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Soldiers Call for Engineering Tech Support
chuckfucter writes "Wired news writes that soldiers in the battlefield now have their own army of geek advisers whom they can contact whenever they need technical support. The stakes are much higher here, with troops asking about the structural integrity of bridges, roads, dams and airfields: Can this structure be safely used after sustaining damage from bombings?"
While corporate America likes to outsource overseas, the armed forces do not and they are not likely to allow their contractors to do so either. The last company I worked for handled only military contracts and we couldn't even get clearances for an engineer from India that was in the U.S., much less one that was still in India. For battlefield support, it isn't going to happen.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Indeed. I actually think this makes a lot of sense. Information is ALWAYS a big problem on the battlefield, but getting the pertinent information is even more important. Having a "tech on call" for various engineering matters provides the troops with an advantage similar to that of getting the Army Corp of Engineers out there. (Need to cross a river? Build a bridge! :-))
My only thought is that this should be extended much further. Instead of just "techie" issues, there should be something similar to the Naval concept of a Combat Information Center. You see, on a ship of war, all information flows through the CIC. It's the responsibility of those in CIC to process the information and route the results and guesstimations on to the proper area of the ship or fleet. Now imagine if we stuck a Zepplin above the heads of our troops.
It could fly high enough to be out of range of just about everything except a Mig-29, and provide a line-of-sight communications center. The Zepplin could take information from onboard sensors, satellite readings, intel, other ground troops, and a variety of other sources, then route the most important information and estimates to the battlefield.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Look at the last thumbnail in that article, hes got a panasonic toughbook in his lap
Damn i've always wanted one of those, looks like another one in the helicopter picture
I'd always thought the military had some special laptops designed specifically for them, but i guess just like the police in vancouver they use those toughbooks
I couldn't find a better section, science didn't exactly fit, IT was the best fit, think about IT and what it is, information technology, it is in itself, abstract, ergo, I defend the section I submitted to.
Back in March, the selective service began planning the procedures for a "Speical Skills" draft, which is a hypothetical draft of "Americans with special skills in computers and foreign languages."
"Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others, what came up was that nobody foresees a need for a large conventional draft such as we had in Vietnam," said Richard Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System. "But they thought that if we have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special skills draft."
Just to clarify: they're not talking about actually drafting such workers yet; they just want procedures in place if they do need to do a draft. (This strikes me as somewhat ominous, in spite of their claims that it's a remote possiblity, but that could be my own paranoia.)
They already have the procedures in place to draft medical workers (up to age 44!) if it ever becomes necessary. The article doesn't say, but I would anticipate that an IT worker draft would have a similar age spread.
This article was back in March; anybody have any more recent news?
These are the same folks who designed most of the dams under the TVA. They designed the steel mesh "tires" on the MOON ROVER, for pete's sake! I'm 40 years old and even I was a kid when that was happening.
It's a way cool place to tour if you're in the area. Don't know if they still have the hangar-size scale model of the san francisco bay but if they don't there's sure to be something equally impressive occupying that space.
This might be a bit OT here but whenever I read some /. article and Military or Army in the Subject then it scares and worries me. I am worried that my work (contribution and efforts) on Open Source and Free Software is being abused by the Military / Army for hightech equipment which helps killing other people. This indirectly makes me a supporter of an organization.
To be more concrete, I am a muslim citicen and thus grown up. I also do work on Open source and Free Software projects as many other people over this world do. By knowing that the Military or Army uses my Software or parts/code of it for their technological equipment such as Radar, Rocket, or Equipment Systems is scary for me. Knowing that this material is being used to kill my own people in other muslim countries.
I would really like to vote for a new way of thinking in this direction whether Open Source and Free Software should be abused in such a way. Supporting the War machinery that causes pain and disaster to other human beings is not supportive.
A lot of people have made comments about the possibility of this being outsourced. While most of the comments are meant to be funny, I think it is definitely possible that it could be outsourced. Remember that the philosophy of Bush and Rumsfeld et al. is that the US army should be *small* and practically every function of the US army that doesn't involve holding a gun and shooting should be outsourced (mainly to private US companies like Halliburton). Actually, considering that even some US government staff in Iraq are guarded by private guards, even holding a gun and shooting is outsourced to some degree. I've read articles that said that in the first Gulf War something like 1 in 100 of the people working for the US army were private contractors, but in the second Gulf War, something like 1 in 10 are from private (US) companies. As events in Iraq show, even things like interrogation of prisoners is conducted by private contractors.
Of course a major problem with this is that you can't order engineers from a private company to go out under fire to fix a bridge/power plant etc. while you can with army engineers. The other major problem is who will punish private contractors who say torture prisoners or accidentally (or even deliberately) kill or injure civilians. If they are in the army they could be investigated and court-martialed, but I think for private contractors it is much murkier. I think the general rule is that they are under the rules of the local government, but well, in a lot of these places, local government is hardly existent or very corrupt.
Hey dumbass he isn't jumping to conclusions, his brother is in Iraq for god's sake... And maybe you didn't read what he said, but US troops arent going in Iraq with the intention of killing civilians, nor are they bombing them. He was also saying that the VAST MAJORITY of those 100,000 deaths where from Iraqi militants and not from US troops. Even better, show me some statistics, how many were killed by US troops directly/indirectly then show me how many were killed by Insurgents directly/indirectly. Until you do that, please stop the BS.
16,000 deaths, 7,350 due directly to coalition forces. http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/
Mind you, you're still right about the entertainment value of liberal histrionics. Every bit as funny as the antics of conservatives during the Clinton administration.
That's all that liberals and conservatives are really good for anyway.
But having Europe attacking the US, there is no way, even if the US was unable to defend itself. Despite all the shoutings and problems, no western European even would get the idea, to attack the "brothers" in the US, although the younger brother currently has a big problem :-) .
Would your feelings change on the subject if the US decided Iran is attacked? What about Syria? After all why stop at Iraq, don't need to worry about re-election so what the hell.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
is a machine meant for killing people. Do you people understand that? Where does this morbid interest in all things military come from? Are you so goddamned brainwashed?
Please understand that a more effective US military equals more innocent deaths all around the world. We don't like you anymore. Here's hoping for more US deaths!