The Internet and The War

John Jorsett writes "Wired Magazine has an interesting article on the realities of the use of communication and navigation technology in the Iraq war. Particularly intriguing is the use of chat rooms to engage experts thousands of miles away in helping to solve problems at the troop level in the field. And if you think your admin job is tough, try running your servers in 125 degree heat in a sandstorm."

Comments

Soldier Skills.

[villain170]

The military better watch itself -- if they start relying too heavily on technology, soldiers will lose the fundamental skills that make them unique.

Re:Soldier Skills.

[Anonymous Coward]

The ability to carry a gun and follow orders?

Re:Soldier Skills.

[Cipster]

It's already happened in my field (medicine). Too many doctors rely on sophisticated lab tests rather than performing a good physical

Re:Soldier Skills.

[GlassHeart]

Sure, your networked rifle squad could lose its GPS uplink--but that's no different than having your map burnt away from you.

Nonsense. It's far easier (though still difficult, obviously) to shoot down a dozen satellites - or just jam their transmissions effectively - than to find each paper map in an enemy army of 100,000 troops and burn them. Need to reproduce a map? Find a photocopy machine, or make a quick sketch by hand!

Technology is great, but it's not without risks. The warning against over-reliance on technology is a valid one.

Re:Soldier Skills.

[hobbesmaster]

Isn't that somewhat saying that you don't need guns because you already have bayonets? And when your gun jams, you're going for that bayonet anyway so lets just skip the guns.

And then centralized command and control; knock that out and theres nobody to control the armies! So lets just throw everyone out there and say "conquer the nation" and it'll all work out!

More or less the same line of reasoning. I'd expect a squad to react to losing his GPS the same way he'd react to losing their comms or running out of ammunition....

Anyway, when did using faulty technology stop the military in the past? I seem to recall an absurd rate of duds in USN torpedos during WWII...

Re:Soldier Skills.

[Dun Malg]

Basic Training may not change much from what it is now; however, once soldiers get to their units and they see their officers using their fancy GPS machines, they are going to wonder why they ever learned how to read a stupid old paper map in the first place. That's when the military is going to be in trouble.

You're looking at it wrong. GPS units aren't used as replacements for maps. They're used to supplement them. GPS doesn't show terrain features, so planning unit movements still often requires separate maps. Even if these maps are kept totally online someday, the ability to READ a map will still have to be taught. Basic military training will always include basic navigation skills.

Re:Soldier Skills.

[zilly]

Look, why exactly will the military be in trouble when they begin relying on GPS instead of paper maps? Presumably there's some advantage to all this newfangled technology over reading paper maps, else they wouldn't be training soldiers to use these GPS gizmos.

If your argument is that the military shouldn't rely on technology because technology is inherently unreliable, then you may have a point -- but do note that the Pentagon isn't stupid, at least not when it comes to training its soldiers, and it will have prepared them well for the eventuality of a technological failure. In fact, the article specifically mentions that soldiers are trained in how to read paper maps in case GPS fails.

Arguing that technology shouldn't be adopted because it causes basic skills to atrophy is like arguing that society should never have moved past the hunter-gatherer stage because today, in the age of specialization, hardly anyone knows anymore how to kill, skin and roast a beast with their bare hands.

May I also point out that even GPS mapping units require the user to know how to read a map.

humbly yours

Military Relies on Microsoft Technology

[HidingMyName]

Several things come to mind reading this. For one thing, they appear to be using Microsoft Chat over the internet to communicate reconnaissance information. Whether such communication is secure is something I'd really like the govt. to think about, if not it could be putting soldiers at risk. One thing that is mission critical is tech support, and apparently they have a top tier (premier?) support from Microsoft. I wonder if anybody short of say IBM could offer a competing Open Source (*BSD or Linux) based solution?

It's true

[John Jorsett]

General speaking, you don't encrypt at the software level, you encrypt the comm links themselves, using NSA-approved hardware. That way, you don't have to worry about it at the application level, and there's no opportunity to build in hidden channels to bypass the encryption.

Re:It's true

[John Jorsett]

There's no point encrypting the links if one end is compromised, or am I missing something?

Correct. Which is why you have a destruction plan in the event of capture, and procedures to change out the keys if compromise is suspected. Too, you take into account the perishability of the info. You don't need to protect, "I'm at position X," as long as you do, "the identities of our agents are ...," so that factors in to how you handle potential compromises as well.

Re:It's true

[caluml]

a destruction plan in the event of capture

Like that Enigma machine on that submarine. They didn't ever expect that to fall into Allied hands.

Get real.

[El Camino SS]

For one thing, they appear to be using Microsoft Chat over the internet to communicate reconnaissance information. Whether such communication is secure is something I'd really like the govt. to think about, if not it could be putting soldiers at risk.

You're kidding, right? The DOD created the internet concept to make a more secure network. They have crap to keep things secret that we could only dream of.

Given that one "internet" concept alone, and the fact that Echelon probably exsists and the US Govt has probably been using it for decades, and that military planes explode in impact specifically to destroy technology... ...then I'd juuust assume that the US Govt would be up on communication secrecy.

Cmon. Secrecy has been *the* number one asset of the military for centuries. Its not a new concept.

After all, the Chinese got inside our spyplanes and didn't get jack squat out of it. That should let you know how paranoid we are about our information. So to say, "be careful that is not secure," to the US Military is like saying, "be careful, that stove is hot," to a five star chef.

Re:Chat rooms?

[John Jorsett]

I don't mean this as a troll (though somewhat tongue-in-cheek), but seriously, asking for military advice on IRC or AOL strikes me as akin to asking the NIDA for information on the dangers of marijuana - ie, even if you manage to get any factual information, you'll never find it from the BS it comes buried under.

You don't seriously believe that a tank commander is going to go on some AOL or IRC chat and start asking a bunch of random schmucks for advice about a gas attack do you? The military is using off-the-shelf technology to construct their own private networks and chats because that's a convenient structure for what they're trying to accomplish. I work with these guys and they're not quite that stupid (they just might even say the same about me if I'm lucky).

critical soldier skills

[The Tyro]

like cleaning everything... constantly... endlessly.

Most people who have never deployed to that region of the world don't realize that it's not sandy... it's dusty. The soil (or what passes for soil) is this lightweight, fine, adherent brown dust... that dust got into damned near everything, even closed pelican cases (don't ask me how).

It wreaked havoc on our COMM and Systems guys; they were constantly cleaning their boxen, from the servers, right on down to the Dell laptops we were using.

Even in my field (medical), we were constantly cleaing and mopping out our Operating Room (in a tent, naturally).. you could NEVER get ahead of the dust. This drove my surgeon colleagues nuts... you could pretty much count on a higher complication rate with an environment like that. When the sandstorms would roll in, forget about it.

A bunch of us ran our own private LAN between a bunch of tents; honing our 31337 CounterStrike 5killz (I tell ya, those terrorists were in deep trouble if they tried to take us on... our M4 and AWP skills would have devastated those Al-Queda noobs... ) Fortunately, our hardware was not as mission-essential as the systems/COMM types... we could afford the occasional crash (though it did hurt to lose your sweet kill ratio).

Demanding environment, alright... it's amazing our stuff worked as well as it did.

Technology changes other fields as well

[John3]

The challenge is to integrate the technology without reducing the skills that make the particular occupation unique. I own a hardware store and we've embraced all sorts of inventory, POS, web, wireless and communication technology. However, we still need to be able to manually examine a rusted ballcock that a customer yanked out of their toilet and hook them up with the proper replacement parts.

War is cool and doesn't cause any harm!

[MavEtJu]

"What's funny about using Microsoft Chat," he adds with a sly smile, "is that everybody has to choosean icon to represent themselves. Some of these guys haven't bothered, so the program assigns them one. We'll be in the middle of a battle and a bunch of field artillery colonels will come online in the form of these big-breasted blondes. We've got a few space aliens, too."

This is exactly what I fear, that going to war is fun and not causing any harm to whoever is in it. First the US television stations didn't want to show the pictures of their own casualties, now this is added.

War is cool, war is fun and it doesn't cause any harm[*]!

[*] no pictures of harmed people by our own actions will be shown.

we are the borg

[technoCon]

resistance is futile.

this kinda realtime adaptation to battlefield problems is one step in the borgish direction. the more that i see of our growing ability to collaborate the more it seems like the borg, but the less it bothers me. maybe not all group-minds are created equal.

bottom line is how our assimilation of Iraq turns out. if we're conquerors, that's one thing. if we're liberators, that's another thing.