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Army Plans Overhaul of Infantry Gear
nxg125 writes "Wired is running an article about a seven-year, $250 million revamping of the US Army's uniforms. One of the major obstacles is going to be how to power all the electronic devices that the soldiers will use. 'They have at least one idea, though. "Avoid the use of Microsoft Windows operating systems," a recent memo on the subject directed. FFW is going open source. Cleaner software needs less energy to run.'"
So why are guerilla tactics used by an opposing force often decried as unfair or underhanded?
Unfair? No, never. Ask anybody in uniform or anybody who's ever served in uniform and they'll tell you that fairness has nothing to do with it. "Overwhelming force" is the watchword.
Some tactics are immoral, though. Like surrounding your troops with civilians acting as human shields, or storing weapons in or basing operations out of hospitals or mosques. Why? Because both of those tactics put civilians in danger. If you make hospitals legitimate military targets, for example, then doctors, nurses, and patients are going to die. That's bad for everybody.
I write in my journal
anyone who's been in the army knows what I'm talking about.
Your GPS has this big whack battery that only works in it. Your NVG's are the same (well, the 'new' ones will actually takee AA's as well). That big 'ol SINGARS radio, what a beast of a battery. The secure comm unit for it, again another specialised battery.
When I was in the army I always thought our biggest weakness was every single piece of electronic gear took a specialised battery that would only work in that item. Nothing could just use commodity batteries.
I think they are just taking this a step further. You guys whine about windows but, this is REAL vendor lock-in. You get batteries from us or all your shit stops working.
Clean software is better than bloated software.
No software is better than clean software.
No matter how clean it may be, it will still potentially have flaws. In the case of "army stuff", I'd tend to think that traditional computing systems would not be suitable or efficent for that matter. Any software which has to 'boot up' is probably bad.
QNX on the other hand, may be good. It's used pretty widely, is lightweight, and supposedly rock solid. But, still, if the task can be accomplished just as efficently without computers at all, it's probably a better idea.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I was in the army for 3 years as a medical laboratory specialist (92B-10) and went to my advanced training school in San Antonio, TX at the lovely Ft. Sam Houston.
I spent several months learning to manually perform all sorts of medical lab work only to arrive at my permanent duty station and be told to forget it all because I'd never need it. Everything in the hospital lab was fully automated with the exception of white blood cell differentials and those were only performed if the machine wasn't sure it had the right answer.
However, if the power had gone out (which it did my very first night working alone on night-shift) I was prepared. Thankfully when it went out it was August and over 100 degrees and that was too warm to perform the tests I knew how to do (as temperature affects reaction rates) and so my very first night being on my own I had to call the hospital commander in the middle of the night and let him know that until the power came back on we (the lab) would be unable to perform any lab work and that we wouldn't be opening the blood bank fridges for anything short of a life or death emergency.
They had to reroute all incoming emergencies to Walter Reed and other area hospitals until about 5:00 am.*
I know a lot of people make fun of the military, but everyone I knew while I was in was well trained and could cope when the expensive equipment wouldn't work.
* Yes, our hospital had emergency backup power.
No, the air conditioning was not on emergency backup power in the wing where the lab was (formerly the psych ward) and so even though the instruments stayed on, the temperature quickly rose to the point where every single instrument started beeping and quickly went out of calibration.
No, the blood bank fridges did not have backup power to keep them cool.
No, I don't know what genius civilian contractor came up with that plan.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
It's as if the senior military decision makers don't really understand how the military is really just another tool of diplomacy, and should be used in concert, planning and execution of all other diplomatic means.
I understand that British generals think this way (and, based on much reading, that most European generals think much the same)- that war is just part of the diplomatic process. American generals are trained on the assumption that the diplomacy is done by the State Department, and that the military is only called in when it's time to bust heads. So they concentrate on being good at busting heads, and let the striped-trouser types concentrate on the diplomacy parts.
In other words, its a difference of opinion about the role of a general. A fairly common difference of opinion, at least between Americans and Europeans.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The so-called "soldiers" involved in the Iraq prison scandal violated orders (or obeyed illegal orders) and ignored their training. As for the prisoners at Gitmo: most fall into a gray area not covered by the Conventions (the last modifications to which took place in the late 40s, decades before an pan-national entity like Al Qaeda was considered seriously).
Go check out the Third Geneva Convention. The Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan did not meet all of the conditions in 4A(2) (most did not wear identifiable uniforms or markings, nor did they conduct themselves accordingly with the laws of war), nor did they qualify as a "regular armed force" (a requirement specified in 4A(3)) nor did they "spontaneously take up arms" as defined in 4A(6).
The U.S. officially calls these guys a few things (such as "detainees") rather than "prisoners of war" -- and rightly so. They are little more than a step up from street gangs operating on a larger piece of turf. They have very little resemblance to professional armed forces when it comes to training, discipline or organization. They are thugs, murderers and criminals.
So please, if you're going to wave your angry anti-American flag, do so after you've been better informed.
i hate it when people talk about the infantry. it's like some mystical world full of video game and movie references and abstract concepts that seem totally logical to someone who hasn't done it. it's a culture shock and a different, very real, very harsh world. it's really agonizing to hear it discussed but that being said:
being in the infantry you get used to everything just being heavy and ungangly. it would be a shock to most slashdotters just how cumbersome our gear is. fighting at night with NVG's on is NOTHING like in a video game. half the time you can't see a thing because it focuses like any other optic. you have to adjust the focus everytime you look at something more than a few feet closer or further than what you were last looking at. and don't get me started on the skull crushers and rhino mounts. i've never been able to get a PVS 14 to sit properly over my eye. shooting in the prone position is even worse.
here's something funny to illustrate. in the army we have this thing called a PLGR (Portable Lightweight GPS Reciever) or "plugger". i assure you that there is nothing portable, lightweight, or GPS about it. it's huge, like the biggest text book you've ever seen. the batteries don't last for shit, it has only an alphanumeric display (no arrows and maps), it weights a good few pounds, it is TERRIBLE at getting a GPS signal. you practically have to climb a tree or be in the middle of open desert to use it.
which leads me to this: most of us use civialian and so called "special ops" (usually just civilian things that have been ruggedized) gear. we use alot of civialian GPRS/FRS radios (though ours can be encrypted), we use lots of civilian GPS too. pretty much anything special forces uses too gets trickled down into infantry use because our gear sucks and they've got the common sense and freedom to use what works.
now to counter that we do have alot of things that really give us a leap over the enemy. we have infared targeting lasers we use at night which really help in a fire fight. other cool things i dont' want to talk about. but of course the bad guys have night vision too. yea, they do. it's not really that expensive these days. good thing most of them are poor shots.
being a terrorist has it's advantages. you can really be effective in small groups. but our tactics work great too and we are constantly adapting. what they gain in autonomy is thwarted by lack of C2 (command and control), training, and good support channels. besides, we can move and act autonomously too.
As far as I've ever heard, there really weren't any military targets in Dresden. The bombing there was to obliterate the city and demoralize the German people, just as Hitler tried to do the same with London. I think there is validity for most people in the Geneva Convention, but if anyone is going to talk about "morality" in war, you might as well completely skip WWII because everyone pretty much blatantly ignored all the "rules".
People tend to get on their high horse when talking about what's right and wrong in war (especially when they've never been in one) and tend to gloss over the fact that this is people fighting for their lives here. According to the Geneva convention you're not supposed to use a 50-caliber machine gun on personell. Yeah, if I have no guns and there's a 50cal beside me I'm sure as hell going to shoot back. In the end if you want to avoid atrocities in war, then don't get in one in the first place.
As section chief of the FDC, I relied on paper chart and paper calulations, although we had specially modified HP's to do the same thing. (A whole 'nother story, but we didn't use the Army's method of data entry either. I taught my people about 'peeks and pokes', and cut down our data entry time by about 75%)
What freaked out our observer from the 505thArty/101airborne, though, was computing a second mission in my head.
The colonel called, ("27 this is 6. That letter "A" is way too small to see well.") Since it was already pretty durn big, I assumed that he wanted the "A" twice as big, so I closed my eyes, computed 5 (one gun could maintain its firing data) sets of deltas for the other guns.
The observer said later (to my Captain and the Colonel) that never in his life had he seen anyone do 3-d trig in their head. It was checked on paper, and my data was 0/0 correct ("Check, 0!)" on all 15 data points (deflection, elevation and tof
Yes I can also do long division in my head!
[B^)
I'm armed and I haven't changed my patch, so don't start with me -- you *know* how I get!