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Building a Better Bomb
dr who and the darlix writes "There is a nice article here about carbon composite warheads being tested. They destroy their targets while minimizing collateral damage."
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Not guilt. PR.
Do you think Bush's approval ratings would be so high if everyone knew that we've killed 6,000 civilians in Iraq? I vote "no."
but
a) It doesn't do any good if you hit the wrong building.
b) It doesn't do you any good if you mean to hit the 'wrong' building.
Furthermore, if a civilian happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, this still won't help... such is the nature of war I guess, though.
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Crudely Drawn Games
Does "collateral damage" still mean maiming and killing people these days? If so, why is US media so afraid of saying so? Or is that just something the evil doers do?
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
Bombs are rarely used for the purpose of killing people these days. They're used to destroy facilities, bridges, buildings. That kind of thing.
Consider the bombing of Baghdad. Generally speaking, most bombing raids were conducted during the middle of the night, local time. Why? To avoid surface-based defenses? Partially. But our forces are essentially immune to ground-based attack. We could bomb any time we wanted. We did it in the middle of the night so we could destroy buildings without killing people.
Bombs are designed to destroy, not necessarily to kill. Killing's an important part of war, but not the only, or even most important, part.
don't take it from me. eisenhower said it first:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
president eisenhower
2 1337 4 u!
Nope. Sorry, doesn't work that way. As long as there are people out there who can think independently, there will be some who want to kill you, take your home, rape your children, whatever. As long as human beings have free will, there will be people who wish you harm.
This has nothing to do with what you do or do not do. You can make more people dislike you through your choices, but you can never make no people dislike you. You can never be loved by everyone. Sooner or later, somebody's going to come along who hates you, hates your way of life, and wants to kill you.
Societies that fail to defend themselves from these kind of people inevitably fall to them... or wake up and start hammering their plowshares into swords.
The best way to guarantee a war is to be unprepared for one. And the best way to prevent a war is to be absolutely, undoubtedly ready to wage one if called upon to do so.
Welcome to Earth. Enjoy your stay.
Let's reverse the question. Why hamper a technical discussion about bomb efficiency with irrelevant issues and issues of morality? There are certainly times and places for discussions of the morality of weaponry, and this is not one of them.
Not a couple hundred years ago, if someone mentioned evolution, someone would pop up and ask why you aren't inserting the word "heretical" into the discussion. And if they aren't...well, is that because of guilt? Fear of God? Same thing you're doing here, different topics involved.
May we never see th
Nope. Collateral damage means just what it says: damage that's collateral, in other words damage that wasn't intentionally caused, but rather came as a side-effect of whatever caused the damage that was intentional.
Sometimes people, such as yourself, like to paint military jargon as being full of euphemisms for killing and whatnot. Ain't so. Military jargon is exactingly precise. We say "collateral damage" because that is precisely what we mean. We say "civilian casualties" because that is precisely what we mean. ("Casualty" means a person killed or injured. Which is why we don't say "people killed.")
It's just precision of language. I'll give you a non-military example. My wife's a surgeon. Sometimes she works in the emergency room. When somebody wrecks their car, the incident is referred to as an MVC: motor vehicle crash. It used to be called an MVA, for motor vehicle accident, but the fact is that when somebody comes in from that kind of thing, you have no idea whether what happened was accidental or deliberate, act of God, whatever. So "motor vehicle crash" is more correct.
Why not simply "car crash?" Because a boat wreck is an MVC, too. So are motorcycle accidents. MVC's aren't limited to cars.
It's about precision of language, not euphemism.
Thanks for trying to slip a shallow and thoughtless political remark into the discussion, though. Appreciate you trolls keeping the rest of us on our toes.
if your government is indulging in "hobbies" you need another government. i think ike was referring to the military, not private gun owners. in which case, the purchase of armaments takes tax dollars which could be used for:
- more or better programs
- tax reduction
or some combination thereof. you obviously, would prefer the later - but that does not invalidate the original statement.you look at the "social" programs that work, they are the programs where volunteers or workers take the time to form a relationship with those they help and simply love and care for them.
ah, yes, the "thousand points of light". remember that? great. let's give those people some tax assistance or direct funding to buy materials or specialized services.
that would be a better use of cash than coming up with more efficient ways to kill people in countries where the "elite guard" means "soldiers with shoes". dontcha think?
2 1337 4 u!
I do think it's rather amusing that despite all the "9/11 NEVAR FORGET" patriot propaganda plastered everywhere, killing twice as many civilians as died on September 11th is completely acceptable for us.
And we wonder why terrorists are trying to kill us?
Economics is not zero-sum. A large defense expenditure, like any other large government infrastructure project, acts like a tax increase on the sly - it pumps money into the economy which eventually comes back as increased tax revenues from a larger economy. More money for social programs. This is incredibly oversimplified, but it makes the point. The economy is not a fixed pie.
Derek
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einstein
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Most would agree that, in all nations, a certain amount of military expenditure is necessary to national defense. How much depends on the threats a nation currently faces. What I think you are concerned about is the effect on a society when military spending exceeds what is needed for national defense: when it becomes part of the leadership of a nation's attempt to project power outside its own borders. In the short term, this is mostly detrimental to both the citizens of that country and the citizens of the other nations the military power threatens. Paradoxically, though, I think excessive military spending and international adventurism act to sap the economic strength of countries that undertake it. In the long term, this has the beneficial effect of tending to prevent those countries' ability to indefinitely control the destiny of others.
One of the finest books ever written is Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. In it, he clearly demonstrates, based on historical experience, the importance of economic power in being able to maintain military strength (and thus the means to project power outside one's own borders).
Thus, while sorry for the citizens of any country whose lives are damaged by their leader's power ambitions, I recognise that the consequent damage to their countries' economies is in the world's long term best interests.
That's right, the solution to Saddam cooperating with the weapon inspections was to blow him to oblivion. I guess next you're going to say that he wasn't enthusiastic enough when we supplied him with the poison gas that he used to gas his "own" people. Oh, but gee, Bush found two tractor trailers that might have contained weapons of mass destruction. And, I need to remmember that we weren't there for WMD's, unless we find them, then of course we will be. And, our goal is to find Saddam, unless we don't, of course. Just like our goal in Afghanistan was to find Bin Laden, unless we don't, then it's still victory, since the goal of course was destroy the Taliban, not find Bin Laden. I guess you just can't lose a debate when lying is not only an option, but also policy, right George?
In the real world, Saddam was capitulating to every single request.
The reasons for war in order..
1. To get Saddam to comply with Weapons Inspections, of course, he did that, soo....
2. To get Saddam to destroy his WMDS', of course, the inspectors couldn't find any, so...
3. To get UN approval to let us go in so we couldn't find them, but we had no suppport, so....
4. To go in and find WMD's, unless, of course, we don't, in which case, we bombed them because we love democracy so much..
Did I leave anything out?
"Why do you think that napalm-like fire bombs are developed and used? Probably to surgically melt down bridges and buildings at night;)"
s /story .jsp?story=432201
... you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect."
Napalm was used in the recent Iraqi war:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/america
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"We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches," said Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. "Unfortunately there were people there
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The Pentagon said it had not tried to deceive. It drew a distinction between traditional napalm, first invented in 1942, and the weapons dropped in Iraq, which it calls Mark 77 firebombs. They weigh 510lbs, and consist of 44lbs of polystyrene-like gel and 63 gallons of jet fuel.
Officials said that if journalists had asked about the firebombs their use would have been confirmed. A spokesman admitted they were "remarkably similar" to napalm but said they caused less environmental damage.
I think that the interesting thing is that the nation state standing army concept is a relatively recent phenomenon (ok so the nation state is pretty recent but even so...). I was as recent as the 17th century when the standing army was not a familiar concept, indeed it was an actively discouraged thing because of the negative imapcts.
I think the critical problem is that since the industrial revolution it has been, to paraphrase Churchill, that never in the field of human endeavour have so few been able to kill so many with so little. And this principle has become even more pertinent in our current world. As such a standing army is a necessary thing and whilst I agree with the sentiments of Eisenhower I find it difficult to reconcile the disaster that would result from an inability for the "enlightened" to protect the weak from the evil. And you can take that anyway you like.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Reducing collateral damage is becoming more and more important as military planners realize that the war is not over once you capture the territory.
You want to win over a people's hearts and minds by changing the regime but not levelling their cities a la carpet bombing Dresden in WWII. Killing citizens does not shorten a war and the London Blitz and Berlin showed that enemy soldiers will fight harder if they know their families are being killed too.
There are lots of different types of bombs that try to reduce collateral damage. The most infamous was the Neutron bomb that limited a nuclear bomb's blast and heat damage to a few hundred yards but killed people through the use of radiation.
The electric power distribution munition(ph), can knock out a whole power grid. This bomb scatters spools of carbon strands over a target. In Vietnam the US developed Hyper baric Fuel Air bombs that used a high pressure wave to kill people in tunnels or create helicopter landing pads in the jungle. The latest improved version is the thermo baric bomb that uses extremely high temperatures to create a blast wave and also suck the oxygen out of enclosed spaces.
War is not glorious but it is necessary from time to time and if you can defeat the enemy without killing non-combatants, I am all for it.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.