Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 07:02:16 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: jbryant@tfs.net, dkelly@HiWAAY.net, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: F1.17 (was Re: C2 Trusted FreeBSD?) Message-ID: <27117.876837736@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 14 Oct 1997 18:27:12 %2B0930." <199710140857.SAA01615@word.smith.net.au>
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> That depends on whether you are constrained to thinking inside the > current model of escalated conflict and warplay. I'd have to say that > there are plenty of other ways that the entire conflict could have been > dealt with. For sure, in a most-toys-wins comparison, the '117 is a > great asset. Hmmm. Well, even under the broad umbrella of -chat, this looks like it's dangerously close to veering off into alt.amateur.military.debate material so if you'd like to elaborate on just what interesting new models for warfare you have come up with using that unconstrained perspective of yours, perhaps we can take it to private email. ;-) > It's not meant to be; it's a weapon. Use a surveilance device to look > at things, and a weapon to break them. My only point is that Sorry, I thought it was also obvious enough that satellite reconnaisance is too slow (it can take hours to get the strike zone into somebody's footprint) and that it's still unproven whether or not the smaller RPVs can survive as part of a concentrated strike package. It's going to take something pretty special to wean the brass from their gun camera and bombsite footage, that's all I'm saying. I haven't seen it quite yet. > > Also, when you're arguing your RPVs, I assume you're also not talking > > about replacing the gunship helicopters? Those are just too usefully > > agile to get rid of anytime soon, I think. > > Why are they going to get less agile when you remove the need to > provide protection for the crew? If you cut the cockpit and glass out > of an Apache, you reduce the side area by about 25%; this lets you cut Sorry, "agile" was the wrong word - "flexible" is what I meant. Even with the ultimate robot equipped Apache, hundreds of pounds lighter and able to take G loads that no human pilot could, you've still got the problem of having it hang out intelligently in a battlefield environment, taking the proper initiatives when confronted with opportunities for inflicting serious damage on some enemy asset. The software for truly intelligent autonomous roaming at the same level as a pair of human eyes just isn't there and you know it - the state of AI today is in rather sad shape and the talking paperclip in Office 97 is about as close as any of us will get to HAL 9000 during this particular millenium (and quite possibly the next one as well if we keep slipping HAL's ship dates the way we have so far). The alternative is telepresence, and I don't see that being a particularly robust solution either in the presence of problems like jamming, transmission delay and the plain and simple fact that a Mark-I eyeball, during daylight operations, still beats a sensor sending back some limited resolution picture (now at night, on the other hand, I do see a rather different story - that time may indeed someday belong solely to the machines). > You are still thinking like a capitalist warmonger. Economy of scale > and pragmatic design would bring weapon costs *down*, not drive them > up. I'm not advocating "hypersmart" weapons, just "adequately smart" > ones. The Tomahawk is an excellent example of an overpriced, So you'd prefer to build V1 buzz-bombs than V2 rockets - that sort of mindset? That mindset works in a few areas of warfare, one perhaps being missiles, but it doesn't work with, say, tanks. We proved that in WW-II, where the far more numerically superior Shermans were nonetheless sitting ducks for the German Tigers, and we proved it again in the Gulf - most of the T-72 tanks lost in the battle of 83 Easting were hit at ranges beyond where they could even see and engage the M-1 Abrams. Sometimes building a smaller number of more expensive and capable weapons beats building a larger number of cheaper but far more easily killed weapons, economies of scale or not. > For a good example, look at the aircraft that the Australian BoM are > developing for remote-area weather sensing. It's fully autonomous, > capable of dealing intelligently with almost any weather condition > (inclding flying in cyclonic weather conditions) and has a "loiter > time" measured in days. Yes yes, or the Israeli RPVs for that matter. All interesting ideas and even very good for certain roles, like artillery spotting, but I just don't see them quite replacing the manned aircraft this year, you know what I'm saying? :-) Jordan
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