Demand For Unmanned Aircraft Outstripping Their Capabilities 325
coondoggie writes "Has the highly successful but disparate unmanned aircraft strategy deployed by the military outstripped the Department of Defense's ability to handle its growth? The Air Force, Army, and Navy have requested approximately $6.1 billion in fiscal year 2010 for new systems and expanded capabilities. The Pentagon's fiscal year 2010 budget request wants to increase the Air Force's Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft programs to 50 combat air patrols by fiscal year 2011 — an increase of nearly 300% since fiscal year 2007. In 2000, the DoD had fewer than 50 unmanned aircraft in its inventory; as of October 2009, this number had grown to more than 6,800. The program's success, however, is causing some big cracks in the system. According to a report issued this week by congressional watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office. The military is facing a number of challenges — including training, accessing national air space, and improving aircraft communications systems — that must be overcome if unmanned aircraft are to take their place as a central piece of the military's future, the GAO stated."
Boom and bust... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boom and bust... (Score:4, Interesting)
Can we start a talking points bingo pool on which pols first utter the phrase "technology transfer" in relation to this report?
(Personally, though, I'm sick of subsisting off the technological table scraps of war.)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
DAVE: "I'd like another bag of airline peanuts, please."
FLIGHTBOT 9000: "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing like Predator drones for hunting moose.
More than the usual debate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like this works so well they want more of it... but in order for it to do all that they want it to do they'll have to divert resources from the manned flights that exist now. Some programs win, some programs lose. Typical Washington debate about to come up...
No, more than that, UAV's are such a contentious issue because of the tremendous culture clash it's causing in the Air Force. In the Army, Navy, and Marines, UAV's are just another military tech tool to use in battle. But in the Air Force, which bases its entire identity on the old Knights of the Air thing, UAV's aren't seen as a valuable tool so much as they're seen as a threat to the very existence of the Air Force itself.
Think about it. If the day is coming when you can train young, non pilot computer geeks to do what current pilots do.... at less cost and less training time, too.... then why have an independent Air Force at all? Because sooner or later, we'll be able to make UAV fighters that can maneuver better, fly farther, and hit harder than any manned craft of today. It's just a matter of time
I think the dawn of the UAV era may well herald the end of the independent Air Force, and I think the current crop of pilots know it too. And it begs the question, did a seperate Air Force ever really make that much sense? It was a branch based on a particular technology.... akin to the Army splitting Tanks off into their own separate service, or the Navy doing the same with submarines. Airpower really isn't a doctrine so much as it's just one more weapon in your arsenal.
I think by our children or grandchildren's lifetimes, the Air Force may be long gone, and looked at the same way jousting knights in armor are looked at... a glamorous, romantic period that was relatively brief, and brought to an end by technology that made it obsolete.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More than the usual debate... (Score:4, Insightful)
One word "Jamming".
Remote controlled drones work against low-technology enemies that cannot blanket the radio spectrum with high-power white noise or shoot down your high-altitude relays (if you use line-of-sight comms technologies such as lasers). The drones can only go autonomous for simple tasks and are (not yet) capable of wining a dogfight with a human-controlled fighter.
Going fully dependent on remote controlled drones is a form of "Preparing for the last war".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you blanket the radio spectrum with high-power white noise, you've just made an incredibly attractive target of yourself - jamming involves transmitting a signal that basically says "HEY EVERYONE PAY ATTENTION TO ME NOT TO ANYONE ELSE". That'll last about as long as it takes for a dumb cruise missile to drop on your antenna.
And if you're the sort of douchebag who sets jammers up in a civilian hospital or something, I'm sure the drone guys are working on that too - you've just told all the drones in the a
Bad news (Score:3, Insightful)
These thing remove the human element to much, from dropping missiles onto weddings and random cars they target from "intel" received.
I think you should have to send in meat soldiers if you want a war, get verification of who your killing, this is making it to easy to unclear to dangerous morally
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you should have to send in meat soldiers if you want a war, get verification of who your killing, this is making it to easy to unclear to dangerous morally
Please explain the morality of war to me.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Kill him or he'll kill you.
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
You got it exactly right. War isn't a game. The less fair we can make it, the better.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Purely for survival.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how either side could complain.
Unfortunately we're not in a 2-teams game. We're in a free-for-all game with 2 different uniforms, but where people in the same uniform may or may not be allies or enemies. So if you're gonna start cheating on Team Brown because one of their guys also cheated, well, the entire rest of the team can complain quite consistently about that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bad news (Score:4, Informative)
Grok this and you will understand all human life.
now, I have read a lot of Heinlen, and he's written some good stuff, but he was a jerk. while his work can provide a nice entry point to thinking about the human condition, please don't use his writing as the source of knowledge about humanity.
Re:Bad news (Score:4, Interesting)
The alternative to Heinlein might be that English guy - Kipling. Reading him gives a lot of insight into military life, and incidentally a little insight into politics. Of course, it helps to actually LIVE what he writes about, to fully appreciate it.
Yes, human life is tragic. We have all the resources available to make life on earth a near paradise, but we prefer to shit on each other, and ruin everything.
Ahh well. On subject. The morality of these unmanned killing machine? They don't appeal to me very much. Somehow, it seems a bit cowardly. Osama bin Laden told his troops that digging into the earth in the Tora Bora mountains would save them, because the Americans have no stomach to come into the trenches, and fight hand to hand. We seem to have proved him right in those mountains, and we continue to prove him right with our little toys.
Yeah, it may be considerably less cowardly to target a high value individual with a missile, than to target 3000 civilians with human missiles. Still - it's not the sort of thing the military has done traditionally. No more 'Charge of the Light Brigade' for us.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Charge of the Light Brigade is actually an example of why our technology is a good thing morally speaking. The charge was a disaster because of poor information and communication. If our technology can give us better information and help us communicate, we'll attack the wrong target less often and fewer people near the target will die.
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Informative)
Ahh well. On subject. The morality of these unmanned killing machine? They don't appeal to me very much. Somehow, it seems a bit cowardly.
Comments like this (and yours is better thought out than many others in this thread) make me wonder if anyone gets how your average UAV actually works.
You've got a spotter (human) on the ground. He lights up a target to destroy. You've got a Reaper overhead, armed with Hellfire missiles. The pilot of the Reaper (also human) is on the ground somewhere, controlling it remotely. The pilot sees the target illuminated by the spotter, locks on, and fires a missile. Boom.
Take the UAV and replace it with a manned aircraft and what changes? Nothing. Same spotter, same pilot, same missile. You might argue that the pilot isn't at risk in this instance, but hell, most US pilots are only put at risk when someone on their side screws up. Nobody the US is currently at war with has a hope in hell of threatening their aircraft.
Just so we're clear, with or without the UAV, you've still got the same human decision makers. We're not at the stage yet where we can trust an armed and autonomous war machine not to screw up. This isn't Skynet, and the spotter on the ground is the one at the greatest risk, and the one deciding what gets cratered.
If you wanted to argue that using any air support is cowardly, then I'd remind you that war has far less to do with bravery than it does with practicality.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahh well. On subject. The morality of these unmanned killing machine? They don't appeal to me very much. Somehow, it seems a bit cowardly.
That sounds a lot like the objections people had to aerial bombing. Or automatic guns. Or guns in general. And probably originally to catapults, swords and sharp sticks when they were first put into use in warfare. But as it turns out the goal of warfare is to control the actions of your opponent through force, and to that end new technology (including tactics) is always likely to improve your ability to project force or your ability to resist force, or both.
The technology in use does not affect the moralit
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Please explain the morality of war to me.
Sometimes going to war is the best of several bad options. It can never be any better than that, but it can indeed be a moral decision.
Note that I'm not saying this applies to our current wars, just that it does happen from time to time. And when it does, it is also a moral decision to try to reduce the attendant horror as much as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
but it can indeed be a moral decision.
Can you point one out? A moral war that is.
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, WWII comes to mind. From the viewpoint of the Allies, there was no real choice. We did not choose it..it was thrust upon us. and we couldn't negotiate our way out of it. Not fighting that war, i.e. succumbing to the wishes of Germany and Japan, would have resulted in a far different world that what we have now.
Should the Allies not have fought back?
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
We did not choose it? You might want to do a little studying about the "peace" conditions imposed on Germany after World War 1.
No, I'm not EVEN going to try to justify Hitler, and the Nazi party, but raping Germany of her coal and other mining capabilities certainly didn't endear the French to the Germans. There was a lot of stuff the allies imposed on Germany that only tended to feed German nationalism. Remember, the entire world was experiencing the Great Depression, and German workers endured more than a lot of other workers because of those oppressive peace conditions.
No, maybe we didn't "choose" to have World War 2 - but we certainly contributed to German greviances against us.
Re:Bad news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
We did not choose it? You might want to do a little studying about the "peace" conditions imposed on Germany after World War 1.
By the same logic, women deserve to get raped because they wear skimpy clothing.
Bad Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
We did not choose it? You might want to do a little studying about the "peace" conditions imposed on Germany after World War 1.
By the same logic, women deserve to get raped because they wear skimpy clothing.
I think that's a bad analogy in this case. I'm pretty patriotic, and pro-military. I'm a vet as well. And as I've read more about WWI over the years, I've become more and more convinced that WWII didn't have to happen, and that we in the west... including the United States... bear some responsibility for WWII. How? First off, it's becoming harder and harder to convince me that the US had to fight in Europe, that we had any real interest there. The Germans didn't start it, and looking back, was an ascendent Germany really a threat to the US? No, I don't think so. When you get right down to it, I thinking more and more that WWI was just another European Great-Power pissing match.
Further, the absolute draconian position that we put Germany in after the war created an atmosphere perfect for the rise of Adolf Hitler. Had we not tipped the balance in favor of the UK and France... had Germany fared better after the war.... I think there's a good chance Hitler never rises to power. He wasn't inevitable. He took advantage of the utter desperation Germans were feeling.
Woodrow Wilson should have never agreed to the draconian demands of our fellow allies. Despite his best intentions, all he helped accomplish was the implosion of one empire in favor of two others in Europe.
So I think the analogy is more along the lines of a combatant being raped by the victors... and then becoming so twisted by the experience that they embrace total evil to have the satisfaction of their revenge.
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this argument is that Germany was not a child, and was not really any more "at fault" for World War 1 than anyone else. It started just like any of the other land-grab wars before it, but because of the interwoven politics (and a lot of personal ambitions by a lot of people), kept spiraling upward untill we got so much bigger than anything that had come before it.
And Germany was/is not some child, and the US was not some adult. They are, and were, full countries. Full of adults capable of feeling wounded pride. The only reason you can cast them in the role of a naughty child is because they lost the armed conflict. If they had won then the US/France/England led aliance would assume the role of the child. Neither idea holds any water, nor are they useful in preventing the same sort fo problem in the future (one of the most practical reasons to study history).
The de-industrialization of Germany was an atrocious idea, and was the biggest cause of World War 2. Without the horrendus finantial oppresion caused by it Hitler and the Brown-Shirts would never have had the fertile grounds to grow their movement in, and would never have been elected to power in Germany. Eventually there probably would have been a war, but that is only because human nature seems to push us to that eventually.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with that example is that by some accounts, if Japan hadn't bombed pearl harbor, it's just as likely the US would have stayed out of the war entirely.
Do said accounts mention Lend-Lease [wikipedia.org] at all? The US took sides in March, 1941. Or from the perspective of the Pacific conflict, the US took sides when they instigated embargoes against war supplies Japan desperately needed to (literally) fuel its war effort - Japan needed oil, rubber, and metals to feed the industrial machine, and the US wasn't
Re: (Score:2)
The French resistance to German occupation in WWII.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you point one out? A moral war that is.
He didn't say that there were moral wars, he suggested that sometimes there can be a moral dimension to the decision to go to war. I could give you the default example but I don't want to Godwin this thread.
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you point one out? A moral war that is.
Aha! This is a trick question. You ask an objective question, pretending it might be subjective, and when someone gives a subjective answer (even if the answer would be agreed upon by 99% of the world) you will get to play devil's advocate and claim the answer is subjective. The end result: a damaged definition of "moral" and a smug slashdot poster.
If that's NOT your aim, and your question is a serious one, then I submit that it's harder to name a war that ISN'T fought for a moral cause. Whether you're providing freedom for the oppressed, resources for your starving people, or a more peaceful planet for our grandchildren -- there are few wars fought for war's sake. The morals may be egocentric, delusional, misguided, or just contrary to your own, but they are the fuel for the engine that keeps a war running.
As an exercise for your philosophical side, generalize the motives to the point that all wars are fought for a more perfect peace, and you quickly realize the unfortunate flipside: For most humans, Peace can only truly defined as a combination of "everyone who is not like me is dead" and "everyone gives me what I need before taking what they need"
Yes, wars are fought for Peace, and therefore wars are moral. It's just not the Peace that everyone else wants. That's what makes it a war, and that's what makes it immoral.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
the roman catholic church way back when did some good work on what is a just war. the considerations they used still pop up in debate. but i once asked a gung-ho solider if he had heard of the concept and he had not, but i am sure he was also a gung-ho Christian
here is a trivial link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_War [wikipedia.org]
A reasonable person however would distinguish between justice and morality, IMO.
some reasonable moralities do however categorically disapprove of atrocities.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok... Let's choose some wars not fought for morals:
- War for oil: Iraq
- War for revenge: Afghanistan
- War for money/resources: Pick your local conflict in Africa
I even am under the impression that WWII was not fought for noble goals either by the "allies"..
Re: (Score:2)
The American Revolutionary War
The American Civil War
Mexican American War
Re: (Score:2)
WWII (for the allies)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
omg, stfu. the vast energy resources of Afghanistan?
this is the most ridiculous and unsubstantiated claim I've heard on the topic. if you are going to suggest that some natural gas pipeline is the reason then you are doubly retarded.
Even Iraq was never about oil, but at least that would make sense.
Iraq was about spreading western influence, creating a semi-moderate, western-aligned country on Irans border with access to the Arabian Gulf. It was part of the balance-of-power-2.0 game. Was it a bad idea? Yeah,
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Interesting)
Afghanistan has vast mineral resources. But you’re partially right. The real reason is, that Afghanistan lies in one of the strategically most important areas of the world.
It is the only country in the world with borders to the ex Soviet Union, China, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. The meaning of this should be obvious. It shouldn’t even be called a country at all, with its diverse tribes and influences. Imagine all those countries had borders to each other, and you would put a blender right in the 5-country border in the middle. The result would be Afghanistan.
In practice, this meant, that during the cold war, the Soviet Union of course wanted that area. But the US didn’t want it. So the cold war got very hot. But the USA were wise back then. They knew that you can’t win a war in that area. Ever. That’s why the tribes still battled themselves to this day. So they sent ammunition and weapons to the Afghans. Who of course happily accepted. It was a “win-win”. Except that the only ones dying were the Afghans. (Two of my uncles died in it, and probably 3 were tortured, so I know very well what I’m talking about.)
Of course the Soviets failed to conquer the country. And Kharzai was pro-US, while the Soviet Union broke apart. All was good for the USA.
Except that now, the Afghans hat shitloads of weapons and a population of which all the young had not ever seen anything else, except war. You can guess what that resulted in. The mental psychological fallout turned some to religious extremism. An easy thing to exploit. Some used it, and gained political power over Afghanistan, by opposing the cruel dictatory pro-US Kharzai. Back then, the Taliban were seen as the less bad choice in the face of his crimes.
Now something had to be done, to gain back power. So the USA used their own man, Bin Laden, and the attack of 9/11 as an excuse (no idea how much of it was planned, so I don’t judge here), as a reason to go to Afghanistan. Completely forgetting, that you can not ever win there. (As they said themselves, some decades earlier.)
And now they struggle in the same way as the Soviet Union did. I would’n be surprised at all, if the SU would fuel the Taliban, just so they could see the US fail in the same way, for shits and giggles. ;)
Fact is that the US will also walk out of Afghanistan without winning. That’s no shame. That’s just how it always was, is, and always will be, I guess.
We should just declare it a uninhabited wasteland, and let the people move away. That would be better for everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
Shit, I had no idea it was okay to just kill people and take their resources. It seems a strange breed of Marxism has taken over slashdot. From each according to their weakness, to each according to their greed.
And you may want to take a cursory look at gas and oil pipelines in that region before you make any more uninformed guesses. There's a reason we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and not the home of the terrorists, Saudi Arabia. It's because Saudi Arabia is already playing according to our rules.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the war in Iraq was a war for oil, the term 'war for oil' is an abbreviation of 'war for low oil prices'. See, the supply of oil to the states was never endangered, however the price of the oil is constantly under upward pressure making the American lifestyle, which is obviously very energy intensive, too expensive for a large portion of the citizens with all the civic unrest etc. as a result.
There was never any binary outcome; win the war, get oil, lose the war, do not get oil. Basically, it's all about
Re: (Score:2)
You have a valid point about "pointless consumption", but resources are resources never the less.
Parts of everyone's families have died in someones "pointless" war.
If making sure my country has resources makes me a dick, that's fine. If making sure my country stays above the above the mean in the balance-of-power game, that's great by me. There's only 3 kinds of people.... [youtube.com]
So you are think about Afghans coming the America and grabbing a hand full of dicks, huh? To each there own.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When even a guy called Gandhi is telling you to STFU, you know you're right the fuck out of 'er.
Re: (Score:2)
Or there's some cunt out there who happens to call himself ghandi.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
According to the CIA World Factbook [cia.gov], Afghanistan's top three exports are opium, fruits and nuts, and handwoven carpets. They produce absolutely no oil. Natural gas production is 30 million m^3 per year and is all used domestically. None of the gas is exported. Furthermore, it's not like they're sitting on a natural gas gold mine. Known reserves place them at number 65 in the world.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
The morality of war is that the winners write the history books. And all wars are moral from the victor's viewpoint.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent:
That's only a fallacy on GP's part if you think the west won the war in Vietnam.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say getting your asses kicked out of Vietnam, and the south being overrun is a loss.
It didn't destroy the US, but there's no way you could construe it as a victory.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess it depends on your definition of "won". It's wrong anyway - European conquerors definitely won the war against the indigenous populations of North America, yet you'd be hard-pressed to find people who would justify such actions. Even those of us who are happy with the results are still forced to admit that the actions of the various empires were quite immoral.
So no, it's not the winners who write the history books; it's done by the dominant societies of the era, which are influenced by the zeitgei
Re: (Score:2)
http://books.google.com/books?id=fXJnOde4eYkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=on+war&source=bl&ots=yPe3VpR9BA&sig=LvFlx_t6wmC2C-IBNCMiBMh3P1Q&hl=en&ei=YlGxS8K6H4aglAeG5YD2BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false [google.com]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
War is an extension of politics - clausevitz. In the quest to get some power/people/entity to stop doing something (invading, destabilizing, living in some land you want) you must find a way (a policy) that convinces them (harasses them) such that continued pursuit of the policy you
Re: (Score:2)
Not even defensive wars? I mean if the Germans decided to invade France and France decides to fight for its own sovereignty, is France's war immoral? Should a nation capitulate because wars are immoral every time someone wants to invade and conquer them?
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Specifically, a laser guided bomb (LGB) may be relying on a laser designator from someone else, not in your aircraft. This works for a regular A/C or a UAV. Drop within the basket, and someone else guides it in.
And that intel/targeting may be from a competing warlord, wishing to take out his competition.
Re: (Score:2)
this.
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd argue that there is far less likely for mishap in the UAV situation. You can afford to take your time a bit more before dropping the bomb, for one thing. With a manned bombing mission in a dangerous theater they will tend to fly in, reach their drop point, drop the bombs, and head out of there. Every second you linger in the target area is a chance to be killed - if the target is worth hitting chances are that it is worth defending, so the area right around the target is often the most dangerous area in the whole mission.
On the other hand, with a UAV you can have one guy flying the thing (or it can be on autopilot), and you can have as many people as you like staring at the video feed making sure that everything looks ok before dropping the bomb. If in doubt you can just wait a little - ok, so maybe they get a missile or two off but you will probably still hit the target even if you don't make it out of there, and the loss of a UAV isn't a horrible thing.
Plus you don't have nearly as much adrenaline pumping, which makes for more level-headed decisions.
I think UAVs have a great deal of potential to cut down on battlefield errors.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You obviously aren't familiar with how this works, you can't "take your time" often your target is only available for a short period of time and then quite often surrounded by "non targets".
On the ground you can "take your time".
Take comfort no one is targeting you...yet.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure losing a few $10 million drones because you wanted to be sure it was the right target and got shot down for your trouble is going to be "career limiting".
Sure less motivation than "I might die", but still a motivation.
Coverage will be different (Score:3, Interesting)
The most important part of this for the Pentagon is that there's no human cost to losing a UAV on the American side. There are no airfields with reporters to deal with - you're not going to allow a journalist on to an airforce base inside the control room for "security" purposes. The pussies who call themselves reporters don't go out of the green zone anymore, and it's hard to get anyone to care about a grainy video or far away sounding reports from foreign news sources. You can bomb the hell out of whomeve
Re: (Score:2)
Don't shareholders of corporations vote with their share of the stock? Did you even think about your signature quote before trying to look cool by using it?
While it's true that shareholders get to vote once in a while, it is also true that by law a corporation has to do everything in its power to maximize shareholder profits....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Citation, please? This idea gets thrown around a lot, but I have yet to see evidence.
One can argue that unless the articles of incorporation suggest otherwise the fiduciary duty of the management is to maximize shareholder value (NOT to be confused with instantaneous profit) and that shareholders could sue the management in civil court over perceived failures to do so. It'd be a pretty hard suit to win, I bet.
But in general, the purpose of a corporation will be outlined in its articles of incorpo
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
These thing remove the human element to much
People have been saying that since roughly the invention of the thrown rock. Do you honestly think that the bombardier looking out a glass window miles over the battlefield has any human connection with the targets below or "verification" of who he kills?
If anything, being physically separated from the battlefield makes it harder to indiscriminately kill, as you have all the self-doubt and remorse but none of the adrenaline and self-preservation instincts. Killing becomes a lot easier—and you become a lot less discriminate—when you know somebody is actively trying to kill you.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bad news (Score:4, Insightful)
You know that pilots, on the whole, don't bother landing their planes at ground zero and examining the carnage first hand, right? They scoot on back to their aircraft carrier or their air force base in the next country and have a cold beer. They rarely even set foot in the land they're fighting. War has been impersonal for a lot longer than UAVs have been around.
And it hasn't been a bad thing. In the days of swords and spears, massacres were the rule and not the exception. Warriors filled with the rage of battle would avenge comrades they'd seen cut down around them by razing entire towns and slaughtering every inhabitant they could find. Besiegers would happily watch entire cities perish from starvation and disease, and would often speed up the matter by flinging flaming objects and infected corpses over the walls. Fighters simply became numb to any notions of decency or morality; it was the only way to survive, both physically and mentally. If you truly think that wars were somehow more compassionate in days gone by, consider the Gesta Francorum [fordham.edu], which chronicles another time the west decided to involve themselves in the affairs of the middle east. Indeed, read any direct account of war from any past era. Don't let yourself be fooled by later romanticizations.
The advance of military technology has slowly moved armies further and further from each other, and in the process, given them more and more opportunities to plan and consider their actions. Advances in communication have allowed everyone to witness wars being fought, and even to catch glimpses of life behind enemy lines. We've begun to notice that our enemies are people who live like us, think like us, and dream like us, and not just foes rushing at us with swords unsheathed. Not long ago, murdering or driving out an entire nation would have been hailed as a glorious victory and proof of divine providence. If the nation was not Catholic even the Pope would have praised it. Now, killing every tenth man in a country would guarantee denouncement and ostracism from the world stage, and would very likely end in a war crimes tribunal. "Civilized" countries are expected to hold back the majority of their raw strength and refrain from using the most effective elements of their arsenals. While war is still a bloody business, it is handled with a delicacy today that our ancestors never imagined.
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And they were right. All of those things did de-humanize war (as if it were humanized to begin with). Of course winning is often more important than the human element, but we should think carefully about the trade-offs, so we can decide if it's worth it in any particular circumstance.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What was the alternative? (Consider the context of several years of all out war all over the globe)
Re: (Score:2)
Peace you moron.
Re: (Score:2)
Peace is only possible in a conflict when one side has decided that it's better to lose. When neither sides accepts defeat as an option, war is the only option either sides will take.
Re: (Score:2)
You might want to research that a little further... There was reason a plenty from their perspective. Several of them, even, seemed rather conveniently provided by the US administration of the time... Though that last bit is left to anyone's interpretation. The US population had no intention to go to war, but I don't think that entirely speaks true of the whole government back then. Here's Gore Vidal on the subject:
On July 16, 1941, Prince Konoye, a would-be peacemaker, became prime minister. On July 26 (as a vote of confidence?) the US froze all Japanese funds in the US and stopped the export of oil. When Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles was asked by the Japanese if some compromise might be worked out, Welles said there was not the "slightest ground for any compromise solution."
Our first provocation against Japan began with FDR's famous Chicago address (October 5, 1937), asking for a quarantine against aggressor nations. Certainly, Japan in Manchuria and north China qualified as an aggressor just as we had been one when we conquered the Philippines and moved into the Japanese neighborhood at the start of the twentieth century. In December 1937, the Japanese sank the Panay, an American gunboat in Chinese waters, on duty so far from home as the Monroe Doctrine sternly requires. Japan promptly, humbly paid for the damage mistakenly done our ship. Meanwhile, FDR—something of a Sinophile—was aiding and abetting the Chinese warlord Chiang Kai-shek.
Three years later the Western world changed dramatically. France fell to Hitler, an ally of Japan. FDR was looking for some way to help Britain avoid the same fate. Although most bien pensant Americans were eager to stop Hitler, not many fretted about Japan. Also, more to the point—the point—a clear majority of American voters were against going to war a second time in Europe in a single generation. Nevertheless, instead of meeting Konoye, FDR met Winston Churchill aboard a warship off Newfoundland. FDR said that he would do what he could to help England but he was limited by an isolationist Congress, press, and electorate. Later, Churchill, in a speech to Parliament, let part of the cat out of the bag: "The possibility since the Atlantic Conference...that the United States, even if not herself attacked, would come into a war in the Far East, and thus make final victory sure, seemed to allay some of those anxieties...." (The anxieties were FDR's inability to come to the full aid of England in the war with the Axis.) "As time went on, one had great assurance that if Japan ran amok in the Pacific, we should not fight alone."
Re: (Score:2)
FALSE. Not sure where you got that idea from.
Conventional wisdom (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This was all predicted over 17 years ago -- Toys [imdb.com].
Toys?!? (Score:2)
Commercial Industry (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How about (Score:2, Insightful)
They could develop a computer system which combines sensor input and calculates optimal control output. For resilience it should be distributed and connected through a network. A network for the sky controlling machines which terminate enemy combatants.
Knock knock (Score:5, Funny)
Who's there?
I kill you.
I know how they feel (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I know how they feel (Score:5, Funny)
Is that why she turned to the unmanned model?
MS with wings (Score:2)
Rails for rockets where added later.
The problem is the units are just prototypes on a production line.
They fail early and just keep on pumping out more.
Its going to catch up with the number of requests.
Solution- outsource. Get Brazil, South Africa, France, England - any $ needing country with a US friendly airframe ready history to make the basics and get state side security-cleared mercenaries to snap
Easy training solution (Score:3, Funny)
Pay Through The Frontal Lobe (Score:4, Interesting)
"The military is facing a number of challenges, including training, accessing national air space and improving aircraft communications systems..."
And rehabilitation. For reasons not yet understood UAV remote pilots are suffering more burnout than most others, as well as PTSD to an extent that mystifies.
Re:Pay Through The Frontal Lobe (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you the answer to that. They are facing stresses that a normal soldier isn't facing. A Predator pilot in Las Vegas has to fight a war for 10 hours a day and deal with all the stress that comes with that, AND THEN go home and deal with all the stress of family life. When deployed you 'turn off' after you fly and recover. Flying from home means you have to constantly deal with much more stress than normal. And you have to separate your military life from your family life even more. You can't talk about the problems you deal with at work with your wife because missions are classified. And you can't talk about your kid failing a math test because you are busy tracking a high priority target. No down time means no recovery. And add all to that this problems mentioned in the article above. Then to top it all off, good luck getting out of an unmanned plane. Without enough training, assignments are lasting much longer than normal. Pilots are getting called back from manned planes to fly drones. It's a no win situation for those who need a break.I did it for a while, and life is rough,
I was a Predator pilot in the AF for 5 years, and I can tell you it's not a pretty picture.
Re:Pay Through The Frontal Lobe (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod this +1e100 insightful. I'm away from home right now (in Tampa, no less. building a data center) so when I'm stressed because some piece of gear is borked I can just go back to the hotel and zone in the hot tub, quick call home, all is good, cool.
But, if I was at home I'd have all the honey-do's and familial interactions (step-daughter in treatment, African Grey parrot, four cats, oh, and the wife, need to stack that firewood, the toilet downstairs is making a funny sound...) needing to be taken care of, and I couldn't get in the space I need to solve the problem, nor could I talk to my wife about the intricacies of the setup (like talking about classified.)
It may be better to just put these pilots on some other base away from their families, a nice TDY, to let them deal with their job and give them the excuse to slack off on the family front for a while. Kind of a toss up. Give them the option, just don't let the spouse know whow asked for the TDY.
What these remote pilots have to deal is so much more REAL and INTENSE than what you or I deal with, unless you are in combat, it is NOTHING, FUCKING NOTHING compared what these Airmen have to deal with.
Sirs. My most humble thanks for your service! (this from an ex-USAF desk jockey, circa '79)
-Joe
Re: (Score:2)
If you're flying an A-10 or an F-15E, you get your target, you release your bomb/missile, you get confirmation and go home. When you're flying a UAV, you get your target, you release your bomb/missile, then you immediately see the results of what you did live on your sensor screen. And it's rarely pretty.
Ironic -- this tech could bring abundance for all (Score:2)
I wrote on this elsewhere: "Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism"
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1937-unnatural-acts-breaking-the-fever-of-militarism.html#comment-2450 [chris-floyd.com]
and:
"It's the unrecognized irony that kills you..."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1590182&cid=31561028 [slashdot.org]
"""
It is ironic that the technology that goes into such a missile, from the computers and materials to the social networks that plan and te
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I assume GP's point was that the money could be better spent employing people in Afghanistan, so that they have something better to do than join the Taliban and whatnot. It's not clear to me that GP is right, mind you. ;)
Re:Comparison numbers (Score:4, Informative)
It depends on what you're considering a UAV. By far the most common UAV is a glorified toy RC airplane. The RQ-11B Raven, for example, of which 13,000 have been built, costs about $35,000 including camera and data link. The ground station is a laptop.
Of the big, expensive UAVs you see on the news, Global Hawk and Predator/Reaper, less than 250 have been produced. I doubt even half of the original MQ-1 Predators remain - according to wikipedia we'd lost 70 of them by March 2009. UAVs aren't as reliable as human-piloted aircraft, especially while landing. Also, engine wear is a function of flight hours, and these things can stay in the air for up to 48 hours, depending on the loadout.