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.'"

Comments

Re:One way street... (it's an all-way-street)

[Rei]

> and I know that a prompt end to WWII in fact saved lives

Oh really? You should have informed Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, who wrote to Truman about how there was absolutely no need to nuke Japan, since they were getting ready to surrender anyway. You probably should inform Truman, too, who wrote in his memoirs about how immoral it would be for us to nuke a city, and who, in his first speech after the bombing, referred to Hiroshima as "a military base".

The "either we nuke two Japanese cities within days of each other, or we do a full force invasion and fight every Japanese man, woman, and child" is a false dicotomy as well. There were tons of intermediate options, from nuking things that were actual *bases* or fleets (as opposed to cities), giving a prearranged demonstration, etc. And, unless you don't trust Szillard, we could have had several more bombs in a few months.

I should add, there was yet another option that it was pointless for us not to take: conditional surrender, in which the condition was the survival of the emperor (something we voluntarily did anyway). Our insistance on "unconditional" instead of setting that minimum condition cost many, many American lives.

When it became evident that the US was going to use The Bomb on a city, not a base, many of the scientists involved quit on the spot. When we actually used it on a city, many more quit.