Slashdot Mirror
Meet the Men Who Deploy Airstrikes
Lanxon writes "Wired followed US Army Staff Sergeant Kevin Rosner into Afghanistan to see first-hand the tools, tactics, and pressures involved in coordinating military airstrikes. This lengthy piece explores the people and technology involved in high-risk airborne warfare, from their perspective. From the article: 'Strapped to his chest, Rosner carries a handheld video player called a "Rover," built by L3 Communications, a New York-based defense contractor. The device, the size and shape of a PSP game console and costing tens of thousands of dollars, reads signals transmitted by the camera pods strapped to the underside of all NATO fighter aircraft. With his Rover, Rosner can see everything a pilot sees, from the pilot's perspective. On his back he carries a radio programmed with secure frequencies that tie him directly to the pilots overhead and to his unit's headquarters, several miles away. At the headquarters, another JTAC monitors a bigger, more sophisticated video terminal that displays the same video Rosner sees, plus other data.'"
So this is how they slaughter innocent people for western greed.
So, what's his key binding for deploying airstrikes? F5? S? shift-F?
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
They didn't explain why I have to get 5 kills to get an airstrike :(
No need to meet them, let them keep being anonymous and cobards
As an Army qualified and certified JFO, let me just say that Air Force JTACs are some very highly trained individuals, many of which who could easily work for the FAA (as airspace deconfliction is one of their primary jobs and they're damn good at it). Close Air Support, or any sort of Fires Support for that matter, are very stressful and complicated tasks, and if your calculations or designation are wrong, 2000lb JDAMs can easily end up coming down on the heads of either friendlies or non-coms.
The Joint Service Joint Fires Observer course itself is no joke, and I can only imagine what type of training the JTACs themselves go through, but I have a very good idea.
From TFA, Staff Sergeant Kevin Rosner is in the U.S. Air Force, not the U.S. Army.
War is always economically-driven. It always has been, and always will be.
The pride, hubris, and misguided hate that you speak of are merely tools that are used by those in power to trick fools into dying in distant lands.
Hello, Pedantic Man here...
reads signals transmitted by the camera pods strapped to the underside of all NATO fighter aircraft. With his Rover, Rosner can see everything a pilot sees, from the pilot's perspective
emphasis mine
Um... no, not quite the pilot's perspective. (Arguably, it's actually a better picture of the terrain beneath the nose of the aircraft than the pilot sees. But it's not the pilot's perspective- at least, I hope not!)
Please learn just a little bit about military history before you spout off such complete, utter nonsense.
Rosner saw innocent farmers working their fields along the valley floor; he doesn't want to add them to the rolls of the dead.
...
Are any civilians in harm's way?
...
"Everything is so critical," Chandler says. Any mistake "can cost you a life."
Gee, this couldn't be Pentagon PR after the recent revelations of US slaughtering innocents, could it? No, I'm sure it's simply Wired keeping us up-to-date on interesting technology.
Perhaps Wired will also do a story on the technology the people in Afghanistan use to bury their dead.
Please correct the military branch. Its US Air Force Staff Sergeant Kevin Rosner, not US Army!
Seriously. All students, please report to the battle room; or play more Modern Warfare.
*AppleTRON*
"High risk airborne warfare" ???? Are you afraid that an afghan made A4-paper-plane may shot down a N-billion dollar (tax-payer-paid) fighter?? Wake-up first-world guys!! And jokes about civil casualties are easy if you're 10 steps away of your full fridge and 10 minutes away from a super-if-you-have-the-money-market.
La culpa no es del chancho...
From TFA:
The device, the size and shape of a PSP game console and costing tens of thousands of pounds, reads signals transmitted by the camera pods strapped to the underside of all NATO fighter aircraft.
From TFS:
The device, the size and shape of a PSP game console and costing tens of thousands of dollars, reads signals transmitted by the camera pods strapped to the underside of all NATO fighter aircraft.
This kind of shit is totally insulting. This isn't even the old sawhorse of /. being a US site - this is just plain outright vandalism of TFA
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I love all the self-promotional talk about how awesome these weapons are, I'd love to see what would happen when they deploy their unencrypted video streams and "secure" radio transmitters against an enemy that at least have weapon systems designed in the last 20 years. These "secure frequencies" would be like a huge flashing beacon when fighting an enemy that doesn't rely on AK-47s and blending in with the civilian population.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Why does every offensive action not have a JAG assigned to levy penalties upon criminal personnel? Where is the UN to prosecute them for war crimes? Seriously, WTF? The prisons of The Hague should be full of American soldiers who made even so much as a tiny mistake. Why is this not happening? When Bu$hitler was in charge, maybe we could understand this deliberate genocide, but now that Obama is in office, is he also an accessory to genocide? What is happening to us good people?????
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Slaughter: I don't think that word means what you think it means.
A choice between the bloodbaths that WW1 and 2 were, and this, is an easy choice.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
who order truck bomb after truck bomb against iraqi civilians, killing many orders of magnitude more than the us (and on purpose, as oppposed to mistake), and now increasingly in pakistan and afghanistan, then i will listen to you
or more exactly, when you develop an ability to actually stop those guys, then i will listen to you
and i already known your answer: its all the fault of western imperialism, neocolonialism, oilthirst, etc
fella: if the usa turned into a giant lake tomorrow, the madmen bombing in the middle east would not celebrate and turn into pastoral sheep farmers. they would step up their aggression, and they would sow more suffering and destruction, because now there is nothing to hold them back
recognize that the fight going on the middle east is a lot larger than your small and simple recriminations
and recognize that the madmen in the middle east are not some cartoonish reflection of what the west does. they are their own original manifestation of all that you detest, but, for some reason, only see in western actions. you suffer from a form of blindness, you see only menace in one direction, when the menace in the other direction is the real enemy of your values
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Can they send nukes from orbit?
One that hath name thou can not otter
First-world countries don't go to war because of an economic factor, never have, and the burden of proof is on you to back your ignorant comment up.
9/11 involved 17 Saudi Arabian hijackers. Saudi Arabia is a monarchy ruled by an Islamic leader. Saudi Arabia has a terrible human rights record, doesn't allow non-muslims to testify in court, and allows young girls to be raped by old men through arranged marriages. Hardly a democratic paradise. So, why did we decide to invade Iraq? First, they said it was revenge for working with Al Qaeda, which is pure bullshit. Then it was WMD, which is also pure bullshit. Now it's to spread freedom and democracy, which yet again pure bullshit, otherwise we would have invaded Saudia Arabia for reasons one and three.
Short answer: Saudi Arabia plays ball, does what we tell them, and Saddam Hussein did not. Iraq also happens to sit on unexploited oil resources. Consider the headline, "West Sees Glittering Prizes Ahead in Giant Oilfields," printed in the London Times in 2002. That pretty much says it all.
If you like, I can go back through the history of just the United States for our wars, fought either for power or economic reasons. We invaded many Latin American countries because they kicked out US corporations and tried to reaffirm ownership of their own resources. We overthrew the democratic government of Iran in 1953 in Operation AJAX to restore British and American access to their resources, mostly oil. We invaded the Philippines after they refused our attempt to annex them in 1898 after the war with Spain, which also involved Cuba.
We have denied the right of nations to self rule for hundreds of years, beginning with the Native Americans, and even as I type, we are denying the rights of Iraqis and Afghanis the right to determine their own future. Economically, we strive to destroy local economies in order to enrich our own, from opening up agriculture markets in Mexico to put millions of poor farmers out of work, or opening up "free trade zones" to allow manufacturers to create something akin to a slave labor camp to push up their profit margins, and ship local jobs overseas.
First world countries are usually first world countries because they have raped and pillaged the third world for labor and resources. This was true for the British Empire, where the sun never set, and the Irish said because God would never trust the English in the dark. We are the new empire. We have over 750 military bases around the world trying to maintain our empire. You, just like many other Americans, are simply in denial about it.
Let me guess, that's the highest you can count?
Or are you just a racist asshole that doesn't consider unarmed civilians innocent unless they are WASP Americans?
Not to mention journalists, people trying to help the wounded and kids.
Love to know about this - there's no such thing as a 'secure frequency', if you know it, you can jam it. I'm assuming 'secure' here obviously means more than 'we've switched to a new one they can't guess' - hoping and there's some cool spread-spectrum, channel jumping geekness occurring, or even better some new tech way beyond the levels of current software-defined radio open source stuff that's ahead of the game. I love radio - whether it be it cell phones, wifi, ham's bouncing signals off the moon or distant medium-wave broadcast stations fading in and out after dark, but it still leaves me worrying that one man with an expensive PSP and a transceiver in backpack can launch a missile strike with such easily comprimised communications.
Considering the hardware I find it peculiar that they kill so many civilians. I guess the people meant to limit the amount of false positives are basically hillbillies. I guess good hardware has no effect as long as you do not train your forces to fight fair. No amount of "freedom" or technology can explain away the fact that the largest army on the planet are still basically just killing for fun / at random. I hope those stupid oil-/gass-wars end soon. I wonder if they would have if we invested all the money we currently invest in those wars in alternative energy. Considering that they evidentially have the needed technology to avoid civilian casualties; I guess not. :/
back out of the middle east?
ok
and the madmen in the middle east will do what then?
celebrate and go to sleep?
you suffer from a strange blindness
they are not going away. and not opposing them means they only grow stronger. and they do intend you and your values harm. this really is the truth. you cannot solve this problem by avoiding it
the substance of your complaint seems to be the death of civilians. which is a valid complaint, and the west does not desire those deaths. so the west should work mor eto avoid such deaths, i agree with that. but what is the other choice?
in reality, real choices are not simple ones between rainbow unicorns and horrible violence. in the real world, its complicated grey areas between horrible violence and maybe a little less horrible violence. recognize reality, and see the west needs ot be involved in the middle east, because there are men in the middle east who most certainly are involved in the west. then form a coherent opinion. currently you represent nothing but simplemindedness, ignorance and naivete
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
not done with drones - but how much easier it would be if you're even :-P
one more level detached from the reality?? when killing is like a videogame..
wiki-leaks video of airstrikes on reporters
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/05/wikileaks-video-of-u.html#more
would you like to address what i actually said? or are you only capable of thinking in simpleminded extremes of position that have nothing to do with my actual words?
the world is complicated, the middle east is involved in the west and west is involved in the middle east. nothing will ever change that
so talking about binary choices is not something i am doing. it is what you are doing. you are criticizing me for a position i am not taking. you are criticizing me for a simpleminded interpretation of the world that only exists in your head. because your perceptual abilities are crude and limited
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you do this stuff, and you are doing it to people who are not directly invading your country, then you are a war criminal.
The coolness of your technology does not excuse your actions.
Since you are not doing it to me, and...
the people who at whom you are directing this cool death tech are not important, and...
they did offer shelter and assistance to those came to your country and murdered thousands of your people,
I'm not condemning you.
I'm not your judge.
But you are war criminals by any civilized standards. So accept it.
it seems that you somehow believe that your grasp on reality and history is superior to mine. i await your indoctrination into the tired narrative of one side or the other being the malevolent player, and other such propaganda for low iq tools
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Off topic? I think so.
This is the kind of info that should be classified and not be made public in so much detail.
Next we will be seeing car bombs outside the offices of L3 and any other organizations mentioned.
Why make the terrorists jobs easier?
The submitter didn't read the article too well. TAC-P is linked with an Army group when they deploy but are still part of the USAF. He's even wearing ABUs in the picture. You will see AF CCT, TAC-P, etc. wear ACUs but i've never seen an Army person wear ABUs when they're with an AF group.
Really? As if they don't pour over anything they might find left over on the battlefield? They (Al Queso, et al) are not stupid, even if they are social and cultural backasses, even in the Islamic world. They're probably getting some I2 help from some of our "friends" as well as enemies as well... if the govment ok'd it, that toothpaste has already been squished out of the tube long ago. and it's not too hard to read AvLeak, Janes's publications, etc. and put two and two together, either.
Get over it.
The "terrorists" are not quite as rational, though. Their motivation seems to be to make us weaker with their own form of "shock and awe", and as such, these things are made to trigger our sphincter reflexes socially and culturally, not by rationally trying to identify strategic weak points or single points of failure and going after them.
Bomb goes off outside of L3's corporate offices? For our press, though, it's a BFD, unless L3 also had the corporate child care center there. It would still be some good press, but wouldn't really do much at all to stop what L3 does, as production would ship to other facilities or maybe even competitors helping out. The long-term net effect would be like pissing in the ocean to turn it yellow.
there isn't a shred anything remotely racist in anything i said. the tragedy is someone modded you up for hurling a smear which is completely bullshit
and the rest of your post, you are responding to some sort of bogeyman that resembles absolutely nothing about what i said. try talking to me and what i say, instead of the demons in your head which i don't actually resemble, asshole
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Really disappointed "maverick" and "iceman" are constrained to be taking directions from earth-bound non-coms.
Always thought they were type-A take charge types.
American military believes that it's always good to collect loads and loads of unprocessed information, and then dump it up the chain of command. Video feeds, reports, observation from absolutely everything that observes, interception of everything that can intercepted -- no one on the ground (or in the air) is good enough to handle it, it all has to go up to the highest level.
Then people are surprised that crucial information is lost in this unstoppable torrent of shit, all high-level decisions are made based wishful thinking, and all low-level decisions are based on prejudice.
Good job, control freaks -- now build a monitor into a contact lens and give it to Obama. Maybe he will accidentally stop the next attack on journalists or something.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Consider how remote control the practice of warfare is becoming. Remote control capabilities protect our troops reducing the risk to their life and limb. It would be unconscionable to have the technological capability and not provide it to the war fighter. Warfare will become increasingly remote controlled and robotic.
As technology progresses there will be waves of Skynet aerial drones and mobile Cyclons fighting wars by proxy. Imagine launching fleets of Predator Drones from aircraft carriers to patrol and monitor foreign lands. If the drones were to identify a suspected IED factory then a helicopter carrying six Cyclons can be deployed to perform an entry operation. Once the Cyclons enter the building the remote cameras video feeds can relay to our troops the situation inside. Only when the building is secure would human troops enter to investigate. The enemy will adapt and place IEDs within buildings and watch from a nearby hillside. The Cyclons will be upgraded up to the point that they can perform the entire mission. Why put lives at risk?
Perhaps a human will always be at the controls. Perhaps not but until the day that AI is sufficiently advanced, the future of warfare is increasing looking like a room full of people looking at a video feed saying, “See the gun in the hands of target one. AK-47 identified. Issue the prompt informing target one to drop the weapon. Target one is firing the AK-47 at the drone. Target one confirmed hostile. Lethal force authorized. Track weapon one to target one. Engage weapon one. Target is down.“
It is almost like a video game except it is way more serious.
For the cognitively challenged, you could try searching for "NATO Afghan killings" - just to get started.
"Consumed by fireball, the Afghan village devastated by Nato strike on Taliban" - The Guardian, September 4 2009
"Moeen Marastial, a member of parliament from Kunduz, said: "Local people are telling me 130 people have been killed despite all the promises of Nato to do fewer bombardments and reduce civilian casualties. There will be a reaction to this. It is a very bad day for international forces in Afghanistan."
and
"Nato strike kills 27 Afghanistan civilians" - BBC, February 22, 2010
"At least 27 civilians died in a Nato air strike in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan cabinet says, revising downwards a prior statement that 33 were killed"
and
"U.S. Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women" - New York Times, April 4, 2010
"After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid."
and
"NATO strikes killing more Afghan civilians" - USA Today, April 16, 2010
"Deaths of Afghan civilians by NATO troops have more than doubled this year, NATO statistics show, jeopardizing a U.S. campaign to win over the local population by protecting them against insurgent attacks."
and
"NATO Investigates 3 Afghan Civilian Deaths" - New York Times, May 1, 2010
"The French military took responsibility on Friday for killing four Afghan children during a missile strike in early April, and NATO said it was investigating allegations of a military convoy gunning down two Afghan women and a girl in southeastern Afghanistan."
and
"NATO checks report of Afghan civilian deaths" - Reuters, May 1, 2010
"NATO said on Saturday it was investigating whether shots fired by its troops in southern Afghanistan had killed two women and a child traveling in car."
Of course, expending any effort whatsoever to consider the plight of those being killed in Afghanistan and finding out some facts - rather than making a false assumption and then using your error to defend killing innocent people - might have taken you almost as much time as you spent supporting the murders committed by "our guys."
I'm sorry, but if your actions repeatedly lead to the killing of civilians then you are responsible for them. Beyond a certain point, intent becomes irrelevant.
Thank you.
Murder is murder.
The justifications here and elsewhere are like committing second-degree murder but trying to argue that because it wasn't first-degree murder that one is innocent.
(One could also argue it's even worse than first-degree murder: the killings are both murders for hire and committed during a robbery.)
It was an interesting article about normal length. Are we so impatient to read more than three paragraphs?
I look forward to the day when these "people" are formally charged with Crimes Against Humanity, for arbitrary executions and murder.
These planes have been transonic for quite a long time. The sound barrier is around 640 mph at sea level.
Would those be _bungie_ straps, or large, flat _nylon_ straps?
(I'll bet it's just put in an unused access port for such things.) :>
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
... you lose a little of your own humanity.
Dehumanising the opposition invites your own people to carry out acts of abuse or even war crimes. We've got plenty of historical records from the last 100 years to know when fighters consider the people they oppose to be less than human very bad things happen which are later much regretted.
Both sides need to bear this in mind.
When the pilots can't tell the difference between canvas combat identification markers and "rocket launchers" and are ready to shoot first and identify later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/190th_Fighter_Squadron,_Blues_and_Royals_friendly_fire_incident
"...going kinetic...", "If I'm doing my job, it means the shit has hit the fan,"
Wow. Truly macho. All cammed up, one in the breach, ready to kick ass, bite the bullet, chew dirt, spit fire. Yo, JDAM calling on the INSEC, level three niner, roger that big bird... for fsck sake.
I'm not anti war, but I am anti stupid.
"Deploy" means station in the field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline
The only element of high risk from the US point of view in the invasion of Iraq was that people would find out that Iraq had zero connection to the WTC attacks. Otherwise the risk was purely to the Iraqi civilian population, 7000 of whom were killed in one week simply for 'shock and awe' purposes. And that is a direct, unashamed quotation from Rumsfeld.
Roz here, thanks for the food for thought. I would like to remind some of you here that the ones you condemn for their service are the same ones that play a part in defending your right to express your opinions on sites like this. As far as controlling A/C, the rover plays a small part in a very intricate flow of information between all the assets in the article. My job is to bring those assets to bear. Also, for the guys talking about direction finding capabilities, the guys on the ground don't push enough watts to be picked up by DF. Not to mention we don't stand around keying a hand mic for hours on end, so your looking at 10-15 second bursts. Good luck DF'ing that. Im going to close this one by reminding ya'll that its much easier to be a monday morning quarterback.