others may see us as heartless automatons bombing the world"

Too late William, they already do. Although "heartless" is not the word most would choose. "Ignorant", "arrogant", "war monger" are some of the more polite suitable words. The US has lost the "hearts and minds" global war.

I still wonder what Bush would have done if the military had actually located the type of WMDs that he, Cheney and others alluded to, not just chemical WMDs?

I suspect that he would have confiscated Saddam's WMDs and either given them to Israel or detonated them in Iran

On 9/11 America was devastated by 19 individuals who used American inventions in order to devastate America!

And through our increasingly remote conduct of warfare, aren't we transferring the risk from our soldiers to ourselves?

A chaotician, one who is accustomed to speaking in terms of probabilities would concur in this sense.

The USA, since perfecting the fission, plutonium and hydrogen (atomic bombs) and lately atomic weapons, spent the years afterward (58 to be exact) trying to keep the technology out of the hands of most other nations and people!

All of us know that the probability is very high that the USA will be a victim of the technological weaponry and advances that it helped to perfect, in time!

An old saying: America invents it, Japan builds it and the Russians say, we already had it! Somewhere in between lies the truth, however, now everyone is getting in on the act!

Our current venture proved how imprudent it is to invade other nations in order to confiscate their real or imagined WMDs.

I still wonder what Bush would have done if the military had actually located the type of WMDs that he, Cheney and others alluded, not just chemical WMD.

I suspect that he would have confiscated Saddam's WMDs and either given them to Israel or detonated them in Iraqn

On 9/11 America was devastated by 19 individuals who used American invention in order to devastate America!

Skip, is a military supporter anything like an athletic supporter?
This is what I get out of this:
If the guy pulling the trigger is sitting in Area 51 doesn't that make Area 51 a legitimate target? We'll let that sink in for a while.

Well, as you mention Rome, the Roman Army method of dealing with roadside bombs would conceivably be very up close and personal: crucifying thousands of the locals along the roads where the IEDs went off...

I mean... This IS all about the American Way Of Life[tm] isn't it?

Let's MOVE 'EM OUT!!!

4000 dead Americans ain't NUTHIN'!

Disneyland-Style Theme Park Set for Baghdad.

No... No joke.

But the following snippet from the satirical portion of this presentation about sums it up:

The construction began in November 2003 on a site that had once contained a set of apartment blocks, a school and a public library, but had been conveniently levelled by US bombs.

Thousands of Iraqis showed their support for the project by lining up for jobs. "I need this for my starving wife and children," one man happily told a Fox News crew.

Thousands of Iraqis showed their support for the project by lining up for jobs. "I need this for my starving wife and children," one man happily told a Fox News crew.

"I have a doctorate in applied mathematics and was affluent before the war, but now the only chance we have for survival is for Disney to hire me to shovel asphalt."

Sadly, this man and twenty-four others were killed by a suicide bomber a few minutes after giving this interview.

Disneyland-Style Theme Park Set for Baghdad. Honest to God - MotherJones

My site if you need the REAL satire:
http://razedbywolves.blogspot.com/2008/04/disneyland-style-theme-park-set-for.html

or motherjones: http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/04/8057_disneylandstyle.html

These drones seem pretty effective against low-tech desperados - but what happens when they start using jammers, or shoulder-fired AA rockets to take the drones out?

Is there a danger in relying on technology that can be pretty easily compromised?

THE USA is heartless...?

I just saw an excellent documentary re: December 7, 1941 and the USA response.

1). USA receives intel beforehand, that Japan is planning an attack...
2). USA ignores intel & does not pass it
on to Commanders Kimmel...
3). December 7, 1941, Japaneese planes are approaching and caught on radar, however intel is ignored - Commanders continue golfing.
4). Twenty-three hundred Americans, roughly the same number destroyed on 9/11 when intel was ignored, are slaughtered. Er herm!!!
5). The USA mounts counter attack and drops two fission/hydrogen bombs (overkill)on non-military Japanese civilians - which was in violation of international law according to the Japaneese.

What lesson has been learned? None apparently, THE USA is still repeating the same mistakes!

One other nuance, the USA took Hawaii from the Hawaiians and deposed their Queen. The USA military was subsequently attacked by Japan (comeuppance). And the last time I visited Hawaii, the Japanese were in charge! Hmm!

Poor Poor Hawaiians!

Ha!! That's funny!!!

==The US - for decades - had to compete w/the Soviet Union to ram values down the throats of 3rd world countries.==

I knew the Soviets were to blame for it all! But wait, there were no Soviets during the Mexican-American war...The Spanish-American war...The Phillipines war...Second Iraq war...

Ok, so it must have been the British "royalist" ideology and the pan-Arabic Socialist ideology that we must have been competing against! These were highly dangerous to our "way of life"!

//The US has for decades tried to ram our values down the throats of every 3rd world farmer we could find. Why is it so hard to see that WE are our own worst enemy (?)\\ -Skip Meadows

The US - for decades - had to compete w/the Soviet Union to ram values down the throats of 3rd world countries. Where have you been? In the pseudo-lib clauset? Howabout 'yes'.

You can be Our Worst Enemy if you try harder and a bit dumber than that. See if that fits - then wear it awhile. Until you get tired of that same old, pseudo-lib, never-works rhetorical hat. I'm sure you will skip it - skippy..

The US has for decades tried to ram our values down the throats of every 3rd world farmer we could find. Why is it so hard to see that WE are our own worst enemy (?) We get ourselves into unwinnable situations over and over. I know the casualties don't matter much because there are no rich kids or politicians kids involved. Just a few years ago the two biggest problems we had were funding social security adequately and medical plans for all US citizens. The answer was always, "where are we going to get the money" ? Where in the hell have these morons found the money they have spent in this lunacy for the past (5) years? I am so fed up with these clowns and their own personal agenda's ignoring the very real need of US citizens just so they can go kill some other country's citizens for absolutely no legitimate reason. I used to think that the countries around the world that had a coup d'etat periodically were just goofy. Now, God help me, I am beginning to understand why they do it. Our government has become dangerous for our very existence as a viable nation and I for one never gave them that authority. Capitol Hill has got to be the biggest "flea market" in the world. You can buy anything, including your very own pol if you wish. I am just absolutely
amazed that they can find that many completely amoral and mentally incompetent people to staff the place. Remote control warfare is just another page in the book of these guys getting richer while everyone else pays the price.

I don't like the idea of battlefield decisions and fingers on the trigger taking place in the United States. These decisions need to be made by people on the ground with an intimate knowledge of the terrain and people. While Drones may supplement the eyes on the ground, they cannot replace them. They must be controlled by local commanders.
I do think there has been an over reliance on satellites. Where they are used is decided in Washington, and there are competing needs for there use. If drones are locally controlled, signal intelligence and reconnaissance can be directed more quickly toward local needs.
You cannot yet replace the human mind, and its ability to process information and make a judgment on how a weapon is to be used.

This is just too cool not to post:

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Baghdad 2025
The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums
By Nick Turse
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skip
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DARPA's Future War on the Urban Poor

In his tour de force Planet of Slums, Mike Davis observes, "the Pentagon's best minds have dared to venture where most United Nations, World Bank or State Department types fear to go... [T]hey now assert that the 'feral, failed cities' of the Third World --especially their slum outskirts -- will be the distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century." Pentagon war-fighting doctrine, he notes, "is being reshaped accordingly to support a low-intensity world war of unlimited duration against criminalized segments of the urban poor."

In fact, this past October the U.S. Army issued its latest "urban operations" manual. "Given the global population trends and the likely strategies and tactics of future threats," it declares, "Army forces will likely conduct operations in, around, and over urban areas -- not as a matter of fate, but as a deliberate choice linked to national security objectives and strategy, and at a time, place, and method of the commander's choosing." Global economic deprivation and poor housing, the hallmarks of the urban slum, are, the manual asserts, what makes "urban areas potential sources of unrest" and thus, "[i]ncreases the likelihood of the Army's involvement in stability operations." And "idle" urban youth (long a target of security forces in the U.S. homeland), loosed in the future slum city from the "traditional social controls" of "village elders and clan leaders" and prey to manipulation by "nonstate actors" draw particular concern from the manual's authors.

Given the assumed need to be in the urban Iraqs of the future, the question for the U.S. military becomes a practical one: How to deal with these uppity children of the third world. That's where DARPA and other Department of Defense (DoD) dreamers come in. According to DARPA's 2004 report, what's needed are "new systems and technologies for prosecution of urban warfare... [and] new operational methods for our soldiers, Marines, and special operations forces."

Today, DARPA, and other Pentagon ventures like the Small Business Innovation Research Program (in which the "DoD funds early-stage R&D projects at small technology companies") and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program (where funding goes to "cooperative R&D projects involving a small business and a research institution") are awash in "urban operations-oriented programs." These go by the acronym of UO and are designed to support tomorrow's interventions and occupations.

The Director of DARPA's Information Exploitation Office put it this way:

"[They are aimed at] conflicts in high density urban areas... against enemies having social and cultural traditions that may be counter-intuitive to us, and whose actions often appear to be irrational because we don't understand their context."
These programs include a wide range of efforts to visualize, map out, and spy on the global mega-favelas that the U.S. has, until now, largely scorned and neglected. A host of unmanned vehicles are also being readied for surveillance and combat in these future "hot-zones," while all sorts of lethal enhancements are in various stages of development to enable American troops to more effectively kick down the doors of the poor in 2025.

Urban Planning, Pentagon-style: Spider-Men and Exploding Frisbees

So let's try to fill out that futuristic combat scenario in the planet's urban jungles with a little futuristic detail. Current UO-oriented systems under development include:

VisiBuilding: This is a program aimed at addressing "a pressing need in urban warfare: seeing inside buildings" by developing technology that will allow U.S. forces to "determine building layouts, find anomalous quantities of materials," and "locate people within the building." According to Edward Baranoski of DARPA's Special Projects Office, Visibuilding will allow "a lot of opportunity to stake out buildings and really see inside." Think of it as a high-tech military Peeping Tom system that lets U.S. troops spy inside foreign homes and make judgments about whatever they might deem "anomalous" inside. While VisiBuilding is in development, troops will have to be content with "Radar Scope" which allows them to "sense through 12 inches of concrete to determine if someone is inside a building."

Camouflaged Long Endurance Nano Sensors: This "real-time ultra-wideband radar network... will detect, classify, localize, and track dismounted combatants... in urban environments." In translation, a system of palm-sized, networked sensors will monitor an area, day in, day out for weeks at a time. This is what DARPA likes to call "persistent surveillance." The U.S. military has headed down this particular surveillance path before via the ill-fated McNamara Line and various people-sniffer devices, all of which proved incapable of differentiating between armed combatants and civilians in Vietnam era. On this score, there's little reason to believe anything will change in future alien urban slums, despite the increasing technological sophistication of such systems.

UrbanScape: This program aims "to make the foreign city as 'familiar as the soldier's backyard'" by providing "the warfighters patrolling an urban environment with an up-to-date, high resolution model of the urban terrain that can be viewed, manipulated and analyzed." Specially-outfitted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Humvees are to gather data about a target city and then translate it into 3D visuals. These images will then be available to troops for use in navigating through and conducting combat operations in tomorrow's labyrinthine slums.

Heterogeneous Urban RSTA Team: With the apt acronym of HURT, this program will network together a squadron of small, low-altitude UAVs sending video footage to hand-held devices for the immediate use of urban RSTA (reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition) troops. This high-tech system is designed, according to DARPA's director, Dr. Anthony J. Tether, to provide U.S. forces with "unprecedented awareness that enables them to shape and control [a] conflict as it unfolds." It is meant to improve the odds when American counterinsurgency warriors take on "warfighters in a MOUT [Military Operations on Urban Terrain] environment" or any rag-tag slum militia of tomorrow. If a report by the Pentagon Channel News is to be believed, HURT will be operational by 2008.

The Air Force is, in turn, seeking the "ability to continuously track, tag, and locate (TTL) asymmetric threats in urban environments using sensors across the tiers of airborne assets." What they envision is a slew of UAVs loitering long-term above hostile cities and slums, ready at a moment's notice to spot a target and begin tracking it. Such "targets" might be "commercial vehicles" or individuals identified through a "hyperspectral imaging HSI video camera" that allows for "the frequency spectrum of clothes, hair, and skin [to] be exploited" thus providing "targeting level accuracy to weapon delivery assets." Think of it as the high-tech urban hunter-killer system for the neo-colonial future. While the Air Force sees this as a way to target and kill "anti-occupation forces" in Baghdad 2025, they also envision it doing double duty in the Homeland where, they say, "law enforcement require[s] urban target tracking."

Nano Air Vehicle: Imagine a world in which mechanical gnats infest a city, buzzing through people's homes, intruding on their lives, filming whatever they choose with tiny cameras and transmitting the data back to U.S. troops. This program aims to "develop and demonstrate an extremely small (less than 7.5 cm), ultra-lightweight (less than 10 grams) air vehicle system... to provide the warfighter with unprecedented capability for urban mission operations."

Additionally, there's the Multi Dimensional Mobility Robot (MDMR), which "will traverse complex urban terrain"; the Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) a small, vertical take-off and landing UAV that will be "employable in a variety of warfighting environments" including "urban areas"; and the intriguing but shadowy Urban Hopping Robots program whose project manager, Dr. Michael Obal, declined to answer Tomdispatch's inquiries about the project. Jan R. Walker of DARPA's External Relations office told Tomdispatch in an email that there is "very limited information available on the Urban Hopping Robots program," but suggested that the "program is developing a semi-autonomous hybrid hopping/articulated wheeled robotic platform that could adapt to the urban environment in real-time and provide the delivery of small payloads to any point of the urban jungle while remaining lightweight, small to minimize the burden on the soldier." The proposed hopping robot, she noted, "would be truly multi-functional in that it will negotiate all aspects of the urban battlefield to deliver payloads to non-line-of-sight areas with precision."

Z-Man: Copyright infringement was probably the only thing that stopped this DARPA program from being called the "Spiderman Project." Basically, Z-Man seeks to "develop climbing aids that will enable an individual soldier to scale vertical walls constructed of typical building materials without the need for ropes or ladders." The Pentagon is aiming to find methods similar to those employed by "geckos, spiders, and small animals [to] scale vertical surfaces, that is, by using unique biological material systems that enable controllable adhesion." This weaponized wall-crawler, assumedly capable of creeping into some 2025 apartment window in Baghdad, Beruit, or Kerachi "carrying a combat load," definitely is not meant to be your friendly neighborhood Spiderman.

Modular Disc-Wing (Frisbee) Urban Cruise Munition: Yes, you read it right, the Air Force has green-lighted Triton Systems, Inc. to create "a MEFP [Multiple Explosively Formed Penetrator]-armed Lethal Frisbee UAV." That is, a flying disk that will "locate defiladed combatants in complex urban terrain" and annihilate them using a bunker-buster warhead. Unlike your run-of-the mill Wham-O, however, this "frisbee" will probably be thrown using a device resembling a skeet launcher.

Close Combat Lethal Recon This deadly, loitering explosive expressively for use in urban landscapes will expand a soldier's killing zone by reaching "over and around buildings, onto rooftops, and into open building portals." Think of it as a smart grenade or, according to DARPA Director Tether, "a tube-launched cruise munition that can be used by a dismounted infantryman in an urban area to attack a target, perhaps spotted by a UAV, which is beyond his line of sight. It's like a small mortar round with a grenade-size explosive in it. A fiber-optic line unreels from its back end and provides the data link that allows the soldier to see the video from the munition's camera and to fly it into the target."

Training for Tomorrow's Urban Occupations

Just a cursory glance at last year's Pentagon expenditures makes clear the heavy emphasis on training the men and women who are slated to use DARPA's high-tech urban weapons against slum-dwellers in the coming years. In March 2006, the Army signed a nearly $25 million contract "for construction of a combined arms collective training facility/urban assault complex" at Fort Carson, Colorado. In August, the Navy inked an $18.5 million deal for the "design and construction of a combined arms military operations in urban terrain facility" at Twenty-nine Palms, California. In September, the Army approved a contract for the construction of an Urban Assault Course at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. In November, the Navy awarded a $12,500,000 contract for construction of a "Special Operations Force Military Operations on Urban Terrain Training Complex" at San Clemente Island, California. And in December 2006, the Army agreed to pay $11,838,998 for a new "Military Operations Urban Terrain Facility" for Fort Irwin, California.

The Pentagon has even exported its urban warfare training centers to sites closer to tomorrow's prospective targets, such as the Army's custom-made MOUT facilities at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan and at Camp Buehring, Kuwait. In November 2006, the Army awarded General Dynamics a $17 million contract to construct an urban combat training site as part of the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center in Jordan -- a facility which will, according to an Army spokesman, be available to "all friendly nations that support the War on Terror."

American Terminators vs. Drug-Dealing Serial-Killer Guerillas

As both the high-tech programs and the proliferating training facilities suggest, the Pentagon views the foreign slum city of tomorrow as a dystopian nightmare and the bloody battlespace to be feared and controlled in the coming decades. Beyond this, the Pentagon exhibits a palpable fear of urban disorder of any sort. In response, it is creating its own Hollywood-style solutions to its Hollywood-esque Escape From New York-meets-Bladerunner-meets-Zulu-meets-Robocop vision of the Third World city to come.

For example, the Navy/Marine Corps recently launched a program seeking to develop algorithms to predict the criminality of a given building or neighborhood. The project, titled "Finding Repetitive Crime Supporting Structures," defines cities as nothing more than a collection of "urban clutter [that] affords considerable concealment for the actors that we must capture." The "hostile behavior bad actors," as the program terms them, are defined not just as "terrorists," today's favorite catch-all boogiemen, but as a panoply of nightmare archetypes: "insurgents, serial killers, drug dealers, etc." For its part, the Army's recently revised "Urban Operations" manual offers an even more extensive list of "persistent and evolving urban threats," including regional conventional military forces, paramilitary forces, guerrillas, and insurgents as well as terrorists, criminal groups, and angry crowds. In fact, even the threat of computer "hackers" are mentioned.

To do battle in dystopian mega-cities where serial killers, druglords, hackers, and urban guerillas may have joined forces, DARPA is intent on developing a program worthy of a direct-to-video sci-fi thriller. In a recent solicitation, it offered a vision of a human-robot military SWAT team busting down doors in a favela of the future. It reads:

"The challenge is to create a system demonstrating the use of multiple robots with one or more humans on a highly constrained tactical maneuver... One example of such a maneuver is the through-the-door procedure often used by police and soldiers to enter an urban dwelling... [where] one kicks in the door then pulls back so another can enter low and move left, followed by another who enters high and moves right, etc. In this project the teams will consist of robot platforms working with one or more human teammates as a cohesive unit. The robots should be under autonomous control rather than remote/teleoperated."
This scenario of tomorrow already seems well launched. The military has, in fact, been obsessed with the idea of sending to war heavily-armed, tele-operated robots - such as the Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System, or SWORDS Talon, a small, all-terrain tracked vehicle, used by the U.S. military since 2000, that can be outfitted with M240 or M249 machine guns, Barrett 50-caliber rifles, 40 mm grenade launchers, and anti-tank rocket launchers.

Pentagon to Global Cities: Drop Dead

This past fall, the Pentagon's U.S. Joint Forces Command engaged in a $25 million, 35-day, computer-based simulation exercise involving more than 1,400 soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors. A year in the making, "Urban Resolve 2015" had one simple goal -- to test concepts for future "combat in cities" -- and, not surprisingly, it was set in Baghdad 2015. An article put out by the Pentagon's American Forces Press Service was quick to say, however, that the virtual exercise really could be taking place in "any urban environment." And the reason why was clear in the words of Dave Ozolek, the executive director of the Joint Futures Lab at the Joint Forces Command. Urban zones, he said, are "where the fight is, that's where the enemy is, that['s] where the center of gravity for the whole operation is."

While the Joint Forces Command may already be war-gaming the 2015 Battle for Baghdad, right now it looks like the U.S. military will have trouble hanging on there for even a couple of more years. Still, if present plans become reality, odds are U.S. military planners will be attempting to occupy some city, in some fashion, come 2015 and 2025. In the future, as the Army's new Urban Operations Manual puts it, "every Soldier -- regardless of branch or military occupational specialty -- must be committed and prepared to close with and kill or capture threat forces in an urban environment."

The way the Pentagon seems to envision the future, its human-robot expeditionary forces will spend increasing amounts of time dropping in on Third World super-slums armed not only with heavy weaponry, but also with gadgets galore. They will be able to read instant 3D maps of the buildings they're approaching and watch real-time video of the most intimate activities in the urban zone they've been tasked to subdue.

As tiny flying UAVs blanket an impoverished neighborhood, a squad of special-ops Spidermen and Geko warriors will crawl and slither up apartment-building walls, while teams of robots are simultaneously hopping through first floor windows, and Terminator-Human teams are kicking down front doors to capture an enemy drug kingpin. Nearby "angry crowds" of politically-minded youth will be engaged by heavily-armed tele-operated SWORDS Talon robots, while a few up-armored cyborg troops, at a safe distance, fire their loitering smart grenades at a gathering crowd of armed slum-dwellers who believe themselves well hidden and protected in nearby alleyways.

Of course, no matter the fantasies of Pentagon scientists and planners, such futuristic solutions will not replace U.S. reliance on massive firepower, even in labyrinthine cities, as was true with Tokyo during World War II, Pyongyang during the Korean War, Ben Tre in Vietnam, and the Sunni city of Fallujah during the current war in Iraq. As Major Tim Karcher, the operations officer for the Army's Task Force 2-7 Cavalry, recalled of the American assault on Fallujah in November 2004, "We sat there for a good six or seven hours...watching... this death and destruction rain down on the city, from AC-130 [gunship]s to any kind of fast-moving aircraft, 155 [millimeter] howitzers. You name it, everybody was getting in the mix."

Given the military's fear of sending large numbers of American troops into the enemy- friendly landscape of the urban mega-slum, where significant casualties are almost unavoidable, this form of Pentagon-preferred urban renewal is unlikely to be replaced, no matter what technologies come down the pike.

The Military and the Metropolis

Cities are obviously on the Pentagon's hit list - today, it's Baghdad; tomorrow 2015 or 2025, if military planners are right, it could be Accra, Bogotá, Dhaka, Karachi, Kinshasa, Lagos, Mogadishu or even a perenial favorite, Port au Prince. Regardless of the exact locale, Pentagon strategists looking into the DARPA crystal ball of the future have determined that urban slums will be a crucial battleground, and slum-dwellers a crucial enemy.

Yet the outlook for the U.S. military is not upbeat -- even with high-tech exploding frisbees, spider-man suits, terminator-like robots, and urban training facilities galore coming on line. In the wars begun since the U.S. high command moved into its own self-described virtual "city" -- the Pentagon -- a distinct inability to decisively defeat any but its weakest foes has been in evidence.

Korea in the early 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s, Lebanon in the early 1980s, Somalia in the early 1990s were all failures. More recently, victory in Afghanistan has proved worse than elusive and a ragtag insurgency in Iraq has fought the Pentagon's technological dominance and superior firepower to a standstill. While able to cause massive casualties and tremendous destruction, the Pentagon war machine has proven remarkably ineffectual when it comes to achieving actual victory.

Now, the Pentagon has decided to prepare for a fight with a restless, oppressed population of slum-dwellers one billion strong and growing at an estimated rate of 25 million people per year. To take on even lone outposts in this multitude -- like any of the 400 cities of over 1 million people that exist today or the 150 more estimated to be in existence by 2015 -- is a fool's errand, a recipe for both carnage and quagmire.
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http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/155031/nick_turse_pentagon_to_global_cities_drop_dead
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==So overall, while drones may saves lives (ours and civilian's) in the short term, and may be less expensive than other means and may even be a better means to destroy a given target, they carry a long-term risk: If our military future is to be a push button video-game style of warfare, others may see us as heartless automatons bombing the world.==

Well, these "others" better get used to dying, 'cause we rule the world!

We don't really know where the world actually is, or what it is like (we are notoriously geographically and culturally ignorant), but we sure do rule it.

==I say send in the drones anytime.==

Yes, seeing what is done in your name can really ruin your appetite for a burger and a good episode of American Idol.

Sending in the drones (or clones, maybe) sounds like a very neat, industrial-strength solution.

We can also coin a cool explainer "vernacular" - "People don't kill people - Drones kill people!"

==There is still someone guiding the drone, and the same person pulls the trigger in order to deploy the missile(s)==

The time is nearly upon us that many of these systems would have to be nearly or fully automated, as our "enemies" in the slum cities of the world multiply and have to be "defeated" in larger and larger numbers.

We would have no choice but to turn to machine automation in war fighting, as we have turned to it for every other efficiency gain. In fact, we are developing a multitude of machine-assisted and machine-run weapons systems, in order to be able to kill effectively in remote, disease-ridden, dangerous and plain disgusting areas of the world where our "enemies" bread and multiply.

Using these new and upcoming "network-centric" systems for surveilance, control, combat and service delivery, we expect to be able to extend our "full-spectrum" dominance of any battlefield into the future. Since great majority of our leaders believe that our "path to greatness and security" lies at the barrel of a gun, automated war fighting is the way of the American future. I would also expect a large increase in "highly disriminating" weapons, targeting a particular DNA carriers or otherwise biologically or physically differentiated "enemies" in world slum cities.

To many that sounds like a bright future for us.

All this talk or "valor" and "honor"...what total and absolute nonsense. War is about killing the other guy, plain and simple. When you see a soldier laying in the dirt, you smell that coppery smell as they bleed out, and the smell where they crapped their pants along the way, and you hear their moans, screams, and cries for wives or mothers...I say send in the drones anytime.

Plainfacto:"...guerilla enemies..."

Funny, I can't recall the Iraqis had intentionally harmed a single American citizen in recent history until we showed up for "our oil under their sand."

You need to do more than look up the word "enemy" in the dictionary... You should investigate HOW enemies become that in context of the Middle East.

Plainfacto:
Yes, they have opened that door; in fact have swung it wide open to just about snap it off the hinges. I do not think that unmanned vehicles don't have a place. There is no honor, nothing redeeming either in setting off an IED or being the victim of one. Within that context we have a moral obligation to defeat the enemy beyond adhering to an ethical code that is not common or shared.

However, like any technology, we need to consider the ethics involved; where the line gets drawn. Genetics, for example provide a real potential to cure many ills. There is also the very real possibility that this same technology could open the gates to hell. A purist might look at gene splicing and DNA therapy as mucking about in the ambit of God; defects are by design an aspect of our humanity. Others might see these same procedures as a way to create perfect people. The ethical limits lie somewhere between; where that limit is, we haven't yet determined. However, if we do not begin careful consideration of the morality involved before they become medical facts, we will be gone too far down that path to return.

The same is true of unmanned vehicles. We are currently faced with the situation you sited below, where reducing risk where none has been offered in counter valance, becomes a moral and practical imperative. But what of the future? There are already being made plans to replace squadrons of piloted aircraft with unmanned and fully armed vehicles. Again, where do we draw the line? Would it be ethical to replace the crews of M-1 tanks with loading machines and remote drivers and shooters? I don't know, at least not in every context possible. However, I do know that if the questions are not asked, if there is no desire to define the limits, something men of honor would see as an abomination will come to pass before it can be stopped.

Clausewitz defined war as "the extension of politics by other means." How quickly would those means be applied by politicians if our own casualties were removed from the equation? Would there be any significant questioning of the war in Iraq if US causalities were zero? Would that be morally acceptable?

Perhaps I am overly sentimental and romantic. Weren't the archers looked down upon by those who wielded the gladius and shield? Didn't the Red Coats see the Minute Men as dishonorable ambushers? Is this just the unstoppable progression of warfare? I hope not.

And one final rant.

I truly find it detestable when journalists and others use the term "... OUR national treasure ..." when referring to the men and women of the military.

Less than 8% of the US population has ever served in the military. Less than 1% is serving now. The military experience is totally foreign to more than 85% of the men, women, and families in this country. In most cases, by their own choice.

My son and daughter are serving. They are not Arkin's treasure. They're mine and my wife's. And I don't appreciate him or others taking 'ownership' of them in order to advance a point in a specious argument.

plainfacto: "But if Sadr Militiamen are using IED's against Americans and Iraqis alike; why shouldn't we enter into the same kind of warfare our enemies enjoy using on our troops?"

Because it's their country, and they are repelling INVADERS.

OTOH, it's NOT our country, and we don't have the guts to admit that Americans are dying (and the pace is increasing) for oil and Israel, so we need to fight it from Grass Valley California (Silicon Systems) and Las Vegas.

Just drive to work in the morning, a fresh cup of coffee in hand, get on the joystick and kill civilians on the other side of the planet.

Now here's a great idea:

We put out a new XBOX 360 game called "Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6 Iraq", and all it has is a live play feature. All the teenagers think they are playing a video game against their friends online, when in reality they are controlling unmanned ground and air vehicles that are actually engaging the enemy in Iraq, Afghanistan, or wherever. It can cut to computer gaming when no combat is taking place, then redirect the player to actual combat operations as they occur. Once we unleash the innate creative destructiveness of our nations youth no country can stand against us!

Arkin writes:

- And through our increasingly remote conduct of warfare, aren't we transferring the risk from our soldiers to ourselves? -

That's the money line, isn't it?

Loosely translated, it means:

'Hey. We, the risk-adverse-and-prefer-to-remain-oblivious-to-the-dangers-in-the-world people living in the United States, are paying the folks in the military to accept risk for us. Now the military wants to reduce the risk to their personnel. WTFO???? That's not part of the deal!'

I've already vented my spleen about UAVs.

Just watch your driving because the wars in Afghanistan and Iraqw are almost over due to a broken American economy (just like the former USSR due to Afghanistan), and those drones will be used by various US state agencies like their state police and the marijuana revenooers.

That why the media keeps rehashing the "AQ in South America" story, because the supply chain to continue persecuting our nasty little wars across the globe is going to fail, quickly and dramatically, and shortly.

We need an enemy within driving distance of Texas.

Does Arkin really know anything about the military? And hanging around the Pentagon press room monday-friday does not count!

//Since man first marched to war, there has been a constant equation; by risking our own youth we are making the tacit statement that the issue at hand is not only important enough to kill over, it is important enough to die for.\\ -BD

Dear BD:
Right. I understand why you said what you did. But if Sadr Militiamen are using IED's against Americans and Iraqis alike; why shouldn't we enter into the same kind of warfare our enemies enjoy using on our troops?

If our enemy chooses to use remotely detonated devices with devastaing consequences to our troop; can't it be said that we didn't open this type of warfare up - but we also choose to stand clear of it as well?

I think that would not be in the best interests of our military to say 'no' to this endeavor. Pandora's box has been open for quite awhile - hasn't it? Even our guerilla enemies have already deployed technology(s) against us...

And yet, despite the increased use of drones and technology, what we have learned in Iraq is that "boots on the ground" are still an integral part of winning the peace.

Arkin poses an interesting, but totally unrealistic (and hence irrelavent) scenario.

Having concluded a career in the military some years ago, I have always been troubled by the increasing US reliance on unmanned vehicles. While commanders, both in and out of uniform, have an obligation to avoid causalities as much as possible, one wonders what these creations do to the Warrior ethos and the sense of honor of those in uniform.

Since man first marched to war, there has been a constant equation; by risking our own youth we are making the tacit statement that the issue at hand is not only important enough to kill over, it is important enough to die for. From that, the willingness of warriors to risk their all, to make personal sacrifices for the good of the society, we see the living embodiment of valor and honor. The military sense of integrity, of value, springs from these principles and discloses the nobility of the human soul which raises mere murder to something honorable and praise worthy.

What becomes of the soul of the warrior, the soul of the nation, when war becomes a push button affair where the risk associated with killing becomes non-existent? What are our values when the sacrifice associated with causing a death is measured in dollars for expended weapons and time spent in front of a monitor? What becomes of valor when killing becomes an administrative function that requires no boots on the ground, no sailors in harms way, no airmen in hostile skies? Aren't we breaking the covenant with our military members by replacing their sense of honor with a capability to murder? How restrained will be a government that can kill at will without risk?

Who cares about how others will think of us, how will be think about ourselves?

The depersonalization of war...

Several authors have written extensively on this topic, apparently war is more palpable when hands on engagements are replaced with remote technological devices. (Technological devices helps to desensitize the killing of another human being, even humans who are innocent)!

The former will increase, instead of diminish the likelihood of nations like the USA, with superior technological advances, launching pre-emptive attacks on other nations and people in the future.

Eventually wars will be fought from the sanctity of an American living room. With the use of sophisticated held-hand devices - Americans will be able to lodge an hour or two of war on the basis of convenience.

Americans will get in a few disassociative kills, perhaps after returning home from happy hour, watching a few porn movies or football games on their HDTV screens, or prior to saying their prayers before retiring for the evening!

Or, hey son, let me borrow your XBOX1000, I need to obliterate a few Iraqis and American liberals before I turn in tonight
(or to destroy the telecommunications system in Iran - we already have that technology up and running)!

Americans today, unlike Americans of old are unwilling to risk death like the old soldiers who preceded them. The old soldiers faced their enemies on the field of battle with honor, or because they didn't have a choice!

Americans are willing to kill others ad nauseum and by any 'high-tech means necessary', for Americans to do so is the ultimate fete compli!

An Israeli pilot confessed on PBS the other day that he does his job, which amounts to flying his airplane high in the sky, after he receives the coordinates to destroy certain passenger carrying vehicles or sites that are to be destroyed on the ground.

And from his lofty position in the sky, he simply pushes a button - he never witnesses the personal carnage, afterward he heads home to be with his family - the other guy did not, and the other guy never knew what hit him.

An American fighter pilot in Baghdad admits that he watches Iraqi soccer matches from the sky, while flying reconnaissance missions. Get it? Watch the game, and then pause for a minute to kill a few Iraqis, then back to the match!

//We rarely ponder the larger human and moral issues associated with increased reliance on the remote war-making instruments. But even with regard to the immediate, we seem blind.\\ -Arkin

The moral issue in unmanned drones is little different than sending troops to do the same job. There is still someone guiding the drone, and the same person pulls the trigger in order to deploy the missile(s). It is risking taxpayer money, but keeping more troops directly out of harms way. In much the same way that IED's blow up Americans and Iraqis by remote detonators supplied by Iran and planted by the Sadr Militia. Blind? We see with the drones, and Sadr's militiamen see who they are blowing up. You raised an unreal arguement - which is par for course...

//Do all of these Predator "kills" in Iraq spell either progress or a better military strategy?

Sure - if you consider that you need less troops to do a similar job. Again, with the Sadr militia using IED's what are you complaining about? If we suddenly have a leg up on the enemy; are you disappointed? It would seem so...

//And through our increasingly remote conduct of warfare, aren't we transferring the risk from our soldiers to ourselves?\\

And finally - you make no sense at all when you do this. it is true that we are becoming more like 'The Terminator' when we become more robotic with warfare. But consider the casualty rate decreasing, less loss of lives and deeper penetration into enemy territory at a useable altitiude. Arkin - I was under the impression that you were an 'air power' guy. Doesn't your son have a remote control car/plane/glider? Why don't you ask him if he would do it that way? I think that is a fair question to ask yourself...

This is the trap. If you are going to fight a war then by all means available FIGHT IT! If you are going to worry about world opinion and how we are viewed by those outside the US then you are on a fool's mission. Unmanned equipment saves lives. It's proven that time and again. It would re irresponsible on the part of the military to put troops at excessive risk if they have the means to avoid it and still get the mission done. However, you are correct in one respect. This whole "techno war" thing seems to me to be one of those self-fulfilling issues. We are more apt to meddle in the affairs of soverign nations if we can do so with impunity.In my opinion, it doesn't matter which approach we take to war, we take it all too easily. We in the US have a long sorry history of trying to impose the will of our leaders (not the american people) on other soverign nations. If we can't buy them off then we bully them with economic sanctions. If that doesn't work; well, lets go kill someone. It distresses me a great deal that a nation as seemingly powerful as this one can't seem to handle peace and/or international cooperation for more than a short period before we are at it again. We refuse to stop trying to tell the rest of the world how to live and then we resent it when they push back.Our answer it better weapons systems! It seems to me we have a fundamental flaw in our thinking. We are not always right(?) Some of the morons we elect prove that time and again. The current administration is taking Jimmy Carter to the woodshed because he went and met with Hammas. Why (?) The only way to solve global issues is by talking and talking and talking. refusing to talk to your enemies is just plain dumb. All this guarantees is that they will always be your enemies. There is always time to commit the troops. Why are we always in a hurry to commit the troops. The government of the US has shown the world that we are very strong on rhetoric but we lack in the execution and the stamina to finish what we start. Every (4) years we have a new leader with his own personal agenda so we abandon those we made agreements with and go another direction. No wonder no one in the world trusts the US government. Not even most of it's own citizens. Drones and un-manned weapons systems are not the issue. The issue is why do we feel we need more weapons systems in the first place. Military action is the last club in the foreign relations bag for all soverign nations. Why does the US feel like it's the first club (?)
And, Dimitri, if the US did go back to throwing rocks, the fundamental issues would still be there and nothing in the mentality of the US government would have changed. I have been a military supporter all my life but I think I have been wrong in some areas. I still support the troops but I don't think they are the answer to all the problems of the world. It's a small planet.

If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at some guys, throw one of those little baby-type pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think of how crazy war is, and while they're thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them.

America should stop using unmanned attack drones and go back to fighting people with well-aimed rocks.

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