New Technology May Cut Risk of Giving Syrian Rebels Stinger Missiles 279
Hugh Pickens writes "PBS reports on a proposal of arming Syrian rebels with a force equalizer to make a decisive blow against Bashar al-Assad's ruling regime — an idea that has so far failed to take hold inside the Obama administration because of serious concerns about flooding a troubled region with dangerous weapons that someday might fall into the wrong hands. Could sophisticated weapons, such as anti-aircraft missile systems, be outfitted with mechanisms that would disable them if they fell into the wrong hands? According to military analyst Anthony Cordesman the U.S. could modify Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank weapons with batteries that cease functioning in a few weeks or months or the weapons could be built to require authentication codes before they are enabled to work. "I think it would be relatively decisive," says Cordesman. ... Another idea is to install GPS-disabling devices so that Stinger missiles only worked in a designated geographic area, such as only in Syria. Such weapons, it is believed, might tip the balance in favor of the rebels in the same way that Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, provided by the United States to the Afghan Mujahedeen, helped expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. Cordesman stressed that this type of weapon would have to be thoroughly tested to make sure the controls work and could not be undone. 'You could not transfer these types of weapons without these types of protections. You simply have no way to know where they would end up, how they would be transferred, what would happen to them.'"
DRM for weapons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Definition of Oxymoron (Score:2, Insightful)
"force equalizer to make a decisive blow"
Re:GPS give time (Score:0, Insightful)
A good job you can't Spoof GPS signals [slashdot.org]. Otherwise that would totally not work.
Re:DRM for weapons? (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly, because we all know how well it's worked before. Clearly the rebels are thought of as primitives and that none of them will have the expertise to work around the restrictions and use them as they so desire.
You can't secure it; don't give it away (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything can be hacked, given time and effort, and what this plan will do is to encourage the crazies of the world to get a better understanding of how to make even more lethal weapons. Please don't.
It seems that the US and Russia are fighting a proxy war over middle east oil by alternately propping up and destabilizing the already unstable Islamic regimes there. There is probably legitimacy to this. Without the middle east, Russia will become Europe's oil supply, and thus Europe will lean toward supporting the least stable major power and probably involve itself in another exciting world war.
A better answer here might be to heat up this cold war, as Reagan did in the 1980s and Mitt Romney suggests he may do, by talking tough to the Russians and the Europeans both, and making it clear what's on the table here. International politics is a purely Machiavellian matter because as cruel as Machiavellianism can be, it saves lives and empires from the dustbin of history.
fast and furious (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah, because this sort of technology worked so well in Fast and Furious when Mexican drug lords used American assault weapons against us after the batterries in the GPS tracking system meant to locate them failed. I am not very convinced this sort of technology would be very difficult to override. The comparison of the Syrian rebels to the Afghan Mujahedeen, aka Taliban, who we are still fighting now, demonstrates an unfornate grasp of history by the people behind this idea. It's still not clear if the Syrian rebels should get military aid from us period -- they are still not a cohesive group, and elements of the rebellion still engage in things like torture and attacks on civilian targets.
Re:US Military (Score:5, Insightful)
The rebels in this case are committing attrocities left and right, they're flying the flag of Al Queda, they're not our friends, and they're not the enemy of our enemy in a way that makes it valuable to help them out. We have no business being in any of these rebellions from Libya all through the middle east.
That's just insanity and screw you main stream media and leftists and democrats for not screaming bloody murder about it.
Re:Too Late (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the previous poster I replied to, you also need to learn what you're talking about.
The MB was not the ones responsible for the attack on our ambassador.
Nor did "we put them in power" or "give them two countries".
Nor do those countries have "very substantial arsenals".
Re:Good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, come on, what are they worried about? Next thing you know, you're going to be telling us that the guy who organized terrorist attacks on the US had gotten CIA training and funding, or that the guy who the US decided was evil incarnate in 2003 only had gotten his hands on WMDs through the largess of the Reagan administration. I mean, that's just crazy talk.
Re:what could go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
history will simply repeat itself if we don't learn from it.
Sadly, the kind of people who study history are not the kind of people who wind up in power.
Re:GPS give time (Score:3, Insightful)
For the same reason drone videos are broadcast unencrypted. Here in reality these will be cheaply modified and easy to bypass.
Replacing a battery is easy and what you are describing will make the weapon totally useless as Assad would just jam it.
Re:Good idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought they were too evil to be supported?
They are committing just as many atrocities as Assad.
So far what exactly has the MB done that is so scary? They are too religious for my like, but so are the republicans.
Re:GPS give time (Score:3, Insightful)
The more complex you make a system, the easier it is to make it fail.
Even if you managed to put in a 100% crackproof DRM system based on GPS, this makes the weapon useless - the opposition will just start jamming GPS signals.
Just Stop (Score:3, Insightful)
Can we just stop trying to solve all our problems with more weapons?
captcha: captive
Re:US Military (Score:4, Insightful)
The rebels in this case are committing attrocities left and right, they're flying the flag of Al Queda, they're not our friends, and they're not the enemy of our enemy in a way that makes it valuable to help them out. We have no business being in any of these rebellions from Libya all through the middle east.
That's just insanity and screw you main stream media and leftists and democrats for not screaming bloody murder about it.
ah you've seen "Charlie Wilson's War", then, i take it? remember the analyst's advice? the CIA *funded* the Taliban in a fight against Russian-funded incursions in a black-ops operation that started out with a budget of i think it was $USD5m that ended up around half a BILLION dollars.
the same analyst *also* said, "look - these guys you're funding - the Taliban - yes you're winning the 'war' but you're tearing their country apart to do it. afterwards, you're going to have to help rebuild their infrastructure, otherwise they're going to get PISSED. it's not going to cost much, but you've gotta do it".
so, this guy - charlie - takes the analyst's advice and goes off back to congress, just like he did for the other operations. the film dedicates i think it is about 1 minute to this part of the war. in this scene, the film portrays - against a background of silence devoid of "dramatising music" to get the point home - some unbelievably crass politician basically says, "well we won the war, what are you complaining about, son?"
you might want to think about that before mouthing off about things are going out there, yeah?
Re:what could go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Syrian Rebels ARE the WRONG HANDS! (Score:5, Insightful)
A shadowy jihadi group believed to have ties to al Qaeda fought alongside rebels who seized a government missile defense base in Syria on Friday
Being aided by people [possibly] linked to al Qaeda makes you al Qaeda now? What I read from this is that they're linked by a common enemy, I won't lower myself to uttering the cliché. Do you honestly believe that US politicians gave a crap about the Koreans, the Vietnamese, and the Afghans during the cold war? Every country - mine included - has accepted the help of some pretty awful people to further their agenda.
The world has to get over this idea of al Qaeda being a group of uber-terrorists with laser beams coming out of their eyes*. They're a bunch of people who have got lucky a handful of times and the thing about suicide bombers is that the good ones can't repeat their work, and the shit ones tend to fuck up, get scared, or get caught.
If you want to live your life scared of these people, fine, do so. However, keep in mind that they don't hate you because of your freedom, it's for a range of reasons - some valid (stop fucking around in their affairs), but mostly invalid.
* With apologies to Bill Bailey
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Syrian Rebels ARE the WRONG HANDS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Characterizations of Islam as a monolithic threat to our way of life are even less tenable than the threat from Communism. Islam is a religion, not a movement or ideology. Its fractured all over the place. Iran and Saudi Arabia are moral enemies. And Saudi Arabia is by far the most aggressive state in the export of Islamist fundamentalism. The reason Islamic parties are winning elections is because they tend to be not corrupt. They are frequently the only political groups that have the first idea about taking care of citizens rather than getting rich. And I thought the whole point of American foreign policy was the furthering of democracy. Well Islamists were elected in Egypt and Algeria last year, and in Turkey a decade ago. Has one of those countries invaded Israel?
I think the biggest threat to world peace is not Islamists, its Republicans.