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)
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.
Syrian Rebels ARE the WRONG HANDS! (Score:2, Interesting)
Syrian Rebels ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Al Qaeda.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57531618/rebels-ally-with-al-qaeda-group-to-take-syrian-base/ [cbsnews.com]
But the Libyan "rebels" were Al Qaeda imports, too. Just the distortion field of western corporate media makes this "Arab Spring" bullshit.
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
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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.
You can't really be a good suicide bomber, you can be a good suicide bomber handler. Screw catching the suicide bombers (well before the op anyay) most of them are just uneducated and desperate people, you want the ops guys behind them.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sooner or later the west is gonna wake up and accept that Islam and the west are simply incompatible and that we should be pursuing a policy of containment just as we did with communism.
You don't need to pursue a policy of containment.
The Islamists are mostly isolationsists and just want the Western world to leave them alone.
But as long as there is oil, Israel, and strategic supply routes, they'll never get their wish.
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.
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the radicals are given free reign by a populace that refuses to stand up to them.
Not universally true: AP report [ap.org]
There seems to be increasing opposition to the nutters in islamic countries, despite the severe hazard to one's health in doing so.
Re:Syrian Rebels ARE the WRONG HANDS! (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit. Plain and utter bullshit. It started in Hama [wikipedia.org]. In 1982. It restarted in Hama last year. But it originally started with Assad's father and the Muslim Brotherhood. And it started IN Syria. A lot of people who are fighting Assad now are foreigners but not the majority by any means. And the only reason there are hardline religious factions there at all is because they are the only ones who are willing to help (whatever their reasons). Everyone else for whatever reason is staying well clear. If you need help in a life and death match, you'll take it where-ever it comes from. We all would. And Assad is not innocent in terms of using hardline religious fanatic terrorists either. In partnership with Iran, he uses Hezbollah as his surrogate army to control Lebanon and to indirectly maintain Syria's war with Israel. And it's evident he is bringing them into play again.
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Big difference: Hard penalties are allowable in military devices. No consumer device will ever succeed in the market if it contains hard penalties as tamper responses.
As a result, consumer device DRM will ALWAYS be broken because an attacker can try repeatedly to defeat the protection. Hard penalties result in failures to attack a device causing permanent unrecoverable damage.
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Consumer devices typically contain warnings of hazards.
Warning: The Blueray player contains a tamper explosive charge and shrapnel. Do not open the case.
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Reminds me of a Modern Marvels episode. They were talking about the trigger device on nuclear warheads I think, and how you have to input a precise code in order to arm the device, or else it locks forever.
Myth has that code being 111-111-111 though.
And 'locks forever' in this context means 'locks until someone physically pulls the weapon apart and resets it'.
Re:DRM for weapons? (Score:4, Informative)
I believe you're thinking of a PAL, a Permissive Action Link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link [wikipedia.org]
Funny thing, it started out as the Prescribed Action Link, but the grunts didn't like that, so they were permitted instead :)
Can control yield and disable weapons, as well as authorize only specific targets in the case of an ICBM. So that new show 'Last Resort' where the rogue sub captain fires a nuclear warning shot into the Atlantic off the coast of DC. Yeah, that could never happen....
Re:DRM for weapons? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh come on, what could possibly go wrong with this clever plan? :)
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paging DVD Jon
You better call the RIAA. I bet they can get all those weapons back and trick these guys (the terrorists I mean) into paying them for the favor.
Re:DRM for weapons? (Score:5, Funny)
I REALLY hate it when I'm facing an enemy helicopter and the DRM on my rocket launcher decides to quit, leaving me staring at an enemy helicopter.
Good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
This sounds great until you consider how innovative people in the middle east have been with weaponry during the recent wars there. I'm skeptical that the security on these things would survive the first set of batteries.
Re:Good idea... (Score:5, Funny)
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yes, like a replacement battery.
Unfortunately for the buyers, the parts will take 4 months to arrive, and do so in a crunched, twice-folded, resealed padded envelope (though because it wasn't an R4 cartridge, it went smoothly through HK customs).
At any rate, I thought the Obama administration made it clear the Syrian rebels were too secular (Turkish-backed) to be supported. Even if this "authorization code" scheme only needs a new battery to defeat it, they still won't get any material support from the US u
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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:Good idea... (Score:5, Funny)
I thought they were too evil to be supported?
What if they hold a war and don't invite us?
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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.
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Geography fail.
It was called Iran-Contra.
Not Iraq-Contra.
Saddam never got any weapons from Reagan.
You got the wrong country.
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my bad. thought you were same guy talking abotu "iraq contra" further down. (edit button would be nice...what is this, 1995?)
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Re:Good idea... (Score:5, Informative)
"Saddam never got any weapons from Reagan. You got the wrong country."
Incorrect. The United States supplied plenty of weapons, materials and intelligence to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war [wikipedia.org]
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Saddam never got any weapons from Reagan.
Yes he did [counterpunch.org]. The Reagan administration was in fact supplying both sides of the Iran-Iraq War in the hopes that they'd basically destroy each other.
Re:Good idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Oneida after the Revolutionary War,
the Tuscarora after the War of 1812,
the Cossaks after WWII,
the Hukbalahaps after WWII,
the ARVN after Vietnam,
the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan,
the Shia and Kurds after the Gulf War,
the Sunni after the Iraq war,
and probably many more.
It's a wonder anyone's still dumb enough to play on Uncle Sam's team. Does anyone doubt what's going to happen to the Afghan government and military after the United States finally leaves?
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GPS give time (Score:3)
If you give them an 'expiry date' then they can't be used for future incidents. Couple that with geographical lock and it should be fairly safe.
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Geographic lock? We've seen how well DVD region codes work.
I'm sure General Dynamics will double the price for these added features. And then offer to remotely disable them ... for a nominal fee.
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DVDs don't have military encrypted GPSs attached to them.
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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.
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DVDs don't have military encrypted GPSs attached to them.
It wouldn't matter if they did. You're pointing (repeatedly) to the strongest part of the system and pretending that it's the point that has to be hacked, whereas we all know that it's the weakest part that will be the point of attack.
What's the weakest point? I don't know, but I do know that it'll be far, far weaker than the encryption on military-grade GPS signals. Likely it'll be in the hardware that handles the actual unlocking of the control system. Remember, at the end of the day we are talking ab
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Feh, pounding a nail with a screwdriver. Just figure out which trace has the "enable" signal on it, and tie it to +5.
Re:GPS give time (Score:4, Informative)
Why would you design a secure system with an easily bypassed circuit? The GPS circuit can prove authentication to the other electronics by signing all locations and instructions with a private key. These systems need a lot of in-flight stabilisation and navigation so just shorting the "FULL POWER" line on the hardware controls isn't going to get you very far.
The spoofing doesn't work on the encrypted military GPS, it can only be jammed, so if they make that the only source for the location spoofing doesn't work either. Of course, their enemies could jam the encrypted GPS to prevent them firing, but such is the nature of these things.
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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.
The battery is a little more complicated (Score:3)
It's actually a combination of battery and cooling unit, and it uses Argon gas in order to enable the acquisition indicators, which are needed for the IR and UV targeting systems. Without those parts, you're back to a relatively dumb aiming mechanism. Not that I don't think that any DRM you tried wouldn't be hackable anyway.
Probably they would just get Russian SA-24 "Grinch" missiles instead, which are roughly equivalent to Stingers, with much less DRM than the proposed missiles.
Definition of Oxymoron (Score:2, Insightful)
"force equalizer to make a decisive blow"
What am I to do? (Score:3)
The batteries in my stinger missile have gone dead! What will I do?
The poster picked an apt comparison: it's just like when the US trained and gave weapons to the Afghans against the Soviets. How's that one working out for you guys?
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You really dont understand the time scale between the two conflicts do you? Or the differences in what we gave them then, and what they use today?
Also that training? It wasn't a bootcamp. It wasnt combat skill training. "We trained them"...that phrase is so generic, so ambiguous, so utterly worthless. The media use it and it implies that we created a force that was as well trained as any of our basic troops. Guess what, that isnt the case.
Most of those enemy combatants for one thing are NOT the same ones we
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addendum to myself:
Now as to the original topic, of course this could backfire. Almost anything can. The typical guy who uses the weapon, no he wont be able to jury rig it to bypass the controls. But not all of them are rural yokels. Someone will eventually rig a few to get around it. So the thought that they can control who uses it, is flawed to begin with, and should be rejected. If you release the weapons into the wild, you should be prepared to see them again later.
That said, we very rarely give people
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It's my impression the US provided weapons, not sold them, to Afghanistan in the 70s. Wikipedia seems to agree with me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan–United_States_relations#Soviet_invasion_and_civil_war). The authoritative source on the subject seems to be only available on microfilm and I don't feel like walking over to the library.
Anyway, even if it was sales, the US might have made about $3 billion on 70s Afghanistan arms sales. How much has it spent on dealing with 911 and the fallo
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The Saudis paid for about half. I bet they got two for the price of three.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
gone (Score:2)
They have lost their damn minds. No way can this have a happy ending. And to think they learn nothing at all from history. The bitching about fast and furious is still going on.
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.
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I'd generally agree, but apparently the stingers the US handed to the Afghans haven't been a threat since they invaded because the batteries had already degraded. That suggests a shelf life of, say 20 years on the batteries at most.
If the shelf life is known like this then can't we just give them some say, 18 year old batteries, and also only give them a limited number of missiles to start with?
I agree DRM on this sort of thing is bound to end in tears, but relying on something more natural like the natural
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How hard is it to replace batteries?
All you need to do take a volt meter to the working batteries and make sure your replacements can provide enough mAh. If I can rebuild fairly undocumented batteries for tools and laptops I am pretty sure they can do it for the stinger.
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I was wondering this myself, but if it is trivial then why hasn't the Taliban done it to shoot down Apaches/Chinooks in Afghanistan left right and centre?
This to me suggests it's not that trivial, as from what I've heard it's not that there aren't still a decent number of stingers in Afghanistan. I have read reports of the odd one being fired which may suggest the odd battery has been found that just about has enough charge to work perhaps but they seem to be few and far between - certainly not frequent eno
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This is a problem people who restore game cabinets solve day in and day out. Excuse me if I don't believe it will protect us.
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A game cabinet being refurbished by replacing, repairing worn out parts is a hell of a lot less complex than attempting to repair a system which has intentionally wiped it's memory of the important software and likely burned out irreplaceable portions of it's internal circuitry.
Yeah, you can theoretically rebuild portions of it, but if you have the technology to rebuild such things... well you already have the technology to BUILD such things in the first place.
Smuggled into New Jersey (Score:2)
You're probably right that this is duct tape for a leaky political mess.
I'm less concerned about them shooting down our drones than smuggling them into New Jersey and shooting down commuter flights, or waiting on boats offshore to shoot down international flights. When a few 747s explode into the Pacific, we might find ourselves reconsidering these giveaways.
You're right: 10,000 feet (Score:2)
You're right, according to this source [fas.org]:
However, I was thinking of a descending or ascending flight leaving an airport, many of which are at the water's edge. We have enough problems with people shining laser pointers at these planes.
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.
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Its not a good comparison at all. The weapons werent disabled in any way. The fed's went to gun dealers, and told them to break the law (by selling to certain individuals if they should try to buy weapons, rather than deny them like they normally would given certain red flags). the feds wanted to follow the weapons and thereby prove that us weapon sales were going across the border.
The logic problem of course, was that if the dealers hadnt been told to allow the sales to happen...the sales wouldnt have happ
Judge Dredd (Score:2)
Rico: Why not?
Geiger: Well, that's a Lawgiver. That's programed to only recognise a Judge's hand. You touch that, it'll take your arm off!
[Rico grabs the gun and points it in Geiger's face. The gun has accepted his grip]
Rico: Gee, how do you like that? I must be a Judge.
[he shoots Geiger]
All we need now is a great name (Score:3, Informative)
DRM (Score:2)
Digital Restrictions Management has and always will fail to a determined adversary. Professional security developers with millions of dollars of support had their attempts for DRM on game consoles, satellite cards, cell phones and other hardware defeated by the home brew community. Start getting professionals with proper labs and budgets involved and DRM will always fail, it's just a matter of time. What DRM can do is buy you time, but it does at the cost of exposing whatever DRM mechanism your using at tha
Obvious reason (Score:2)
The obvious reason for designing an intentionally high maintenance weapon is expensive ongoing service contracts, the "prevent arms from falling into the wrong hands" is just the straw dog to get it to pass and make some dough.
If you really wanted a solution to the "prevent falling into wrong hands" problem, you'd produce about 100 times as many SAMs as you "need" but 99 of them are booby trapped with bad source code in the guidance computer or intentionally faulty whatevers in the innards, so they intentio
Mujahadeen == Taliban (Score:3)
Security vs Physical access (Score:2)
In security circles, doesn't physical access = assumed compromise? Game consoles & "locked" phones, e-Readers, etc. are all compromised within hours of being released to the masses. I think one should be very careful before placing trust in physical access security.
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Not necessarily. There are ways to protect a device even when an attacker has physical access. HOWEVER these ways involve techniques that are unacceptable to a consumer end-user, and so are never used in consumer devices.
And the Sony PS3 took over a year to get compromised.
GPS transmitters can be faked/set up (Score:2)
Formula 1 all the way down to Formula 3000 uses GPS to get millimetre accuracy. how can they do that, you ask, when the GPS signals are scrambled in the lower bits? well - and this i heard about as far back as 1993 when i was working for Pi Technology - all that is needed is one single low-power GPS transmitter, placed in the centre of the track which *is* accurate. the GPS receivers lock on to that; this gives a concentric ring of millimetre-level accuracy and the remaining GPS satellites can be used to
Just Stop (Score:3, Insightful)
Can we just stop trying to solve all our problems with more weapons?
captcha: captive
Metal Gear Solid 4 Did That! (Score:3)
It was called "The System" Whenever you picked up a weapon, your DNA was checked against a database. No approval means no shooting....until you visit a Drebin (black-market gun launderer) ;-)
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It was called "The System"
(Or called SOP - Sons of the Patriots). Effectively ID tagged weapons and gear. If you, theoretically, had a system of registering unique IDs for rebels on some scale, be it just fingerprints on a certain part of the weapon, to the DNA of every single rebel on some database, it could be done to a degree
However as other comments seem to point out, even if they take a long time to be hacked, they'd have to be pretty irreparable if broken as they shouldn't be salvageable for parts. And cost wise... who pays
How foolish (Score:2)
Exocet (Score:2)
That's ok for warships and warplanes, but if the missle was stolen during a conflict, it could be used against a civlian target that didn't have the
A killswitch won't help (Score:2)
WILL WORK Perfectly (Score:2)
I fully believe that these "safegaurds" will work perfectly for their intended purpose: To soothe the concerns of politicians long enough to make the sale.
Clearly none of this can fully work.... one way or another, with time and enough units, any protection can be disabled, and a disabled device can be re-enabled, or modified.
However, this allows politicians to claim its safe, and then be shielded from blame when it doesn't work out, and they can easily kill any investigations once the heat dies down.
Weapons don't kill people. (Score:2)
People kill people.
but ya, giving weapons to others means they'll probably get ebay'd to someone else later. So if you are worried about it, don't give anyone any weapons.
How about we don't give them stinger missles (Score:2)
I propose we stop giving out stinger missles peroid.
No Syriana reference? (Score:2)
In the movie a shoulder fired antiaircraft missile was supposed to be disabled. It was - it's flight computer was in fact disabled. But they used the explosives to blow up a ship.
The world is a big place. You trying to shut down *everything* bad that can ever happen isn't gonna work out how you planned.
Use chemistry rather than DRM (Score:3)
The electronics-based, "DRM" type approaches aren't optimal due to increased complexity. Installing something that requires a GPS lock, time-expiring auth code, etc, reduces the chances of the weapon positively functioning in combat. Furthermore, unless sophisticated Permissive Action Links [wikipedia.org] are used, then any practical solution could potentially be defeated by third-party control/firmware. If they can't keep console hardware from being modchipped without resorting to judicial means, what do you think is going to happen when these diverted weapons end up in the hands of a group with state sponsorship?
Thus, I suggest that the problem be attacked via chemistry. Attempt to develop explosives and rocket propellant that will decompose over time. Yes, this is likely to make the weapons sensitive to storage conditions (thereby altering the "expiration date"). However, a device whose warhead would "expire" in 5 years at room temperature is likely to last at least 12 months in the desert. Other "poison pills" could be added, eg. a compound that would degrade the warhead if it were frozen in an attempt to prolong viability.
Yes, this approach might result in weapons that have to be swapped out frequently, but it would also prevent MANPADS given to erstwhile allies from coming back to haunt us in 15 years. If rogue actors can swap out the propellant and warhead while retaining the appropriate weights & distribution for flight characteristics, then they've probably got state sponsorship anyway (meaning they could get weapons regardless).
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The military are not arms peddlers. They are consumers. This is Hillary making a sale. The "DRM" is an attempt to make it look palatable. If they could cut off all weapons sales, there wouldn't be a war in Syria, or that the very least, a much less destructive one.
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:US Military (Score:4, Interesting)
We have no business being in any of these rebellions from Libya all through the middle east.
On the contrary, we have BIG business in these 'rebellions'. Just remember, it's strictly business.
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They're not our friends now? You mean like how we armed all of Iran so they could fight those darned Soviets?
Re:US Military (Score:5, Informative)
History fail.
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:US Military (Score:5, Informative)
I think he means more like abusing and executing POWs. Plus a little using snipers against civilians, that sort of thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/world/middleeast/united-nations-warns-syrian-rebels-over-atrocities.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
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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".
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Oh don't even try, the type of ignorant pillock who thinks that anyone foreign is everyone foreign (i.e. Osama Bin Laden was foreign, so all foreigners are terrorists) can't be reasoned with. They're lost causes beyond help so utterly caught up in their ignorant nationalistic mindset that all hope of anything of value coming from their mouth on a topic involving somewhere outside of their home country is long lost.
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ZOMG. Alert the presses! The leader of the free world in his role as chief diplomat invited the leader of another nation, one we have poor relations with, to the white house to talk, to negotiate, to do, you know, diplomatic stuff! SHOCKING!!!
You are as ignorant as you are racist. no I dont like these countries that dislike us a whole lot either. But the man wears multiple hats. The job of POTUS isnt to just shoot first and talk later. Teddy Roosevelt said it best: "Talk softly, but carry a big stick." The
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Or perhaps you should read what he posted here and in other places? And do you even know the definition of the word? I've railed against overuse of the word before. But even I'm pretty sure labeling all middle easterners terrorists qualifies.
AC's strawman of redirection is hit for 9000 critical damage. AC loses.
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So diplomacy is no longer part of the presidents job?
When did we make that change?
Try not to cry to much when Romney loses.
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:what could go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or if you do have them fall into the wrong hands, you now have a credible threat that will justify legislation to force the civilian air fleet to install expensive countermeasures. At the same time you will also have justified research projects to develop the next generations of stealth and anti-air missile technology for the military. Finally since the technology will now be well understood by potential nation-state adversaries, you have also justified research projects for the next generation of anti-ai