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Army of Davids Beats Pentagon Procurement
chris-chittleborough writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that 'a Marine officer in Iraq, a small network-design company in California, a nonprofit troop-support group, a blogger and other undeterrable folk designed a handheld insurgent-identification device, built it, shipped it and deployed it in [Iraq] in 30 days.' Compare this to the Automated Biometric Identification System, a multi-megabuck Pentagon project now 2 years old. With bureaucracy increasingly strangling innovation, will agile smaller businesses be able to accomplish what once required a sprawling government project?"
You used "government" and "innovation" in the same sentence.
A great story of how I won't take no for an answer solves problems. I just hope, and bet, it will save lives on the ground in Iraq.
So does their device withstand extremes of temperature duration both
operation and storage? High humidity? Is it impervious to dust?
How does it handle shock and vibration?
20+ years ago, I worked for a company that designed & manufactured
power supplies for the military. It's one thing to design a quick
& dirty one-off, proof-of-concept. It's quite another to build a
production device that will withstand continued use in a multitude
of military environments.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Big business controlls all. Think about the billions of dollars of waste in iraq.. our taxpayer money. A couple days ago i read that the government shipped 4 BILLION DOLLARS IN CASH on palletes over to iraq. What kind of moron government does that? Now how much of that 4 billion in unaccounted cash has been dipped in by insurgents, our own government, and hell probably even our own troops. (pallate of cash worth millions, no one is watching, its human nature sadly). Anyhow beyond all that, the decisions in iraq are made with heart and not thought. Small businesses can't make the money the Halliburtons makes, but maybe they care more about the troops than Halliburton..
I once learned (or was taught) at a consortium if you (as a corporation) couldn't build a new major application/suite of applications in six months, you shouldn't do it. I think the message wasn't that if the task was more than six months it was too hard... the message (in my interpretation) was you should find a better way to get to your endpoint, i.e., in a business setting you had to be more "agile" (sorry).
I think this is even more true for this example. Bigger organizations (and they don't seem to get more bigger than the government, eh?) beget less ability to:
When lives are at stake it is even more/most glaring. It would be nice to see the government (whoever that is) take a lesson from this. However, different pieces of the government maintain a stranglehold grip on their turf and are generally loathe to loosen that grip.
Less is more, but it's hard to convince the more to let the less get 'er done.
Now without all of those pesky "legal restraints", "checks and balances", and "aquittals"! Now, when you round up every male between the ages of 16 and 70 after an attack and have them fingerprinted, everyone else will know that they're all suspected terrorists.
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
Something tells me that if we drafted the appropriate industries to build a *REAL* military industrial complex, and punished profiteering adequately in the first place, our troops could have had this technology (instead of a stupid deck of playing cards) in 2002, instead of waiting until 2007 for it to be delivered. But since Bush doesn't want to impact the profitability of this war, we have to wait for a significantly patriotic David to identify who the enemy is. It's exactly this lack of vision that has turned Afghanistan back into a Taliban-controlled country and destroyed our success in Iraq.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The government will never be as efficient as a business. This is especially true in procurement, where there are enormous safeguards to try and restrict corruption. Of course, these safeguards don't always work. But they have been added over time as people learned to cheat the system, and are there for a reason. What we lose in agility we gain, somewhat, in transperency and review. Its a trade-off, and it makes the article's contention a truism. Its also intentional.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
With bureaucracy increasingly strangling innovation, will agile smaller businesses be able to accomplish what once required a sprawling government project?
I think a better question is: "Are sprawling government projects and bureaucracy really necessary?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
That's what we called it when I was in the Army in the mid-80's. The PRC-77 was the size of a briefcase, carried on your back, and fairly pricey. Cost far more than handheld walkie talkies that operated on the same freqs. But the PRC-77 was far more robust. When it's raining artillery, robust is what you want.
Best Slashdot Co
If my login wasn't clue enough...
I've had so many negative experiences when dealing with governmental customers. While there is a lot of blame to be laid on the large companies, I can't fathom (or rather I don't want to) how much money has been wasted by people who really don't understand what they want, or how much it will cost to actually get what they want.
I've spent months doing work only to have it erased by the customer, worked another month, only to have them revert back to the origin. Only then do they discover that you can't just 'go back' once production has started without huge costs.
Or maybe they do understand it, but just don't care.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
That the quick and dirty app working now usually trumps the super-duper uber app that may get built in 3 or 4 years.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Oh man, do you know how many puppies will be blended because of this article's title! Don't feed the monster!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
In situations like this, I would be careful the source. This is coming from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which is extraordinarily conservative. I'm not saying that this isn't a shameful example of the Pentagon getting bogged down in bureaucracy. But anything coming out of the Wall St Journal's editorial board smacks of political agenda. In this case "government == bad. free enterprise == good". And this is one of the directors of the editorial board to boot.
Just my 3 cents.
had a system for this.
There is a difference between trying to get everything perfect and good enough. This is good enough. Waiting around trying to figure out how to get all this networked isn't it going to help.
The moment you try to limit funding to a wasteful Pentagon program you're accused of hating the troops.
And so it goes.
The standard rip against wasteful education spending is, "You can't just throw money at a problem and expect it to be fixed!"
Yet that's done 10x with the military and no one bats an eye.
I do police RMS systems for a living. They don't have all this most magic of technology. Usually, roadside, the cop will radio in to the dispatcher to have them run an NCIC check, although increasingly they have the infrastructure to put this on a laptop in the car.
Anyways, more on topic, it isnt about the government not being able to develop this device. The government doesnt develop such devices, we do, in fact we sell something quite similar. Governments have to bid contracts and select one. The problem, as presented in TFA, is that they are trying to fight a war with peacetime procurement rules.
It's not "hurr US too stupid to make a database", it's "dems dont want to let them have the funding they need".
Besides, aren't you guys going to freak out about the privacy implications of a database that people can put names in? ONE THATS USE BY DUN DUN DUNNNN THE US GOVERNMENT?!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"will agile smaller businesses be able to accomplish what once required a sprawling government project?"
No, because they don't have the political power to actually get large contracts. Their larger competitors will use their influence on legislators to get "written in" to large budget bills. Can you say, "No bid contract"? Their less scrupulous competitors will bribe legislators or military procurement. We've already seen this in Iraq with everything from oil and water, to flack jackets.
The most insidious tool that's used are the absurd design requirements documents. They set out an often completely unnecessary set of requirements that often only one company, or perhaps two very large companies can provide. This keeps any bidding process "under control". What will be delivered may not even meet those requirements, but only after years of delays, "best effort", and disappointment. The only good thing that seems to come out of the larger projects are the much derided "slush funds" that let individuals actually innovate without being put under this absurd process.
Why is it set up this way? Is there a better way with the Bureaucracy we have? Is tearing it down the way to go? Good questions. DARPA and some small programs try to fix this around the edges, but something with this much money in it will always draw the crooks.
NASA is subject to the same pitfalls. It just costs less money, and fewer people die.
How long will it take for the government to forbid the use of the new device?
Technoli
Yeah, smaller companies distribute and process information more effectively, so they are almost always better suited to developing new things than the government or the large contractors. However, producing old things repeatably to the same spec and with organizational resiliancy is something smaller companies have a harder time doing, so from a long term perspective it's not a clear win for smaller companies.
The only time the government really beats out private industry (and to a greater extent, larger orgs beat out smaller ones) on new technology innovation is when it's a money issue (the materials really do cost billions of dollars). As technology has gotten cheaper and become more accessible, that advantage has slowly disappeared.
A larger issue than size, though, is that governments (most of them, this one in particular) tend to recruit homogenous workforces and encourage groupthink. Workers are encouraged (directly or through lack of promotions, harassment, etc.) to "fit in" at an institutional level. So, it's not surprising that the government is not as innovative as other places.
People lately are often heard saying that the US government doesn't "pay enough" to get good people. I dont know about you all, but I'd give up a little pay to work on interesting projects and with good people. The government's problem is that it doesn't -like- people who are creative, innovative, and different and actively selects them out - not the pay.
We know that we can build equal equipment cheaper and faster, but just think of the children of the KBR executives that will not receive a tropical island for christmas because some do goodder was more interested in protecting troops than Haliburton profits. I mean, my god, if our desire was to simply stop terrorism we would have another president right now, and probably would have put bin laden on trail rather than hussain.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The government doesn't spend $10 on a screw. They spend $10 on an M2.5 truss head stainless steel threaded fastening device.
Free Market > Government Mandate
Nancy Pelosi just wants her Silicon Valley financers to get a piece of the action ... and let's increase the H1B quota while we're at it. The newly unemployed Americans can serve as cannon fodder .... er ... ah ... biometric machine operators in Anbar province.
I think they might need a little more than thier eyeballs. What about the time the american troops shot up a BBC Van covered in BBC identification and stickers? What about the recent "hero" in his plane taking out a british soldier? What we need on the battlefield is real identification of targets. This device is probably a good implementation of such a device, but more similar are needed. obviously he can't just rig up a load and sell them however.
All I could think of is that they found a nice security hole into Iraq.
I think I have a minor correction. The "friendly fire" incident you're probably refering to happened during the invasion in 2003. It took this long for the video to come to light.
Any time you have one group of people buying things for another group of people you are guaranteed a mess. It doesn't matter if it's .gov, .mil or .com.
.gov & .mil know they will have a career afterwards selling into their organizations so they are picked and pick people who play the game. Again since it's not their lives on the line what do they care.
The solution is to let the people who need it buy it. The problem with all of the above is that
So, call me an ignorant foreigner (I'm Canadian), but why are US military forces doing the job of a domestic police force in a middle-eastern country?
I swear to god I'm not trolling - but for the life of me, I don't understand why you're shipping guys halfway around the world to do someone else's job.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
uh, no--what we NEED to do is vacate this battlefield that we created and have NO right to be on.
Trying to fight a "major war"? We are not at war and have not been since 1945.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
IAANAT (I Am A Navy Acquisition Type). Don't give me the "ditching the peacetime acquisition system would fix this" argument - innumerable, half-assed products are developed and dumped on the troops during wartime in the name of getting things to the field quickly. They get fixed only after it catches fire and kills the crew. Or they don't work after falling in salt water. Or something like that. Wartime is no better. Troops in the field always want the latest and greatest Right Now; they don't care that 79 other guys are asking for the same thing, but a little different, resulting in 80 incompatible systems that each carry their own, unique logistics tail.
I also can say that the big contractors are indispensable for some things. Lockheed Martin maintains and updates the monster that is Aegis, for example. David has no ability to do this. Maybe an army of Davids overseen by LockMart acting as lead integrator, but otherwise no.
The acquisition process has serious problems, don't get me wrong. But anecdotes don't make a good argument.
I'm quite certain you've never seen a free market in health care.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
It's news that a small group of committed individuals moves faster than Department of Defense procurement? Continental drift moves faster than Department of Defense procurement.
It can take decades for a new weapons system to go from concept to prototype to deployment. Look how long systems like the F-22 fighter were in the procurement pipe. The DoD procurement process is so lengthy that by the time the system is deployed, the threat it was designed to counter has often disappeared.
Read my blog.
As you seem to be talking about healthcare here, I'll put the whole free market vs gov't in perspective. The most "free market" healthcare system in the world, America's, seems pretty good except for a couple of things: a) cost, and b) availability. In the US the poorest and the neediest get to ride the train for free, as it would be impossible to pay for healthcare on their own. The upper class effectively rides the train for free as well because a very small percentage of their income goes to healthcare (especially as there is a maximum tax for medicare). The middle class get's screwed with large bills to cover not just their own private insurance, but also pays into the social medicare/medicaid that they can't use because they earn too much. As far as availability goes, it's even worse. Only certain hospitals are covered by medicare, only certain doctors accept it. Why? Because they charge too much and the gov't says "whoa...no way man." If a rich person needs a pacemaker installed, he can choose the finest cardiovascular surgeon in the country. If a pensioner requires the same procedure he'd have to settle for whatever surgeon is available at his local hospital. The middle class man needing a pacemaker had better sell his house because the insurance company will try they're damndest to screw him over; and they'll likely win.
Let's compare this all to a social healthcare system. The government pays for all non-elective procedures, all follow up medicine, and all preventive care, and they do it for everyone, rich, poor, and in-between. The best part too? Everyone pays their fair share. The poor pay little to nothing, the middle class family would pay roughly what they pay now for insurance premiums, and the rich would pay a non-capped percentage of their income. In the end, everyone pays a little less as there are no insurance companys needing to make a profit. I'm not saying a company doesn't deserve the right to try and make a profit, just that a company who maximize their profits on the suffering of their clients (see Katrina for many examples) shouldn't be allowed to operate.
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- conflict of interest
- conflict and interest
- interest in conflict
- etc.
(Don't take this seriously: I'm not trying to make a statement, just playing around with language.)everyone in business is familiar with the concept of playing chess by commitee. it doesn't work. any large beaurocratic organization is going to have increasing momentum and inherent inefficiency as it grows. all government wants to do is grow ... it's like a giant club of people who want the easy life of no responsibility, no fiscal goals and no reprecussions for not accomplishing anything.
the huge companies of the world have similar problems, but the main difference is on some level they are required to be fiscally viable. otherwise, they'll run out of money eventually and fail. the government is required to do nothing but maintain status-quo.
government has no need for innovation, new ideas, efficiency or even deadlines. they don't need these things because they are funded by the never-ending money tree that is taxes and their ability to constantly raise them to continue stuffing their "hard-working" pockets.
it should surprise no one that the government can't deploy anything in a remotely reasonable amount of time, accomplish any of its goals or do anything worthwhile really. the real question is, why aren't smaller more agile companies beating the government on these projects more often?
-asleep
Large corporations also suffer from beaurocracy and inflexibility. I can't believe I'm saying this being as lefty-liberal as I am, but the difference is that companies follow a natural life cycle. They start out small and agile, get bigger through success against their less nimble rivals, become less nimble themselves, and get beaten in their turn. Government has no natural rivals and thus never dies. It just shambles on, zombie-like.
;-)
I'll put that down to people's fear of not being able to support themselves, and thus being unable to let go of a job even if that job is no longer relevant. Perhaps if rights to food, clothing and shelter were garaunteed, government departments that had outlived their usefulness would be less resistant to being dissolved.
Whew! Almost let a pro-capitalist thought slip through unchallenged.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
1: a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government; especially : a rebel not recognized as a belligerent
2: one who acts contrary to the policies and decisions of one's own political party
Setting aside the legality of the occupation for a moment, the typical insurgent isn't defending his homeland, but more so fighting for his particular faction to gain control or power, doing whatever harm against others in relatiation for "being wronged" whether by United States or another competing faction.
The troops at this point aren't so much fighting a convential war, but rather working as an "industrial strength" version of a police force to stop one group from attacking the other and vice-versa, getting caught in the middle from "meddling" with each groups objectives. As a police force, they need the tools of a police force in order to locate and identify troublemakers and perform their investigations more efficiently. This is one example (of many) tools to function in this manner. Remember that the military is better equipped for fighting wars and not function as a domestic police force. Equipment like this would allow them to function better with their current mission as such.
Think of it this way for a moment: Would a city's police force be very effective if you took away all of their offender databases, mobile data terminals and other tech tools? Yes, you could equip them all with body armor and machine guns, but their effectiveness is then limited to "shoot first and ask questions later". If the police were only allowed to operate in this mode, it's no wonder that all sorts of uprisings and attacks would result.
There are many reasons why some military equipment should withstand such environmental stresses, but applying the same rules to all equipment makes little sense if the end result is that the US army does not readily have the equipment. Sometimes, it is better to have access to many units at a cost effective price and time than a much smaller numer of no-more capable (albeit more reliable) units. I think the Israeli forces have recognised this.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Says the guy typing a message on the "internet", a technology innovated by the government.
You mean megacorp + government bureaucracy = incompetence? Man, I had no idea!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
As much as I like to hear that small businesses are more agile than larger ones, or governments, I think the fact that such devices are needed proves one fact: war is never cheap. Whether you count the cost in lives or the pieces of equipment that is lost, you will pay a hefty fee to make war. I'm not trying to diverge the general topic away from the article itself, rather I think the article gives way to this sort of assessment in that we're seeing that war takes a heavy toll on our infrastructure, public and private. Perhaps this war in Iraq will teach the next two or so generations to keep their butt out of it for a little while, or until it's absolutely necessary, but that's me for hoping.
-- Bridget
I foresee that a great many Iraqis are going to be hacking off their thumbs to get rid of the "implanted GPS device".
Look at the war the US lost in Vietnam (looks a lot like the Iraq war). The US troops had planes, jeeps, tanks which guess what, they kept working but got stuck in the mud or were very slow in the woods. The Vietnamese defenders were using freakin' bicycles to get their stuff transported. They were much more quiet, they did it without being noticed, didn't need an airstrip, and they didn't get stuck as often. Of course, I imagine their tires would frequently go flat or their frames rusted through, probably much more often than the US equipment but the US equipment was very inefficient at doing the same job.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Along similar lines to this article, during the middle ages The Thema of Byzantium (Present Day Greece and Turkey) were military districts made up of farmers/soldiers who independently procured all their own uniforms, weapons and provisions without a centralized military bureaucracy. They came up with some interesting military inventions such as "Greek Fire".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thema
Hmm, interesting. Where did you read that? I was under the impression that defense procurement is universally slow, inflexible, rigorous, and paranoid (make a $100 radio cost $5,000 by building it to withstand a nuke).
It'd be interesting to hear about a military that has managed to reduce cost and delay without sacrificing reliability of critical systems.
My bicyles
Oh, this is brilliant. First of all, all your facts are wrong. The actual facts are that vast majority of Iraqis (and Afghanis) want the US out of their country AS SOON AS PRACTICAL, but CERTAINLY NOT NOW. The vast majority of Iraqis (and Afghanis) are in favor of the Constitution that they ratified, and the republican government operating under it, meaning they are OPPOSED TO THE INSURGENCY. You are also quite confused about what the Insurgents are doing. They are waging a religious war on each other, and on the people and the government. But attack "the occupiers" is their last priority, and only done to score points with their constituents. The majority of US troops support the war, not oppose it. The majority of the US public wants the war to be over ASAP, but are not so foolish as to support immediate abandonment. But the point that is clear is that you have no concept of the meaning of democracy. The form of democracy practiced in the U.S. is the form of republicanism proscribed by our constitution. Under this form, the people elect a President every four years, and this President commands the armed forces -- as opposed to the people commanding the armed forces by popular poll, or the armed forces commanding themselves by popular poll.
I once worked for a UK based defence company, in a division that wrote Avionics Simulators for various Air Forces, but mainly the UK. Typically the project quotes were well into $M's and generally taking 8 to 24 months to complete and deliver. DiD a company (now defunkt) were responsible for writing Flight Sim games for the PC (EF2000, F22, Tornado..) put a quote in that was well below a few hundred $Ks. The UK Ministry of Defence procurement struggled to cope and comprehend on how they could delivery something so complex, so cheaply and well ahead of the estimates the usual defense companies quoted. In essence, they can do this by being lean, mean and having people prepared to work well into the night, rather than ageing 9 to 5 ers, in positions that they have held for twenty years, and are awaiting retirement. A.M
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. - HGTTG
The experience of people who are there and who have been there is important, but everyone's individual experience is still just that - it doesn't give an overview, you may miss very important features of the situation that didn't occur where you are (and, of course, it leaves out the experiences of Iraqis).
My guess would be that the experience of people actually talking to Iraqi's every day incorporates far more Iraqi experience than pretty much anyone sitting in the US.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I had one of those and it was a beast. I froze it solid once in sub-zero temps, once it thawed it worked fine again (although the screen was unusually dim for about a week afterwards). I cooked it in the cab of a truck in the desert in 100+ temps, once it cooled off it worked fine again. I dropped it many times. I stepped on it at least three times. Once at a party someone through it across the room like a frisbee. Nothing could kill it.
I know it's the WAR AGAINST TERROR, but isn't anyone concerned that the US Military gave the Iraqi police which has been implicated in numerous atrocities and is not going to be under direct control of the US for the infinite future a means to fingerprint every man woman and child? That will be really useful if they have to hunt down non-Shiites/non-Sunnites/non-Kurds in the upcoming ethnic cleansing.
/. when this technology will trickle down to your local police department. No drivers license? Let me fingerprint you. Out in a public place? Let me fingerprint you. Smoking in public? Hey, lemme get that wireless fingerprinterthingy.
Since the Brits and the US military have to go out and dismantle police units that freelance as death squads on a regular basis, this will probably show up at a local "drag out the Sunnies and shoot them" rouge checkpoint very soon.
I'll be looking forward to the outcry on
and is nothing to do with 'protecting' troops
Then we can have another one to keep the ggod times rolling
The "insurgent" is the guy who just shot your ass. Brought to you by one pissed-off American, $0.00, and about 43 seconds of time. Do I get an article on /.?
It's ok to have a device that might fail if you have a low-tech backup procedure that will suffice until you can get a replacement.
In this case specifically, if your thumb-print reader fails, all soldiers are already equipped with a low-tech backup - a knife to cut off the thumb for scanning later.
paintball
First, undeniably, I'm categorically happy when the little guys get things done, leaving the big bureacracy in the mud.
But notice; these are the people with the $600 toilet seats. These people need a million dollars just to decide if they HAVE a million dollars. Putting money in these people's hands ensures that 1% gets to it's destination.
So: do we really want to rely on our government for our every need? Do you think they'd take the time, and make better judgements than we would at the local level? I think you know the answer to that.
When the Congress was in direct contol of the USPS, they wasted MILLIONS on simple crap like "The uniforms should be blue, with grey stripes!" and about the time they arrived, "No, wait! They should be grey with BLUE stripes!". As much as he was a crook, Richard Nixon did one thing that improved your life: he's credited with the reformation, a relative privatization of the USPS. This included the zip code, the idea that "we only get so much- we can't waste it" and "lets charge less if the senders do the sorting for us".
This revamp made a HUGE change in the sucess of the postal service. Giving anything to Congress means they will micro-manage it; it's their way.
A similar problem exists in the Pentagon, as this story shows.
Know who got this right, when it was most important? Britain.
Before the war, they needed a fighter plane, but couldn't make it LOOK like they were shopping for one. (Might push them into war) They held "Float Plane Races" and offered huge contracts for the one that could make it around the track the fastest. Well, take off the floats, and you get a light, strong, fast aircraft that can carry bombs, too. It quite literally saved Britain that Supermarine was able to win that little race. Might have even saved the world.
But remember that ever time you ask for your government for something that wasn't in the original Constituion (like welfare, farm subsidies and the like) we're using the wrong tool for the job. See AMTrack; there are routes based on which senator wants it to go. It goes places people don't need. And it's about to cost billions just to bail it out, AGAIN. Disaster.
Smaller government is good. I just wish the Republicans hadn't forgotten that.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
In a lot of cases, they can. Its a question of can they make it through the government beuracracy and procurement process. There are no no-bid contracts for things that actually work, are the only available solution, are available immediately and can save lives. We only have no-bid contracts for corporate cronies who contribute to political campaigns.
A case in point...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14686871/
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
Please. Get YOUR facts straight. 72% of soldiers in Iraq want to be home now. http://www.zogby.com/NEWS/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075 Define "democracy" however you want, but the simple fact is that a majority of the public opposes the war (verify this with nearly any poll taken in the last year--or witness the public ousting the Republicans from Congress in the last election), and yet "our" government continues to fund and escalate the war--an inherently undemocratic outcome that is expressly against the will of the people. The United States government is the reason for the civil war in Iraq. We invaded and demolished much of the country and its economy. We disbanded the old military and government apparatus. The puppet government and constitution the US government set up in Iraq enshrines ethnic divisions, playing different factions off of each other. We use militias of one ethnic group against other ethnic groups, further heightening differences. This is classic divide-and-conquer strategy. All of the violence in Iraq and its consequences stem from the illegal invasion and occupation. The longer the US stays in Iraq the worse the situation will become. The US military is not a stabilizing force, nor is it rebuilding the country. There may temporarily be greater violence when we leave, but there will definitely be greater violence if we stay--and the Iraqis cannot form their own government and civil society under the yoke of a brutal occupation.
Great. So our morons in Iraq are going to fingerprint (and perhaps photograph) "suspected insurgents".
I can't think of a more idiotic way to deal with the insurgency.
Exactly what good do fingerprints do you? Or even photos of suspected insurgents? The latter may have some use in that you can show them to informants and get an ID, then give copies to patrols who can spot the guy and pick him up - IF you KNOW he's an insurgent, not just a "suspect". And if he's a "suspect", THEN what do you do? Toss him in Abu Ghraib and torture him until he "confesses"? Right, real effective so far.
But fingerprints? Useful ONLY for identifying someone you HAVE picked up, geniuses! And only for someone you have picked up BEFORE as well!
This is just makework. It's useless in actually doing anything to WIN the counter-insurgency. Utterly useless. Even if you arrest five times more people than the US is now - with its random sweeps yanking in everybody on the street after an incident - it will do absolutely nothing to stem recruitment and motivation for the insurgency.
Morons. That word is WHY the US lost the war - and will lose the next one in Iran with far more devastating consequences on the US economy, military, and geopolitical credibility.
Expect to be at war with Iran in the next three to six months. A third aircraft carrier group is on the way into the Pacific, probably heading for the Indian Ocean as support for the two in the Gulf region.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
While some independent projects are bound to be faster than government projects, you'd be amazed at the completely unpredictable environments military equipment works in. It has to work in the rain, when thrown in the mud, when filled with dust from Arabian winds, when a private tries to connect everything backwards, be usable to people who've never seen it before, take shockwaves from incoming artillery, sit in a black metal container in the sun when its 130 degrees, sit in a metal container in the -30 degree arctic, be jumped on repeatedly when you're trying to save your buddies in a fight and you don't care what you're walking on...
The military isn't efficient. But they are very good at preparing for the vast array of impossible conditions that military operations take place in.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Your dictionary definition aside, the people that the US is killing in Iraq (650,000 at last count by the reputable medical journal The Lancet) are regular, ordinary people. Most of the so-called "insurgents" are people fighting an illegal foreign occupier--or the puppet regime we installed that lacks popular support.
As for your laughable comment about the police... I say disband the police! Their primary purpose is to uphold and defend the highly unequal status quo in society. They do not prevent crime or make the public safer (far from it--they often brutalize and oppress the public). The roots of the modern police force have far more in common with the colonial slave patrols that wealthy planters hired to return escaped slaves. Throughout US history the police have been a tool used by the ruling class to manipulate elections, crush union organizing, murder/discredit political dissidents and infiltrate/destroy popular movements. Society would be better off without them.
Read "Our Enemies in Blue" by Kristian Williams and open your eyes.
With big business funding the very bills (and politicians) that create inefficiency.
Quack, quack.
If there's somebody shooting at you, you're not going to take the time to fingerprint them before shooting back. And if there's bystanders about, you're going to tell them to get out of the way, not try to fingerprint them.
For a radio, or a GPS, or a rifle, or any of a dozen other things, I can understand spending five times as much to get something 20% less likely to break - cause if one of those picks the wrong time to stop working, people are going to die quickly. But something designed for use in a law enforcement roll doesn't have to be that overengineered. When performing a law enforcement mission, your not going to be cut off from your base and getting blown up.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
If they'd wanted to win we would have mobilized a couple million soldiers and actually had control of the country from day one.
This... they planned for a 4 week operation. In and out, throw up the "Mission Accomplished" banner and march down Main Street to cheering throngs.
I don't know what you call this shit, but it ain't a war.
They're already spinning up the "Democrats made us lose George Bush's Folly"?
When are you guys going to start taking responsibility for your own fucking incompetence? I suppose next we're going to hear the "soldiers were too lazy to fight" canards like we did after Vietnam. Sheesh
Bush has received every funding request he's asked for up until this point. Every single one. We're 4 years down the road, and things are worse now than before 9/11. And now you want to lay the blame on someone else, because you are too much of a moral coward to admit you were wrong all along.
On whether or not you own Halliburton stock.
If you had bought in 2000, you'd have a 500% gain by now.
> you have no concept of the meaning of democracy. The form of democracy
> practiced in the U.S. is the form of republicanism proscribed by our
> constitution
Only if you're a Federalist...
That would certainly make the 72 virgins in the promiced land a mote point as well
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"You don't go to war with the military you want. You go to war with the military you have."
Issues of government (in)competence and procurement arcana aside, let me offer an alternative explanation.
We, through our elected representatives, have not faced up to the fact that we're in the occupation and counter-insurgency business for the long term.
We've created a military with unprecedented tactical agility -- which doesn't help in this situation, as they trudge out on patrols and get picked off on the way back. We've equipped them so they are more lethal per person than any military in history -- which is downright harmful. What we can infer about this is that we want our guys to fly in, kick the shit out of anybody they have to, then get the hell out.
Rushing new technology into the hands of troop is les than ideal for many reasons. Nor should you need to do it if you anticipated how you'd be using the troops correctly. The first weeks of the Iraq war showed how well the troops were equipped, trained and structured for the ass kicking duties we thought we'd be using them for. The remainder showed how poorly we'd planned the aftermath; the intention was to be well out of there by now. We were assured that while nobody could predict how long it would take, that people who said it would take years were crazy or something.
The bottom line is the reason we are bogged down in Iraq isn't bureaucratic incompetence, it is strategic incompetence.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"The Wall Street Journal reports that 'a Marine officer in Iraq, a small network-design company in California, a nonprofit troop-support group, a blogger and other undeterrable folk designed a handheld insurgent-identification device, built it, shipped it and deployed it in [Iraq] in 30 days.'"
The wikification of government solutions.
Face it ... the large military contractors (the Raytheons, the Halliburtons, the whomevers) are not rewarded for their innovations. They're rewarded, in units of large contracts for weapons systems with questionable necessity and dubious quality, for their contributions to the campaigns of the political leaders who control those contracts. Can you said "quid pro quo"? Sure you can. And the more impressive-sounding and more expensive the proposed weapons systems are, the more likely the funders get hard-ons for them.
Oh, yeah, and let's add in the concept of cost-plus contracts, where the contractors make more money the more they spend. There's no incentive to build anything for a reasonable cost, and no incentive not to keep piling on the extensions and overruns.
So simple things, like better body armor and better defense for humvees and the cheap electronic ID-things mentioned in the article, which aren't sexy (but save lives), don't get the attention of the Big Contractors nor their political funders.
I'm kinda surprised that Raytheon hasn't tried to stamp out the little guys ...
Use an account if you have anything useful to say. Otherwise you should be getting the Troll mods. Oh wait. You're probably posting AC _because_ it was you who applied the troll mods.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
As far as I can see, none of the comments relating to the story touch the subject of the rights of the people being fingerprinted. I see concern for the troops, and the need to reduce the cost in American lives, but no concern for abrogation of the rights of the civilian suspects - who are quoted as suspected insurgents.
What would the outcry be if this technology was deployed to the police in the US? I cannot imagine the population -- which is now arguing about compulsory identity cards -- thinking it is fine for the police to fingerprint anyone they wish at random.
So, I see some interesting issues. For example, by fingerprinting these suspects, against their will, the US forces are sending the wrong message: oppression is the word that springs to mind. They are stepping out of a "police" role, and back into a "police action" - specifically the territory that is to be strenuously avoided!
What is to be done with this database of fingerprints that is collected: will it be turned over to the local police as a collection of "suspects" to be interred and tortured? Over the long term, will this actually save lives, or sow enough seeds of discontent that more of the locals are driven to insurgency?
Feel free to tell me how I have missed the point here...
Anytime I see biometrics and fingerprinting in the same sentence I stop reading. Talk about unreliable and pointless. How many times do people need to show how trivial it is to defeat a fingerprinting system before people stop spending millions of dollars on fingerprint biometrics. I'm sure there are better ways to fight the info war in Iraq against the insurgents. Or at least... ways that work. Basically, what good is a device that can only identify an insurgent if he's already been identified and his finger is stuck in the device. I'm sure that's going to be really good at preventing IEDs and suicide bombings. Sure I'd love to be the guy who'd job it is to stand next to someone to determine the likelyhood that he's strapped up with an C4 jacket. This is a good example of the "mobility" of small companies but not innovation. Innovation would require more than listening to exactly what some military type says they want in a device and rather listen to what some military type wants a device to accomplish for them. Take those specs and work on developing a device that accomplishes the mission rather than some hunk of useless tech that basically is some outgrowth of what some Major saw on 24 last night.
Can I just point out that the process of doing this (whatever the hell it is) actually took 2% of the entire duration of operation iraqi freedom.
2% is not "like a nanosecond"
Doing this is a great acheivement, but do not denegrate the efforts of the people who are trying to support the forces who are deployed there via official channels. This is a conflict that is not being lost because of a failure of technology provision, it is being lost because the people who we are trying to free have lost the context into which they could be freed.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
"close, but no. it (Cambodia) was stable until we pulled out"
With due respect, please read some history. Cambodia's history does not start with the day the USA was involved.
But to wait two years for one, you loose far more intel in two years.
;)
There is nothing wrong with a cheap devices that can be replaced VERY quickly...
Gone are the days of expensive manufacturing and long time to delivery.
Today if its broke, we can deliver a new one in 24hrs. In that case, if its cheap, have 5 spares in the boot of the car.
Why have one device thats 10x the cost that CAN BREAK, its better to have 10 devices and 1/10th the cost that might last if
taken care of.
So a pentagon devices might cost $30000, because of 2 years dev cost and built by the most expensive factories in down town San Fran.
A $400 device with some hacks and leather casing could last long enough, and you just buy 10 of them, $4000 bucks.
If you want it water proof, build a casing for it, you can buy digital camera underwater casings far cheaper than Pentagon prices
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
From some whose life has depended on such devices? I'd much rather have a theoretical device over one that will be unreliable. (Not 'may' - will.)
For a given amount of good - but it doesn't compare well to any part of Europe that isn't currently experiencing the aftermath of a recent war, or New Zealand, Australia, and a few other places.
Well, at least he didn't say Ada
What do you expect of the Pentagon when the war is run by the Cheneys and George P. Shultz, for the benefit of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal Financial Slime-Mold of which they are part? If you want private entrepreneurs to have more freedom, you must liberate them from those private financial interests that have become the government and have commandeered our military. The U.S. Constitution, which has not yet been re-written or destroyed, provides a remedy: impeach Cheney now!
There's nothing like the proper delivery of tons of bombs to stabilize it. Or democratize it.
Your version of history is fanciful, and you need only be aware of recent events to note a parallel...
This is all familiar. The US and the west bring an abomination to power, support it during the worst of times, and once it has filled its purpose, work belatedly and hypocritically for something like frontier justice. Well Pol Pot, he died relatively peacefully in his bed, no justice there, but otherwise the parallel holds.
The great powers, including the US, supported Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge! The US gave the Khmer Rouge millions, reportedly amounting to 85 million in direct aid, more in indirect aid.
It's the logic of the red scare that was nonexistent. Communism was never the monolithic international movement you make it out to be. The Chinese Communists hated their threatening neighbor to the North for the reasons that China hated Russia before Communism. Similarly, the Vietnamese hated the Chinese communists the same way they hated previous generations of Chinese imperialists. The Communists in each country were individual national revolutionary movements, not part of a global conspiracy.
The article makes no mention of ABIS (DoDs biometric system). The article only says that " The laptop would sit in the troops' Humvee and the data sent from there to a laptop at outpost headquarters. "
No mention of biometric searching, only collection. The poster is for some reason comparing a biometric collection device to a system that matches fingerprints on millions of subjects.
I'm glad to see my submission sparking some good discussion. (But I was surprised that only toupsie (heh!) caught the reference to a book by Glenn Reynolds, AKA Instapundit.)
It's true that the DoD has good reasons for requiring equipment to be "infantry-proof". The difference between "good" and "good enough" matters in most fields of human activity, and has done for millennia. The infantry themselves often prefer quick and dirty; this device is, in a way, just another of thousands of in-the-field innovations ... only a lot more high-tech.
Through the late 1960s, the Khmer Rouge was supported and trained by the Vietnamese. While it's certainly true that they didn't capture the capital until 1975, it was most certainly the destabilization of the country through our war in Vietnam which created the environment for this to occur.
What's really sad, is that all the Vietnamese wanted was to no longer be a colony. They wanted the French gone, the Chinese gone. They wanted self-determination.
Rather than supporting that, the US fought it. Slaughtered millions of Vietnamese to prevent their independence.
You would think with our history, we would understand colonial independence, and we would support it. Had we, Vietnam would have been a capitalist nation and major trading partner 30 years sooner, and wouldn't have had to suffer the deaths of 15% of it's population.
Working for a defense contractor, I almost fell off my chair laughing when I saw the word "LockMart". I will share this word with my coworkers that observe the status of one of their non-working-and-will-probably-never-work products.
a multi-megabuck Pentagon project
What are megabucks? Is this a gameshow?
You make fine points.
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I love the Spitfire - marvelous aircraft. Your post made me think about a whole range of British innovation in WWII. Remember also: the Lancaster bomber, the Mosquito (simply the finest aircraft of the first half of the century), RADAR, the codebreakers
Heaven help us if today's bloated governments were ever required to leverage technological innovation to counter such existential threats as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
I'd actually go as far as to say that small government is an issue of national security. It's a shame about the GOP. GHWB and GWB both were instrumental in this "compassionate conservatism" - flowery language for expansion of government handouts, bureaucracy, pandering to special interests, (e.g. NCLB, amnesty, etc) - that has betrayed the noble principles of small-government conservatives/libertarians/classical liberals that the GOP was founded on. I ask you, one true believer to another, what has happened to the Party of Reagan and what can be done about it?
What will it take to restore the GOP? My answer: President Hillary Rodham Clinton
The worst part? Now everyone gets the poor schmoe that would have been making a similar amount in the older system, while the finest cardiovascular surgeon in the country spends his time in either private research, book signings, or a completely differant field. Will you still get your operation? Yep. If you have an extreme case of something-or-other that would normally be referred to the best damn doctor you could find, well, then your stuck with someone that is only good, as opposed to the best.
Even if it takes a middle class person the rest of their life to pay the bills for surgery from one of the best in the country, at least they have that additional chance that there will be a rest of the life to pay.
The other worst part? The government defines non-elective, follow-up, and preventative. I agree that insurance companies are good at screwing us over these very terms, but if we have learned anythying over out lifetimes we ought to have learned that when it comes to screwing, the government has every private company beat. They can enact rules or guidelines that would send most insurance companies into bankruptcy.
Whee signature.
The issue is one of where money is spent - as well as how much money is thrown in.
We hate Bush because he's pseudo-moron with his own agenda. By pretending to be stupid, he can avoid many serious accusations with his "from the gut" approach to things. Quite amazing is his showmanship.
Basically, Bush has been spending the manpower and money that he thinks he can get away with at any time. The rationale for the war would have been under much closer scrutiny if he'd talked about 3- or 400,000 men instead of that ridiculously low number that was put in. It takes much more manpower to govern a nation than to suppress an enemy on the combat field. While the invasion was brilliantly executed, the situation we've been getting more and more into was shaped in a matter of days after Baghdad was taken.
So really, it is Bush the liar that should be taken to task for your catch-22. He hasn't been straight with us from day 1, and in my opinion he can be attacked both for not commiting more troops and for using the situation for personal gains for his crowd.
But again, if he had commited more troops from the start, the public would never have accepted this excursion in the first place..
I suspect you've ignored the history of invading forces in Afghanistan. Over the last 150 years, there's been about five attempts by international powers, who were initially successful before being repelled by a consequent native resisting force. Having hidden in the mountains bordering Pakistan, native resistance forces have trained up, imported help from around the world and are now moving out to reclaim their land.
I also suspect that, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, your war is won for the body of the country, but not her heart, soul or mind.
Saying you can design/build/test/ship a device that can meet military specifications is like saying you can build your own space shuttle and fly it to the moon in a month. I work for a communications comapany that builds ruggedized military communications equipment. You can even test the battery in a month let alone an entire system. They may have done it done but will those devices continue to operate a month after they are deployed in those conditions? Chances are the answers is NO.
I'm not the least bit surprised a Marine was behind all this. Marines have forever been doing more with less resources.
Do you honestly think that government agencies continue to exist beyond their usefulness because the hordes of paper shufflers are scared of being poor? Let's get real. Those agencies don't self perpetuate due to the nameless masses employed by them, they do it because of the people at the top of those pyramids love the power they wield.
How about this: By not ensuring that enough money could be spent early on, he has caused the war to escalate to an extreme level. The result is that now we have to spend more money than we had to if we had just done the job right. It's kind of like when a contractor tries to build something without enough widgets, something bad happens because of the lack of widgets, and suddenly that $1mil project has exploded to a $20mil sinkhole, and he's still short n widgets.
there is a system out there for the troops to use. I may be a little biased as I am in the army, but there is a Biometric Automated Toolsethttp://www.oberonassociates.com/biometrics. html/ as nifty as another option is, and if this one is significantly more portable than the toolset, one cannot truly say that there was nothing out there before this new system.
Vietnam was full of new and shiny tools for soldiers to use in combat. Stuff like microphones shaped like shit, dropped en masse over a jungle in an attempt to track VC movements, failed miserably. Some like night-vision goggles were huge successes. But while loading down soldiers with eventually useless gear is annoying in peace time, in time of war it can be deadly. Which is one of the reasons (other than bureaucracy, corruption, incompetence, etc) why the military takes these kinds of innovations slow. And thank God, seeing as how we've got maniacs like http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/media_archive/jan -11-2007_a.html this guy and his amazing seven-timezone-cock-cock running around trying to "help".
FTFA, "...A rumor quickly spread that the Iraqi army was implanting GPS chips in insurgents' thumbs..." What the spin doctors didn't say was, "Undetectable GPS devices," I just get this feeling that we are going to start seeing certain folks who lost their thumbs...
a handheld insurgent-identification device
A handheld device which points at people who dislike the US invasion force? I can supply that! It may look like a stick, but that's uh... stealth technology... stuff.
Can I have a trillion dollars now? I'll take cash.