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Advanced Surveillance Tech for Unmanned Drones Credited In Iraq
mathoda writes "Investigative reporter Bob Woodward states that America has developed secret capabilities 'to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or so-called special groups. The operations incorporated some of the most highly classified techniques and information in the US government.' The LA Times now reports, 'As part of an escalating offensive against extremist targets in Pakistan, the United States is deploying Predator aircraft equipped with sophisticated new surveillance systems that were instrumental in crippling the insurgency in Iraq, according to US military and intelligence officials.' Part of the capabilities appear to be that the unmanned flying drones can track targets even inside of buildings." Update by J : Bruce Schneier's readers have some thoughts.
Is there some way that we could get further and further away from the plot in a Terminator movie?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Is there some way that we could get further and further away from the plot in a Terminator movie?
We stop using robotic drones?
Personally, I like them, It saves our troops' lives and I'd really would like to know what the Taliban are thinking when a robot comes for them.
It's not a human with a family. It's not a human that thinks it's going to heaven to 42 virgins or whatever. It's a machine with the sole purpose of killing them. I just like to image that these things are their worst nightmare and it's striking more terror into them than the Taliban and al-Queida could ever have produced in their innocent victims.
If it works, does it matter? The US military has mostly been very good with the use of disinformation over the years. Plenty of reason to be very skeptical of any story about this.
They have obviously figured out how to leverage some technology. Whether it's this or some other method it appears to be working. It could be a less advanced system being used in a new way, or it could be a more advanced system that hasn't been disclosed. They get the coolest toys first.
The best part is that this will allow them to seriously reduce US military presence in Iraq and finally finish the job in Afghanistan. It seriously pissed me off that they would screw up in Iraq for so long, getting so many people killed in the process. These new techniques will go into standard practice and hopefully make any future operations easier and faster.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
UAVs are inevitable. We have the technology to begin removing people from some dangerous positions, so we are. UAVs kind of remind me of early airplanes. They were used for quite awhile as just simple reconnaissance, then someone had the neat idea of strapping a gun to one.
Of course, unmanned does not mean autonomous. There's still someone in a pilot seat pushing the buttons.
Well, interestingly enough, listening to "fucktard Bush" or not, that was the entire goal of keeping troops over there in the first place. The entire "stay the course" message was to was supposed to let the Iraqi people know we weren't going to hand them over to the insurgents or Al Qaida.
What people seem to ignore is that after tossing saddam out of power, the goal was to get Iraq back on it's own. When the dems though arbitrarily losing a war would help get them elected, the violence went up exponentially. The more they screamed "immediate withdraw" or "when I'm president, I will hold my head high while telling out military to hold their head in shame, tuck their tails between their legs and come back home", the more the violence and recruiting happened. Then, when in spite of all this, even after Al qaida issued support for democrats in 2004 and again in 2006, Bush sends more troops over which not only allowed us to change how we were operating but it showed the people of Iraq that we weren't giving up on them and they could expect us to keep our word. And our word has always been, we would leave when Iraq was stable enough to take care of themselves.
The surge brought more then just troops into Iraq. It brought renewed hope for the people. It brought security to certain areas that others saw and said I want that so they started pointing out where the road side bombs were. They started pelting th people planting them with rocks when they came into their neighborhoods. We were able to maintain security around things like tankers filled with ammonia or chlorine that have been driven into crowded markets and exploded in some insane attempt to turn opinion against us.
The surge itself didn't create everything we see today in Iraq. But what it did was bring conditions into Iraq that encouraged and allowed the progress we see today so in a way, it is responsable for it even though the credit needs to go to some of the people in Iraq, their security forces, police, government, and communities that just said I've had enough, too.
perhaps it was just a combination of the surge, elimination of key targets and conversion of sunni groups
Most likely a combination of the three. The surge plus the high value target elimination apparently made the "foreign fighters/al qaeda in iraq" redouble their efforts by escalating their methods. They were always vicious borderline insane fanatics (you'd have to be to go running to Iraq to support your cause), but this escalation apparently made it abundantly clear to the Sunnis that they weren't interested in Iraq and its people so much as killing infidels and infidel "collaborators". When the local Sunnis stop hiding and feeding you and instead run to the police stations and say "hey, the Syrian motherfuckers who killed my neighbor for selling a Pepsi to a US soldier are in the building next door making bombs", well, then you are pretty much fucked.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Maybe he was but the BRD only started in 1947. Before the military occupation did not work very well and people just wanted to start to get things going again. Adenauer was an old man with a pre-war political career. The main advantage was that the whole political class learned its lessons and the extremists were wiped out. They started from zero. It was that post-Endsieg scenerio. People were tired with revolutionary politics and wanted to get things running again. Adenauer had this strong catholic conservative bias. Other politicians like his old opponent social democrat Otto Braun wanted to get Prussia back which was a stronghold of protestantism. Unfortunately the Americans resolved Prussia. But the tradition for which Prussian social democracy stood for, and its bias against authoritarian rule, was adopted by the conservatives. The overall social situation forced politicians to solve problems. And under the Soviets things went much worse. No experiments. You had a political class that had an experience of prosecution and no surprise they were progressive on civil liberties and rule of law. Basically what post-war Germany helped was the total surrender, the whole game was played by the nazis till the very end. As a contrast after WWI it was anarchy and civil war.
Another reason why it was irrational to oppose the occupation was that the occupation was the lesser evil as opposed to the Soviet (Stalin!) occupation. Note that the Soviets troups expelled millions of people from their land in Eastern Prussia, Pommern and Schlesien and drove them west. Also the Russian troups raped women on a large scale. The Americans just appeared to be the guys to go with.
In Afganistan there was quite a chance because the taliban installed a terror regime. Same in Iraq but there the brutal dictator kept the different tribes in check. Americans were told there were "the Iraqi people". Their whole campaign was a bit autistic. And then they find out, oh, there are different tribes and groups which hate each other, how could we know. The learning curve of the American public was horrible to watch.