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Behind the Scenes With America's Drone Pilots
An anonymous reader writes "As President Obama meets with advisors on an Afghanistan strategy today (who are now leaning more toward Joe Biden's more-drones policy), and even as Al Qaeda claims it's not all that scared of drones, the new issue of Esquire takes the first real in-depth look at the American military's UAV build-up. Defense geek Brian Mockenhaupt spends some time on the ground in Afghanistan, as well as back at the Pentagon, where the pilots ('more like snipers than fighter pilots') are playing a kind of role-playing game, getting to know terrorists' daily ins and outs. Looks like these Reaper drones are the real wave of the future, eh?"
...Chief of Staff's reading list. Short on fighter pilot stuff, long on strategy and counterinsurgency. They see the way things are going, no doubt about it.
The Army reading list
That's the Air Force as a whole not just the drone pilots.
What is laughable though is that the drone pilots get their time flying drones counted as flight hours which count toward their career gates. So for being at less risk than most anyone else and essentially playing flight sim games all day they get bonus pay.
The Armed forces are still giving out medals that were originally produced in anticipation of that invasion.
For example, 500,000 Purple Hearts were made in preparation for the anticipated invasion of Japan. As it turned out, they were not needed then. This stockpile has been reduced by the Korean and Vietnam wars and all of the lesser actions (Iraq 1 & 2, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, and various "peacekeeping" missions), but about 100,000 still remain unused.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Russians carried most of the war and while they lost more soldiers
They lost almost two orders of magnitude more soldiers than the US did. As I understand it, the US conscripted about 18 million people while the USSR conscripted about twice as much. There's at least an order of magnitude more casualties per million in the USSR army than the US. Further, the USSR lost (as in were killed) about a third of its military. That's cutting it fine for a winning strategy. While it isn't particularly relevant, the US-associated fronts did capture more physical territory (including the gains in the Pacific, of course).
And the remark about the USSR opening a new front is silly. They could have opened it in 1935 as well as any time prior to 1945, if they so chose. At the time they opened the front, Japan had abandoned that front. So it was low effort for great gain as far as the Soviets were concerned.
I also think the strategic bombing had greater effect than popularly claimed. While factories might have not been particularly damaged, the bombing disrupted the logistics of the Nazi empire and forced the Germans to occupy territory that spread out their forces (for example, occupying Scandinavia, North Africa and the islands of the Mediterranean particularly Crete and Malta, the latter which was never successfully invaded).
Finally, it's worth noting that the USSR did as well as it did through the somewhat greater incompetence of Nazi strategy. Hitler's obsession with taking and occupying Russian cities, particularly Stalingrad and Leningrad, led to the greatest mistakes which doomed Nazi Germany.
That's pretty much been the situation in Afghanistan since recorded history began. Under Taliban rule, the Taliban basically ruled Kabul, and outside the city limits, it was no man's land. The Taliban didn't give up bin Laden because they couldn't, he was 400 miles away in disputed territory and the Taliban didn't have the military to pull that off. There's a considerable difference between can't and won't. What the war did was create enough martyrs to put the Taliban in a stronger position than ever before.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I read the article and was amazed at the great use of technology, that we could beam video and aircraft commands across the world to do surveillance and attacks. But then I saw a special on PBS last night where our ground troops can't even talk with the Afghans. The interpreter didn't speak good english, and his face was blurred out -- no doubt due to fear for his life and his family's safety. So, I wondered, why can't we use the same UAV technology to facilitate better translation?
Simply, give ground troops a video camera, mic, and speaker. Video and audio would be relayed to a translator sitting anywhere in the world. The translator could translate from Afghan to english, speaking into the troops' earpiece. English to Afghan would be broadcast over the speaker the troop carries. It's not nearly as personal, but I'd bet we'd get better and more translators. They can work anywhere and don't have to fear being shot or their family being threatened.