US Army Could Waive Combat Training For Hackers 223
An anonymous reader sends word that the U.S. Army may adjust some of its training practices and rules in order to attract the best "cyber warriors" available. "New U.S. Army cyber warriors could be spared the rigors of combat training to help the Pentagon attract badly needed recruits from the ponytail wearing Google generation, a top American general has suggested. Lt Gen Brown, commander of the US Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, said: 'We need to give serious consideration to how the US Army could combine the technical expertise of the "Google" generation with its more traditional military skills. In order to gain an intellectual advantage over adversaries in cyberspace, we will need to tap into a talent pool that may not fit the stereotypical soldier profile. Our goal is to recruit the best talent possible.'" This is not the first time there has been talk about loosening requirements to fill these roles.
It would do them good. (Score:5, Insightful)
How hard is it for a twenty something year old to get into basic fitness? Perhaps if there is a good candidate but would otherwise fall out because of fitness, work with them in 'pre basic' to get up to speed. It needn't be punative - might be the best thing that happened to them. For really handicapped people (say someone with paralysis), perhaps a medical waiver.
But to have a whole group of 'different' Army folks - not such a good idea.
Re:It would do them good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hire them as GS whatever. (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_service_pay_scale) [wikipedia.org]
100% agreement.
If they are NOT going to be deployed then hire them as GS whatever.
If they ARE going to be deployed to a situation where they can be shot then they need combat training.
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they want them to be sworn soldiers. there's a magical difference between sworn and unsworn.
if they ask a hacker to create a virus that causes an enemy industrial site to explode and kill the workers & scientists, refusing to do so because of "moral grounds" is now a court martial.
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if they ask a hacker to create a virus that causes an enemy industrial site to explode and kill the workers & scientists, refusing to do so because of "moral grounds" is now a court martial.
An unlikely scenario. On the other hand, having them in uniform allows tighter control over both them and the product. I've worked with plenty of top-tier programmers who were not fat Cheeto-eating pigs. But boot camp and Army PT simply isn't all that hard.
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What moral grounds? That is nonsense and anyone who stands on that doesn't understand the situation.
Would it not have been moral to kill to workers and scientists who developed the V1 and V2 flying bombs that killed thousands of civilians?
Of course it would have been, so if those same people are making weapons that will kill us, then killing them first is perfectly moral.
These are the same idiots who claim the nuclear weapons used against Japan were immoral. Anyone who claims that simply doesn't understan
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Sort of.
1) You can (even in uniform) refuse an "unlawful" order, according to the UCMJ. If you can successfully point it out in a courts martial, it can include things like refusing an order to torture someone, shooting unarmed children, and similar things. It is also why the "I was just following orders" spiel is not a defense in court should you commit an atrocity and get hauled before a tribunal for it. This link looks like a good civilian-ready primer [about.com] on how that works.
2) It doesn't require a uniform to
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It is also why the "I was just following orders" spiel is not a defense in court should you commit an atrocity and get hauled before a tribunal for it.
Maybe not in the US Army, but we also seem to hold that standard to other nations.
Example, Germany in WWII, we tried many soldiers for things they did "under orders". But the difference was, they may well have been shot for not doing it, more likely towards the end of the war.
An extreme example was in Berlin, near the end. Even the very young and the very old men were expected to fight. Even just trying to leave the city, the penalty was death.
In such a situation, "I was just following orders, under pain
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
Yes. You will have to justify it though.
Anyway, back to the previous comment:
It's not magical. It's "military" and "civilian". If you're military then the UCMJ replaces the civilian laws.
The military does not create the weapons that it uses. It buys them from civilians. The M-16? Parts made by Mattel. The same company that makes Barbie
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What is really going on, is these 'google types' used to be called contractors and worked for private for profit corporations who contracted to the military and intelligence agencies. The problem of course is those contractors were very, very, prone to lie and completely distort intelligence gathered in order to promote profit generating activity. The military and intelligence communities are realising that private for profit contractors suck big time, and the person doing the work needs to be under tight
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How about an entirely different branch of service then? We already have the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and the US Public Health Service. The first five are part of the DOD, the other two aren't. Simply create a new branch, in the way that the Air Force was spun-off from the Army. Decide if there will ever be forward-deployed personnel,
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How about an entirely different branch of service then?
Why not deal with it the way we already deal with such things: contractors? We already hire non-combatant talent in other areas, why not this?
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If you're willing to bring civilians into it,
We already bring civilians into it. They're called "contractors".
why not letters of marque
Because military actions are not supposed to be acts of individual reprisal conducted by private citizens, they're conducted by a government. We would assume that the intended cyber-target had not personally targeted the "hacker" being employed to attack that target, so there would be no personal reprisal to start with.
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This.
Basic training means different things to different branches--field-stripping a rifle is replaced with using Wireshark or disassembling some code or basic drone flight (even for pure (h|cr)ackers) in the theoretical ChairForce (LOVE that term).
Probably still a bit of a physical fitness/discipline requirement (arranging into squads, e.g.),but no need to be so intense. Or more accurately, time-consuming with all the march-20-miles stuff. Maybe 30 mins/day of calesthenics and certain minimum proficiency
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all we really need is a good group of Hot Drill Instructors then we could get them into shape fairly quickly.
Otherwise think Combat/Field bonuses (heck make it a GAME hmm Americas Army is still running right??).
"All Right You Grubs most of you kick ass in Games. Well Speaking as your Game Master i would like to tell you that this game You HAVE ONE LIFE and my job is to see to it that you can handle being deployed to the Field. Now as a Hacker you must be able to travel with THIS PACK IN ARMOUR because that
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They are trying to attract good hackers. If a good hacker is out of shape and you make him go though pre-basic, then basic, he just must decide its not worth it and get a job somewhere else. After all if his skills are that good he has lots of options.
So what you're saying is there are not enough qualified American tech workers are willing to invest the time and effort to satisfy the long list of requirements. So clearly more H1B's are needed. :-)
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Or just revisit the requirements, to make sure you aren't imposing some requirements that are not strictly necessary for the job.
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Except that Basic Training is and has been, considered a requirement for the 'military' aspect of the job. Sure, you don't need to be able to do a dozen pullups to get the server up on the rack, but to be a 'part' of the military system, you do need that. Every truck mechanic, cook and phone tech who is wearing the uniform has done that.
As has been pointed out, on any given military base either in New Jersey or Kabul you will have contractors that aren't part of the military and don't necessarily have to
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This.
Who in Sam Hill gives a shit about ANY characteristics of a hacker other than the ability to hack?
This opens the door for the physically and mentally challenged, as well as being gender-neutral, sexual-orientation irrelevant, and religion proof.
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br.Why not? The regular USAF COMM troops are routinely riding convoy duty, manning a gun on top of the HUMVEE.
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Ummmm, please don't to that (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're in the Army, you're a legitimate, Geneva Convention-certified MILITARY TARGET.
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A lot of people think that by joining and taking up a civilian-ish MOS, they're not actually in any danger. Which is simply not true. I had, for example, a friend who joined up for a job doing lab biopsies of medical samples. Figured he'd always be stateside. Then the Iraq War broke out and they simply reclassified his whole unit as field medics and send them over to a FOB near Fallujah.
If you're in the military and they decide they need more people on the front lines, it doesn't matter what your MOS is, yo
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yup... I did US Army back in the early 70s.. Was initially drafted, got the song-dance in boot camp about re-upping for an additional year to *avoid* being an 11B (Infantryman). I thought I'd avoided that by opting for training as a radar repair tech.. Funny thing... I got sent to Vietnam and guess what? they had no open slots for a fixer of this particular radar, so I got assigned as an *operator* of this particular radar (AN/PPS5, a 3-man-pack-able anti-personnel radar), which was essentially an 11B "grun
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With all the rights, privileges and responsibilities associated with that position. If you're not, well, what is it the US does with non-uniformed combatants?
The mistake is having them in the military at all (Score:2)
This is a job well suited to mercenaries. They don't risk their lives.
The great danger and draw back of mercenaries is that they will not fight to the death. But hackers don't die when they lose a battle.
This concept is likely hateful to the military largely for traditional reasons. But they need to get over that. Fill the role with mercenaries and contractors. Bind them to US service, give the company a budget from the federal government, provide them with federal protection to keep them from getting assas
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As to mercenaries being bad for a nation, not at all.
Consider the age of sail with the privateers. This was at a time when nations didn't have formal navies of any note. Yet those same countries had large merchant fleets with skilled sailors well able to become a navy.
Of course, they were not going to turn over their ships to the king or sign up for service if it meant losing their independence. They worked for those ships. They belonged to them. And their skills were highly in demand so they didn't need to
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No issue with that either so long as it is the most effective means. Often there is a certain amount of corporate bloat that might be intolerable. But assuming they run their shops mean and lean... sounds good.
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Then by that definition, there is no such thing as civilized society and pretty much never has been.
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Re:The mistake is having them in the military at a (Score:4, Interesting)
You say that indifferent to the fact that the CIA does such things without being under military rules at all.
And you say such things despite the NSA hacking away at things without being under military rules. A member of the NSA can quit at any time. Just resign and go home.
Same is true of all the military contractors that design and build the fighter planes, the submarines, the missiles, etc.
Just because you work for pay does not mean you are without honor or that it is unethical to do the work.
The men that built the atomic bomb were not members of the military.
You perhaps do not know your military history... please take no offense... do you know that mercenary armies used to be the most common means of waging war? You had your police force which was paid by the state and you had a royal guard of sorts which was very much like the modern military. However, the actual armies were considered too expensive to maintain in those days so instead of maintaining an army, you would rent one.
This had pros and cons. They were very cheap over time. Even though during war they were quite expensive, during times of peace they cost nothing at all.
The disadvantage of a mercenary army was that they lacked loyalty and a willingness to die for their client. If they were routed they would run away.
Professional armies owned by the host nation would win in most cases against a mercenary army because the mercenary army would break and run.
What further ended such armies was that professional armies could be much larger. Mercenary armies could fight little wars. They might have a few thousand men in them but they rarely got any larger then that. While as you know, professional armies can number in the hundreds of thousands.
This hacking issue however brings the whole thing full circle. There is no question of a hacker running away because he fears for his life in a hack. There is no question of the money really. And the free hackers tend to be a great deal more competent then those under conscription.
As such, a flexible mind will see that hiring them as mercenaries actually makes perfect sense.
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It is a job which involves killing people in order to defend against threats to one's whole country.
In fairy-tale land. OK, I'll give you the War of 1812, but we are talking about the US Armed Forces here, who almost entirely project force into the world to enact political ambitions.
No civilised society even contemplates using them.
The US Constitution calls for their use (S. "Letters of Marque and Reprisal"), which is relevant to the US Army discussion. But we're talking about governments here, and ther
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I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Please rephrase and elaborate.
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As to mercenaries being put at greater risk, consult the combat losses of mercenaries and compare them against regular military units.
They have much higher survival rates.
For one thing, they don't take suicide missions. For another, they do absolutely run away more often.
You remember when shipping companies were getting boarded by pirates? The shipping companies started hiring mercenaries.
Do you know what happened when a ship carrying mercenaries was boarded? About half the time they jumped over board and s
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In regards to hiring them for pay, you are forgetting that in most cases these would be Americans getting hired to do the job.
You have your head filled with some crap about the way mercs work that is inaccurate. They do not generally go against their host country. We have thousands of years of merc history to go through and what you have to understand is that most of them are actually rather patriotic.
They just don't want to die and they want to get paid what they're worth. That is not unreasonable.
I could
Wrong Stereotype (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't physical activity that scares off hackers, it's that the entire military lifestyle and mindset is something that runs counter to the hacking culture.
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The Mullet Wearing Facebook Generation of Press (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: ponytail-wearing (Score:2)
Yeah, I was having trouble figuring that out. I think of "ponytail-wearing hackers" as those members of my (Boomer) generation who still have enough hair to tie up. And sorry, the Army tried to draft me once (my birthday made its saving throw successfully), taxed me for decades to pay for the Vietnam and Cold and Anti-Muslim Wars, and they're not going to get another chance.
Dress Code (Score:4, Interesting)
This is already done ... (Score:5, Informative)
Bear in mind this is already done for medical recruits. You don't seriously think they make neurosurgeons undergo the rigors of basic training do you? When last I heard MD recruits had a 3 week familiarization course on military customs and courtesy.
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Yes, but the Medical Corps (MC) is a staff corps (non-combat branch) of the US Army.
We perhaps could create something similar for computer specialists in "games and theory". :)
Then again, doctors enter at a minimum rank of second lieutenant, but frankly the pay is terrible compared to much of the civilian world.
The Army will have the same problem, to get the very best computer specialists they have to compete with Google and Apple to hire them. Is the US Army really prepared to pay six figures to 22 year o
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Good for her, but of course it doesn't deal with the reality of the situation over there, which shouldn't be allowed to exist in the first place.
We no longer seem to fight to win, we fight to... well... fight...
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Yes, but the cost of living in Texas isn't nuts, and there is no need for the Army to put such people in SF...
That being said, $80k in Texas goes a long way, it would be a start, but the Army doesn't pay that well (neither does the CIA or FBI, another issue with why they can't seem to catch anyone anymore).
No need to lower the bar any further really. (Score:4, Interesting)
The Army is already a 2nd tier service with lower standards. Short of creating an entirely new branch of the service, they aren't going to get away from the fact that they are the Army and get whatever cultural baggage comes along with that.
Watering down bootcamp is really not going to address the real problem.
They spun off the Air Corps and there wasn't nearly as much of a culture gap going on there.
Hackers Don't Take Orders (Score:2, Insightful)
This would be like trying to put a cat in uniform. You could do it, but you're not going to get the results you expect. The people equipped to establish and maintain military discipline are not usually the same people who need to give competent orders to the hackers.
Contractors are the way to go here. Hackers can be motivated by money and will take the orders to reap the rewards. Telling them they have to do something because "it's an order" isn't going to work.
Signed,
US Army veteran
Microsoft veteran
Missing the point (Score:2)
Basic Training is about a lot more than combat training. It is about teaching the value of the command structure, of camaraderie, of working as a team and relying on your buddies. If "hackers" aren't able or willing to go through that training then they should be hired as civilian contractors. We are already outsourcing lots of jobs that used to be done by soldiers.
But the thing that unites everyone in the military is a set of core experiences and the values that come from them.
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You want to provide some proof for that? Should the military provide exemptions to that kind of training for organized sports because they also learned to work in a team? Or should we trust in a system of training soldiers that has been honed over a very long time. Unlike another commenter who likened them to surgeons — who are waived from combat training — these "cyberwarriors" are engaged in actual military action. They are fighting. So they should go through the same shared experience a
think this through... (Score:2)
you have two kinds of deployment situations: those that need to be in the field, and those that can remain back at a base (preferably outside of the country). i would question even the need for an army to *have* the second type of individual when they could just as easily have someone from e.g. the CIA or elsewhere be contracted in.
so that would leave the first group - hackers that could need to be deployed in the field. now, i don't know about you, but if i was an ordinary soldier, along-side someone who
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"Tired of being seen as a nerdy geek? We can fix that for you. A regimen of training to get you physically in shape will make you more attractive to the opposite (or same) sex, and invigorate your brain, enabling you to do even more marathon game sessions. We'll help you make an even greater impression on the folks back home by throwing in a spiffy uniform. And you'll get paid to do what you do best."
Bad Idea (Score:2)
Most personel don't recieve much combat training (Score:2)
Most people in the military have some sort of job and they receive training for that. They don't spend much time learning to be a commando.
Are you talking about boot camp? Bootcamp doesn't really teach you about combat. It's more of a series of complex choreographies that you have to learn. The purpose of this mostly has to do with indoctrination and brainwashing. The military certainly isn't going to loosen its brainwashing requirements on cyberwarriors.
Same uniform, same rules (Score:2)
Having a separate chunk of people that did not have to do that will breed resentment among the rest of the force. Most people in the Army/Navy/Air Force do not have 'combat jobs'. But they all need to meet the same minumum physical requirements, and all went through the same basic training.
Why bother? (Score:3)
The "hackers" I've seen in the movies wouldn't have much trouble with combat training:
http://www.allaboutjackman.com... [allaboutjackman.com]
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Es2uYtSJ... [ytimg.com]
Easy fix (Score:2)
Basic training does not impart the correct skills (Score:3)
The purpose of basic training is to turn civilians into soldiers (not warriors, soldiers.) Prior to the modern army (as deployed by the Romans), battles were fought by a combination of highly-trained elite units (cavalry, well-trained melee combatants, etc.) and cowed peasants forced into battle at sword point. (As you might imagine, other than as a meat-shield vs. other peasants, this was not particularly useful.)
Starting with the Romans, Western Armies took conscripts (or volunteers) and trained them, first and foremost, to follow orders as a unit without question (as in, not prod them in the back with a spear all the time). At the same time, they were taught basic combat skills. Such soldiers were certainly more effective than cowed peasants, and in many situations more effective than independently trained elite warriors, since they could function as a cohesive team.
Nothing hackers do requires orders to be followed in seconds. Their orders do not involve putting themselves in the way of personal harm, so they don't need indoctrination/brainwashing to work against their natural survival instincts.
Certainly you DO need them to follow orders, and a cohesive unit can be good for morale (this doesn't just apply to the military), but there have to be better ways to do it vs. basic training, and you'll needlessly exclude those with perfectly usable skills unsuited for traditional basic. (I will note that Army Basic, while tough, is not actually that hard to pass, physically. You need to be in decent shape by the end, yes, but not an athlete. It's the mental demands that causes the most flunk-outs.)
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Solves the wrong problem (Score:2)
Boot camp 2020 (Score:2)
I'm a hacker, nothin' more
I won't quit until high score
Sound off: if then
Sound off: while for
Bring it on down: if then while for if then WHILE FOR!
Now drop and give me 20K lines of code, soldier
How is it different than medical? (Score:2)
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Instead of 'Men Who Stare at Goats'... (Score:2)
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lol
Obligatory meme: (Score:3)
Our new elite military hacker. [photobucket.com]
What would be the incentive? (Score:2)
I won't even dignify "patriotism" with more than a laugh.
Can't pay a competitive wage. Can't offer benefits remotely close to what private employers will offer. Lose a ton of personal autonomy from matters trivial (no 420) to absolutely vital (Wanna move to a different state? Nope. Wanna quit? Nope. Wanna change jobs? Nope.) Be beholden to whatever high-functioning sociopaths make it through our joke of an electoral season.
Oh, you might get to play with some cool toys that you might not have access to as a
Re:Why not as civilians? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not as civilians? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is part of it (you give up a *lot* of constitutional protections while in uniform), but there is another, far more important reason: Every member of a given military branch is fully expected to be capable of fighting. The Marines have a saying "Every Marine is a rifleman", and it holds true for every branch (even as a USAF electronics/avionics technician, I was still trained to use, strip, assemble and clean an M-16, and I had to maintain a minimum proficiency of marksmanship with it.)
This has its roots in one aspect of combat - a salient of enemy soldiers breaking through the front. Even as late as the Battle of The Bulge (WWII), rear-echelon troops such as cooks and mechanics had to quickly stop what they were doing and start shooting back. Most of them sucked at it, but without the combat training they did get? They would have been even easier pickings, and likely would have allowed Germany to prolong the war for years longer than it had lasted.
I see no problems with requiring a basic level of combat ability and readiness. It instills a sense of physical fitness, a level of discipline (a slob generally cannot run 5 miles, aim a weapon worth a damn, etc), and gives them at least some modicum of stature with their fellow soldiers (who would otherwise consider them to be far, far worse than a POG [urbandictionary.com]. We give each other crap as it is, but at least everyone knows that everyone else had at least some level of martial training.)
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And that makes sense for people who will be in a live fire zone and shot at- having no training makes them a liability to those who will have to protect them. It makes no sense for people who will never leave the US and will work by typing on a computer. These people aren't soldiers. They're programmers and IT workers. By adding these restrictions onto them you reduce the pool of talent you can reach by eliminating people for useless reasons.
A better question though is why to put these people in the arm
Re:Why not as civilians? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the funny part - you never know where you're going to wind up.
I originally figured that as a flightline grunt in the Air Force, I'd never, ever have to see a combat zone. Then this happened [wikipedia.org], they send a few of us and our jets to Howard AFB, and that's where a young kid with a uniform and a multimeter discovered that Panama is a really, really tiny country.
While the operation was short and sweet, the odds of sent to some war zone isn't as remote as it seems. With respect to OP, consider that satellites have built-in lag, and that undersea cables can easily be cut. Suddenly, your hacker corps has to go to where they can get a network connection...
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That's the funny part - you never know where you're going to wind up.
Sitting in a datacenter on a military base in the continental US means you can be pretty confident that you're not going to be in a combat zone. If you are, then something has already gone horribly wrong and a hacker being able to field strip an M16 isn't going to help much.
they send a few of us and our jets to Howard AFB, and that's where a young kid with a uniform and a multimeter discovered that Panama is a really, really tiny country.
You mean as a weapon system support technician you were deployed with that weapon system to a foreign country where there was active combat? Uhhh, and you couldn't forsee a need for your specialty at a place where the weapons you maint
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Except in this case you totally would. You'd be signing up to be a hacker. There is no reason to deploy hackers outside of the US- you'd have lower access to infrastructure, making your goal more difficult. Whereas a member of the traditional army makes sense to deploy around the world.
As for undersea cables being cut- if the cables are cut and you can't reach the country you're attacking, the "cyberwar" is over.
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If there are technicians important for military support and technology missions, they can be part of a civilian group or one of the various security services like the NSA or CIA which does not have operational combat requirements for all members.
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Even though I think the likelihood of them ever needing to use physical fighting skills is virtually nil, I think the more important point is the sense of camaraderie in both directions. Not only would other soldiers respect them more, but they would respect and understand other solders better, having a sense of brotherhood which would lead them to know who they are really protecting and fighting alongside.
If that is the case, then if you send computer people to boot camp, you should send infantry soldiers to computer camp.
The door swings both ways...
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You do NOT want an 11B touching a keyboard - ever. Trust me on this one.
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I don't think women should have to meet the same standards as men due to some crazy lack of faith in science...
I believe they should have to do it because the gear that has to be carried doesn't know or care that it is a woman that is hauling it...
A M-16 is the same size and weight for a woman as it is for a man. 300 rounds of NATO 556 is the same size and weight for a woman as it is for a man.
The distance between point A and point B is the same, etc...
So the quals should be the same. I have no problem wi
Re:Even better, why not another division? (Score:5, Funny)
Why not just have the white/black hats be a separate division completely, as opposed to attached to the AF, Army, or whatnot?
First of all, there is a loss of esprit de corps if the white/black hats are brought in and given rank without seeing boot camp. Pretty much similar to the same contempt that enlisted people have about a butter bar.
Sure. Instead of calling them SEALs we can call the WHALES (White Hat and Leviathan Exploit Syndicate). They can have their own Fedora and everything.
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Well, putting on the uniform means you can be ordered to take actions that will result in property destruction and loss of life, and (a) you have to do it and (b) you enjoy some protection from legal consequences as a member of a uniformed service.
It's quite common (and legal under international law) for countries to execute "spies" for doing things that "soldiers" do all the time. As a soldier you can drop a bomb on a dam that kills people both directly and indirectly and you are not criminally responsibl
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That is actually a very good point... though not a slam dunk. Is a "cyber warrior" carrying their weapons openly and acting in accordance to international law? If not, Geneva may not apply.
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Geneva only applies when fighting civilized nations.
Germany in WWII was largely civilized re: US and British captured soldiers. Yes, a few times the SS would execute prisoners, but those events are rare. Against Russia? It was brutal and almost no quarter was given or expected on either side.
Japan in WWII was largely uncivilized, which is why at the end of the day we nuked them, and this brought them into civilization when their emperor bought a clue and figured out that they could be exterminated like t
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Japan in WWII was largely uncivilized
The USA was pretty uncivilized toward Japan as well. Of the 19,000 Japanese on Iwo Jima, only 216 were taken prisoner. The official line was "hey, they all committed suicide", but if you talk to the people that were there, they will tell you that is not true. We regularly shot Japanese soldiers attempting to surrender. The intentional white phosphorus firebombing of Japanese civilians wasn't so civilized either.
Re: Why not as civilians? (Score:5, Insightful)
The USA was pretty uncivilized toward Japan as well.
Please put down the crack pipe.
Of the 19,000 Japanese on Iwo Jima, only 216 were taken prisoner. The official line was "hey, they all committed suicide", but if you talk to the people that were there, they will tell you that is not true. We regularly shot Japanese soldiers attempting to surrender.
Yes, we did shoot a lot of them pretending to surrender. Way too many times prior, starting on Guadalcanal and moving on to Tarawa, Japanese soldiers would pretend to surrender, waiving the white flag, then when they got close they would pull the pin on a grenade and take an American soldier with him.
When things like that happen as often as not, it becomes very hard to take prisoners. In addition, Japanese soldiers would often, once they had run out of ammo, put on their bayonets and charge into the US line, directly into machine gun fire.
Off Okinawa, 32 warships were lost to Kamikaze pilots and many more were damaged. About 5,000 US sailors lost their lives at sea from suicide pilots in 92 days of fighting off Okinawa.
The intentional white phosphorus firebombing of Japanese civilians wasn't so civilized either.
It was an effort to end the war, other options were not working. In truth, the idea was sound but for some reason, people don't respond to 200,000 people being killed over 2 days via 1,000 bombers dropping a million tons of bombs, yet they DO respond to 200,000 people being killed in 5 minutes via 2 bombers and 2 bombs.
Don't ask me why, but it seems to make a difference.
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Oh, and lest you think that we started all of it, keep in mind that Japan started that war and they considered surrender dishonorable. If you don't know that, then you don't understand the war and really shouldn't comment on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
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Japanese soldiers would pretend to surrender, waiving the white flag, then when they got close they would pull the pin on a grenade and take an American soldier with him.
It is questionable how much of that really happened, and how much was American propaganda. There are many examples of America wildly exaggerating Japanese atrocities during the war. Much of that was to build support for our own ruthlessness.
Japanese soldiers would often, once they had run out of ammo, put on their bayonets and charge into the US line, directly into machine gun fire.
A general rule of thumb for that type of assault, is there will be two wounded for every KIA. Yet in this case we are supposed to believe it was 99% KIA? Implausible discrepancies in wounded/killed ratios have been use as evidence in war crimes tribunals.
It was an effort to end the war, other options were not working.
Any war cri
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Any war crime can be justified as "an effort to end the war".
It is a shame that you view that as a war crime, but that is your choice.
You're wrong of course, but you are entitled to be wrong and hold on to that belief.
2+2 still doesn't equal 5, no matter how many times you say it.
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Your post is bull shit. The Japanese general in command of Iwo Jima told his wife he wouldn't return alive before he left. They intended to defend this Japanese island to the death while inflicting as many American casualties as possible. They considred surrender a terrible act of shame. You should look into the "Banzi" and Kamakazee attacks that occured in many places to better understand the mentality. You might also want to look into the use of "surrender" attempts as a ruse to lure Americans into fi
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Sure, Bill. That's why we have footage of the "poor civilians" in Okinawa throwing themselves off of cliffs...rather than surrender to us.
That was Saipan, not Okinawa. There were certainly some suicides. But that doesn't explain a 99% extermination rate.
they were training voluntarily, with swords and bamboo spears to fight troops in the case of a land invasion.
The Krauts were doing the same thing with their Volkstrum. Yet most German soldiers survived the war.
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The Krauts were doing the same thing with their Volkstrum. Yet most German soldiers survived the war.
No, no they were not doing the same thing...
The Vokstrum (the people's army) were being trained to fight, not to die. Most surrendered rather quickly once they faced superior allied forces.
The difference is that they didn't pretend to surrender then commit suicide taking an allied solider with them.
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You're conflating the Geneva Conventions (wartime rules for handling prisoners and wounded) with the Hague Conventions (rules for conduct with weapons of war). The Hague Conventions do have an addendum called the Geneva Protocol, but it only deals with chemical and biological weapons.
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tips combat helmet M'Sir.
M'Lord*
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Well. I used to be a good soldier, years ago.
Now I'm a fat slob with asthma.
Does that mean I can be a good hacker?