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The Drone War
There are plenty of human casualties in the Afghan conflict -- though few among Americans -- but the fight seems especially significant in terms of technology and military conflict.
The Predator spy plane and other unmanned drones and gunships (along with satellites, thermal imaging devices, X-ray scanners, etc.) not only search for the enemy, but fire guided missiles, drop powerful oxygen-sucking hyperbaric bombs, and guide bomb strikes from afar. There is no war in recent human history that involved so few humans, at least on one side of the conflict. The most staggering statistic out of Afghanistan might be that the first American combat casualty died nearly three months into the "war."
Before Afghanistan, conventional military wisdom held that a war can't be won without substantial numbers of ground troops. Even as the Afghanistan campaign began, pundits flooded cable talk shows asserting that air power alone wasn't enough, that there would be substantial human sacrifice. Both Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq and the Kosovo conflicts involved the growing used of so-called "smart" laser-guided weaponry, deployed with varying degrees of reliability. But those conflicts also involved either the use of enormous numbers of soldiers on the ground and were controversial in terms of the bomb's precision and effectiveness.
The Afghanistan campaign is a very different kind of fight. Early reports suggest the civilian casualties may be lower than in any other large-scale military operation in modern history. Although dangerous and complex for the military on the scene, it's hard to imagine a conflict more remote to the majority of Americans, asked to go about their business as usual.
Orwell's "Drone Wars" come very much to mind here. So does Sir Arthur Clarke's machine warfare and AI military stories. A handful of human soldiers guide and direct the increasingly sophisticated technological arsenal that has devastated the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda networks with stunningly few U.S. military casualties and American civilian casualties beyond September 11 and the anthrax attacks. The Taliban and their terrorist friends seem to have been totally unprepared for this variety of war, such a stark contrast to the Soviet's ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan just a decade ago.
It seems only a matter of time before other countries developed their own surrogate weaponry, and the idea of the high-tech Drone War -- machines warring with one another -- moves to the next level.
Winston Churchill repeatedly asked his countrymen for brutal sacrifices in World War II. In the new kind of American war, political leaders ask citizens only to keep shopping and traveling.
Military historians like John Keegan have recently argued that the devastating toll of warfare in the 20th Century makes conventional conflicts increasingly less likely. Once a means of expanding territory and amassing wealth, the brutish wars of the 20th Century have rendered both objectives hard to attain. Even before Drone Wars, artillery and aerial warfare along with nuclear weapons suggested that wars can't really be won in the conventional sense any longer; even the victors will suffer unacceptable losses. But drone warfare radically alters the equation. Technologically advanced civilian populations -- just as Orwell foresaw -- can send their technological surrogates off to battle one another while humans stay home to wait for the outcome.
A war without sacrifice is definitely a 21st century idea. Why should citizens of any country hesitate to wage such a war if they have the machinery? War has recently seemed so terrible that civilized societies view it as a last resort. But American history is crammed with technological innovations that are neither discussed nor much thought out. Drone Wars might not appear so terrible. They might even become irresistible.
It will be almost impossible for oppressed people's to violently object to tyranny in such a scenario.
War is mearly becoming symbolic.
I remember an original Star Trek episode, in which there was a conflict between two planets. The Enterprise crew the war was mearly a computer simulation, but each side killed X amount of citezens according to the simulation results.
A war waged by computers, the casualties human, for no purpose.
War should only be used to stand up for beliefs in the shadow of only the most incredible evil. When there is no death, is there really any significance?
The most staggering statistic out of Afghanistan might be that the first American combat casualty died nearly three months into the "war."
No, the first casualty reported to the media died three months into the war.
Same thing in Desert Storm. We had a lot of casualties. Some are still classified.
The US has learned from Vietnam. Americans don't like to hear about the death of Americans.
If you don't think that Navy Seals have been in Afghanastan since September 12th, and that some of them died before we even declared war, then you shouldn't even speak of war, cause you are out of the loop.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I think that as long as only one side is largely using machines to fight, then such "Drone Wars" will still be considered carefully and prudently, due to the possibility of the loss of human life. Once both sides are doing it, though, I do agree that the use of such technology will be approved much more readily.
Still, I don't think that they'll become knee-jerk reactions to future crises due to the lingering potential of the death of innocent bystanders (nobody looks good when they kill civilians.)
Incidentally, I don't understand why the talking heads were talking about the great need for ground troops. Certainly, it's a little difficult to bomb a deep cave, but I think Desert Storm showed us that with the technology that we currently possess, bombing certainly can make the efforts of ground troops little more than "limited skirmishes", as Mike Myers described the ground war in Iraq in "Wayne's World".
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
The role of ground troops was played nicely by the Northern Alliance fighters. It's not that there were no ground troops fighting the Taliban, it's just that they weren't Americans.
...there are significant ground forces, they are just not Americans.
"Entirely different" ? Not even. The chief distinction I'm seeing drawn here is that nobody we care about dies in a drone war -- which has been true of a dozen proxy actions over the past half century.
Oh sure, the US and Russia never openly fought, but used proxies instead, with US backing Iraq and USSR backing Iran, for example. That's not a drone war, you say? But it satisfies the chief distinction mentioned above: Just some arabs killing each other for us, nobody anyone cares about.
And "more remote" he calls it -- the proxy wars in Chile and Nicaragua barely made a mention on the collective American consciousness back when they were current events. How many people remember them now?
Nope, sorry, drone wars as Katz is describing is hardly a new thing. The only difference that may be slashdot worthy is the probability of using robots of metal rather than flesh.
All these sci-fi writers are wrong. deeply wrong.
take the last two wars US fought: Gulf and Afghanistan.
Gulf was won by siege. They sufocated Iraq by preventing them from buying weapons and _food_. when Iraq's soldiers came to the point of choosing between death and surender, they surended.
Afghanistan was not properly an US war. it was a civil war with US giving air cover.
in certain environments (Afghanistan specially) you can't win or even fight a drone war, because THEY DON'T HAVE DRONES. the only thing they have is AK-47 and some grenades. their bases are almost all in the underground in a mountain landscape.
the only way to fight a war in such place is with _infantry_. in the ground. with handguns. using guerrila tatics.
ask pentagon about fighting in tropical jungles like vietnam or amazon. ask them if drones are efective in such places. if they say YES, they don't know theyr jobs.
What ? Me, worry ?
the Soviet's ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan just a decade ago.
I don't remember the Soviets invading Afghanistan after the Gulf War... I thought it was a decade before that.
Afghanistan was invaded by the Red Army in 1979 and the invasion ended in 1989 when the last troops withdrew from Afghanistan.
This site agrees with me.
Before Afghanistan, conventional military wisdom held that a war can't be won without substantial numbers of ground troops.
Firstly, that conventional wisdom was first broken in the Kosovo conflict, when Yugoslavia capitulated as a result of NATO air bombardment. Secondly, there are all kinds of ground troops on the ground in Afghanistan; not counting the small number of special forces, there are tens of thousands of Northern Alliance troops who actually captured the Taliban positions.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I don't think this builds to a future where robots fight each other and we sit at home and wait for the outcome.
... public support for this dries up pretty fast.
... or at least feel safe.)
I think what we're seeing here is a natural progression, not a revolution. It's always been less risky for a wealthy nation to fight a poor one (as long as the wealthy nation is willing to spend the money -- Russia wasn't) than it has been to fight against even odds.
All you have here is a mechanism for wealthy countries a relatively guiltless and politically easy-to-swallow way to wage war against relatively poor countries. There is no threat of nuclear backlash, and we don't risk soldiers. All we ask is for people to pay their taxes and support the economy.
The "equalizer" (if you want to call it that) here is terrorism -- if civilians here start dying in scores in retaliation
(Thus, one could decide, the only way to keep these kind of wars going is to run a police state so your civilians are "safe"
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"A war without sacrifice is definitely a 21st century idea"
An interesting aricle, but doesn't that depend on which side you are on? I'm sure that the majority of Afghans and the Northern Alliance troops who did most of the groundwork wouldn't agree that it was without sacrifice...
Of course, what you means is that for the US it was basically without sacrifice. What would be interting would be if the situation was reversed: if another nation was attacking the US using these weapons, would the media be filled with reports about the "inhuman war machines that fire death from a distance which no civilised nation should use"?
A Roger Waters quote springs to mind : "The Bravery of being out of Range"
Of course the value of human life is obviously irrelevant to you.
I would much rather have my tax dollars spent eliminating (or at least fighting) the threat of Extremists (spelling?) bent on the destruction of innocent civilians in the US or anywhere else. It's called self defense. The preservation of the lives of the men and women of the military dedicated to this cause cannot be counted in dollars and cents. Every penny spent on technology that can keep them out of harm's way, while working toward the goal of restoring safety and security is money well spent.
What are the northern alliance if they aren't ground troops?
Just because they are not the US of A does not make them ground troops.
It's a tad bit flawed post since there are plenty of ground troops, just most of them are not American.
And anyway, the USA, Britain, Australia etc have sent in the majority of their special forces, which I wouldn't be surprised if they number cumulatively in the thousands. Ground troops will always be required as will the human decision in the battlefield loop.
If he thinks that mechanized warfare will lead to no casualty war, he's incorrect. (Um, what about the targets of all those high tech weapons. They certainly won't all be the other side's high tech weapons, they will be people).
If he uses this assertion to conclude that because the citzenry won't be involved in the offensive side of the wars, that they will be more inclined to go to war, then he is on shaky ground. I see no reason why the further mechanization of war could honestly lead one to believe that the "sacrifices of war" would be seriously reduced. Industry would still be destroyed. People would lose their jobs, and some would lose their lives. An aversion to this is exactly why conventional wars are no longer in favor, and why mechanization will not change that fact.
I do grant, the mechanization can lead to greater war between the advanced world and the conventional world, as we've already seen. But extending that to say that advanced countries will be more likely to go to war because technology reduces the costs of going to war is ludicrous and wrong.
I think I'll stop here.
Well, those Northern Alliance guys were humans.
The Afghanistan campaign is a very different kind of fight.
Only within the context that that the indiginous people, with the assistance of overwhelming and unopposed US airpower, drove out an unpopular occupying force.
The chief reason the Taliban fell so fast was because they didn't have an airforce or any sophisticated weapons. Let's see how this analysis holds up with North Korea, eh?
While I don't doubt that technology is changing the arsenal, the war is still fought between people. To take it to the begining, the attack of Sept. 11, was about the same as a Kamikaze mission, just using the resources of the foe. The face of terrorism has changed and remote countrol drones and tomahawk missiles are ineffective when sorting out who the village terrorist is. Back to the intelligence game for that.
I don't think we need to look for Terminators quite yet.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Even for Katz this article is outrageous.
First off, airpower alone did not destroy the Taliban- it (greatly) supplimented the Afgan opposition's ground forces. Just because our tanks and infantry weren't in those mountains doesn't mean there weren't any there. Ground forces will ALWAYS be needed to sweep through and hold captured land.
But as for the larger discussion of the evolution of warfare:
Wars will not be fought off on some designated battlefield where each side sends its combatants (carbon or silcon based) while the generals stay at home. Wars are fought on somebody's homeland, usually for the purpose of taking that homeland for yourself.
Say we conducted this symbolic war in cyberspace or in meat-space with drones. Does this mean when we lose that I have to give up my house without a fight? Not gonna happen!!!
Rob.
The "equalizer" (if you want to call it that) here is terrorism -- if civilians here start dying in scores in retaliation ... public support for this dries up pretty fast.
Um, hello? Have you ever heard of Israel? There people haven't been cowed by forty years of bombings, wars, etc...
We wouldn't bomb Afghanistan when they were abusing their women and blowing up priceless historical artifacts. Not even the terrorist attacks in Yemin and Saudi Arrabia could convince us. Those were just servicemen. It took an attack on civilians to justify this war. And Bush's approval ratings are astronomical (and comically depressing)
Support for military action doesn't dry up when terrorists strike. It grows. When people feel threatened in their everyday life they want only to end that threat. And the quickest way is to destroy the people attacking you. It's also the easiest to understand and demonstrate.
What makes a war difficult 'to swallow' is when there's the people supporting the war don't feel threatened. Like Somalia and Bosnia and Vietnam. That's when casualties become dangerous.
To sum up: Civilian casualties increase public support for war. Because it could be me and you who are killed next time.
(Ugh, this wasn't supposed to be this long -- Sorry)
Sweat
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Sure, robots have their place..But what difference does it really make in the long run?
Every militarized country in the world wishes it's military was comprised of individuals who purely execute orders. Flesh robots, if you will. Mind you, theres nothing denegrating about that label--Countries are liberated, people are saved, and the world's criminals are punished due to the work of "flesh robots". You've got a bad case of function guilt if you think robots will ever supplant people on the front lines -- It simply isn't feasable.
Wars are rarely fought with singular orders. The typical soldier in a wartime scenario relies heavilly upon the information he recieves, the situation he percieves around him, and is capable of making rational & complex decisions based upon that information. Sure, a machine can be taught to do all that, but how is that information going to get there? And if your ultimate goal is programmable warfare, isn't the most flexible solider the human?
Here's a few things to think about before you buy stock in Honda--Flesh robots do not require battery power. Metal robots would be prone to power loss at critical times. Flesh robots can usually continue to fight, even after physical injury. Metal robots would be severely impaired if even one portion of their body is rendered useless. And, above all, we have nukes. It wouldn't matter at all what you put on the battlefeild, 22 kg of plutonium smooshed together at the right angle will kill anything that lives, flesh or metal. Insanely high-tech creations would be rendered completely and totally useless by 1940's technology.
Look, I think robots are cool too, especially ones designed to kill eachother. I just don't think you'll ever see 5000 robots cross a river chest deep in water, scaling the cliffs of Normandy, or making it through a Korean winter. Why bother making metal robots then, when you've already got flesh robots who can do the same?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Drones, however advanced, will never replace a squad of trained soldiers led by a human commander in the field. They are not as flexible, they don't have the wide variety of abilities of human soldiers, and they have totally different weaknesses (for example, to EMP). Drones are just another tool, like the tank or the airplane or the Gatling gun.
These wars are as much drone wars as my PC is artificial intelligence. We aren't there yet. We may never be.
But unlike AI I think the benefits of this kind of war are hard to deny. Drones don't hate you. Drones don't rape. They don't kill children or torture civilians.
It won't make defeat much more bearable but it may add decency - if such a thing can be present in war.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
Well, if he does have inside info, he certainly can't tell you because it's most likely classfied. So, should you believe him? Up to you. I happen to agree with him as I have to have worked for the agencies for a few years and have similar stories. The number one rule of classified information is "only on a need to know basis". Let's face it, we really don't have a need to know where our special forces guys are and aren't (unless of course you do). 99.99% of slashdot readers don't fall into that category. Heck most of the US doesn't fall into that catagory. Will we ever find out? Probably. Things have a way of leaking/declassifying over time.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
It's fortunate that the most technologically advanced nations are also democratic, because democracies do not start wars with each other as a rule. If dictatorship is incompatible with the maintenance of such a technological edge (because of the human capital required) maybe the world will become a safer place; however, I'd worry if a nation like China can get to the point of building such weapons systems without also liberalizing its political and economic system.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
As significant has been the development and mass production of precision ordnance such as the JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition), which can be dropped from a standard bomber (B-1 or B-52) but is satellite-guided. What's particularly interesting about JDAM is that it is attached to ordinary gravity bombs (of which the US military has a very large stockpile); it converts the current stock of inaccurate weapons to something much more accurate. IIRC something like 60-70% of bombs used in Afghanistan were precision-guided, as opposed to 10% or so in the Gulf and some larger percentage in Kosovo.
It's still not Attack of the Drones because the UAVs don't shoot at anything, or drop munitions. I think this is smart: a human needs to make the final call that the target is in fact what we think it is. AFAIK the Pentagon has no plans to change this division of labor: automated surveillance, humans leading the attack. But someone better informed than me may wish to supply further info here.
sulli
RTFJ.
So the Afghanis fighting against the Taliban were remote controlled drones guided by Quake hardened veterans of the Pentagon's elite clans?
I don't think so.
Maybe Jon has been watching a different CNN from me - but from what I recall there were soldiers busy fighting and dying against the Taliban long before the American's arrived to "save the day" john-wayne style for the gawking eye of the camera.
If anything the lesson of the war against Iraq in the early 90's was that you can't win a ground war by the air. The western allied nations pounded Iraqi ground positions for months before moving in on the ground - and they still had to fight Iraqis on the ground. They didn't run away, they were still there.
Afghanistan was not a vacuum of empty space with nothing but the Taliban and American jets. Afghanis themselves were fighting and dying in order to overthrow the Taliban control - this war was won on the ground not in the air. Certainly the American and British bombardment did a lot to weaken the Taliban and enabled the Northern Alliance to make critical breaks in the Taliban lines that they had not been able to up until that point, but lets not imagine for a moment that this war was won by laser guided bombs and cruise missiles alone. That would be naive to an unbelievable degree.
When you have people on the ground, occupying space, you cannnot remove them unless you go in and physically do so. No matter how many bombs you drop, how accurately you pinpoint your missiles, how many satellite and drone recon photos you take - it still requires people on the ground with guns to take and hold territory for a nation to be conquered.
The fact that America achieved her objectives with little loss of American life is meaningless in this context for a few simple reasons. American objectives were simply to eliminate the Taliban & Al Quaeda's abilities to carry out terrorism. Not neccessarily to "liberate" the Afghani people. It happened that in this instance this goal dove-tailed nicely with the goals of certain Afghani parties whose ambitions were to remove the Taliban from power and institute a new state - so supporting those forces in achieving their goals was the simplest and most effective way of achieving the American goals.
Mostly however it was because America was fighting by proxy. There was little need for large numbers of ground troops to be deployed because the local forces were already in place and familiar with the landscape and the methods of fighting in this region. Also the political consequences both at home and in the eyes of other Muslim nations of a large-scale American invasion were prohibitive. So using somebody else to do the grunt-work of the war made both good political and military sense.
To make up a story in which America won the war by itself with nothing by high-tech gadgets is absurd and meaningless. Any conclusions drawn from such a situation are useless in both a military and political framework.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
All through history weapons have (sadly) evolved to, amonst other things, seperate the person(s) 'weilding' the weapon from the victim in order to reduce the risk of the victim striking back. It's nothing new. The seperation has been anything from a long stick (pike) to being in a concrete bunker on a different continent (ICMB).
These so called drones are simply the continuation of a develompment process that has been going on for thousands of years.
The 'dramtic' results in recent asymmertic conflicts (Iran Afghanistan) attributed to them are no more dramatic than, say, the Germans Panzers aginst the Polish Cavalry, were at the time.
If the sides are evenly matched they'll eventually run out of each technology and end up hand to hand. c.f. The trenches in WWI.
Reginald Molehusband. Edinburgh, Scotland
The trend in modern warfare has been a steady decrease in casualties among combatants and a steady increase (at least percentage wise) among noncombatants. I think we'll see a future where it is far safer to be actively "fighting" than to be an innocent bystander.
The use of robotic proxies makes me wonder what the drones would be used for once they had beaten their robotic counterparts? I assume they would be used to subjugate resistance among the civilian population. A My Lai without getting your hands dirty?
The point about these future forces not requiring a WWII type total war burden is not necessarily true. We have been burdened with a staggering peace time defense budget that makes other nation's pale in comparison. We spend money as if WWII never ended and seem to be eager to find excuses to use our "defense" forces. Our very definition of national security has been stretched to the limits of plausibility with the most unlikely places and scenarios being labeled as critical to security. The same thing is being done with the definition of terrorism.
It is worth pointing out that the WTC attack was low tech and points out that highly complex systems are vulnerable to low tech attacks (look t DOS attacks on systems). Being highly dependant on advanced remote fighting tech gives you one big Archille's Heel.
In addition, the fact it took months before an American was killed in combat (disputed) just means that all of the ground fighting has been done by Afghanis themselves up to that point. The US wavered as to what to do until it finally threw it's weight behind the Northern Alliance. I doubt there'd be any significant US forces on the ground if it wasn't for the NA.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The original writer completely forgets that there were significant ground troops present in Afganistan war: the Eastern Alliance warriors, that did most of the footwork while Western countries provided supplies and air strikes. In essense, Afganistan war was a civil war with outside powers playing major roles.
A lot of fighters also simply switched sides when the tide seemed to be turning against the Taliban regime, again involving a significant number of foot soldiers, but now doing just "occupation" work.
It is therefore too early to cast out the old military wisdom about the need for ground troops. Rarely we have also seen such advanced technology to be applied on such primitive culture. Automatic robot weapons are of course great against natives that still live in the stone age, but what if the Taliban would have had advanced weapons, too? The story would have been completely different. And then the ground troops would have mattered much more.
No man on the earth today is innocent. But 5000 (I pulled that number out of my butt, so don't quote me on it) people including children the WTC buildings are definitely NOT guilty of crimes warrating death. You yourself are not innocent, does that mean Achmed Turbantop is justified to kill you, your wife, children, and/or everyone in your neighborhood? If you know he had the intent to do so, would you continue on peacefully, hoping it didn't happen soon, or would you take measures to defend yourself and those around you. Or did that piece of gum you stole in 7th grade invalidate your right to life. That right should only be taken when absolutely necessary to preserve the lives and rights of others. i.e. Murderers forfeit that right and are executed (or killed in self defense) to protect the lives of those not guilty of the same.
It seems only a matter of time before other countries developed their own surrogate weaponry, and the idea of the high-tech Drone War -- machines warring with one another -- moves to the next level.
This won't happen. Why? Because the potential for this is already out there, and it hasn't been used yet.
Why not just play a sporting event between the two countries? Why not just take 50 people from each country and put them in a room, and whoever lives wins the war? Because that's not humiliating and decimating enough to the loser, and because the loser always has another battlefield to fall back on -- human fighting.
Remember, these people are at war, which isn't something you do because someone stuck their tongue out at someone else. You go to war because of serious, grave issues. You go because diplomacy has failed. When you go to war, a country can't lose yet still be 100% intact -- because they will just take the fight to the next level.
This is what makes nuclear weapons so frightening. Do you think that any country that possesses nuclear weapons will allow themselves to be taken over without using them, no matter how horrible their use is? Given the choice of being wiped out by a country that invades you or blowing that country up with nukes, possibly creating a lot of pollution (somewhere else), which would most countries pick?
The only reason that nukes haven't been used yet is that the wars fought by the countries that possess them haven't been important enough for their use. We had nukes in Vietnam. We could have used them. But in the end, we didn't care about that country enough to justify using nukes to win the war. Russia didn't care enough about Afghanistan to justify using nukes to win that war.
Bottom line -- the only way that war can be won or lost between two equal powers is if the powers use their most horrible weapons. Those weapons will not be limited to robots because a country will never accept defeat if only its robots lose the battle.
Ralph
When you think about things, there's a slight risk involved here. More and more these days, machines are running war for us. Some of the greatest AI experts of the age are confidently predicting that these battle-ready robots may, for one reason or another, turn on humanity in a real-life 'terminator' scenario. Kevin Warwick, head of Cybernetics at Reading University, England is one example. He is working, among other things, on ways for machines to 'evolve' their own intelligence. It might not take as much time as we think for machines to take over the show entirely, planning battles and maybe, eventually, starting wars where their country's interests are sufficiently compromised. Once a system like this is in place, it would only take a small amount of file corruption in the wrong place (especially using 'evolved' software, which is likely to be more fragile) for the war machines to go epileptic and/or decide they weren't happy with second place. What will happen in the future is anyone's guess, but I'm thinking that maybe the makers of 'Star Wars' were being overly optimistic when they inserted large droid armies under external control.
The problem is, without any moral cost of war, what's to stop it? We can go to war without stopping or thinking.
Americans tend to have a very egocentrist view of the world. "It's 'over there' and doesn't really affect me. Oooh Bon Bons are on sale!"
The non-american death toll and environmental devestation is just as profound with smart weapons. We just don't see it as much since our last few engagements have been in deserts.
Don't fool yourself into thinking this is somehow 'better.' War is destructive, costly, and sadly necessary. As sick as it sounds, reinstating assination is a much better solution to daisycutters and drone probes. The vast majority of soldiers don't want to fight. And the primary trouble-makers are some crazed/greedy/narcisistic dork trying to be the big bully on the block. Eliminate them, problem solved.
Don't just game, Dungeoneer
When I started reading this article, I said to myself, "I bet he's not going to mention the Northern Alliance at all." Yup. Not one mention. How many Northern Alliance men have died fighting the Taliban? Reading Katz's article, one gets the impression the entire war was won with Predators and smart bombs. That's not only wildly inaccurate, it's shamefully disrespectful to those who have given their lives.
"Even as the Afghanistan campaign began, pundits flooded cable talk shows asserting that air power alone wasn't enough, that there would be substantial human sacrifice.
...
The Afghanistan campaign is a very different kind of fight."
No, Jon. It's still a massive infantry ground war. We just have a few more toys to help out with.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
To talk of winning a war without ground forces is silly. As Ted Fehrenback said. "You can fly over the land, you can bomb the land, you can render the land uninhabitable. But you don't own the land until you stand a 17 year old kid with a rifle on it." As of now, we haven't won the war. The Northern Alliance and other indigenous forces have. Note these groups recent indifference to US preferences regarding the release of high ranking Taliban prisoners.
A military commander should value his soldiers lives higher than he does the lives of hostile noncombatants.
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It costs industry sudden a sudden boom in production, and larger profits. To produce the bombs, drones, machines, etc, costs cold, hard cash. The industry makes money. The top 1% of American wealth gets wealthier. War is good for buisness.
It costs the media a sudden wave of new stories, specials, and "plot developments" that are garaunteed to boost ratings and draw in marketing dollars. War is good for buisness.
It costs the military "bragging rights" ("imagine what would have happened if we weren't there on foreign soil to protect you") and a continually larger budget for at least the next decade. After all, we need to keep the military maintained just in case we have another incident like this any time soon, so make sure 50% of next year's budget goes to the military. War is good for buisness.
It costs the government the critical eye of the public; after all, when there's a war going on, we can't get too petty and start demanding the government preserve every little tiny right we have, no matter how significant it may seem. War takes top priority, so when little things like national ID systems get installed, we'll be too busy worrying about the war to care. So now that everyone is looking elsewhere, the lawmakers can get away with things they couldn't do during peace time. Meanwhile, the RIAA and their ilk are getting the laws and actions passed that they wanted (think Ukraine; the RIAA's "no blame" ammendment to the Patriot act; etc.) The lawmakers get paid with campaign contributions that they won't even need -- after all, any president who leads a successful war is almost always looked on favourably, and reelection is easy (the best we can do this time around is hope for a "like father like son" situation). Any Congresspeople who support the war effort will be repaid in kind. War is good for buisness.
So when was cost ever an issue?
~A.
student of animation and the fine arts
I'm not so sure about that. We've already got automatic artillery. We've got flying drones with cameras and weapons. A miniature robot tank on the front lines certainly sounds feasible to me; not from guilt, but from a quick analysis of function and form. And what about landmines? While not classically "robots", these could be classified as the dumbest war robots ever built.
Wars are rarely fought with singular orders. The typical soldier in a wartime scenario relies heavilly upon the information he recieves, the situation he percieves around him, and is capable of making rational & complex decisions based upon that information. Sure, a machine can be taught to do all that, but how is that information going to get there? And if your ultimate goal is programmable warfare, isn't the most flexible solider the human?
All true. But would a drone have to be self-controlled? Why not remotely controlled by the flexible human soldier? Or part both? There are already robots that work as a team; there could be war robot teams, too.
Flesh robots do not require battery power. Metal robots would be prone to power loss at critical times.
Flesh robots require food, get knocked out, and are susceptible to gas attacks. Metal robots could use gasoline, or electrical power (which is available without supply lines, from a ubiquitous source).
Flesh robots can usually continue to fight, even after physical injury. Metal robots would be severely impaired if even one portion of their body is rendered useless.
Only humaniform ones. Insect robots could still travel with three legs gone. Tank robots could still fire even if immobilized.
And, above all, we have nukes.
Eh. So who wants to nuke their own country to glass in order to fight off the drones?
I just don't think you'll ever see 5000 robots cross a river chest deep in water, scaling the cliffs of Normandy, or making it through a Korean winter.
But you will see them floating down the river, flying over the cliffs, and hibernating while they store enough energy for spring. And crossing hostile terrain relentlessly, without food or water.
Why bother making metal robots then, when you've already got flesh robots who can do the same?
Because we can! No, seriously, because it saves the lives of many flesh robots. Not necessarily our own soldiers, but opposing countries' civilians, too.
Why bother waging war, when we could make a neutron bomb and destroy the people, leaving the buildings behind? Because we don't really like killing. It's not good for the economy. At least not in the long run.
Judebert
We're out of dynamite. What we need now is a plan!
For geek dads: Contraction Timer
Despite the claims of JonKatz, the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan does not disprove the need for infantry. We might not have many ground troops in, but the Northern Alliance has a whole bunch.
What the current conflict does seem to reinforce is that air power vastly increases the effectiveness of infantry. An outnumbered, disorganized force of partisans (the Northern Alliance), was able to establish territorial dominance in a matter of weeks over a mountainous country the size of Texas.
The latter half of the 20th century has demonstrated again and again that air power cannot control territory. The US was unable to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait by applied air power - ground forces were required. Air power alone was not sufficient to stop the deployment of troops in the Yugoslav quagmire. The vast Allied bombing runs in Germany during WWII did not significantly affect production - Krupp produced a continually increasing amount of material throughout the war.
Nor does air power do much to break civilian support for the government in power. Iraq is the first counter-example that comes to mind. In Yugoslavia, support for Milosovich actually increased during the course of the campaign. London, Japan and Germany during WWII are also fine examples - with the exception of Fat Man and Little Boy.
The poor bloody infantry isn't going anywhere. It's all very well and good to speculate on drone warfare - but all we have right now is a limited example of a small number of "drones" being used against a technologically disadvantaged opponent.
- Ed Pichon
I shall not cheese. Cheese is the mindkiller. Cheese is the little death that brings total obliteration.
There is a HUGE difference between what we are facing in Afghanistan and what the Soviets faced there. The Soviets were facing an opposition trained and supplied by the USA. The Taliban has no such backing.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I think the actual trend that we're going to see is not one where technology is used to replace the human in armed combat, but to continue to make the individual more effective. As everyone's pointed out, the massed military charges of the World Wars are essentially a thing of the past, mostly due to bigger, better, badder weapons. Today, you can accomplish more with a smaller, more higly trained force of men. That's the trend that's going to continue to develop. Smaller, more specialized forces capable of achieving their objectives quickly and efficiently. Several sci-fi books have been mentioned supporting the 'Drone Wars' theory... but has no one read Starship Troopers? There's just some things that you can't achieve by turning a streatch of land into a sheet of glass.
Insert witty
How are these even remotely comparable? In WW2, before America joined the war, the English were in real danger of losing! Germany was bombing London (remotely, I might add, using the V2 rocket), civilians were dying, and every last bit of effort was required just to hold off the German forces. Churchill was trying to mobilize the entire country in the face of the very real threat of invasion.
In Afghanistan, it couldn't be more different. At no time were US citizens EVER threatened by the Taliban or other Afghan military forces. The overwhelmingly superior US military + allies simply waltzed in and bombed the crap out of them. The cost of the campaign was small change compared to the US GDP. THAT's why no sacrifices were required by US citizens! It had absolutely nothing to do with the technology involved.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I agree, but here are the two key points I would like to take from both your and the previous post:
1) Our country is -not- better than these non-democratic countries. While we, the citizens, may have more freedoms than others, at the same time the actions of our government have been as despicable as many. In fact that only derisive you heap upon China that couldn't be said of us is undemocratic.
2) Just because other governments do crappy things doesn't excuse our own government when it does crappy things. The gov may be quick to critisize governments we aren't fond of for their human rights abuses, but we will stand to the end behind our own actions or those of our friends (such as Israel).
You're right we are not living in a utopia, but similarly we cannot afford to act like we hold the moral high ground. In order to actually claim that ground, the first step would be an honest look at ourselves and holding ourselves accountable for what we have done before we begin pointing fingers at others. Enlightenment begins within, they say.
By that token, I'd ask you to take the post you replied to as just such a wakeup call. We could talk all day about China and Russia and what they've done... But first lets talk about us.
P.S. I find it ironic that someone who would be preaching how we are in Real Earth not Star Trek would talk about "democratic countries and elected governments", as if we could vote the CIA out of existance. I think you need to face reality as well.
The enemies of Democracy are
maybe we haven't declared war because that would validate Al Qaida's claims of being at war with the US. I mean, who are we gonna declare war against? Golem?
If we declare war against Al Qaida, does that mean that the attack on the WTC was an act of war rather than a terrorist attack, and the victims are casualties of war?
Exactly what I thought. But hey, when Katz (you know, big ego & clueless) decides to write an yet another "insightful" article on a subject about which he, again, has no clue whatsoever, it is convenient to forget about things that don't really fit into the story (i.e. robots did all the work). And of course foreign people are usually thought of as a lot more expendable than your own, so a reader which is as clueless as the writer might actually oversee the omission of their deaths.
I'm sorry if anybody sees this as trolling, but I seriously think Katz should get a kick in the butt for being a well known (and respected?) journalist and writing drivel like this, totally ignoring the high prize the northern alliance has paid.