OT: Technology on the battlefield
eddys...@hotmail.com
From Ugh tying a sharp stone at the end of a stick so he could throw
his weapon at his opponent from a distance instead of having to come
in close for a fight up to the US army using blanketing technology to
avoid IED’s getting triggered by a cell phone, an evolution in
technology has led to new battlefield tactics.
Better technology leads to better battlefield results – right ?
I thought so too until I recently realized that technology can also be
a limiting factor with a huge impact on how armies are allowed to
fight. Just a small example : in the age of laser guided bombs would
the public tolerate it if the US bombed an entire village in
Afghanistan to dust because they had intelligence with 100% accuracy
that OBL was in one of the houses ? Nope. One could say that in the
age of the scalpel the use of the bludgeon isn’t tolerated anymore –
even when it would have made perfect military sense as at Fallujah.
Also, during the Bulge the US airforce bombed American held Rochefort,
back in those days it was a mistake due to the state of the then
current communication devices – everyone realized that and moved on –
today the same action would lead to a congressional hearing and
careers ending prematurely because the general public is so used to
modern instant communication that mistakes like that wouldn’t be
tolerated anymore. Yet, even military networks can go down and fubars
are just as likely to happen today as in 1944 so the net result is
that the fear of making a mistake, and the JAG officer looking over
their shoulder, is holding commanders back from doing what needs to be
done. A sniper seen shooting from a civilian house in WW2 would have
resulted in that house getting a couple of rounds from a Sherman,
today we demand the Abrams commander checks first to see if there
aren’t any civilians in the house because we know he has this thermal
imaging capacity. Meanwhile the sniper escapes through the back door.
Any thoughts ?
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Giftzwerg
@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, eddys...@hotmail.com says...
> I thought so too until I recently realized that technology can also be
> a limiting factor with a huge impact on how armies are allowed to
> fight. Just a small example : in the age of laser guided bombs would
> the public tolerate it if the US bombed an entire village in
> Afghanistan to dust because they had intelligence with 100% accuracy
> that OBL was in one of the houses ? Nope. One could say that in the
> age of the scalpel the use of the bludgeon isn t tolerated anymore
> even when it would have made perfect military sense as at Fallujah.
Hmmm. So the USA blasts a whole village in Afghanistan apart, killing
hundreds of people ... but we end up with a photograph of Osama bin
Laden dead with his entrails hanging out?
95% of the USA would cheer with joy. And that's if George W. Bush's
hand was on the trigger. An Obama-ordered village-blasting that killed
bin Laden would go to 100%; even Bernie Sanders would cheer.
--
Giftzwerg
***
"Before we let suspect computer models developed by a handful of people
drive the entire world economy into a ditch, don't you think we should
take the covers off and invest a little more time and effort to
thoroughly examine how these models work? Hopefully this will include
analytical critiques from a wider cast of characters than the self
serving cabal whose mendacity and ham-handed attempts to marginalize
dissent were recently exposed."
- Bill Frezza
Cronos
> Any thoughts ?
My only thought is that Eddy is a sick and twisted individual if these
are the kinds of things he day dreams about. Most healthy males day
dream about having sex with female beauties and not death and destruction.