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Date:      Wed, 15 Oct 1997 10:59:00 +0930
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc:        chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: F1.17 (was Re: C2 Trusted FreeBSD?) 
Message-ID:  <199710150129.KAA00726@word.smith.net.au>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 14 Oct 1997 07:02:16 MST." <27117.876837736@time.cdrom.com> 

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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. ;-)

I vote to kill it.  It would appear that moving it to chat and being 
flippant hasn't much helped people understand.  I expect that the 
average American male doesn't have much hope of recognising what most 
of the rest of the world finds so funny about the "major" military 
powers and their armed forces.

(Issues like "pride" and "patriotism" come to mind.  Back into your 
court, J.K. Freud 8)

> > 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) 

Did I say satellite?  Did I not, for that matter?  Contemplate the sort 
of coverage you could get with a pile of Iridium-style satellites; 
build them for limited lifetime, toss up a few thousand on SRBs and run 
them as a wide-area synthetic aperture.

Again, conventional military thinking is just different from my 
(commercial, industrial) viewpoint; I'm not claiming oracularity.

> 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.

This is much of my point; things are as they are because they are.  The 
fact that they are doesn't repudiate the suggestion that alternative 
methods might be viable, merely reduces the chance that an alternative 
might receive any sort of reasonable hearing.

> 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. 

This is locked down in the current model of conflict, and is really 
outside anything sensible to be discussed here as you point out.  

Suffice to observe that if materiel stops being valuable in and of 
itself, hanging around to destroy it becomes a waste of time.  Chase 
the real target instead.  8)

>  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). 

I could argue (and I think Amancio would concur) that the talking 
paperclip *is* a weapon, and probably a pretty powerful one at that.

> 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.

This is of course why AWACS and JSTARS are basically redundant and not 
at all useful to a modern pilot, right?  Granted, I do all of my combat 
flying in simulations (and I'm a pretty lousy pilot at that), but 
eyeball contact has a limited (but very valid) set of uses.

Given the way sensor technology stutters forward, I can see that using 
a modelled, reconstructed virtual environment cued from sensor data 
from the RPV offers quite a lot of possibilities.

If you've ever had a chance to play Warbirds, you'll have some idea of 
what I'm getting at.

> > 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, 

My apologies to Jim and the inference that the Tomahawk doesn't work 
well; on the contrary it's a marvellous performer, until you take its 
price into consideration.

> So you'd prefer to build V1 buzz-bombs than V2 rockets - that sort of
> mindset?

Not as such; the key is the definition of "adequate". 

>  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.

Sure.  And a TOW or a Hellfire will kill an M-1 while it's still 
wondering what might be in the trees over yonder.  Just as the Tigers 
were rendered useless courtesy of people like 617; if you insist on 
matching like with like, the better will generally triumph.

> 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? :-)

Entirely.  8)  

What the hell, I suspect people are asking, does my stance have to do 
with FreeBSD?

I think it should be obvious; FreeBSD is the cheaper, more 
"appropriate" solution in many situations where "conventional" thinking 
might dictate otherwise.  There's probably a catchy name for this sort 
of allusion. 8)

mike




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