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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
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.
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.
Desmond Doss, a medic and Conscientious Objector from Rising Fawn, Georgia, received the Medal of Honor on 12 October 1945 for actions on 5 May 1945 at the Maeda Escarpment, Okinawa with Company B of the 77th Infantry Division. He disregarded heavy enemy fire and lowered between 50 and 100 (Doss claimed it couldn't have been more than 50, while the men of his unit said it was 100) wounded men down the escarpment on a rope, using a tree stump as a pulley.
He was wounded twice on 21 May 1945. The first wound was received when he stepped on a grenade that had been thrown into the foxhole he shared with 3 other men. The second wound, a bullet to his arm, was received as he helped another wounded soldier to safety.
He also received a Bronze Star for actions at Leyte earlier in the war.
PFC Doss went on to donate his $100/month MoH stipend to the Civilian Defense Rescue Service of Walker County, Georgia.
BTW, I live in Walker County, Georgia and had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Doss a few years back. I had to shout into his hearing aid for him to hear me. You'll never meet a nicer man.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.