Stuff like these UAVs are not only great for tracking and killing terrorists, but they will have a chilling effect on the surviving terrorists as the word spreads. Imagine the stories these guys are going to tell each other about the "white man's magic". "I got a few rounds off, jumped in my truck, sped at least 10 miles away, and they still got me!"

testimony like this tends to way heavy on the minds of future attackers.

"You have twenty seconds to comply"

I sure hope they make it so this thing can roar like a lion.

How about one that loudly announces in arabic:
Prepare to be assimilated! Resistance is Futile!

Ace--

Trust me. If half the shit I work on ever gets deployed, we might as well be calling lightning bolts down on the bad guys. It'll pay off the ol' Arthur C. Clarke quote about any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic.

To some Jihadi living in the 7th Century, this stuff might as well be magic.

The Fallujah fight is just a taste (the first one's free). Now, perhaps people will give Rummy a bit of the benefit of the doubt when he talks about the power of transformation.

Cheers,
Dave

P.S. Best line? "We're getting Predator." Makes me think of calling in actual Predators.

Which, BTW, ain't outside of the realm of possibility. How so? Two words: electrochromic camouflage.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_30/b3843083.htm

Yeah, I've seen that. The Japanese had this awesome poncho that virtually turned one invisible (well, from a distance).

One of my friends works down at Fort Belvoir on the Soldier project. She gets to play with all the cool toys-- X-Ray goggles, bulletproof t-shirts, tossable robots.

She qualifies the job as "every boy's wet dream."

I hate her for that.

Cheers,
Dave

P.S. Of course, all this stuff is great, when it works. And when it doesn't weigh the soldier down any more than he already is. Oh, and when the batteries don't run out.

But yeah, it's great stuff after all that ;-)

"Boot muj sent out to get the Coke. Luckiest bastard on the planet."

No joke.

All the high tech goodies are nice, but unless you penetrate the insurgency and get informers, you don't know who they are unless you happen to spot one with a weapon. Until then, your high tech stuff is idle.

And all too frequently, superbly trained US soldiers with the latest gear can be dispatched by 2 illiterate Iraqi teens who set up a 160mm shell with a cell phone activated fuse.

And, lasers, JDAMs, magic soldier suits don't address the political and religious challenges we face. When the US is hated by 90% of the populations in 40 Muslim countries because we support corrupt secular strongmen ruling those nations, and heavily tilt to whatever Israel wants -- no end is in sight to the hostilities. And Americans living and working there are in serious danger. This is a recent phemonena. Up until the mid-70s, it was quite safe for Americans and other "infidels" to live and travel in Muslim nations.

The two most important goals of America are to reform dysfunctional Muslim states through democracy and law acceptable to the populations there - and impose final borders between Israel and Palestine. A goal almost as important is to make a serious investment in America having the resources of people that know the Ummah and obtaining 1st class intelligence on what's going on thre.

It's nice to have a strong military with toys no one else has, but that's not enough to obtain victory over the forces of radical Islam.

cedarford,

You kinda have your mind set on most matters, doncha?

While what you say is of course mostly true, the article -- and the excerpt I specifically quoted -- says that the technology in fact spotted insurgents without the need for informants.

You sorta glossed right over that.

ACE -

The high tech gear is definitely nice as long as you let the enemy take the 1st shot since you are clueless on who the enemy is until they attack you...because few in the region wish to become informants in the present atmosphere. And after the enemy attacks, then maybe 1 time out of 20 you have a superwhammadyne flying machine that can track a culprit down.

A fine new military toy is no solution in itself to defeating an insurgency.

Or gaining peace with Muslim nations where we are hated by the vast majority of the people for reasons fair and unfair.

Cedarford--

Hey, I agree. But I think you're arguing the wrong point.

We'd be at war with these guys whether we were armed with sticks or with handheld nuclear weapons. All things considered, I'd rather have the latter than the former.

And, as for defeating the insurgency, *some* form of fighting will be required. . . right? The bells and whistles we've got, and the superbly trained soldiers we've got, combine to make it a lot more likely that A) we don't die, B) we kill them, and C) we kill a lot more of them than they of us.

High-tech doesn't win wars by itself-- you need sound strategy, operations, and tactics. But high-tech sure can make winning wars a LOT easier, at least for the side that has it, and knows how to use it.

Cheers,
Dave

Dave - we probably agree. I wrote what I wrote as a caution to anyone so dazzled with high tech weaponry that they advocate a series of "easy" wars with a string of Muslim nations. "They can't stop us! We have the JDAM!!"

And who think because we can get high res photos of license plates from satellites, or use UAV's - that high tech compensates for us not knowing who or what the targets are because we lacked HUMINT on the ground.

ACE references a "lucky" coincidence where a UAV operator just happened to notice a bad guy firing at US troops and fleeing - and the operator was not committed to using the asset on a mission at the time and had the freedom to follow and track the attacker. In most of the IED attacks, and most of the ambushes, the assailants are unknown to our limited human intelligence assets. Even if we had 4,000 UAVs in the air, most of those assailants would still be able to mount attacks and disappear into city buildings if spotted.

To get them, we need Iraqis working with us. Not a new whizbang spy vehicle or rifle that shoots magic bullets. In light of that, Bremer's decision to disband the entire Iraqi military and Muqubarat and toss them on the street was a monstrously stupid mistake.

ACE & Dave - A good Ralph Peters article illustrating limitations of high tech.

http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/34002.htm

Cedarford--

Yup, I think we agree.

HOWEVER, I would like to say that your comments are still selling the technology a bit short.

For example, we've been using UAVs to spot IEDs being set up, and even to spy car bombs, allowing us to neutralize them before they even get close to their targets. Be aware that some of the more advanced UAVs, like Global Hawk, aren't just relying on the ubiquitous B&W video footage. They've got a lot of useful sensors-- different radars, hyperspectral imagers, etc. that can tell an observer an awful lot about the target they're looking at.

Also, in a purely military scenario-- such as the counterbattery fight described in the article-- HUMINT is probably too slow for the situation, unless you're dealing with eyes on target. Besides, if we own the skies, anything that we see, we usually can kill-- either through precision fire, or by rapidly deploying our troops to cordon the target. That's an advantage afforded to us *entirely* through our high technology.

In the article, the Jihadis are just lobbing shells, hoping to get a lucky hit with fire-by-map. They have no forward observers; they have no secure comms even if they did; they don't have a secure firing location, or even the mobility to redeploy their weapon once American forces sight and range it.

Intelligence is all about context. I agree, we could always use more HUMINT. But technical intelligence is an invaluable "force multiplier" for the HUMINT that we get. Getting a report from someone on the ground telling us where to look and listen is great, but that HUMINT by itself may be useless unless we can verify it in time, or exploit it with additional information necessary to destroy the target.

Intelligence always has been a bit of a rock-paper-scissors game, but all of the elements involved aren't necessarily equal at any one time (or, in fact, ever equal-- imagery has its limitations, so does sigint and masint. But, surprise, suprise, so does humint).

As for Bremer's decision, that's a debate for another day!

Cheers!
Dave

Bitch all you want about these toys, Cedarford, but they are part and parcel of why we're kicking these guys' asses hard. When the attrition rates are what they have been in this incredibly one-sided near-massacre, that's going to affect recruiting somewhat. Those Arabs who hate us so much might have to swallow it if the choice is being hosed off the treads of an Abrams.

You sure seem to piss on a lot of stuff and just kind of glaze over the most obvious things if they contradict your cranky-ass opinions.

poker me up