Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Refuses to Hand Over Fighter Source Code to UK
orbitalia writes "The UK is heavily involved in the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter program) but has recently considered abandoning the project because the US refuses to share the source code. The UK had intended to purchase $120 billion dollars worth of aircraft to operate on two new aircraft carriers, but is now seriously considering Plan 'B'. This is likely to be further investments in the Eurofighter Typhoon project." From the article: "It appeared that Tony Blair and George Bush had solved the impasse in May, when they announced an agreement in principle that the UK would be given access to the classified details on conditions of strict secrecy. The news was widely seen as evidence that the Prime Minister's close alliance with the American President did have benefits for Britain ... 'If the UK does not obtain the assurances it needs from the US then it should not sign the Memorandum of Understanding covering production, sustainment and follow-on development,' the MPs insisted."
The EuroFighter is a much more advanced fighter anyway. The JSF is the US Military just trying to "Cut Costs" by consolodating which seems to be what most of the military is doing. Pretty soon a tin can will do everything from cook a meal to shoot off a nuke
...give me the ROFLcopter!!!
If that does't work, there should at least be a LGPL version, right?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Every country involved has been told the same thing. And more importantly, all co developers are PROHIBITED from installing their own avionics.
What happened to the buck stops here? And why does Bush refer to himself as "the decider"?
You seem to be mistaken about the pivot point of the relationship between Britain and the U.S. today. Bush and Blair are two peas in a pod. *rolls eyes* For you to deny what is going on here shows how out of touch you are.
Allowing another country to design military machinery is one thing, but software? Why did they even consider this in the first place, thats like a huge national security risk. I can see it now...
As the British fighters approach the American jets, they all suddenly lose control and crash into the ocean.
PWND.
The Joint Strike Fighter is the F-35. Much less stealth, much lower price, and likely just a little below the EuroFighter, in my opinion.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
The UK doesn't have any F-117's and never will. Anyway, the JSF family of planes are intended to replace a number of others:
F-35A: F-16, A-10
F-25B (STOVL): Harrier, F-18
F-35C: F-18
By using a set of three planes that are mostly the same instead of half a dozen completely different ones it should in theory lower costs in terms of a better economy of scale on the planes and their parts and a lower cost of training for pilots, mechanics, etc.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
The US government is really just too embarrassed to hand over the source code since it's all in Visual Basic 6.
A few pointers:
1) The F-117 has no air-to-air capability. It also has a rather small payload (basically 2 bombs), high maintenance costs due to early technology and is (generally believed, though I think it is still classified) to be a subsnoic jet, in other words, slower. Stealth isn't everything. Also, as it only fills the one role, it is less economical than an all-in-one type aircraft.
2) Uh... since when did anything other than a super-precision ground strike become unpopular politically? The U.S. has certainly used "dumb" bombs in many campaigns, including Afghanistan and Iraq, to good effect under certain conditions and on certain targets. JDAMs - much more economical than laser guided munitions - are also quote popular and while they aren't as accurate, "close" is often good enough, assuming they're fired under certain conditions, of course. Furthermore, this particular aircraft is capable of using laser-guided weapons.
3) You know, there are areas without civilian populations present where Close Air Support could still be a concern... like, say, the mountains of Afghanistan perhaps? Or in the middle of nowhere in the Iraqi desert? Or hundreds of other battlefields? Not every battle in the future will occur in third world cities, you know.
4) A helicopter with a "chain gun" has a limited operational range and exposes itself to a great deal of enemy fire. Helicopters' armament tends to be lighter than what an aircraft can provide, focusing more on armor-piercing weapons (Hellfire missiles), and smaller weapons more useful against vehicles and lighter targets (rockets, canon, etc.). A strike fighter, on the other hand, can deliver 2000 lb. bombs on a target when necessary, enablig it to knock out, say, a heavily reinforced building or bunker than a helicopter would stand no chance against.
I mean, if you don't like this plane, that's cool and all, but there is still a mission out there for it.
They are not as stealthy as the current F-117
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The F-22, F-35, and Eurofighter are all more capable than the F-117. The F-22 and F-35 are also more stealthy.
Close air support today means not just small aircrat laying down munitions (rockets and 20MM) from low altitude line of sight, but also B-52's and B-2's dropping JDAMS from 25k'. Or an F-22 or F-16 dropping SDB's from 30+ miles away.
BTW, they are retiring the F-117's to the boneyard in a couple of years.
I love the dept. line for this one. The UK is reading the "EULA" first, and that's why we're threatening to cancel a multi-billion dollar order.
After all, would you leave the ability to maintain your air force in the hands of another nation? (And seriously, even if the order goes ahead, would the US seriously expect the UK to honour some contractual agreement not to install working software in its military aircraft?)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
>The American military machine, touted as the strongest, most efficient, lethal, modern and advanced, has just got a beating from AK-47 wielding thugs of IRAQ.
Only because of restraint. That really isn't relevant to modern fighter planes. No one is shooting f16s with ak47s. Get real.
The sad thing is that it has takes three years and almost 3,000 coalition deaths for the military authorities to acknowledge this.
Single battles have gone over 46,000 or 51,000 even... small scuffs can raise several dozen or even a couple hundred. 3,000 is quite a low number for a few months of occupying a country.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
You're crazy. The AK-47 is indeed a fine weapon, but every time somebody toting one engages our forces, they get shot/killed/blown the hell up.
You're comparing light weapons to aircraft? Rather have that, you say? How about you shoot at me and miss because your weapon, while reliable, doesn't have the accuracy to hit me from any farther than maybe 300m, 50m if you shoot like an average Iraqi. (It's reliable because of the tolerances built into the bolt mechanism but that makes it far less accurate. Marines have to qualify at 500m.)
Have fun with that while I'm calling in air support and deciding whether I want to just kill you or to drop the entire building you're in.
This will give you the idea.
~ some jarhead
Oh, and I'm pretty sure the Seals "submerge" themselves every once in a while. Marines? Well, we never get near water, right?
Yeah, let's dump all our aircraft, tanks, submarines, nuclear weapons, and ships because some soldiers got shot by AK-47's. Clearly the AK-47 is the ultimate weapon and will win all wars from now until the end of time.
Or maybe, just maybe, local insurgents killing soldiers on the ground in a country they're occupying has no relevance whatsoever to this topic. Maybe aircraft aren't meant to kill every enemy of the US in one foul blow. The ability to destroy any building, vehicle, or person whose location is known might just be enough to make aicraft like the F-35 worth investing in. You know, assuming someone with an AK-47 hasn't got there first and destroyed it with those new Bunker-Buster-Bullets I'm sure the Russians are about to release...
I for one welcome our new assault rifle wielding overlords.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Too many errors in your post, I think it's bullshit.
The F-117 is being retired as of 2008 (instead of 2011).
The F-22 replaces some of the F-15's (air superiority role). The F-22 can also perform some ground attack roles with the inception of the 250lb Small Diameter Bomb(SDB).
The F-35 replaces some of the F-16/Harrier ground attack missions. The USAF/Reserve/Air Guard will still have a bunch of F-15 and F-16 to go along with the F-22's, and the Navy/Marines will still have a bunch of Harriers to go along with the F-35's.
Sadly without this agreement the UK really should simply say no to any involvement, however I would suggest that the UK will still splash out anyway. The entire US/UK Special relationship is pretty much a myth anyway and more to the point it has been regarding foreign policy matters for a long time, placing even more dependence on the US in areas of defence is a bad idea.
There seems to be (in the UK at least) a memory lapse within political circles, that the US has in the past simply not stood with the UK.
The Lack of US support during the Falklands war, and outright opposition to the Suez crisis, should show that the UK cannot rely on US military power to support the UK's own operations and aims, and nor should it. The US will always look after itself, it will only take action when it feels its own perceived interests are involved or if there is sufficient domestic political pressure to do so, and the UK really should follow suit. Frankly that is a sensible position for any nation state to take. The UK governments current position of "follow the US's lead wherever it is demanded" is downright treasonous.
The UK needs to continue to maintain forces, equipment and any other capabilities independently or with allies as long as the UK is capable of maintaining the same, in the absence of their allies. It would be foolhardy to rely on the US (or France/Germany/Italy etc..) for equipment, parts, support, or armaments in the case of war, especially if any of those allies were opposed to the conflict.
The one thing I do feel that is surprising with this scenario is that the US will happily sell the aircraft to the UK. I would have assumed that any sensitive information about the aircraft would be available from the aircraft itself, which of course presents the question as to whether there are either surprises in the software that would give the US any advantage in the unlikely event that these aircraft were used against them. Although ignoring that (slight conspiracy theory) surely it should also raise questions about the quality of the software.
Anyway, I see no reason why the UK cannot simply continue to work on its own or with allies who full trust the UK, rather than be treated as an interloper or a poor cousin by the US.
So you want them to engage you on your terms so that you destroy can them as you mention? No way! These guerrillas (or insurgents as you call them), are smarter than that.
In fact they are engaging you on their terms and from what I have seen and heard, it's working for them. Again, it's very saddening that the war had to take all these many lives and time, for American military leaders to realize that it's not working.
I'm among the first to bash the services for huge projects that grow seemingly out of control, especially aircraft and ships, while less glamorous things such as individual soldier equipment gets short shrift. However, these systems are not designed, tested, produced and fielded overnight. Just because we have air supremacy in both of the current combat theaters does -not- mean that we will in future conflicts.
Can anyone imagine the reaction if in a future conflict, US ground soldiers get killed en masse because close air support is unavailable because we cannot maintain at least air parity? The outcry would be an order of magnitude above the body armor / armored HMMWV debate of a couple of years ago.
Um, the JSF (actually its not the JSF anymore, its the F-35 Lightning II officially) has about the same radar crossection of the F-22 Raptor, which is markedly more stealthy than the F-117A. I won't even get into your lack of information about the weapon platform superiority the F-35 has over the F-117A, as well as it's ability to carry different weapons...
All the below information from GlobalSecurity.org.
The F-22 represents a significant design evolution beyond the highly successful F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, with performance not achievable by today's front-line fighters. Low observable, or stealth, technology has advanced to the point where conventional aerodynamic configurations can be made incorporating low observability without compromising aerodynamic performance or increasing costs significantly. Design development risk was greatly reduced by the performance demonstrated in the dem/val program where angle of attack attitudes up to 60 degrees were flown. The validity of the low observability features of the F-22's design were confirmed by full-scale pole model testing. Why continue with the JSF?
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be:
Four times more effective than legacy fighters in air-to-air engagements
Eight times more effective than legacy fighters in prosecuting missions against fixed and mobile targets
Three times more effective than legacy fighters in non-traditional Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) and Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses and Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD/DEAD) missions
About the same in procurement cost as legacy fighters, but requires significantly less tanker/transport and less infrastructure with a smaller basing footprint
...are the only thing of value in aerospace code. Once you have seen the implementation (in Ada, most likely) you can re-implement it in a different language and along the way make it very difficult to prove that you ripped it off.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This is not just about source code. In a system like that software, hardware and system integration are inseparable. You either give no information or have to give it all. These are the crown jewels of the platform. Revealing them also reveals any number of critical points for interested adversaries: thrust and manoeuvrability limits, reaction times, counter-measure schemes and logic, EMC-characteristics etc. all of which can be used to find weaknesses and design weapon systems to be more effective against it.
Also, since the UK is only conributing 10% of the development costs, its no wonder the US isnt keen sharing. Usually with mil-tech you only give a bad, incomplete user manual to the client so he can barely operate the thing and then wait for him to pay more for extra features that are already implemented by disabled in software or simply undocumented. You never ever allow the client to have exact specs, schematics or software which would allow him to reverse-engineer and develop his own extentions and applications to it.
Here in Finland we bought old C-model F18 Hornets. When the first upgrade cycle came, the US told us of these new fancy secure ground-to-air datalinks and avionics for combat close formation flying they wanted to sell us. We just told them we had developed our own by then, thankyouverymuch. But that was because the platform was getting old and most of the stuff in there was already open knowledge with multiple nations having purchased them years ago. Also with old-gen mil-aircraft there are a lot of avionics standards which were developed and adhered to during the cold-war to easy manufacturing, lower cost and allow inter-service operations. These JSFs will probably have special new-gen custom avionics to do with flight and weapon control, targeting, radar, stealth, communications and electronic warfare that the US definately wants to keep wrappers on.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Yes, even the ones that can't walk yet. One problem is the troop numbers are far less than the operation in Kuwait and there have been a lot of situations where the best of a bad situation was to shoot everything that moved, and it's easier to count unknown dead bodies than spotting live insurgents first. Unfortunately this turns others against the army and there is this new situation of a seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers. What to do? The British couldn't work it out in Iraq with comparitively bigger forces and a similar technology advantage in 20 years but that doesn't mean there is no answer. The nationalists still see it as a puppet government - if we can work out why that could solve some of the problems. They've had sixteen years of war that sent Iraq into the third world and a long war with Iran before that that drove the nation so broke they invaded Kuwait to do a bank robbery on a national scale - a few more bombs alone are not going to stop them.
Prime Minister Blair, you could just give us some fighters so we can write open source code for them.
Modern weapon systems can win wars.
Modern weapon systems do not occupy the country, soldiers do. Occupation is required if you want a friendly regime to take power. Anytime you have a foreign army occupying your streets, there's going to be deaths on both sides. Take away the AKs and give them sporks and you will still see people on both sides die.
The contractors are giving it to the US anyway for review. That seems to be what the UK is asking for.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
The sad thing is not the nearly 3,000 coalition deaths but the estimated more than 650,0000 civilian deaths (or 2.5% of their entire population). To downplay that is insulting to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis suffering.
But the thing that puts Americans over the edge is the deaths of their troops? I don't quite understand that logic. Can someone be so kind as to explain that?
But... We don't want to give them the source code for the avionics so they can reprogram and update the plane themselves! Most Forgien countries get the "base" version of military hardware... they get the plane, but not all the radar, guns, missles, radios, etc.. but new planes are heavily "fly by wire" we don't want to give them that code... so they can't update the plane. Worse than that they can't prove it's really THEIR plane.. that the US hasn't somehow sabotaged it so that if we might have a security leak they could end up with hacked planes they can't fix... or worse WE could hack the planes so they wouldn't fly if Britian Crossed us. Think "Microsoft Windows Advantage" ....for nuclear weapons!!!!
EOR (End-of-rant)
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
I hate to rain on your parade, but the US did provide loads of support to Britain during the falklands. Though, I suppose you could argue this was at a time when we "free nations" had to "stick together" to oppose the "red menace". I've read else where that other supplies were provided to UK forces for the conflict from the US, in addition to what wikipedia mentions, though the source escapes me at the moment (probably one of Jim Dunigan's books).
Ungh
We have to step back and ask ourselves another question, "Why go to war at all?"
There comes a time when all diplomacy has failed and there is no other choice. The hand has been dealt and the bluffs, raises, and calls have all been made and it is time for one side or the other to lay their last card on the table or else concede defeat. The appeal of last resort to combat and the use of lethal force is the basis for our entire society and thus it remains, for those who elect the way of war, available to us today as the oldest and most final form of dispute resolution. Why go to war at all? Because the other guy refuses to relent and says, "I will see you in hell before I accede to your demands" and it is important enough for you to risk life and limb to get what you want. Admittedly, not many things are that important, but some things are worth fighting for and always remember that he who can destroy a thing controls a thing and that includes our fellow man.
I don't care if you're a liberal, conservative, libertarian, communist, fascist, moderate, or anything else. Regardless of your political beliefs, it has to be admitted that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with justice, freedom, or "weapons of mass destruction". They were merely done to exert increased Western geopolitical influence in central Asia. A major part of this is to counter the ever-growing power of China, but also because of the extensive energy supplies available in the region.
I would characterize myself as a right of center Republican with Libertarian sympathies and I disagree. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, misguided and ill timed though they may be, were most certainly about justice and freedom and, to a lesser extent, WMD and the president has said as much. Should we not at least on this, his beliefs, take him at his word? You can disagree with his decisions and his convictions, but the President thought that war was the only option remaining with a reasonable possibility of actually achieving these goals. You can disagree with that too, but that it is what is great about democracy...we have the right to disagree and make our voices heard. It is because of this freedom that we seek to liberate others because the President believes, as I do, that the best probability for long term peace lies in democracy and freedom. When I say long term peace I mean the kind that President Kennedy spoke of following the Cuban Missile Crisis,
"What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time."
We do not fight to occupy and oppress or to steal natural resources or to subdue and destroy merely for own security. It is indeed unfortunate that certain people, namely Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and all who support the mission of terror have decided to force our hand in these matters, but we are not likely to achieve the sort of lasting peace that Kennedy spoke of when there are men like this loose in the world bent on the ultimate destruction of our way of life.
Now I know that you will argue that they fight us because they say that they want us out of the Middle East and I take them at their word that they do indeed want us out of the Middle East, but what do you suppose that they will do when we are gone? Will they be satisfied with the restoration of the Islamic caliphate, the oppression of their women, and the brutal imposition of Sharia law or will they turn their eyes next towards Europe and ultimately the United States? Is it fair to our children and grandchildren to allow this menace to grow and sustain itself in the Middle East in exchange for a
"... and then all our vipers suddenly when dead, it was like someone threw a switch..."
... contingency plans. Especially the current crop of loonies.
I don't blame the brits at all. I certainly wouldn't trust the US military not to make
The JSF is a product that is being developed for the military by Lockheed Martin and major partners BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman.
Precisely. And you do realize that BAE is a British company, right? (The B in the name used to stand for British) In other words, America is not telling a British company that it's not allowed to sell the source code it co-developed to its own government...
But a soldier from brazil is worth most of all.
That's just the point, isn't it. The outcome of 'battles' is a metric for conventional war, and a bad measuring stick for uncoventional/asymetric war.
One side can claim all the battle victories they want, but if the other side is not fighting battles (nor has any interest in doing so) then the claim of victory is meaningless. How many conventional battles did Geronimo win? Is he revered as a tactical genius because fought on his enemy's terms or because he tied up massive numbers of troops while continuing to raid and elude capture for 30 years?
The greatest mistake the US makes about Iraq (other than being there in the first place) is thinking that it is about battles and direct confrontations, or imagining that once troops are in a town then that town is 'held'.
American troops can raise all the flags they want in all the provincial outposts they want but it will do very little good when the 'enemy' simply melts away, returning sporadically to disrupt supply lines and make actual administration impossible. Raising a flag only means something when the local population recognizes the flag as symbolic of control and submits accordingly. Geronimo did not, Ho Chi Minh did not, and the internecine groups in Iraq do not
As long as the US keeps thinking that this fight in Iraq is about territorial control (particularly when the US military cannot even control Bagdhad), they are destined for failure. The insurgents don't need to control cities. They don't need to win or even fight battles. As long as they disrupt the business of running a military occupation and survive, they achieve their goals. Strike and evade, strike and evade. There's no need to hold any particular ground since they have far more ground on which to hide than the occupier can possibly cover.
And the harder the US tries to hit them, the more collateral damage is done; the more collateral damage, the stronger the insurgent groups are supported. The more support they have, the more sophisticated their attacks become and the easier it becomes to melt away and evade the counterattack (which of course does more collateral damage and begins the cycle anew).
If insurgent groups in Iraq were dumb enough to stand together and fight the occupying US Army head on, of course they would be obliterated. But the situation is far more analogous (though by no means akin) to that of competing gangs -- their real beef is with each other. One or another side may try to use the police (the occupiers or their puppets) as intermediaries to get at their enemy but only as a means to an end, and without trust. The intermediaries are disposable, and subject to attack at any time.
Such is the nature of occupations, and why they rarely work out.
Note: My sympathies go out to all those in uniform in Iraq. I truly believe that the vast majority of you are good people (and those that aren't weren't before they were sent there). You have sacrificed far beyond what you were asked to, and have served well and admirably. I only wish that those who sent you were compelled to learn from your experience, and forced to undergo the same danger and hardships to at least understand and appreciate your stories.
Russia? Israel? Japan? Your ignorance on this is rather startling. Russia hasn't been up - to - date since the end of the Cold War. They do have decent infrastructure for aircraft production, as well as two of the greatest fighter design companies in the world (Sukhoi and Mikoyan - Gurevich) but they're not in the same league as the European Union, let alone the United States. Israel basically ships American weapons across the Atlantic and gives them new names. They don't design their own high-tech weaponry. They use the current generation of US aircraft (F-15, F/A-18, etc for fighters) and will upgrade to the new generation when they get a chance. Japan? You have to be kidding me. Japan is less militarized than my grandmother. Their constitution limits them to military action only in self defence under very very limited Rules Of Engagement. In fact, though they sent 500 technicians to Iraq, Australian personnel were tasked to guard them, because it was not considered that they would be safe under their operating guidelines. Their fighter aircraft are F-18 Hornets and (I think) a few Block 52 F-16 Fighting Falcons. Please note that none of these countries are getting any of the new-gen fighters, apart from Israel, who is buying F-35 JSF and perhaps later F/A-22 off the US. If you want to make comparisons, look at Eurofighter Typhoon versus Raptor versus JSF versus (perhaps) Dassault Rafale (if they're ever going to sell any of those, which I doubt.)
The US army probably loses many more than 4 people a month to accidents in peacetime. The Iraqis aren't defeating the US troops militarily; the US is defeating itself politically.
The smart thing to have done would have been to leave Iraq completely shortly after capturing Hussein, turn him over to be executed, and to let the various Iraqi factions kill each other to their hearts content. Instead, Bush chose to keep troops there "until the nation was stable". Big mistake.
If you're going to forcibly stabilize another country (which I don't recommend), you have to actually be FORCEFUL. That means eliminating whomever opposes you quickly and decisively, shrugging off civilian casualties and international opinion. Right now, the US is trying to do it "nicely", which simply doesn't work. The different factions just laugh at the US soldiers knowing that they aren't authorized to do anything that will really have an effect, or even effectively defend themselves.
Whenever US troops do take a major action, civilians are killed and citizens are horrified. Occasionally a few soldiers get pissed, go crazy, and kill innocents, and citizens are horrified. It's like fighting a small dog. You can easily kill it, but everyone will hate you for doing it. You can try to capture it without hurting it, but you'll get bitten a lot and everyone will laugh their ass off at you.
Aside from any code with the purpose of fascilitating a "shutdown" of the plane, the code for the radar data processing is what the US is most concerned to keep a well guarded secret. Also, 90% of the code for the F22 is written in Ada. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/air craft/f-22-avionics.htm
and this has what to do with the fighting on the ground? sorry but trying to cover over your wounded nationalist feelings and claiming you didn't lose vietnam doesn't change the point that all the technology in the world is no good to you if your enemy refuses to engage you in pitched battles.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I thought Mistress AdaCompiler delivered stern spankings for the use of any naughty words?
"It's not a military problem to control the situation they created? Yeah I suppose that about sums up America. Believe it or not, there is more to a war than the initial occupation. But then when has America ever managed to subdue anything bigger than a small Caribbean island?"
Japan? Germany? Italy? The South Eastern United States?
Those big enough for you?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Hell, half the software engineers involved in the project probably came over on the H1B anyway. Just buy the code from them.
Wow. I agree very strongly with your point. You're one of the few I think who have the courage to say this.
In truth, regardless of whose side you're on, war is supposed to be nasty and brutish. I can imagine the worst thing to happen to the US military is pervasive media and the internet. It magnifies everything a millionfold and filters war through the eyes of civilians. It should not. It hampers the efficacy of military operations because the military now attempts to please the public.
I agree with you - this war has become a nightmare of public relations because the US refuses to use crushing force to annihilate insurgents for fear of public outcry. Thus the irony of a military force doomed to failure for attempting to please the very people already predicting their demise.
Any military treatise preaches on the psychological aspects of war. For better or worse, the United States airs its dirty laundry for the world to see - on the news, online, message boards, etc. It sends a message of a country divided... a military CASTRATED. It's a shame, mostly to the soldiers who are in the field. Incidentally, your points about speed and decisiveness are key tenets of basic military philosophy as well - but group think in the US is a serious handcuff to that prospect.
There is no tactical reason for this conflagration to still exist - it's like the heavyweight pulling punches against a flyweight in the ring because the crowd is crying foul/unfair... etc. The same crowd will point derisively when the lightweight pulls out the decision. smh.
George Bush is an idiot - and the hesitance of this administration to close this out is damning. They've already taken the PR/IA hit... just close it the fuck out and pull out already.
un burrito me trampeó.
--John Quincy Adams
"One moment, please hold for the Prime Minister"
(pause)
"Hello, Mr. Stallman? I understand you have some experience applying political pressure to closed-source vendors, I wonder if..."
Let's be careful with blanket statements. Anyone who's spent more than 15 minutes studying the military history of the late 20th century knew damn well that Iraq was going to turn into a guerrilla nightmare. You can be assured that the military academy graduates who run the US armed forces fall into that category.
One of the problems with being a senior military officer in a democracy is having to say, "Can do, Sir!" with a smile on your face when your civilian leadership asks you to carry out an order. Even when you know those orders are stupid.
I think that you are confusing the Presidents convictions and his policies. The president thought that it was in the best interests of the United States that Saddam Hussein be removed from power and so he set out to make the case for removing him using what evidence he could gather to support his convictions. If you were looking to convince others that your ideas were correct would you not also attempt to gather evidence to support your case? We now know that some of that intelligence was incorrect, but you must remember that the job of the President, first and foremost, is to protect and defend the constitution and that sometimes means making important and time sensitive decisions based upon incomplete or partial information. Is the world better off without Saddam Hussein? Probably. Will history judge that the benefits were worth the costs? We may yet live long enough to find out. As for the suggestion of widespread public knowledge, this sounds suspiciously like the appeal to "conventional wisdom" that has been used in the past to marginalize reasonable objections to the common consensus. For my own part I am taking the long term view that we are better off fighting now then waiting for the next 9/11 to arrive out our shores.
It's not restraint, it's using the wrong tool for the wrong job. Let's contrast the first gulf war with the current one.
In the first gulf war we did not plan to occupy iraq so we flew something like 300 sorties a day dropping an ungodly amount of bombs on the place. We targeted and destroyed all kinds of crucial civilian infrastructure such as bridges, electrical generation facilites, water treatment plants, roads, factories etc. Our goal was to make the iraqis suffer so much that they would rise up and overthrow saddam so we worked very hard at hurting as many common iraqis as possible. As a result of these efforts and the sanctions that followed we killed close to two million iraqis including hundreds of thousands of children.
That was using the right tool for the right job.
In the second war we wanted to occupy iraq so we didn't want to destroy any infrastructure that we wanted to use ourselves so we didn't target water treatment facilities, bridges etc. We wanted to keep saddams palaces so we could move into them and set up shop. Wrong tool for the wrong job. The US military is awesome at killing, destroying, and making millions of people as miserable as possible. It sucks at police work and occupying an angry populace.
Wrong tool, wrong job.
evil is as evil does
The problem is that aside from you and a handful of really right wing nutcases nobody else really wants the US to conduct genocide at the scale you are calling for. When you are trying to occupy a country the size of iraq you are going to have to destroy anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of all building in the country and kill tens of millions of people in order to snuff out all opposition.
There is a minority of about 20 to 30 percent of americans who would rather enjoy killing ten million iraqis but since most americans would revolt at the thought it would be political suicide.
evil is as evil does
"Prime Minister Blair" is very much an Americanism, I'm fairly certain it's not a title that you would use as a prefix. Being British I'd call him Mr Blair if I was talking to him (well, I can think of a couple of other things to call him as well, but they would probably get me arrested saying them to his face). I think when he's announced it's something like "The Right Honourable Mr Tony Blair, The Prime Minister".
Ah, the old "stab-in-the-back" excuses already.
0 1/neocons200701
In the first place, not enough troops were sent to occupy Iraq. Then the Pentagon disbanded the Iraqi Army and ripped apart the Ba'athist infrastructure leaving a lot of *trained guys running around with grudges against the US military. Privatisation of occupation duties plus lack of control (for the sake of "efficiency") has led to rampant corruption - http://lrb.co.uk/v28/n21/harr04_.html This has led to an almost complete failure by US corporations to restore Iraqi infrastructure.
Let's face it, the US Main Stream Media has been controlled and castrated for years now - see the NY Times and it's suppression of the wire-tapping. The US military embedded journalists so as to control them. I see you're polling for control of the internet as well. How much does it take for you to say that the US fucked up? You sound almost like these guys: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/
As for the justness of this war, the sheer number of so-called honest people telling us lies in order to get us to go to war have been astounding. Weapons of mass destruction? Non-existent. Uranium? ditto. Saddam and Al Qaeda? Wrong. In the US, the neo-cons have even gone to the extreme of committing crimes (re: Valerie Plame) in order to justify this war. In the UK, the pressures of this power has forced an honest man to commit suicide. If the need to go to war was that just, why all this pressure?
And I have to say that the current US intransigence towards their supposedly closest ally smacks of, at the least, ingratitude. Brits are currently dieing in Iraq and Afghanistan, paying in blood for a "speicial relationship" which is being revealed as worthless when push comes shove. In contrast, I bet the US would hand the code over to the Israelis in a similar situation.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
We do not fight to occupy and oppress or to steal natural resources or to subdue and destroy merely for own security.
t he_United_States
... the great ideological battle of our times...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_
For starters, I suggest you read sections "Early national period", "Continental expansion", "Indian Wars", "Banana Wars", "The Boxer Rebellion", "Russian Revolution", and "Panama".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war
Then, for kicks, check out the "Cold War" section above.
Granted, this history is the sum of many imperfect people's actions. That said, believing the US only fights for noble causes is naive. The US has done some ugly things and allied itself with some ugly people in the past to further the agenda of those in the White House (be it good or bad).
Will they be satisfied with the restoration of the Islamic caliphate, the oppression of their women, and the brutal imposition of Sharia law...
There's a big difference between the present Middle East without US troops and a Middle East with a united Islamic empire. You're conveniently skipping several revolutions and not factoring other powers such as Israel into the equation.
Yes, theocracies are notoriously oppressive and intolerant. That said, what does that have to do with the "War on Terrorism"?
If we pulled out the Middle East now and allowed the cancer to grow unchecked then nothing would prevent that final terrible war...
Cancer? Final terrible war? Your post is littered with emotionally charged wording. It is full of black hats and white hats.
The reason for our struggle is
We're struggling to battle? You're not making much sense at this point. Did you mean Christianity vs. Islam, round n?
Yes, 3k Americans should be very important had they been defending their country against a violent invasion. However, in this case it was USA who attacked and should be held responsible for the 650k innocent people they've murdered.
a right tool for the job of "police work and occupying an angry populace"
Let us suppose for a moment it was reversed and the Iraqi army had invaded the US. You might have really hated Bush, you might have gone to protests against him, but I can't quite imagine US citizens welcoming in an invading force.
My best guess would be that the US hoped to get what they had in Iraq - puppet government to control their people, given the tools and blind-eye to do so by the US (in return for smoothly flowing oil).
The entire argument that the intention was merely to bring democracy is obvious jive. Take for example the recent elections in Palestine (which were considered to be free and fair) - the democratically elected government there was fair less corrupt than the PLO, but as the democratically elected view of the country moved away from desired US policy funded was halted (EU did the same). This was funding for hospitals etc and the lack of is is accepted as causing deaths of civilians.
You can only draw the conclusion that the stopping of funding was to punish the country for electing the 'wrong' democracy. While this punishment for voting the wrong way continues, I cannot see how any election result produced can be considered democratic.
No, the truly sad thing is that anybody believes those nonsense numbers. (Which, oddly enough, were released just before the US election, just like their last survey.)
655,000 War Dead? A bogus study on Iraq casualties
The Iraq Body Count project strongly rejects the 650,000 number as well.
I think that there are lies told in the pursuit of "peace" that equal or exceed those claimed to have been told in the pursuit of war.
As to Iraqi suffering, I don't recall there being massive protests around the world when Saddam invaded Iran, Kuwait, gassed the Kurds, or filled various mass grave sites. That leads me to believe that very few people in "peace movements" outside Iraq are genuinely concerned about Iraqi suffering. I do remember massive protests by the "peace movement" when the large multinational coalition prepared to eject the Iraqi Army from Kuwait in 1991. The protests were against the liberation of Kuwait, which leads me to believe that few people in the "peace movement" were against the suffering of the Kuwaiti people under occupation, or against the suffering of the Iraqi people under Saddam who was waging aggressive war to incorporate Kuwait as a province of Iraq. During the period that Iraq was under sanctions, there were protests against the US and not against Saddam for misusing the corrupt Oil for Food money to buy weapons and build palaces instead of buying food. The evidence seems to point to the "peace movement" being against the US and not against Iraqi suffering.
But the thing that puts Americans over the edge is the deaths of their troops? I don't quite understand that logic. Can someone be so kind as to explain that?
Americans don't want to see other Americans killed. They understand that people are likely to die in war, but prefer that it is the enemy soldiers if it is going to be anyone. That isn't hard to understand, is it?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"they don't engage our forces head on anymore. They'd all die and they know it."
very true. As I recall my history there was another army that was absolutely devestating when fought on its own terms. That was the british army in the days of cavalry and muskets. We even built a sizeable empire around it (and our navy). That army even defeated the supposudly unstoppable napoleon.
Then some people in one of our colonies learned to fight us on their terms. As I recall, they didnt march out with flags to meet us like gentlemen on the field of battle, but would ambush us.
The effect was devestating, and that army won. In fact they kicked us back to our own country and declared independence.
I believe its now called the united states of america.
Its amazing how many empires there have been, the greeks, the romans, the british, the french, we have all controlled vast empires through military might at one stage. And we have all learned the futility of relying purely on force of arms to maintain control of foreign countries.
I guess it's impossible to accept that lesson when you *are* the current military top dog. It took humiliation of our army to learn that lesson. I'd rather the US learned it without having to lose any more of its own servicemen.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Kirk offers to surrender himself and beam over, if Khan will let the Enterprise and its crew go. Khan accepts if Kirk also turns over all information the Enterprise has on Project Genesis....
a th_of_Khan
Kirk stalls, claiming difficulty in retrieving the data. This allows Kirk and Spock precious moments to retrieve the Reliant's security access prefix code from the Enterprise's computers. The transmitted code lowers the Reliant's shields, allowing the Enterprise to use its last bit of phaser power to damage the Reliant enough to force its retreat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_II:_The_Wr
Our goal was to make the iraqis suffer so much that they would rise up and overthrow saddam so we worked very hard at hurting as many common iraqis as possible.
What lunatic thought *that* could work? It will have had exactly the opposite effect.
The press make sure they don't (and this isn't a US thing it happens in all wars).
So they're not people, they're 'insurgents'. In WW2 they weren't people they were 'nazis'.
On the other side I'm sure they call the US troops infidels or invaders or something - same principle.
Meanwhile if one of the US troops gets killed we get news reports about 'Joe from Ohio, and here's film of his greiving family'.
I'm sure the other side do the 'Joe from Baghdad' story as well.
The crazy thing is we've been falling for it ever since mass media was invented...
In the first gulf war we did not plan to occupy iraq so we flew something like 300 sorties a day dropping an ungodly amount of bombs on the place. We targeted and destroyed all kinds of crucial civilian infrastructure such as bridges, electrical generation facilites, water treatment plants, roads, factories etc. Our goal was to make the iraqis suffer so much that they would rise up and overthrow saddam so we worked very hard at hurting as many common iraqis as possible. As a result of these efforts and the sanctions that followed we killed close to two million iraqis including hundreds of thousands of children.
Our goal in the first Gulf War wasn't to make the Iraqi people suffer, but to cripple the Iraqi war machine. Armored vehicles and supply trucks generally need bridges to cross deep water, and wars don't go well without them. Supply trucks and many military units need roads. Roads that have craters from bombs make for slow driving, assuming you can do it at all. Aircraft need landing strips to fly and fight. Airport landing strips are unusable with craters on the runway. Military units that can't move, fly, or fight are going to fail. Factories making ammunition, weapons, spare parts, and other essentials for war don't get work done without electricity. Government workers without electricity for light and computers aren't very producctive. The Coalition forces went out of their way to avoid damaging protected classes of targets. What you've written is false.
It wasn't we who killed Iraqis due to sanctions; it was Saddam. If Saddam hadn't abused the Oil for Food program to buy weapons and build palaces instead of buying food, far fewer Iraqis would have died. If you have 10 kids and spend all of your paycheck on booze and drugs, whose fault is it if your kids are starving? Is it your fault, or your employer's?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Again, it's very saddening that the war had to take all these many lives and time, for American military leaders to realize that it's not working.
We apologize for that, Recently it was noticed by the Secret service that George Bush had a very shiny Paperweight on his desk. It has beenthere for nearly 4 years now, removing it last month solved many of the decision problems he was having.
Research shows it was left by the Clintion Administration...
So this war is Bill Clinton's fault, he left something very shiny and distracting on the oval office desk which distracted the President.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It also locks you in to buy only the missiles that the US wants you to buy (i.e. theirs).
You don't need a lab to make mud.
Case in point: the Tet offensive. Technically, we won that campaign. But we lost the war largely as a result. The North Vietnamese and VC weren't supposed to be able to do that kind of anymore. We didn't lose. We found out that most of the progress we'd thought we made wasn't real.
When the enemy knows our history better than you do, you're in trouble.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Very nicely written. More importantly though, it is crucial to realize that we cannot win in Iraq because victory is not defined to be anything realistic or satisfactory.
What would G.W call a victory? A stable country? There never will be a stable country given sectarian divides and a lust for power, with or without American troops. Saddam kept it stable using tyranny to repress the Shiite desire to rule (the doctrines of that sect are political by nature). We cannot do the same. In addition, we cannot be satisfied with stability if it involves a shiite theocracy that crushes the other groups into submission.
Weird thing about dictatorships is: people come to accept them, to be content with them. War wakes the ambitions in people up. To succeed, we need to crush those ambitions and force our version of "democratic" government on the citizens, then be ready to go back and do it again if needed.
Of course, that is a kind of success we could do without.
Show him the permanent seat the United States has on the UN Security Council.
"Show him a stealth bomber."
Show him the European bases they operate from.
"Explain to him the functioning of a nuclear weapon."
Show him the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
"Show him a video of a Jihadi."
Show him US support for the House of Saud and Saddam Hussein.
"THEN see what he says."
To care more about fellow countrymen is indeed a normal human trait, by 200+:1 ratio it becomes an inhuman trait.
Actually, the DoD never really "used" Ada. There was a mandate for a while. Some programs used Ada during this time. Most did not.
There was lots of talk about it and in general it was a success (though Ada initially was somewhat ahead of its time and it clearly showed).
When programs failed for a variety of reasons, people would try to point to the Mandate, Ada, their dogs or anything. Eventually, the mandate was repealed and replaced with a saner DoD statement that said "Just figure out what the right thing is to do on each job.". Which then got interpreted as "Quick thou shall use C, I mean C++, I mean C#, I mean Python" or whatever the flavor of the day was. Contracts still come in and have mandated languages.
DoD software was and is a mess largely because:
People who know very little about software try to force policies without really understanding anything about software.
There is a constant belief that the COTS world knows what they are doing so we need to do what they are doing (but DoD software is always 5-10 years behind commercial software now so they pick things up just after they have been abandoned by the commercial world.
95% of all software is a mess.
I have not seen any requests for proposal mandate Ada in about 10 years. Some new projects still select it for new development. Most seem to have forgotten that it even exists. There is a new Ada standard getting ready to be released (Actually, the standard has been available for a while but it takes a while to get things through the ISO board). There was a pretty good overview of its new features in Crosstalk magazine a few months ago: http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2006/08/inde x.html
In any case, the vast majority of JSF software is indeed C++. There is some Ada 95 in some places but it is the exception rather than the rule and seems to be limited to safety critical areas of JSF.
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
No the problem isn't people shooting f16's with ak47's.
The problem is thinking you can use an f16 to shoot a guy with an ak47.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Douhet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Douhet
Never mind that it was disproven during the Second World War, since 'round-the-clock strategic bombing certainly didn't make the German populace rise up against Hitler (or Londoners rise up against Churchill during the Blitz). From my grandfather's personal experience as a POW, it made the civilians hate Allied airmen.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
So, let me get this right: The US is gonna turn down 120 Billion dollars because they don't want to show their code, to their only remaining supporter?
That's dummer than Dumbya on a bad day. Scratch that, that's the dumbest shit ever.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
It sucks at police work and occupying an angry populace.
I will get modded to hell for this, but here we go....
The populace is angry because Saddam (who, don't get me wrong, was a complete mental case) was about the only thing stopping the country descending into all-out civil war. The US have gone in, removed the complete mental case with no plan as to how they will prevent the descent into all-out civil war, and now are finding it hard work because there's angry locals everywhere they look. Well surprise surprise. Wonder why they're angry?
I seem to recall a number of instances of the US propping up dictators - hell, even Saddam was US' pall once.
How about if you people stopped the shinny-eyed self-delusion that the US will use it's power for some abstract "greater good" and once and for all admitted that the US does (like all other countries) use it's power for it's own good (in the case of Iraq that would be stability of the US oil supplies).
History is full death and destruction when the greed of some was dressed in the grand, fine clothes of noble objectives - it seems that some people either never learn or keep believing everybody else is ignorant and dumb.
Nowadays, half of the cost of developing new aircraft is the software. You'd think the super-advanced F-22 would have required billions of dollars at materials development and design, but no, over half the cost was software alone. So with how much the US has spent on the software, you can see why giving it away for free would bug them.
We're planning on renewing our air-force by buying some new figther-planes, and it looks as if Eurofigther, SAS-Gripen and the JSF are the most likely candidates.
The first suggestion from the US was that we'd not even be allowed to *see* the sourcecode for the JSF under NDA. I think that may have gotten resolved, but being allowed to *change* anything is out of the question.
It's ridicolous. Why would any sovereign nation accept buying military material where they're *dependant* on a foreign power for even trivial bugfixes ?
Just wondering, is it possible in your worldview for a three year old child to be "enemy"?
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain