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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?"
Give it a few months and they'll outsource it to India like all the other tech support jobs.
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"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. "
Ummm, wouldn't that be the Army Corp. of Engineers?
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.
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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.
So has anyone ever seen how long it takes to get a building checked out by a civil engineer and now your telling me people are going to do it over the phone whithout even seeing the damage to the beams?
Protect you from who? It's the rest of the world that's worried about the US, not the other way around. It certainly makes sense to have better information on a battlefield, but surely it's more about reducing casualties - especially "friendly fire" on both your own and allied troops.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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?
such as what they're doing in the areas of signal security and preventing interceptions/jamming of transmissions on the battlefield. How do they authenticate who's talking to who? How do they keep the enemy from listening in?
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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.
Over how many years?
:-/
Who gives a damn? The guy used nerve gas on his own city, pushed little kids out of helicopters, randomly terrorized his people with the police force, turned a blind eye to his kids raping women, and a lot of other crap that the body count just doesn't do justice to!
America killed at least 100,000 in 2 years. I'd be willing to say America has the higher rate of killing Iraqi civillians.
Listen up, you sanctimonious son of a bitch: The US troops aren't killing people. The remnants of Saddam's forces are. Just like they've done for the last two DECADES. Only now, assholes like you blame it on people like my brother who are PROTECTING people over there. He nearly lost his life protecting Iraqis on MANY occasions. And you know what? The IRAQIS are THANKFUL he's there. In fact, civilian support is one of the few things that keeps him alive.
So get off your GODDAMN high horse, and recognize that the US has actually DONE A GOOD THING. You can argue with the reasons for starting the war, but don't you DARE blame deaths caused by Saddam's regime on our troops.
Ok moderators, I've said my peace. Do your worst.
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Yeah, sure.... the Canadians and Mexicans were just waiting for you to lower your defenses in order to conquer, plunder and rape defenseless Americans... Americans who are unarmed by definition, after all they don't have right to bear arms to form militia.
The two large coasts? You need an industrialized nation in order to attack those (airplanes/warships). China could *perhaps* do that. Europe is out of the question: we barely have enough military to defend ourself if anyone would like to invade us.
Besides, the US under attack would immediately recall all troups in Iraq. Be damned civil war in Iraq if you've got bigger problems at home.
Thanks for calling the USMC technical support line.
If you have been shot, press "1".
If you have been bayoneted, press "2".
If you want to shoot someone else, press "3".
If you want to talk to a human being, a real nerdy type, the type you jock military type assholes used to bully in high school then you can kiss my safe, bunkered, hairy corn-fed ass. Yeah, not so clever now are you? Right, now Ive got your attention, lets talk about that wedgy you gave me in sixth grade...
"MOAB penetrates deep underground"
Massive Ordinance AERIAL Burst.
Most of the rest of what you've said, the AWACS thing with facial recognition, is a bunch of fake shit too.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
It may make the difference between life and death.
Then I'm glad they decided to use this method instead of AskSlashdot.
Is this a joke? If you don't want a piece of code you wrote to be used in a certain way, then license it in a way that takes that into consideration. Of course, at that point, its no longer "free and open", its "free unless i don't like what you're doing". If you actually submit code to larger projects, where you don't have control over the licensing, well... too damn bad. Either don't give it away for free, or live with it. Nothing is being 'abused' here, but hey, thats common sense, and your post smells more like a troll then that of a real, concerned programmer who submits to open source projects.
Youre ignoring the main point - Saddam was behind Sept 11 ;)
The funny thing is even if Europe had the ressources to fight sever offensive wars, it in its current state would not, the people are fed up with war and have been fed up with it since WW2 (you need severe reasons to drag the average European into a war, he/she would feel would be justified, Iraq was the classical example of not how to do it).
:-) .
On the other hand, Europe is a good buffer zone for the US and always was. Europeans prolly would start to fight tough once they are attacked. Europe in its current state should not be underestimated as a defensive force but as an offencive, forget it. The mentality of the people is not like that.
Even if there are lots of problems with the transatlantic relations (most are caused by the idiotic Bush government) Europe still is the best ally the US can have against an atlantic coastal attack, most attackers who would try it that way, would get stuck way before, with around 500-800 million people working actively or passively against them und ultimately being stuck in Europe with an unresolvable resistance situation.
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
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.
As a former Army Engineer officer, and former structural engineer, I'm a little skeptical of this article.
Engineer units and officers, who are already organic to Battalion (500ish troops) and above, are trained to do this sort of thing (bridge load surveys). For very complicated structures, I can see a need to contact a consultant "in garrison" somewhere who can do a more advanced structural model, but I'd think that would be quite the exception.
I think the article is misleading. The Army has had to evaluate the strength of existing bridges for years--since WWI or before--and has trained and integrated units and leaders with the capability to do so. Before 2004, tank commanders didn't just guess about whether a given friendly or enemy bridge would hold their vehicle.
Notice how as the armies of the world get more advanced and better weapons, that certain tactics that were used in the past that killed many more innocents, are no longer used. Take carpet bombing for example. How many times, during previous wars, have certain areas been bombed, with thousands of pieces of ordinance, with no regard as to where the individual bombs fell? Now, we have smart weapons that can take out one specific building, with minimal impact to the surrounding area. Yes, there are times that the intelligence is incorrect and the wrong building is targeted, and innocents die. BUT, there are far fewer innocents being killed nowadays, then in the days of past. Also, I would recon that more innocents have been killed by their own people (i.e. suicide bombers) than have been killed by the US military.
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