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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.'"
you're forgetting that all this expensive technology was at least partially developed to avoid mistakes leading to civilian casualties.
weinersmith
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 :(
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.
The bullet points for why we invaded Iraq:
What they didn't consider:
Of course that's the simplified version but pretty much the way I see it.
Oh, the rest of the Bush Administration should have listened to Powell.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Not fair to attack the individuals. They're regular people just doing what they're trained (and ordered) to do.
If, on the other hand you want to go after the political policies that put the individuals in that position in the first place, be my guest. I'm with you on that.
This ain't rocket surgery.
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.
If the pilot has access to the same video in the cockpit, then they both see the same thing on their respective screens. So he would in fact, see what the pilot sees. It is just that the scope of what is seen is narrow and ambiguous in the summary.
What they have volunteered to do.
While I am also uncomfortable with singling out the individuals who actually push the buttons which cause death, at some point we have to remember that the same "volunteer" military that has given the sons and daughters of wealth and privilege the ability to avoid being put in harm's way has also created a "warrior class" of people who for one reason or another, have chosen to participate in what are often the ugliest sanctioned acts that our society perpetrates, necessary or not.
It was the draft that created generations of Americans who each (except for the Dick Cheney's of the world, who will always find a way to get out of it somehow) have a direct connection to the defense of the country. It makes wars harder to start, when everyone is involved in a direct, physical way. The notion of a "professional" military class is in conflict with the beliefs of every single Founding Father, nearly all of whom believed that the US must never have a standing army, and that the kind of international adventurism which has defined all of our military actions since WWII should be avoided at all costs.
While it makes me uncomfortable to connect the faces of young American men and women with the sort of remote-control violence that much of our "wars" have become, it also makes me uncomfortable to say that those young men and women somehow had no moral involvement at all.
It's ugly business and I believe compulsory national service, like that of Israel or some European countries, is preferable to having professional soldiers who get "bonuses" for joining up and then get to wash their hands when innocents are killed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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
You do have a point. I guess I'm worried about the veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars experiencing the same demonization that happened to Vietnam vets. Speaking as someone who was actively involved in the anti-war movement of the Sixties and Seventies, that's the single aspect of the entire endeavor I'm not proud of.
You're right that they volunteered, but they did it either out of a sense of patriotism--possibly misplaced patriotism, but patriotism none the less--or economic necessity. I know a number of young people who joined up because they had no other prospects. BTW, I agree that some sort of compulsory national service is called for, but only if there's an option for non-military service allowed.
As far as young American men and women having no moral involvement, that's a tough call. The thing is, there's a reason beyond mere physical strength and endurance that compels the military to chose young people and that's the fact that human brains aren't fully developed until about age 25. Young people haven't yet acquired either the life experience or synapses to make wise judgements on fine points of morality. That's why young people do the dumb stuff they do, and why they deserve at least a little bit of slack in this case.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Well to be fair, it is possible that both are true...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
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!
Please draw a moral distinction between: the side who goes to great pains to avoid casualties, versus the side whose stated goals are the massacre of innocents. Analyze the goals of each side and tell us why intentionally killing innocents helps or hinders each side. Bonus points for including the phrase "Bu$hitler".
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I doubt the soldiers on the ground, the JTAC or the pilots are trying to hurt civilians (maybe a few really are, you can never really know). When the soldiers on the ground are in danger, the stress and need for quick action can easily make it hard to coordinate these airstrikes properly. If anyone is to blame, it is the higher-ups who set the policies and training procedures, and decide who should be piloting or calling in the strikes.
Using an engineering analogy, it's like an engineer designing a brake system that has unexpected failures (Toyota's specific problem is too rare to be a good analogy). The drivers who get people killed aren't at fault- they did as they were trained (through driver's ed/experience), but the system failed and people die. While no one was malicious about it, if anyone you have to blame the engineer for designing a faulty system, and to a lesser extent the government for not training drivers to better handle exceptional circumstances. The engineer has the responsibility to fix the braking system and ensure the faulty braking system is no longer used.
We make a huge deal out of civilian casualties- and we should- but I expect our military is putting more effort into balancing saving soldiers lives and saving civilian lives than any previous effort by any military since the development of long-range artillary. If we assume the military loves blowing things up as much as they can (which you seem to imply), they would still want to minimize civilian casualties. The better their track record is, the more freedom they have to keep using bombs at will. Unless you've performed these airstrikes yourself you shouldn't assume it's as easy as video games make you think.
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Your historical perspective and current understanding of the situation are both deeply flawed. I've met pilots in all divisions of the military, and none of them are bad at what they do. Going around saying "everyone" is better than the airforce, the UNDEFEATED airforce, is a little bit disingenuous. Can you fly a F15? How about a F22? Can you even fly a Cessna? Then what makes you qualified to even judge these pilots?
Granted, Airforce pilots are a lot more likely to be flying Air tankers and transports, than anything else, but that doesn't make them inferior. In fact with out them, you'd find you are in a totally different war. Firepower blows stuff up, logistics win the war.
Politicians wanting to get Iraq producing at 100% again and more importantly, not controlled by US haters, invade.
It would be nice if the actual politicians would invade themselves, instead of sending young boys to do their dirty work.
Thanks PopeRatzo and gyrogeerloose for having calm, rational, and civil points to make about this. My opinions are somewhere near or between you two and it's tough for me to grasp the complexity and the ethics of the battlefield. Clear, concise, and reasoned discussions are very much needed today.
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
murder is murder.
And killing isn't always murder.
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.
I would argue with that; you have to remember that there were oil men from Texas in the White House.
My point being that the invasion of Iraq had NOTHING to do with lowering the price of energy, which would have been good for ALL of the American people; rather, it had to do with enabling a few people to increase their rate of wealth accumulation. Consider: The former objective is Democratic; the latter, Republican.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Compulsory national service, at least in the history of the United States, leads to poor services and terrible morale.
Having a tiny professional service that is bolstered by a draft isn't a good way to respond quickly either, look at World War 1 and 2, the small US professional services that were then bolstered by conscripts were slow to react, often poorly trained and often ineffectual.
The US declared war on the Central Powers in the spring of 1917, yet large formations were not available until the summer and fall of 1918. US build up for the Second World War began in the spring of 1940 and large units weren't available for Europe until the fall of 1942.
Large conscript armies, like the Cold War era US military from 1946-1975 were morale pits and many were combat ineffective when sent into combat in Korea and Vietnam.
The idea that it is harder to start a war if everyone has served is ridiculous, the Soviets were more than happy to sent young men into combat from Hungary, Czechoslovakia ad Afghanistan while the Americans, Israelis, British and French all had World War Two experienced leadership yet began adventures abroad.
The Founders of the United States could envision a nation without a standing army, they had a sea to protect them. Today a bomber can destroy Boston after a flight of 10 hours from Murmansk.
Regardless of the rightness of the occuptation, the Wired piece was naive military cheerleading. No attempt was made to do any investigation beyond the tidbits that the Army/AF doled out to the reporter. I think it was also pretty obvious from the text that he was no war correspondent.
Wired is not exactly known for getting U.S. military exclusives, so no doubt they jumped at this chance. But the text of the article was actually no more technical than I would have expected from some random NYT stringer. Secure frequencies? I think he also got a little confused about the strict meaning of "going kinetic." A Wired reporter got this story because he would be unqualified and uncritical.
Even if you fully support (ahem) "bringing democracy to the people of Afghanistan," you can't seriously claim you just read anything but a military press release.
There was a draft, but the boys who became the politicians managed either to avoid it or to get their dad to have them assigned to cushy, safe reserve jobs at home.
In a further touch of irony, the few politicians who *didn't* dodge that draft and signed up then had their patriotism questioned by the supporters of the draft dodgers, because they dared speak out against torture or war.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
How good do you have to be to shoot down rusty Soviet cast-offs and bomb weddings? The US air-force is probably the safest job in military history.
It's safe because we are that good. Let me give you a little perspective on what it takes to get into a fighter cockpit these days. I'll keep it simple and give you my own personal story of getting there. My ROTC class started with 80. Of that, only 15 graduated and became officers in the Air Force (19%). Of those 15, 4 of us received pilot slots (26%). At initial flight screening, 16/20 graduated and were able to go to Undergraduate Pilot Training (80%). At pilot training, 11/14 students in my flight made it through primary training (79%). 1 of those 11, me, was selected for T-38s (Fighter/Bomber track) (9%). And in my T-38 class of 6 people, we might see 2 fighters (more likely 1) (17%).
So through my own personal path, 5/1000 people who try, will make it into a fighter cockpit.
That's how good you have to be.
Can you fly a F15? How about a F22? Can you even fly a Cessna? Then what makes you qualified to even judge these pilots?
Wall street "quants" have changed the financial game without knowing finance. Many pro sports scouts were never good enough to play professionally, but are the best in the world at judging talent that they don't have. There are a billion examples that your opinion that only a pilot can judge a pilot is dead wrong. Most people trot out this type of argument when they want to forcefully shut down an argument that they are going to lose, so it has a "smell" of weakness when used.
BTW, if your reasoning was solid, then who would decide the best course of treatment for patient with severe brain injuries? Would we have to ask the few gorillas that know sign language how to treat gorillas? Would children decide what gets taught in school?
Actually, I have been an Independent my whole life. I sound like a Democrat because the impact of the Republican policies of blocking all attempts to wean America from foreign oil, "flood-up/trickle-down" economics, deregulation, and inequitable free trade have so damaged America that I had no choice other than to recognize the fact that the Republicans are the greatest threat the American people have faced in our entire history.
Sure, the Republicans have seen to it that some few Americans have vastly increased their rate of wealth accumulation, but they've done so by taking it out of the American people's hide.
I am, in fact, a six-year Army veteran; when the right - the Republicans - began to try to transform America from a democracy into a hereditary aristocracy of a few wealthy and many, many poor (to include such abominations as naming corporations as super-citizens with the rights accorded to a real American citizen multiplied by the wealth they can bring to bear) they named themselves my enemy according to the oath that I swore.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"