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Army's Cut of 'Future Soldier' May Impact Med-Tech
docinthemachine writes "The U.S. Army has decided to axe its $500 Million 'Land Warrior Soldier of the Future' program. If this goes through, the loss of future medical technology will be enormous. Many do not realize the enormous amount of medical technology that trickles down from the military. The program was working on develops new HUDs, 3D vision systems, and bioarmor. Surgeons today are using this technology (via DARPA) to develop new robotic surgery, bioimplants, intelligent prosthetics and more." That's the downside. The reason for the program's cutting is fairly obvious: "Unfortunately, land Warrior is part of the Army's Future Combat System (FCS) Initiative. This is the roadmap for an unprecedented hi-tech modernization of the Army. What new? How about an air force of completely unmanned remote controlled fighters- it's in the budget! Unfortunately, the entire project is so far over budget it becomes a target for cuts. Originally at $60 billion, then $127B, recent estimates have balooned to $300 billion total cost (yes that's billion with a B) and some are calling it the biggest military boondoggle ever."
Originally at $60 billion, then $127B, recent estimates have balooned to $300 billion total cost (yes that's billion with a B) and some are calling it the biggest military boondoggle ever.
At I believe it's still at least 100 billion short of the iraq invasion, which currently holds the record as the biggest military boondoggle. ever.
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Sounds to me like this is being reported by someone who wants to keep the program running, so they are trying to fud it up with implications that medical science will be harmed.
If the U.S. didn't get into wars all the time, then wouldn't that both save lives and cost less money?
I'm gonna need a spec.
So the questions have to be: if the results of this research are so amazing;
1. why aren't companies like Pfizer investing in it? (probably they are?)
2. why doesn't the US Government have the sense to invest directly in such things?
Do we really have so little influence over the State, and the State is so stupid, that our best hope is to encourage the State to invest indirectly in such research by funding military development and hoping we get the sort of spin-off we're looking for?
And even more significantly, have we ACCEPTED this state of affairs?
This is OUR money that's being spent.
That's why it's being axed.
It's a load of horseshit.
Have you seen the sorts of prototypes they've been showing off? They don't look like battlefield systems. They look like toys. Few looked actually deployable, and only a couple looked really useful.
I'm a big fan of random, pointless research. But I don't like it being sold as something else. This is an out-of-control R&D project that's been light on the "D."
Ok, the cold war was won by outspending the enemy through insane amounts of technology.
n _iraq.html
But you have to realize that this really was psychological.
And it works both ways.
If you have nothing but money to go against will power then you will eventually go broke.
Think of a suicide bomber as a very cheap and very smart self guided missile.
Compare this to the millions of dollars a single cruise missile costs.
If you want to win modern asymetric wars, then you will have to do what is necessary.
Not what you fancy.
http://www.exile.ru/2006-November-17/how_to_win_i
Post tenebras lux. Post fenestras tux.
I wonder if it occurred to any of the that the approx. $300 billion could be used to provide food, medical supplies, clean water and decent housing to most of Africa, propelling America to a saint-like status, and eliminating most anti-american bias that has accumulated.
Remember that Monty Python quote: "But what have the Romans given us?" "Roads" "Ok, besides that, what have the Romans given us?" "Sewerage systems." And so on.
How would an extremist go about recruiting people to his cause when the country was the source of their food, water and etc. (not meaning to sound condescending).
Ninjas use italics.
Just because the military and space exploration have traditionally funded research efforts that have "trickled down" doesn't mean that that's the best way of funding those efforts. What indirect funding through the military has accomplished in the past is to separate politicians from interfering directly research; that's been valuable, but it has also given us a bloated military and lots of wars, because that bloated military wants to do something.
In the end, the best way of funding medical research is by giving funding to medical research, and the best way of making advances in computers, semiconductors, material science, nutrition, etc. is to fund those areas. We just need to figure out how to make that work politically without wasting money on gimmicks like the military or manned space exploration.
"HUDs? Cheap IED? There, you're out of your freaking mind. What do HUDs have to do with an exploding IED taking out a humvee?"
The US government wants to load up the soldiers with more and more expensive hardware, while the 'bad guys' can kill them with a few bucks worth of explosives and a cheap cell-phone. Like managers everywhere, they have an expensive solution to the wrong problem.
"So, you're suggesting the ability to acquire targets more reliably and quickly"
Will allow them to kill more innocent civilians faster, thereby increasing the number of 'bad guys' they have to fight.
"The truth of the matter is, if the US starts to fail to continue developing the technical edge of the military, it can and will fall."
The US military _ALREADY HAS_ failed. It's a cold-war military in 21st century urban combat against guys with AK-47s, RPGs and cell-phones; didn't you even read about that recent US military war game where the officer playing the 'bad guys' took out the US fleet with fishing boats and anti-ship missiles that cost a tiny fraction of the amount the US government spent on their ships?
You talk about how 'the US military can and will fail' when they can't even control Baghdad, for Bob's sake!
No wait...we should have let Saddam get nukes...no wait...we should let President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad get nukes so he can blow up the Israelis *then* us as he has said. Because we all know the Holocaust was a myth.http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/14/ira n.israel/ And any who would help the 'Zionists' should be wiped off the face of the earth. http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/26/ahma dinejad/index.html/ http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=9898/
. jpg/ we did already. Maybe our country *is* wrong and we should listen to better leaders http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/09/20/chave z.un/index.html/ as our leader is obviously the devil incarnate.
r _and_military_action/...we've lost more in those than any other time...wait wait...might we have lost close to as many in Katrina? Where are the war drums beating for those people? Where are the people complaining that those families still don't have homes to move back into?
Because we should wait until something happens to us first...no wait http://www.september11news.com/111wtcreutersitaly
Maybe we've lost too many soldiers and should pull out...no wait...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_toll#Wa
But I digress.
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty."
The military is a terrible jobs program and overall R&D system. Of course if we're hiring lots of soldiers and improving medicine for necessary military operations, then we should harness that huge progressive activity for the greater good. But reversing the process, and putting job creation and R&D into the military just because it's got a budget, is a tremendous waste. Not to mention that funding and maintaining a huge military brings us closer to war, despite naive oversimplifications described as "deterrence". As history shows, and Einstein noticed, "you cannot simultaneously prepare for war and make peace". FWIW, that is not to say we don't need a substantial military in our dangerous and unpredictable world, but a giant one is provocative of enemies (including new ones), drives some people to expect "if we have it, we should use it, or we're wasting it", and then it gets in the way of better alternate solutions to problems: "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
We want more jobs, basic science and healthcare R&D. We clearly want to fund and operate it through the government, socialism, because we want everyone in the country to benefit equally from access and results, regardless of money and position. So instead we should spend that money directly on job creation and R&D. Simply offering more scholarships to med students, especially researchers, with most of that money would make most of the difference. Scholarships for recertifying mostly qualified foreign doctors would bring more foreign expertise, techniques, even whole theraputic systems into the country. Rather than throwing them away like we do now in order to maintain our artificially low supply vs increasing demand, just to keep privileged doctors rich and worshipped like gods. And much more could be spent increasing the National Guard for coping with increasing natural disasters like hurricanes / floods / wildfires and manmade toxic spills. Or invested in highschool level training and entrepreneur grants for locals to start re/construction companies, possibly trained with rotations through the Army Engineer Corps, or a more civilian one.
But just spending $BILLIONS, $TRILLIONS on a military jobs/R&D program is a huge waste. We want to buy those things for our country's security. Better to do it without bloating our unaccountable military further, and actually get more productive, healthier citizens. Instead of more dead/wounded people and a higher bill.
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make install -not war
So, what exactly is your plan for stopping Iran getting nukes? Destroy their two biggest enemies (al-queda and Saddam)?
Since 9/11 the US has helped Bin Laden achieve his major war aim (US troops out of Saudi), destroyed Iran's enemies and given control of Iraq to Iranian allies.
Maybe you'd better learn to look before you leap.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
"If this goes through, the loss of future medical technology will be enormous."
I think our medical technology in the fields of blunt trauma and prosthetics are "good enough" at this point. The Army can develop ways to better help you cope with getting shot or getting into a car collision, but they haven't touched the field of disease since they figured out how to avoid malaria and promote hygene. I don't see the Army curing cancer or AIDS or anything of the sort.
Besides, a lot of the treatments developed by the Army nowadays are so expensive you'll need the budget of the Department of Defense to pay for it.
>we are engaging most of the enemy (terrorists) in that fight and we have not been attacked on US Soil.
The attacks have happened in Spain and Britain instead. Both had troops in Iraq. Fighting in Iraq does not prevent terrorist attacks.
It was one of our allies who acknowledged that the current President is "the best recruiting sergeant ever for al-Qaida".
bin Laden's second in command, Zawahiri, publicly thanked God for the situation in Iraq.
AQ strategist Yusuf al-Ayeri published a book arguing that the best thing that could possibly happen for the bin Ladenists would be a US invasion of Iraq.