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The Soldier of the Future
An anonymous reader writes "Land Warrior, the Army's wearable electronics package, was panned earlier this year by the troops who were testing it out. They were forced to take the collection of digital maps and next-gen radios to war, anyway. Now, Wired's Noah Shachtman reports from Iraq, those same soldiers are starting to warm up to their soldier suits of the future."
Where do you clip the iPod?
Most of the stuff on
Now, Wired's Noah Shachtman reports from Iraq, those same soldiers are starting to warm up to their soldier suits of the future.
The soldiers aren't warming up to the suits because they like them. The soldiers are warming up because the suits use Sony batteries.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
...will be a machine, which may or may not be controlled by a techie in an air-conditioned office.
Yeah ... they're starting to warm up to it ... kinda ... except it's still too heavy and it doesn't work right ... and a bunch of stuff has been taken out of the original concept ... but yeah, it's great!
IOW, it's still a POS, just not quite as much a POS as before. And, oh yeah, it costs money the Army doesn't have.
Jesus. I was a grunt back in the dark ages (late 80's) and I can't tell you how glad I am that we didn't have to lug that crap around with us. The amount we did have to carry was already a killing load; the senior NCO's, who got their start in Vietnam, always told us exactly what we should throw away, and were unanimous in their opinion we were still carrying too much stuff. (And they had heard the same thing from their Korea-veteran sergeants.) Sorry, I don't believe that today's infantrymen are that much bigger and tougher than we were -- the human body hasn't changed, but the amount of crap the brass wants to load onto it keeps going up and up. And this is in the desert! Pretty soon the Iraqis won't have to kill American soldiers, just wait for them to drop dead of heatstroke.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"Let's see, Apple is building an entire business around user friendly appliances and have a pretty good reputation for user interface design. Why not see what they can do with it?" .. and then you drag the Enemy into the trash can.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I certainly hope the brass have read Arthur C. Clarke's 1951 short story, Superiority. Anthologized in Clifton Fadiman's Fantasia Mathematica, which a lot of libraries still have.
A rueful officer explains how his advanced army with a brilliant research division was "defeated by the inferior science of our enemies."
The story describes how they were continually being equipped with new and advanced weapons. They were constantly delayed while their ships were being refitted. They are constantly discovering that gadgets that seemed wonderful in tests and demonstrations have minor glitches that basically render them useless until the relatively small problems can be solved with them can be solved.
"Given time we might even have overcome these difficulties, but the enemy ships were already attacking in thousands with weapons which now seemed centuries behind those that we had invented...."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
As much as I want to agree with that sentiment, being anti-war, it should be obvious that it isn't about killing. It's about not getting killed, not killing the wrong people, and getting to our troops that need assistance. The more information and the more communication the better -- always. The fact that we're in Iraq is a reality. We're there and no matter what you want and no matter what you think is right, we're still there. Anything that saves American lives is good with me, even if I think we shouldn't be there and I want us to get out. Getting out is going to suck and I'm sure we'll need all the communication and positioning we can afford when we do it.
must... stay... awake...
You know, I just looked it up, and it appears that this guy weighs in 300 pounds. Is it any wonder that the nerds identify with the character?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
If you believe that computers will ultimately possess high intelligence, then you had better prey they don't develop with the morality of the Dick Cheney and his neo-GOP friends. If so, the next day after the computers realize they don't need us and can defeat us will be the last day of mankind. We had better hope they develop with something more like the morality of Gandhi.
Indeed. I believe it was Gandhi who said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." For a nation with such Christian traditions, the leaders the US elect sure don't act like they believe in Christian values, and even as someone who isn't religious by nature, I'd rather people respected values like "thou shalt not kill" wherever realistic.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
1. This com system seems to be much more valuable (once debugged) than plenty of other gear the soldiers are carrying, so I would pose the question: Do any experienced soldiers see the benefit in ditching ten pounds of old gear for this gear? 2. Anyone arguing that the Iraqis are doing just as well should reconsider: they're lambs to the slaughter in a gunfight versus our trained military, and most of their successful kills result from sacrificing themselves. I'll leave the obligatory quote by Paton out - I'm sure you can guess... 3. Could it be that this is one more reason that we got into this war in the first place - to test the 'beta' designs of military research? 4. The real downside for us is this: micro-evolution; our soldiers might start using such advances as a crutch, get lazy, and then succumb to a more savvy fighter.
"more like the morality of Gandhi."
So instead of neo-GOP racists we'll have Gandhi's racism? Sweet.
You look at Dick and the neo-Cons but you never look at actual REAL conservatives.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
No matter what they end up paying for the system, the guy wearing it is going to be killed by someone eating rice or falafel who cost all of $200 to train and equip. What kind of kill ratio do you need for an even trade-off, 1000:1?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
You aren't the first one to make that comment. Bill Mauldin the World War II cartoonist commented about the "efficient dime-store salesmen" who sold all the crap to the army that the grunts were supposed to lug around, crap that the grunts often shed as they walked simply because there was too much to carry and walk let alone fight.
One of his cartoons depicts two grunts walking down a road littered with discarded gas masks with one saying to the other "I see that C company got the new type gas masks."
He noted that the Brits were much leaner in part because they issued less and in part because they punished company CO's for "waste".
It's always been easy to agree to an extra 6 ounces of gear while sitting at a desk eating lunch. Carrying it and the other 50 6 ounces, now that's a bitch.
Even though there are those that are trying that it won't work so let's look at the other questionable options. Chemical weapons? Iraq used those a great deal on Iran and still lost. Nukes? Pick a steep mountain valley and hope your nuke kills more than a few goats and that the guys you are after are not in the next valley (mostly talking about the problems of potentially using them in the Afgan campaign which is one reason they were ruled out in 2001) - or nuke a city and have nothing left to hold but a nuked city and your enemies spread out in the hills just got a powerful new recruitment tool and the goodwill of half the world.
You are talking about dropping nuclear weapons on the city of an ally. You really are not paying attention.
You're a naive philosophical ostrich. That level of civilization is not yet possible. It will not ever be possible as long as we have people such as:
- and of course, the people who listen to them
Please stop spouting off garbage until we can resolve the real problem (political greed).I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I was a grunt back in the dark ages (late 80's) and I can't tell you how glad I am that we didn't have to lug that crap around with us. The amount we did have to carry was already a killing load; the senior NCO's, who got their start in Vietnam, always told us exactly what we should throw away, and were unanimous in their opinion we were still carrying too much stuff. (And they had heard the same thing from their Korea-veteran sergeants.)
I was a grunt in the early 90s, and it was of course the same problem. I was in a "light" infantry battalion. You know the joke there, of course.
SLA Marshall, in his esteemed study of combat load and its effect on battlefield performance, figured that the average soldier's load shouldn't exceed 1/3 of his weight. I recall that during one NTC rotation in the lovely Mojave Desert, all of my normal load plus my "fag bag" full of maps and code books and assorted crap, and the transmitter they forced platoon leaders to lug around, I was hauling 110 pounds. Of course it was all "necessary".
Grunts from the time of the Roman Legions have probably been complaining about excessive load.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
We can decide to be reasonable and rational and agree to set rules on the competitions short of life and death battles to the death.
Pacifism leads to death unless you have non-pacifists around to protect you. Being reasonable and fair is fine and good, and we should strive for that path, but one must also be willing and able to use deadly force in defense. Even in modern times, over a small number of generations, we have seen a population split, the two halves become isolated, one become pacifist, and when the two halves reestablish contact the pacifists are murdered and/or enlsaved by their blood relatives. Sorry, read this in a book so I don't have a link handy, the people were Pacific islanders, timeframe 19th century IIRC.
Recent history suggests that this is no longer true.
WWII started just over 20 years after WWI.
Since 1945, there has been no direct conflict between major powers, no use of nuclear weapons. My mother once told me that she seriously expected WWIII to begin in the 60's. It didn't happen; it still hasn't happened. Maybe we've learned - a little.
Having really good interfaces may save lives, but it will also make it easier for troops to take lives, and that's what I think some developers at Apple would have problems with. In my field there is allot of research being funded by the military that I don't want to have anything to do with, even though it is pure research and is not applicable to weaponry. However, it is applicable to military intelligence which is used to track people down and kill them which I don't want to have anything to do with. Sure it might save the lives of a few US soldiers, but I'm more worried about the innocent civilians that are in the same building with the target. Soldiers have signed up to fight and possibly dye, however in modern warfare it's civilians who seem to do much of the dying.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
I was under the impression that the flamethrower was retired because of the severe reduction in life expectancy that results from carrying around 70 pounds of highly explosive flammable liquid in a tank on your back.
SRSLY.
I'll all rust in a couple of decades. Even in your example, the cavemen would need to find some wires and a lightbulb, plus know how to hook all that up and rotate the alternator at the same time. Plus, they would need to have a use for it (check out a story about the steam turbine remaining just a toy to the people that lived 2000 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile ) And so your alternator will remain a neat toy until the lightbulb burns out.
For any artifact to generate progress, the people that find it would need the tools to take that thing apart, understand it, and replicate it. Can you, right now, go out there, make your own shopping list, and make an alternator? In theory you could, but in reality you probably can't. I am not even going to ask you to go out there and make your own 8088 chip or even a damn transistor for that matter!
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Of course it's about killing. The only reason for a soldier not to get killed is so they can do more killing. It's only a bonus that they get to come home in one piece.
As for saving American lives... why does it matter if their American? I'm for saving lives period. I've lived on the other side of the great divide. I've been in the military. I've since decided that it's wrong to think about being just an American citizen and defending this country. To truly move forward we must think of ourselves as global citizens and care for all people. It's when we divide ourselves into groups (American, Iraqi, etc...) that we forget to see the humanity in others.
Attack >
Defend >
Settings >
Shuffle Tactics >
Helmet Light >
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You're wrong, it was pulled out because n00bs from the other side complained and spammed forums that it was too über.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.