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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.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
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.
Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better...stronger...faster. and errrrrrrrr over budget.
liqbase
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.
> $300 billion total cost (yes that's billion with a B)
No, that's billion with a 'b'. You mean 'Billion'; that's billion with a 'B'.
Max.
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.
Black outfit, plastic helmet--looks like the soldier of the future is some kind of SciFi nerd.
With some creative accounting with help from Verizon, perhaps the 300B figure could be "manipulated" to minimize budget blowouts.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
We wouldn't have failed patheitcally at 'managing communism' in Korea.
We wouldn't have had an enourmous display of incompetance and uneffectiveness in Vietnam.
We wouldn't have attacked Saddam in 93...our ally a few years previous...because he invaded Kuwait who were friends of our NEW ally Saudi Arabia which oppresses women and backed the 9/11 terrorists.
We wouldn't have lost 3k people, wounded 40k and blown $400Billion chains WMDs,,,no wait, stopping Saddam from getting Yellow Cake for nukes, no wait to stop Saddam from supporting Al-Quieda...no wait...to Free the oppressed Iraqi people....who actually had it pretty good compared to many places in Africa which were unfortunately oil-less.
Blar.
"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!
The primary reason FCS has seen such enormous escalations in costs is that it rather stupidly ignores normal military R&D cycles. The rather poor assumption is that if you envision what you want your military force to look like, and throw enough money and people at it you'll get it. In doing so, planners essentially hope to skip the next generation of military tech and instead deploy the second generation of technologies at the time one would have the first. Not only is this absurdly expensive, it is likely to prove impossible, or at the very least, will not meet the actual needs of the army at the time of deployment. Ironically, aspects of the land warrior program are the most grounded and realistic aspects of the overall FCS project, and there is little doubt the project is most in tune with the future needs of a military that will mostly be engaged in low intensity stability operations.
No intelligent project manager would even attempt FCS. It is far too ambitious to ever see tangible and wanted results from the army's perspective. A better use of resources would be to more rapidly develop the next generation of technologies, particularly improving the safety and intelligence capabilities of ground troops.
Even if it were possible, I'm not the least bit convinced that FCS will meet the army's future needs. While the goals of rapid air deployable forces makes perfect sense in stability operations, light armor does not. The greatest information systems will probably never be able to always spot and eliminate a potential shoulder fired anti-tank missile, and when that missile is fired, you'll want the extra armor and heft afforded by today's vehicles. Ultra-high tech solutions are great for traditional warfare, but we're much more likely to be fighting in Africa than in China in the next fifty years.
Taking all this in mind, they'd be much better off scrapping FCS in favor of next-gen technologies and increasing funding for land warrior.
"In God we trust, all others we monitor." -- Unofficial NSA motto
You want to help the grunt? Okay, invest your money in:
... ooops, now we're fighting in the desert!") or it shoots fine, but its tiny bullets don't make a big enough hole and the enemy keeps coming.
1. Body armor. First, make sure there's enough of the current generation to go around; then put R&D money into developing lighter, better armor that will offer the same level of protection without adding so many pounds to the already killing load the modern-day soldier has to haul around the battlefield.
2. Medevac choppers. Nothing new, nothing fancy, just the same Blackhawks that have been quite successfully pulling wounded troops off the field for the last couple of decades. And, of course, the medics and equipment to turn those choppers into first-class air ambulances. One of the major reasons we lost so few people in Desert Storm (trust me on this one; I was one of the people doing this job) is that we had so much surplus medical capacity in the air that any soldier, injured anywhere in the theatre, combat or non-combat, was guaranteed to be on a chopper within minutes and at a hospital within half an hour. That was the first war in history (and so far, the last) where this was true, and it shows in the casualty reports.
3. A goddamn rifle that works. The M16 and its variants have been failing American soldiers on the battlefield for forty years, for fuck's sake! Either it doesn't shoot at all ("Okay, this thing doesn't work so well in the jungle. So let's make it work really well in the jungle
All of the above are a lot cheaper than trying to turn our troops into something out of an anime, you know? And last but certainly not least:
4. The State Department, so maybe we can stop putting our troops into wars we never should have had to fight in the first goddamn place.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.
--
make install -not war
The US Army has been very much at the fore front of modern medicine. Obviously the future list of benefits isn't in yet but here is a short list of a few benefits I can think of right off the top.
Coumadin - Primary anticoagulation and colt prevention drug used in medicine -- Developed as Sodium Warfarin to kill RATS.
Most Skin Grafting and venous grafting technology arose from combat surgery and recovery. This includes the modern advances heading towards organ replacement that began as tissue replacement efforts under US Army funding.
Most Rehabilitation technology (No comment needed here)
Most Nutrition Research -- Yeah folks they were from the 1860's on the primary research effort into human nutrition
Vaccinations of nearly all types. -- Yes I know there is some history before and outside the Army but most of the efforts to contain disease are US Armed Forces based this is world wide.
Water Purification -- Most of the efforts at good potable water development are US Armed Forces developments.
Mapping - Not just GPS folks the US Armed forces have been involved in this to the limit and it benefits all mankind including those around the world who use the Satellite technology for such. This is cheaply available because of the US Armed Forces.
Weather -- The US Armed Forces provide a very large part of the weather research around the world and millions owe their lives to it. This is on going research
Electrical and Magnetic Technology advances. -- Funny how those typing on computers can complain so about the US Armed Forces. Computers wouldn't be hear and that famous OS Microsoft sells wouldn't be here either.
Education -- You know all those kids from the far East who are knocking us Americans out of a job because their schools work? Well they learned in schools largely patterned after US Armed Forces Schooling technology. The contribution of the US Armed Forces to Human Learning is very deep.
I know it may not be popular to say so but the US Armed Forces have done a lot of good.
To be fair, in this "Free Trade" world, the new technology is more likely to displace an American from his job than it is to make him one. But that is a matter of US Tax and Trade policy it is not one of the US Armed Forces. The US Armed Forces are in their R&D beyond belief. Here is a short list of what is coming: [1] Cars that drive themselves saving millions of lives and billions of barrels of oil and stopping much damage to the environment. [2] Faster and better computers. [3] New Energy Technologies. [4] More disease control. Are there bad things? I am sure some things will always go wrong. But on the whole, the loss of US Armed Forces Research is nailing the lid on the casket of the USA in future generations.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
"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.
And now, this word from the Military Industrial Complex ...
Did you know that war is good for you? That's right: think of all the amazing medical benefits which trickle down like a warm, red rivulet of blood from today's mechanized battlefield! Artificial limbs, artificial skin, artificial eyes ... just thank a disfigured soldier!
But that's not all! Thanks to military development, you can buy a combat-sized humvee just like the ones you see smoldering on TV (armor not included -- see dealer for details). Your police department's armaments have never been deadlier. And coming soon: pain-causing crowd control devices guaranteed to put the "obey" back in "civil disobedience."
You U.S. citizens are fortunate to live in a nation which has been continuously at war somewhere in the world for over sixty years. Nothing benefits the homefront more than the front line. So call your legislator now, before the new Democratic congress, and tell him or her you demand the rich benefits of bloated defense appropriations. Because there's no bigger buzzkill than stopping the killing.
War ... what's it good for? It's good for you!
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
>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.