We're not hamstringing ourselves and guaranteeing systemic unemployment for the next generation, we're making sure we have another Cold War, and the glory days of the US defense industry will be /back/, baby!
*Now* we have need of long-range stealth bombers, ICBMs, aircraft carriers, and the whole shebang.
Probably too much to hope that we'll have another space race to get us motivated to get out to Mars, though.
How about a stealth UAV bomber? (Score:2)
Already done. Deploys from an aircraft carrier, carries 5000 lbs of bombs. Looks like a B2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B [wikipedia.org]
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Already done. Deploys from an aircraft carrier, carries 5000 lbs of bombs. Looks like a B2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B [wikipedia.org]
That's a Navy project. After the F-4 and A-7... both initiated as Navy projects... USAF basically swore it would never have a Naval aircraft forced on them again. There's a lot of "me-too"ism that goes on in the Pentagon, lots of identity politics and turf warfare over the budget pie and prestige.
Manned bombers for first strike are obsolete. You send in missiles, or from high altitudes, precision guided ordinance. Then when you've taken out enemy ground based anti-air and gained air superiority with your fi
Didn't Skynet use these? (Score:2)
I know it's late (Armageddon was a few years ago) and the wrong country (Russia not China) but at least we're making progress.
As for the "brains" well I think it's probably going to be Watson speaking to us through his assistant Siri.
B52 replacement? Seems unlikely. (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't really sound like a B52 replacement.
The B52 (and its counterpart, the Tu 95) stopped being a going concern in the face of anything but complete air superiority years ago. Nevertheless they have seen out many bomber designs that were meant to replace them for exactly the same reason.
Air superiority is difficult and requires things such as stealth, speed and very high speed (i.e. missiles). Those things all have serious tradeoffs. To maintain stealthiness, you have to make all sorts of compromises.
Once you have air superiority, there is no need to make those compromises any more. The B52 is a large, robust, relatively fule efficient and extremely flexible design, which cas been modified and hacked around with in all sorts of ways. It is still useful because if air superiority is guaranteed it does a better job of hauling a bunch of bombs and stuff around the sky than any other bomber in the fleet. No messing with super high power density jet engines or fickle stealth coating, etc...
I expect a true B52 replacement would be something more like an adapted airliner or cargo plane.
There seems to be an obsession in certain areas with stealth. Meanwhile, planes like the B52 and A10 do an exceptionally good job and neither have credible replacements.
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I expect a true B52 replacement would be something more like an adapted airliner or cargo plane.
There seems to be an obsession in certain areas with stealth. Meanwhile, planes like the B52 and A10 do an exceptionally good job and neither have credible replacements.
I expect a true B-52 replacement to be an upgraded B-52, as has been the case for decades. In particular, the current 8 engines should be replaced with 4 modern, efficient, high-bypass designs. It seems the Air Force has been thinking about this since the 70s, but since it's always "about to be replaced" by the something sexier and stealthier, they haven't bothered. Once somebody realizes that a sexier design won't replace it any time soon, the needed upgrades can be done.
A more modern cargo or passenger de
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A few years ago the Air Force did a study on converting B-52s to four modern airliner engines. ISTR the cost would have been ~$8billion, and it was decided that this wouldn't have been economically worth it - over the expected lifetime of the B-52 fleet they wouldn't have saved that much in fuel, so the idea was shelved.
Manned but optionally bomber, instead: B-797? (Score:2)
Why not just add another mission to regular passenger planes, and make them bombers, as well? Just make the seats able to hold bombs as well as humans, and add bomb bay doors on the floor. Then instead of just sitting around waiting for a war to start, bombers can haul passengers around the world.
And, hey, those bomb bay door would speed up de-boarding at the airport as well.
It would be just important for the pilots to remember if they were hauling bombs to drop in a war zone, or passengers to drop at a
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Just imagine, all passangers could bring their own bomb! No need for TSA anymore.
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Why not just add another mission to regular passenger planes, and make them bombers, as well? Just make the seats able to hold bombs as well as humans, and add bomb bay doors on the floor.
Humor aside, the addition of a bomb bay is a major change to the structural dynamics of an airframe. There WAS a concept to mod a 747 airframe for use as a cruise missile platform: that would require far less major structural alterations from the baseline B747 design. . .
Details and a drawing [g2mil.com]
Artificial intelligence... (Score:2)
Gotta Love the B52s (Score:2)
China doesn't need to sink our ships (Score:2)
China doesn't need to sink our ships, they just need to unload their US investments and treasuries to make our currency worthless and hyper inflation. While we still build weapons to fight a physical war from the last century, China is in position to cripple the US with a modern day economic war.
completely confident (Score:2)
1. I feel secure knowing all unmanned bombers' code is totally bug-free.
2. And no unmanned drone bomber carrying nukes will EVER get hijacked. I mean, look how secure our other drones are.
3. On an unmanned bomber, who sets up the nuke unlock code? If it gets done over an encrypted radio link how can they guarantee the link won't be jammed?
4. Which tastes better: Zero Coke, Pepsi Lo-Cesium, or Slurm Cola?
UAV to Groundcontrol: (Score:3)
I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal.
I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.
And I want to help you.
Transition aircraft (Score:4, Insightful)
The "optionally manned" bomber sounds like one of those transition craft that appears as a new technology is replacing an old one. A classic example were steamships of the 19th century. Various combinations of paddle wheels, screws, and sails were tried. None of the hybrids were very successful.
In bombers, the classic example is the B-36, with four jet engines and six propeller engines. The B-36 was a stopgap measure until the all-jet bombers were ready, and was quickly replaced by the B-47 and B-52.
"The craft is intended to replace the 1960s B-52" (Score:3)
"52" stands for 1952, "B" stands for bomber, It was introduced early in the cold war, it is a 1950's plane NOT 1960's.
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That's no moon!
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You could just as easily argue that education, health care, welfare and transportation actually benefit Americans, while the current level of military spending gives us such great power that there's a constant temptation to misuse it. We've gained absolutely nothing from the Iraq War, but gotten a lot of Americans and a lot more Iraqis killed in the process. Invading Afghanistan certainly disrupted Al Qaeda for a while, but how much longer can we try to occupy the country when it's clear that the people hav
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Re:first bomb (Score:5, Insightful)
A nifty graphic on the federal budget [nytimes.com] While defense is high, healthcare and social security both outstrip it and interest on the national debt is gaining ground rapidly. Not to say we can't reduce defense as well, but it's not the only bogeyman in the budget, and it's not the one with a rapidly increasing share of the budget either.
As for the grandparent's assertion about Iraq, total spending in the total war on terror is estimated (on the high side) at about $4T. The deficit has increased by the same amount since Obama was elected. So is it the sense of /. that Obama is as big a disaster as the Iraq war? If you want to blame Bush, just remember the Democratic majority in congress for two years prior to Obama's election that passed those spending authorizations up to and including all Obama spending. Many of those same people voted to go to war in Iraq.
Now go worship your Obama god having completely ignored any of the accepted facts above.
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Wasn't a lot of war time spending actually kept off the books? Wouldn't it make sense that you'd collect less taxes during a recession?
If you want to blame Obama, remember that Bush had 4 years with a Republican Majority in both houses with which to balance the budget.
Re:first bomb (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, a lot of the war time spending was kept off the books if by that you mean the actual budgets passed by Congress, but that does not mean we do not know what it was. The $4T seems to include all the spending, I think is on the high side but that might include ancillary costs like health care for wounded vets going forward.
What does Bush's failure to balance the budget have to do with Obama's failure to balance the budget? Are you saying that since Bush got away with it, we should give Obama a pass? A lot of conservatives were upset with Bush's failure to balance the budget. Obama created a commission, Simpson-Bowles, which made their recommendations...and Obama ignored it. In fact, he's still ignoring the biggest drains on the budget, i.e., the entitlements. You could take all of Defense's appropriations and still only halve the deficit.
Republicans are doing with they always do, trying to buy the next election with tax cuts (even keeping Bush's is attempting to buy the next election). The Democrats are doing what they always do, trying to buy the next election with social spending. Both will fail and drive up the deficit. There are no adults left in the room...well, not enough of them anyhow.
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Federally funded social programs (particularly Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) comprise over half of the federal budget.
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As long as most countries keep using the US dollar for everything (trading oil, grain, CPUs etc), the USA has it easy.
So many don't seem to understand that it's rather different when you owe someone a lot of money in a currency you can create on demand (and have already created trillions of - google for Federal Reserve trillions).
It's not the same as you owing the Bank a lot of US dollars. It's mor
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Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?