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U.S. Gov. Space/Air Force Possible Plans For Future
We had a reader send us a link to the United States Air Force Report on plans for possible futures. They've looked at the next 30 years, envisioning different scenarios and created the areas that the USAF needs to work -- the role of space obviously becomes more important, and they've got some interesting conclusions about what to expect. There's /reams/ of data here, and I've only started to read through it, but it's pretty cool stuff.
The fun thing to notice was that in one of the scenarios, "Digital Cacophony", when individuals gain power and authorities have no longer much to say, the world is marked with "fear and anxiety".
I disagree. I'd say it might well be a happier place without the stupid who command and the more stupid who follow.
The term comes from the Spanish for "little war" and originated in the Peninsular Campaign of the Napoleonic wars, when Spanish guerillas assisted by British gold, British ships and some Spanish regular soldiers made life hell for the French armies and French pupper regime.
Perhaps it's a litlle far fetched for 2025, but I can see a scenario where the Information Corps becomes utterly crucial. Not just a vital support/espionage/sabotage operation, but actually the heart of the war.
Consider. War is essentially a matter of getting another country to do what you want. You could do this in various ways:
1. Kill off everyone living there and colonise it with your own supporters
2. March in a land army, kill off all the current rulers and their troops, install a regime, backed by said army, that will make the people do what you want.
3. Do enough damage to the country with sanctions, bombs, etc. that the current regime decided to do what you want to get you off their backs
Now consider the information Corps solution:
4. Take over their data networks, and send orders on behalf of the current regime to do what you wanted anyway. More sophisticated versions include faking input data to the regime so that it decides to do what you want, etc. An extreme version of this applies where the population of your enemy country has neural interfaces, and you hack those -- make the enemy people WANT to do what you want by hacking their brains.
In this scenario, the Information Corps is the "leading edge" of the war. Once you control their top-level C3 infrastructure, you have won, there is nothing else left to do. Other forces would be in support roles like nuking unhackable backup stores, kidnapping people who know key passwords, infiltrating secure areas to make network connections, destroying systems to trigger less secure failover procedures, etc.
Because some of those countries that fear us would be invading/bombing/terrorizing us if they didn't fear us, and *THEY* will be developing in any aspect of military science in which we are not.
Why do so many people who assume that the US Government is composed of nasty war-mongering fascists fail to realize that the governments of other countries are more so?
Over here, they at least have the check that if they're truly off their nut, people will vote 'em out of office. That isn't true in, say, Libya, Iraq, China, etc.
Hell, even our allies are fascists. Germany today is only a hairline short of the way they were in the 1930s.
And don't get me started on where Brazil will be in 25 years. They're damned close to us geographically, and damned far away philosophically.
As for space being for scientific development; not if we suddenly wake up one day unable to get there anymore, because somebody else walled it up like a fortress and we didn't keep up.
Cool! The "God's eye view" turns warfare into a real-life game of Tiberian Sun or Total Annihilation! I just hope the expansion packs are good.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
But your dissinformation point kind of falls apart when you note that the US spent billions of dollars on SDI research. We were not treating it as a dissinformation campaign, we treated it as a technology development project. SDI-derived technology is still leaking out to this day, and will be for many years to come.
The failure of SDI had more to do with crappy management and politics then it did with any physical limits on whats doable.
Just for the record, Reagan wasn't the only guy to try to put weapons in space. There was an article in Popular Science last year (or was it Popular Mechanics? I'm not sure,) about the USSR's own plans for space weaponry. They had plans to mount anti-sat missles and defensive lasers on Mir, among other things. I think they might have actually flown some of them, but I don't remember the article well enough.
MSK
Heres the list of what they want within the next 25 years:
- Global Information Management System
- Sanctuary Base
- Global Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting System
- Global Area Strike System
- Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicle
- Space High Energy Laser
- Solar High Energy Laser
- Reconnaissance Unmanned Air Vehicle
- Attack Microbots
- Piloted Single Stage Space Plane
Things like a "Solar High Energy Laser" could be very scary, what are they going to do with it, blow up the sun?
Mark Duell
"In short, there will be no escaping the oncoming SHMAC."
I'm glad to see that the people working on this had some sense of humor. I'd like to see anyone talk about SHAAFT dropping a SHMAC on the enemy and keep a straight face.
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
The reason that space appears to be the next area of confrontation is because it is the one of a few next great economic development areas. Every economic development area throughout time has been fought over at some point. Oil, coal, religion, food, etc have all been fought over. Space will be an area where great development will occur in the next 20-50 years and there will be people who want to take advantage of investments the US have put into space. The Air Force has to position itself now for funding in 10-20 years to develop the weapons that take 10-15 years to build. This is just a document that was released a couple of years ago to get the Air Force leaders and current young officers and NCO's (Non-Commissioned Officers) to think about the future might hold. It is also kind of a power grab of the Air Force over the other forces for money. The Air Force is claiming Space as its domain. It is saying that if Congress wants to spend money on space, it should go to the Air Force because the Air Force has the best ideas for space and has a clear path towards developing US assets.
I hope this doesn't sound too much like flaimbait but this is just the way I see it....
A)They can do all this stuff now.
or
B)They want to do this stuff in the future.
If it is A, I'm reminded of president Regan and his use of "Star Wars" technology as a negotiation tool. For those to young to remember, when the Star Wars movie was at the height of it's popularity, the president went on national television and proposed "laser beams in space" to intercept long range balistic missiles before re-entry, and deployed billions into fruitless research. Of course, at the time none of this was even in the relm of possibility, but the russians didn't know that.
This forced the Russians to funnel enourmous funds into similar (impossible) research in order to assure their people that they would be safe. In the end. the Russians (Gorby) came to the negotiating table begging the US not to deploy the system. This proved to be a wonderful negotiating tool to ask the russians for concessions.
If it is B it forces other countries to move funds into pursuing a "global network" to try to match these capabilities (that may just be pie in the sky dreams).
Either way it's (Score 5:Interesting) for the US.
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another blurb: . .. . by providing the "God's eye view" commanders have always longed for, it would bring about a revolution in the manner in which forces are managed.
All they want is god like powers?! Is *that* all?!?!
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And this kinda stuff is why I got out of the Air Force after 9 years of service. The generals and such spend all their time sitting around dreaming up this stuff all the while neglecting what needs to be done (like take care of the troops). It's a sad day when I noticed my military buddies using food stamps becuase their military pay checks don't cut it. The military, especially the Air Force, love to dream about all this high tech gear, yet most can't even manage to remember their password for more than a week. To bad they aren't noticing the lines and lines of us techies walking out the door seeking better employment. As a network administrator in the Air Force, with 9 years under my belt, I was making $24,000 net a year. Boo on the Air Force. Horay for being a civilian.
So yes, indeed, this report is 4 years old. Gen Fogelman is no longer the Chief of Staff, hasn't been since 1997 or so. Gen Mike Ryan is the current Chief of Staff of the AF. Sheila Widnall left in 1998, F. Whitten "Whit" Peters is the current SECAF.
The Air University is responsible for a) professional military education of the Air Force non-commissioned and commissioned officer corps and b) academic development of aerospace doctrine. They're the "think tank" of the AF.
Neutron
I get my kicks above the
For a similar US Army site, see http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/ssipubs/stdypr og.htm. It has a collection of monographs on topics of more current interest. For example, an excellent discussion of relative capabilities and possible intentions of PRC vs. Taiwan.
I didn't read the whole thing (yet), cause it is simply gargantuan, but it seems like they know what they're talking about. Lots of good ideas in there.
The one problem there has always been with this sort of thing is that you can't predict stuff that there are no trends to suggest. For instance, they don't expect any truly revolutionary devices to be invented, although as everyone knows one of the things war does is show just how important a given device or technique could be: no one was afraid of U-boats before 1914, and no one really thought about guerilla warfare that much until the USA lost in Vietnam. There were probably people who suggested that these things could be important, but it took a war to really prove it. We get guerilla warfare in every conflict, but it never really swung the tide except in Vietnam (because that was all North Vietnam really had).
In one of the papers, a Lt. General says that he does not expect that there will be a Space Corps. or an Information Corps. I'm not sure about this assertation.
Perhaps there will be no Information Corps in the sense that it won't be on the same level as the Air Force or Navy, but it'll certainly exist. The only thing which may prevent it is if countermeasures (like crypto) become strong enough that it can't provide a big advantage. But information warfare already exists, has always existed, and will continue to exist. It's just another way of talking about espionage and certain sabotage.
Not to mention propaganda: against a country like the USA, I would make sure that the American public got plenty of footage of blood soaked villages and starving children. One of the reasons Vietnam was so unpopular was that there was so much press coverage, and that translated into less enthusiasm. Less enthusiasm for a war means fewer volunteers (and draftees) and fewer resources committed to the war. People didn't really think about what was going on over there until the press started to draw attention to it.
And the Space Corps...that's up for grabs. It all depends on how much technology progresses in that time. If we're still stuck in Earth-orbit, than it will just be a part of the USAF. Research colonies will probably be unaffected, so even if there are researchers on the moon or Mars, it will probably stay with the Air Force. If there are actual colonies then it may be Army/National Guard. And if, and this is a big if, we have large successful colonies on other planets which are essentially small countries, and spacecraft routinely make trips between them and Earth, it may become Navy (the spacecraft are traditionally Navy in most science fiction). Instead of Navy, however, there may be the United States Space Force (or Corps). I don't think we'll get that far in 25 years though.
So basically, they've got good ideas and good predictions, provided that no new, unexpected technology shows up. If something big should happen, it's a toss up.
Then again, I could be wrong.
I just want to point out that the "last modified" date at the end of this page is "Wed Dec 11 09:55:15 1996"... Now I don't always update my last-modifieds (well, yes, I do) but this seems like a while ago to me... The executive summary, etc. also has a similar date ("Last updated: 1996 September 15").
How likely is it that this document is still relevant? I am thinking it probably still reflects what the AF is thinking about the future, but is this the most current document they have on-line? Just asking....
--8<--
But then, the reason for science fiction is to serve pretty much the same purpose as the ones that the Air Force intend - to extrapolate from the current state of affairs of the world and pick out possibilities, maybe merging and switching a few of those possibilities, and come up with something that seems plausible. The true outcome, we've learned historically, is never quite exactly as depicted in these fictitious glimpses in the future, but may actually fulfill some of the predicted destinies.
You can't own or take over parts of space - this whole thing is very wrong at a fundimental level. I'm sat here hoping that in 25 years a "Strategic Attack" will be an outdated concept...
Did the human race evolve to a certain point and then suddenly start to degenerate?
And am I the only person to notice that the section covering "Information Warfare" (a stupid concept anyway) is classified?
My Opinion:
The United States Air Force is, in all honesty, a bloated, poorly managed, semi-corrupt agency.
As an employee of the Air Force (soon to be a former employee) I'm seen all kinds of jewels they come up with to help themselves at the expense of their employees and contractors.
Scenario One: Civil Service Steals Ideas Contractors.
1) Award a contract to one competitor among several. Civil service immediately opens several "shadow projects" like that of the contractor; they "shadow" their work, constantly stealing any progress the contractor makes and holding it up as their own, thus justifying continued civil service positions. They often justify eliminating the contractor at the end of the contract and "going civil service" since they did "an equivalent or better job" at the task.
Scenario 2: Steal Money from contractors.
1) Contractor A needs access to Air Force resource X.
CS: Oh! You need *that* resource? When do you need it? Oh, six months? Well, it won't do what you need in that time frame. But if you fund a massive upgrade on it, it will do everything you need, in the specified time frame.
In the mean time, the contractor in charge of that resource, who knows it's all lies, can't say anything without incurring the wrath of the corrupt AF/CS/Contractor structure. That contractor gets a slack/neutral review because no one uses the resource, even though it's primed and ready to go. The "upgrade" requirement is falsified to insure the CS can get brownie points for upgrading AF resources, even though it was unneeded.
Finally, I'll toss in my "Pro Linux Speech" here: Even though Microsoft has been found guilty of holding a monopoly, the Air Force (in particular), and the Navy (in general) continue their campaign of "all Microsoft, Everywhere".
It is this final point that shows the United States Air Force and Navy are becoming rogue entities; they deny the will of the people of the United States, the considered opinion of the Judicial Branch, and repeated, vocal concerns of the Legislative.
The United States Air Force and Navy should have to undergo major funding cuts until they STOP the behaviors I've outlined. Furthermore, although I detest libertarians (they aren't) and Republicans (they aren't, either) I have to say that federal employment, in the form of Civil Servants *who produce rather than manage or oversee* are eroding the economy of the USA.
The CS needs to be reduced to oversight, and all production areas closed and sent to the public sector. I can't beleive that I agree with the republicans and libertarians on this one issue, but I do.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
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ok space has always thus far been a place for scientific development. Other than reagan and his ideas on "Star Wars", Why must we look to space as a great place for Military Development? No wonder most countries fear us.