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U.S. Soldiers Hate New High-Tech Gear
mattnyc99 writes "Land Warrior, the Army's wireless equipment package featuring helmet cams, GPS, laser range-finders and a host of other state-of-the-art electronics, is finally ready for deployment on a global battlefield network in Iraq after 15 years of R&D at the Pentagon. But in a report for Popular Mechanics, Noah Shachtman not only tries on the new digital armor—he talks to troops who don't like it at all. As if that wasn't disheartening enough for the future of tech at war, the real Land Warrior system doesn't even match up to its copycat gear in Ghost Recon 2."
the real Land Warrior system doesn't even match up to its copycat gear in Ghost Recon 2
Well, duh. Otherwise I'd start bitching that my crossbow isn't as accurate at 500 yards as its Half-Life copycat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of _the_AK-47_and_M16.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
So, what happens when
the smart other side captures
one of our soldiers?
I sit here racking my brain for why the soldiers are wrong. I think to myself, "hmm, they just aren't used to it. they need to get us3ed to the new equipment."
But then I read that the tracking capabilities can lag up to a minute behind: I certainly couldn't play a first person shooter with a 60,000ms ping - how could this be any less of a problem in real life?
Despite my vehement tecnophillia, I too wonder if this gear is really a benefit.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
This article reminds me of two things:
"It is a hard heart that kills!" - Full Metal Jacket
Hiro turns off all the techno-bullshit. The statistics about his impending death distract him... - Snow Crash
What happens to this whole thing when the batteries die? Or when they have to jump in the water and it shorts out? Or when it just, you know, breaks? Soldiering is soldiering, no matter what technologies you equip your soldiers with. It's about being adaptable, flexible, and enduring. This techno crap isn't really any of those things.
"An M4 (I can never figure out the sequence of these numbers) is a good deal tougher long-term than the antique M16."
1 - The numbers are always in order, but every type of object has it's own series. The M16 is the sixteenth rifle adopted by the Army and the M4 is the fourth in a different series. It's a carbine or SMG or something like that.
2 - The M4 is just a shorter version of the M16. The only differences are the buttstock assembly and the barrel/handguard assembly and with the proper tools it takes about 15 minutes to convert an M16 into an M4 or vice versa. If you don't care about swapping the buttstock you can do the conversion by simply swappinng the upper receiver which takes less than a minute and requries no tools. There has been evolution in some design elements but these are also included in the M16s, either when they are purchased new or when they go to an armory for refitting. A current M4/M16 is tougher than a Viet Nam era M16, but there are many current M16s and M4s in use that were originalyl purchased 40 years ago and have simply been upgraded over the years.
3 - Even the original M16 doesn't lack much in durability or reliability. It takes a little more maintenance and is can be more finicky about the quality of the ammunition but when taken care of it is very reliable and those tighter tolerances make for a much more accurate weapon. If I were selecting a weapon to issue to poorly trained conscripts then I'd choose the AK, but for professional soldiers who know how to take care of their equipment the M16/M4 family is the better option.
...is that expensive military gadgets are big business. Spending money on training a soldier, providing good veterans benefits are all right out because this doesn't make anyone any money, but attaching a playstation 3 to a soldier's helmet is a huge contract that someone could make a huge profit off of (and not just in this administration; this has been true since the start of the cold war).
We should be spending money on training and intelligence gathering. The military is suffering from the same tech envy as the rest of the population is suffering, and yet they have no one to be envious of. The enemy can blow up your $100,000 humvee with $5 worth of materials available in a third world country corner store. They don't care how big your guns or computers are. Spend some goddamn money on real intelligence gathering and building knowledge and experience of your troops.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Isn't it sad that people can somehow rationalize that a weapon that was built specifically for killing humans should not be classified as an assault rifle. Even if it was designed to be used while assaulting an enemy. Yeah that's right, you don't need a 600 cyclic rounds per minute rifle to kill a deer. Not unless you are shitty shot or have mental problems where you get your jollies making hamburger while it is still on the hoof.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
What you, and everyone who thinks along these lines, don't understand is that all military conflicts are by definition political. Not only that, but you also fail to define "won". In military terms, we already won. We just failed to keep the peace in Iraq.
Yes, exactly. Especially in a conflict like this the goals are political and you cannot separate the military methods used from those goals.
I have no doubt that the rules of engagement hamstring soldiers in life-and-death situations, and result in insurgents escaping. The thing is, in any situation where the soldier actually has a potential target, they're already way ahead of the game. When the IED goes off under the HUMMWV, when the suicide bomber in the buick blows up the car at the checkpoint, who exactly is the soldier supposed to shoot at? The guy looking around the corner? He could be the trigger man, or he could be an innocent bystander, or he could be a lookout working for the insurgents. You can't figure that out after the fact.
The real problem in Iraq is a failure of intelligence. We have no insight into the workings of the insurgents, we have no ability to infiltrate them without the explicit help of the local population, and they simply are not helping us. The local population, even the ones who are glad we invaded and took out Saddam, even the ones who look forward to a stable democratic government, are not truly on our side. They don't see us as helping, and so they aren't helping us. Does anyone think that showing less restraint, being less selective about who we shoot at, is going to convince them to aid us?
You see the same thinking -- that having less restraint would have turned a loss into a Victory -- about Vietnam. But really the fundamental problem was the same -- when it came down to it, the people did not support us, they undermined us. We won every battle, but lost the war, simply because it wasn't the battles that were important. We could have "won" if we wiped out every village the VC had ever been seen near, just like we could "win" in Iraq if every time an IED blew up in a neighborhood and nobody told us who set it off we leveled the entire town. We'd absolutely never have the people's support, but we could "win" according to a goal post that has nothing to do with the reason our troops were there in the first place.
I think the key learning here is that there are types of conflicts where our military and our political reality make victory nigh impossible. We are not willing to wipe out whole populations in the name of "freeing" them, ergo we will fail in the face of any long-term insurgency that has a substantial degree of support among the populace. People who want to "win" by reducing restraint want to "win" by changing the name of the game from "free" to "wipe out". You could do that just to claim a victory, but that's like changing a losing game of Hearts into 52 Card Pickup -- you "win" by losing the real game even worse.
The enemies of Democracy are
So, by your argument, we should be regulating deer rifles, not "assault weapons", because deer rifles are more deadly.
My argument is not that one or another type of rifle is more or less suited for one or another task. My argument is that the furor over assault weapons is a manufactured hysteria. One can change an assault weapon into a perfectly legal one by changing the furniture on the weapon, which has little or nothing to do with its deadliness. and much to do with its scariness.
Again: The most dangerous component of a firearm is the person wielding it.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You ask for something that doesn't have a short answer:
I agree, mass killing humans for profit and power is a bad thing. But on the other hand it is human nature. It is an extension of our older instincts to protect and expand our territory. More territory, more food, better chance for survival. The problem is, we don't really need to fight to expand anything any more. We're not likely to starve to death any more. So it is best that we try hard to keep this in check. However, going to war to defend ourselves is perfectly justifiable.
So Afghanistan is an easy one to address. From a 'noble' point of view, we know that their government didn't respect basic human decency and freedoms for one. They sanctioned killing women for things like trying to get an education, reading books, or showing their face in public. From a defensive point of view, the Taliban (the ruling government of Afghanistan at the time) also didn't respect international protocols and basic understandings in that they sheltered a terrorist group (Al Quaida) even after that group admitted to the terrorist attacks against the United States which killed close to 3000 civilians (including other foreign nationals... about 200 Canadians among them). Not only did the Taliban refuse to give up the culprits, they refused to take any actions to punish or even curb their activities. This in itself can be seen as an implicit declaration of war. Limiting the ability of a foreign rogue nation to perpetrate or allow to perpetrate mass killing is a very valid reason for being there. At the same time, schools (real schools not fanatic religious schools for boys only) are now operating again, and basic human rights are returning in a limited way. Maybe not what you want, but certainly better then they were under the Taliban. You might also note, that some of the most active elements fighting NATO in Afghanistan are Arabs, not Afghanis. This is because the Arabs that are there (and not all Arabs in general) are mostly members of Al Quaida who want a return to Afghanistan of a system that allowed them to practise and organize their terrorist activities unchecked. You are very naive if you think dialogue would have changed anything in Afghanistan. Mind you, politicians are naive if they think it will be easy to effect any permanent change there. How do you get rid of a couple millennia worth of warlord mentality?
On the other hand, I already said I didn't agree with the Iraq campaign. It was not really necessary at the time (Hussein's posturing was not really a threat), and draws too many resources away from Afghanistan which was really justifiable. And to top it, they did a piss poor job executing the invasion. Instead of the surge now, they should have had two or three times the troops in the first place; to replace the police that would go missing after an invasion, to guard the weapons/ammunition dumps of the former Iraqi army (which weren't guarded... hence all of the dumps' contents disappeared thus the amount of IEDs), to make sure militias and civil war didn't happen (Saddam was the only reason they didn't have a civil ware before... just like Tito in Yugoslavia... once he was gone, unless there was another iron fist, boom, the country goes up in smoke). Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld really did run the war like a business process. The bare minimum to do the job to keep costs down. Then crow about how successful they were while neglecting the fact that the after implementation support issues were never really thought out since most busines managers all seem to have a 'Pollyanna' attitude. This doesn't mean I don't feel for the troops on the ground who have to deal with the bad decisions of their leaders. And I don't expect them all to agree with me about their leaders either BTW.
On the other hand, Hussein really was a bloody tyrant and his sons were just animals, pure and simple. But maybe that is what it took to maintain the peace there. Anyway, I'm never really sorry to see these kinds of people done in. Personall
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.