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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.
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 ?
War is mearly becoming symbolic.
Only to one side (in this case the US/UK/Etc.).
Having an enormous bomb landing on your village is far from symbolic.
The real test will be when two technologically advanced nations start fighting - I strongly suspect we'll be seeing huge numbers of civilian casualties on each side instead of the 'ideal' where it's just the drones that get destroyed.
When humans fight they want to see real damage to the opposition - would the US be satisified if all they destroyed in Afganistan were unmanned drones, weapons and installations?
Hogsback
I have a feeling that the teachings of Dr. King and M. Ghandi will have much more of an impact once "oppressed peoples" realize that violence isn't going to harm the "enemy" any more.
That, and had the Palestinians taken a King/Ghandi approach to their current situation (apartheid), they would stand on much higher moral ground than the Israelis. But that's another story entirely.
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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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
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
I'll bite. I don't for one second believe that any SEAL teams were in Afghanistan on September 12th. For one thing, even had they been ordered to stand-to at 10 a.m. on September 11th (unlikely; remember, even the President wasn't sure what was going on at 10 a.m.), they would have only barely made it to Afghanistan by the 12th, with the time change. Moreover, with no airstrip available, your SEALS are making a combat drop--into where? For what purpose? Recall that as of September 12th (and ultimately for that entire week), three groups were considered capable of pulling off the strikes on the 11th: Al Quaida, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Iraq. I submit that we did not send SEALS jumping out of planes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria "just in case."
I am nitpicking, of course, and your point is very well taken; it is unreasonable to believe that there were no soldiers on the ground before the media knew about it, but it is equally unreasonable to believe that they were thrown in pell-mell with absolutely no objective and no hope of accomplishing anything at all.
Moreover, your assertion to me sounds more like post-Vietnam hysteria of government distrust than informed opinion. Remember the clamor that arose about the report that the Ranger/Delta raid on Mullah Omar's compound was a disastrous firefight that severely wounded 7 Delta troopers? Remember how it turned out to be bogus, and exposed as such when it turned out that the scenario it suggested hinged on the Delta Force having a mission plan that could have been bettered by most armchair generals, including me (I, for example, would have left sentries at the door, for one, and brought some snipers, both of which the Deltas apparently forgot). The bottom line is that the United States military is, man for man, the most powerful fighting force in the world, and occasionally, even the worst naysayer has to give them credit for doing things correctly.
Now, of course there are casualties on classified missions, casualties that are not reported. But those missions and the forces that conduct them, by their very nature, are small; to suggest that they might suffer substantial (in numbers) casualties is incorrect. After all, even if you were to wipe out a SEAL boat team (which would rank as an historic tragedy in SEAL history), you would only add 8 casualties to your total. I don't doubt that some casualties were classified in the Persian Gulf. If I recall, the official tally was 338 dead. If you were to suggest that more than a handful are classified and unreported, I'd want documentation.
Your final claim rankles me as well; exactly what were these SEALs doing when they died before we declared war (N.B.: For those who may be out of the loop, we still haven't declared war)? Stand-up, knock-down firefights? Sorry, that's not the way SEALs undertake missions. In fact, the mission before we started bombing turns out to have been liasing with neo-friendly forces, forging the alliances that we would use later to break the back of the Taliban in record time. Unless you think Northern Alliance soldiers were knifing Rangers in their sleep, I submit that probably only very small numbers ever saw combat before the bombing started.
I also suggest that the Afghans are way out of their element fighting American and British special forces, while those forces are exactly in their element. People forget that the major successes the Afghans had against Soviet occupation forces involved shooting down helicopters (with American-supplied Stingers) and ambushing heavy armor (which we do not have in theater). Soviet SPETSNAZ commandos were enormously successful, last I heard; so too are SEALs, Rangers, SAS, SBS, Delta, and Marine Recon Forces likely to be.
It may still be en vogue to suggest that the military lies about everything it does, and does much of it wrong (though I would suggest that it no longer is). But just making the loud claim doesn't necessarily mean you have your facts straight.
-db
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
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