What Happens In Vegas Happens In Afghanistan 522
theodp writes "After the morning commute from his Las Vegas apartment, Air Force captain Sam Nelson sits in a padded chair inside a low, tan building in Nevada, controlling a heavily armed drone aircraft soaring over Afghanistan, prepared to kill another human being 7,500 miles away if necessary. Welcome to the surreal world of drone pilots, who have a front-row seat on war from half a world away. 'On the drive out here, you get yourself ready to enter the compartment of your life that is flying combat,' explained retired Col. Chris Chambliss. 'And on the drive home, you get ready for that part of your life that's going to be the soccer game.' No wonder why the Air Force is interested in the Xbox LIVE crowd and the Army's opened a new arcade recruitment center!"
Fly-by-wireless-link for the win! (Score:4, Insightful)
The risk to them: We kill them. If we ever get Bin Ladin in the sights of one of these things, it'll be well worth the investment.
The risk to us: We lose a drone. Pilot safe, and he can move on to another drone to keep going.
Sure, they can try to kill the pilot in Vegas... but that's a mainland murder and that's a whole lot easier to solve and capture them here. Furthermore, they've got to be here to do that.
So, net result is we're bringing the war to them using technology we have and they don't. Now our fighter planes don't need to have the fighter pilot on-board. They might own the ground in the war zone, but we own the air.
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I wonder if the pilots get to post messages online labeling the insurgent snipers `cowards` when they're taking a break from being `brave` pilots.
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You have a point. We publicly declare enemy snipers holding a street or planting IEDs in the path of armed soldiers to be cowards... yet we're actively working on technology to launch drones from ships at sea and control them from plain office buildings in the USA. How are drone pilots any DIFFERENT than snipers hiding in the bushes shooting at women and children, how many "lives" is the drone pilot allowed to take to save is MACHINE? Even enemy snipers are putting THEIR lives on the line for battle, our
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Re:MURDER BY REMOTE CONTROL (Score:4, Insightful)
9/11/01 turned out as only yet another excuse as to why we still roam the world and kill people for resources.
9/11/01 was significant from similar events only in that it happened in the USA. Only in that it was *our* civilians that got slaughtered. The west have done worse many times, and many times after 9/11/01.
The only way to prevent war is to fight the reasons for them. Starting more wars only starts more wars.
Re:Murder by remote control and other ways, too. (Score:4, Informative)
If by in some ways you mean barring the Red Chinese, the Soviets, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandans, Imperial Britain, or just for Godwin's sake the Nazi's then yes you are correct. Otherwise you're a troll.
Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win! (Score:5, Insightful)
Collateral damage, hmm, do you even know that term. The greatest risk of all when murdering people by remote control, loss of humanity. It is so easy for them is it, whoops, just blew up a baby and it's mother, whoops, there goes a grandad, whoops, legless child, all so easy to walk away from the carnage with excuses of I was ordered to do it (exactly how do those victims now seek justice). Of course, but the other side is worse (number of casualties caused would tend to indicate this is a lie), of course you can always hide your shame behind faulty hardware, guess shots soon become it veered of course (you chose the hardware, you used the hardware, you are the murderer when your hardware fails).
You implement justice by upholding it not abandoning it. You can only ever capture terrorists, when you arrest them, when you try the in court, when you put up your evidence so that it can be challenged and proven. Murdering suspects in the field is just that, murder. Self defence whilst attempting to conduct arrests is the only excuse to open fire and then that fire must aimed directed and minimised, not a bomb or missile that sometimes targets the individual but always kills any innocent people in the near vicinity.
You can never abandon your human responsibility for the choices you make, when you choose to kill that is your burden, that is your act of evil which you will be forced to account for, failure to refuse to kill when it is not an act of self defence is cowardice.
Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win! (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention their suicide attacks within Afghanistan which typically kills far more civilians than it does military.
The US goes to great length to prevent civilian casualties - for the latest offensive they warned people about a month before. They may not be perfect but I really don't like this idea that they are somehow as bad as the Taliban in their regard for human life.
Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win! (Score:5, Informative)
In WWII the US did intentionally slaughter a couple hundred thousand civilians in Dresden and Japan (nukes). Without even entering the issue of whether that was justified, it's just not true to say we always avoided targeting civilians.
Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win! (Score:4, Insightful)
In WWII the US did intentionally slaughter a couple hundred thousand civilians in Dresden and Japan
And Berlin, Monte Cassino, Okinawa, Tokyo, etc...
I'm not going to justify these actions, they were horrendous. Nonetheless, they were all done for the purpose of ending the war.
Not the intended goal of the insurgents whom we are fighting, who are actively seeking out such conflict.
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Your post is crack. You're taking perhaps one resistance movement in the whole of the German occupied WWII area, a more rural and sparsely populated area at that, and extrapolating from it to all resistance movements across europe. Including more urban, populated areas of western Europe and Poland. Your conclusions therefore are quite unsafe.
The rest of your post, your casual calculating away of the deaths of wholly innocent people (1/4 of those deaths directly attributable to the occupying powers, another
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Exactly how many years of this unwinnable guerilla war of attrition, how many dead Afghani children, how many dead US soldiers, /will/ it take for you change your mind?
Also, if america had the right to be extremely angry after 9/11 and had the right to act against its aggressors (i.e. Bin Laden and his followers, who are now not anywhere in Afghanistan), why do you think that, after many years and an even greater number of dead Afghani civilians, the Afghanis do not have the right to act against the occupyi
Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Insightful)
We start to treat killing the enemy the way we treat killing chickens at the Perdue packing plant.
At the most fundamental level, war is still human beings killing other human beings...usually human beings who've never met. One of the damping feed-backs in the war loop is the ugliness and brutality of it. That loop needs more, not fewer, negative feed-backs. Further depersonalization and sterilization of war may incentivize the decision to engage in it.
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And if you actually *read* the article, you'll see that many of the people involved feel that this is *more* "personalized" than the old way of doing it (a bomber 30-40k feet in the air).
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I respect more the lowly grunt, who actually fights for his life during combat, even though he has better armor, better equipment, and better medical facilities than the irregular forces against him.
Cowards should not be held up as heroes.
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I have very little respect for the crossbowman, who kills his enemies from the safety of the castle walls.
I respect more the lowly grunt, who actually fights with his life during combat, with his sword and pike.
Cowards should not be held up as heroes.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Funny)
I have very little respect for the pikeman, who kills his enemies from the safety of the other end of his halberd.
I respect more the lowly grunt, who actually fights with his life during combat, with his dagger and fists.
Cowards should not be held up as heroes.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Informative)
John Wayne... George Patton... Same thing, really...
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Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Insightful)
War is about greed. War is governments killing people, both people of their enemies and their own, instead of being reasonable and sorting out their differences.
If government officials themselves had to go into armed conflict with each other when negotiations failed (instead of sending in their armies or assassins), how many disagreements do you think would get resolved over a conference table?
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Informative)
Why? At the risk of quoting John Wayne, war isn't about giving your life for your country - it's about making the other bastard give his life for his.
That was not John Wayne, it was George C. Scott in the movie Patton. The whole quote is "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
Movie Quote [imdb.com]
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Informative)
Not just that, it's an actual quote of Patton [military-quotes.com].
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Insightful)
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Terrorism is also about what you do outside of the fight. When you make videos showing people being tortured and beheaded -- soldiers, journalists, your own countrymen, tourists, etc -- that becomes part of your identity even though it's not directly part of the war. That's a big component of being a terrorist instead of a hero.
Has the US done similar things in the past? There's an argument to be made about things like Hiroshima. But there's also one to be made that since then, maybe for the first time, tec
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny you should quote John Wayne, since he normally portrays values of
fairness.
It's not about dying for your country, it's about fighting fairly while still doing everything to win.
All I'm saying is those who don't fight fair should not also expect to be *respected* for their efforts.
War is ugly, war is violent, war is best avoided and war is definitely not fair. An unfair war where the enemy is demoralized to the point of surrender in the first month is better than a fair war that lasts for a decade. There is a difference between being unfair and being barbaric. Now, you could argue that desensitizing war leads to increased barbarism but fairness is not something that should be debated in war. Fairness is for sport fighting (ie. no hitting below the belt in boxing), not for life and death fighting.
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I have to disagree to some extent. The problem of respect for the occupying forces (which arises through the perception of fairness) is at the center of the strategy of "winning hearts and minds" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Regardless of the military merits of this strategy, which are worth debating separately, the practical consequence
of adopting the strategy is that the perception of fairness is important, both in the occupied countries and at home for political reasons. Right or wrong, fairness is not merely for sporting events.
The hearts and minds are being won. How? By giving cold hard cash to the folks over there. Welcome to the western world where cash is king and all else is secondary. Not that I totally disagree with this philosophy, for I too have bills to pay and desire creature comforts. War is only unfair if you don't get paid.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/28/afghanistan.taliban.pay/index.html [cnn.com]
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Informative)
"Why did the American Civil war soldiers line up and fire at each other? Because to hide behind trees, bushes, and hills would be unethical."
Everyone who modded this up deserves a (virtual) throat punch for gross and spectacular historical ignorance.
Slowly for the short-bus crowd:
Civil War weapons were not accurate or long-range by modern standards, so the way to obtain high volumes of fire was by massed formations of troops. That didn't have anything to do with ethics, but everything to do with making the best use of (usually muzzle-loading) muskets and rifles.
Massed fire required lots of troops, performing different stages of the process to ensure something like steady fire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doqgPsmT7tc&feature=related [youtube.com]
Contemplate doing this while under musket and cannon fire you can't usually move to dodge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z5kr2EmRIo&feature=related [youtube.com]
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Informative)
That's not entirely true... the Civil War saw huge advances in weaponry, and was really the first war to be fought with what we would now consider to be modern weapons in terms of both range and accuracy. It was also one of the bloodiest wars ever fought, with enormous losses suffered by both sides, largely as a result of the fact that the tactics in use WEREN'T optimized for their weapons.
By the end of the Civil War, most soldiers were equipped with combat ready battle rifles utilizing jacketed cartridges and fully rifled barrels (rifling had existed for decades, and was fairly common on high-end firearms, but the technology to effectively mass-produce them came into being during the war... this is one of the reason that Confederate volunteer forces, with their heirloom quality guns so heavily dominated in the first few years, they were much more experienced and better-armed than their conscripted Union counterparts). Semi-automatic revolvers, repeater rifles and carbines, as well as early machine guns, were deployed among certain elite units and officers. These guns were quite accurate, even at range, and even the single round breach-loaded models carried by basic infantrymen had a decent rate of fire that made mass fire line battles obsolete and unnecessarily brutal.
Now the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, those required mass fire at point blank ranges, and the only forces to employ guerrilla-style tactics were local militias acting primarily to impede the progress of real forces. The Americans never could have won the Revolution if they'd kept using Minuteman tactics firing from behind cover and fleeing from return fire.
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Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Insightful)
The philosopher John Rawls proposes that we consider a set of rules as if we were about to take part in a game. The twist is that we don't know which side we are going to play, in this case side the insurgent sunning himself on his rooftop with his wife and children inside, or the drone pilot who is about to blow them to kingdom come. This is sometimes called "the veil of ignorance".
If you are willing to play under these rules without knowing which part you will be assigned then *you* consider these rules fair.
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Since when has fighting a war ever had anything to do with fairness? The whole point is to kill more of the enemy than they kill of your own guys. Anyone who focuses too much on "fairness" in that situation is going to get a lot of his men killed.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Informative)
Rawls served with the Marines in the pacific theater of WW2. After witnessing the aftermath of Hiroshima, he turned down an invitation to officer candidate school and went back home to earn a doctorate in philosophy.
It's probable that Rawls knew more about war than you did. It's almost certain he knew more about ethics.
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I guess you connected the Bush thing with the poster's quote about John Wayne. John Wayne also did WWII movies, and the quote came from real-life General Patton, but anyway...
What's so bad about framing complicated situations in terms of something like cowboy films (that many people have seen, unlike actual war)? Most political leaders eventually fall back on some kind of ideology. Why are cowboys not a good one? I'm not a cowboy movie fan, but from what I know they represent toughness, some kind of honor (
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That's daft. Programmers, engineers and pretty much anyone else who works in an office environment don't kill people.
Come to think of it, there was a related example in WWII. Some German office workers killed Jews by filling in forms. I guess you respect those people.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything is a psy-op.
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That's called fighting the last war... when we thought that hijackers wanted to go somewhere, we let them into the cockpit. When the new hijackers got the idea that they could take over the plane and hit a target, we ended up with a small number of people able to cause a large number of people, and they didn't care about guilt or punishment because they were fine with the idea of dying in the crash.
The rules of war have changed... the enemy isn't a state, it's a force of people loyal to a cult that believes
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Insightful)
The rules of war have changed... the enemy isn't a state, it's a force of people loyal to a cult that believes a corrupted religion.
That's not war, that's a crime ( just like Aum Shinrikyo ) , and when we start thinking it's a war, and treating it as such, we begin to turn society into a militarized police state. Welcome to 1984.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Insightful)
And when crime goes unpunished because the cult has control of significant money and land areas what is the proper response? Send an arrest warrant? What happens when the law in that country allows him to go unpunished?
There are really very few international laws.
So what can you do to punish those responsible for cross border crime? Do you know what happens when a naval frigate captures somali pirates right now? They ask them a couple of questions, feed them and release them safely to shore. Why because it is okay to commit piracy in Somali.
When there is no law only lawlessness remains. in the borders between countries it is without law.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't say i blamed them. Piracy is and always will be an economic problem. A somali Pirate works for say 1 year, attacks a half a dozen ships captures one and his cut out of the bounty of several million is ~$100,000 dollars. it is the kind of money many in the USA wish they were making. The best part is if you are attacked and can't get away you put down your weapons, they capture you feed you better than you have eaten in months, and set you free.
as I said piracy is an economic problem. If taking a freighter hostage earns you more money easier than fishing in water polluted and over fished by others then people will go for it. An intelligent solution would be to setup fish farms under Somali control and to buy the product from them at current market price, People will go for the legitimate option if given a fair chance. it must be fair though.
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Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorism isn't an act of war. Never was, never will be.
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A POW status would state how you may and may not treat them.
as does the protected civilian status, there are rules, and human rights
I agree that we (USA) should not treat non-POWs without basic human rights and without dignity.
Good, and those things are meant to be ensured by the fourth geneva convention, which the US blindly ignores by claiming to invent their own new status.
But what really pisses me off is how our new administration wishes to grant these terrorists with the same constitutional protections they (Al-Qaeda) wish we never had.
But if you were to not treat them fairly according to your laws, would that not speak volumes about the US as a country, violating your own principles is a lot worse than anything al-qaeda could do to you, you become the monster.
In my opinion the terrorists succeeded, but only because of
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Pick a side. It's easy (black and white). You can be the victor, or loser/slave to your enemy.
Is there a third side? Neither of the two sides I see are just black or white. They both have had varying grays at different points.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Insightful)
The best line from a TV show on the subject in the last 10 years I think is from Battlestar Gallactica.
"There's a reason we separate military and the police: one fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."
This is why I always was nervous about the "war on terror". If it's a war then it's a civil war since extremists are also American citizens. The US Military an incredible effective fighting force. It's too easy in a 'global war on terror' for its sights to be turned onto itself. After all the US despite all the 'exceptionalism' is part of the globe. If terrorism knows no borders then that includes our own.
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The rules of war have changed... the enemy isn't a state, it's a force of people loyal to a cult that believes a corrupted religion.
If you think the only reason they're attacking the United States is "corrupted religion" then you have no clue WTF has been happening for the last few decades.
AFAIK almost every Mid-East country from which terrorists come has very specific historical gripes with US foreign policy.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Insightful)
AFAIK almost every Mid-East country from which terrorists come has very specific historical gripes with US foreign policy.
When Cuban citizens start flying airliners into American buildings, I'll start taking that argument seriously. Until then, as far as I'm concerned you're just creating excuses for a bunch of theistic fascists.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo!
The US has screwed over any of a dozen countries in Latin America a hundred times worse than we ever even thought of screwing with the middle east. And we were doing it a hundred years before anyone, save bible scholars, bothered to take notice that the ME was even there. In fact, as I sit here typing this, I'm on land that used to belong to Mexico. And it's considerably nicer than any you'd find in that part of the world too.
Sure, it's simplistic to say things like : "They hate us for our freedom.". But there's a more fundamental incompatibility than just our awful foreign policy.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Insightful)
When Cuban citizens start flying airliners into American buildings, I'll start taking that argument seriously. Until then, as far as I'm concerned you're just creating excuses for a bunch of theistic fascists.
That's a stupid argument and you're a stupid person for making it.
Why? Because the Middle East isn't Latin America.
Different people, different culture, different values.
The mere fact that you're trying to respond with such an argument shows you aren't even close to being able to intelligently discuss the region or the religion. "Theistic fascists" doesn't even begin to explain why (for example) Iraq turned into a clusterfuck of opposition to the US. Hell, it doesn't even explain why 9/11 happened in the first place (hint: try reading what the terrorists stated as their motivation [wikipedia.org]).
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The rules of war have changed... the enemy isn't a state, it's a force of people loyal to a cult that believes a corrupted religion.
Corrupted religion? Lets see here we have Muslims on one side and Christians on the other so which side are you talking about. They both seem pretty corrupted to me.
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We are not at war with all Muslims, but a particular corruption of that religion that believes all non-believers (including Muslims who don't share in their corrupt version) must be killed.
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:5, Insightful)
At the most fundamental level, war is still human beings killing other human beings...usually human beings who've never met. One of the damping feed-backs in the war loop is the ugliness and brutality of it.
This is a lie repeated over and over again.
Had your statement been true. WWI would have ended in 6 months.
And the Germans and Soviets would have called it a true in 1942 at Stalingrad.
Truth is... Humans can be made to murder each other under the worst possible circumstances possible.
I remember reading a few German, Russian, and American soldier memoirs and the explicitly state that after about a year on the front line, you stop thinking about the dead bodies or who you are killing after a while.
Truth is humans can be a lot worse than machines when it comes to reprisal murders. Germans did it. Russians did it. Americans did it. (in vietnam a lot. Thats where the term Frag came from when a friendly soldier went beserk and threw a grenade at his own troops or civilians)
Take the soldier out of the battlefield and he'll be less likely to murder someone at random simply because he has stress issues.
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This is a lie repeated over and over again. Had your statement been true. WWI would have ended in 6 months.
All he said was that the ugliness of war is a damping effect, he didn't give any figures as to its strength relative to other factors. Where do you get 6 months from? It could just as easily be speculated that without the damping effect, WWI would have lasted 30 years.
Truth is... Humans can be made to murder each other under the worst possible circumstances possible.
Right, but the key is that they h
Re:Additional risk to us: (Score:4, Informative)
And that's why the US can not "win" this war. The reason Japan surrendered is not that the allies were defeating their armies down to the very last man, but because we were firebombing and nuking entire cities. When the suffering became too great, the persons in charge knew the war had to end.
The significant difference between then and now are that the enemy is already not in power, and the enemy has no concern for the well being of the civilian populations in which they hide.
If the US were to switch to a carpet-bombing strategy in Afghanistan, things would be almost no different from a battle point of view. A few civilians might even cooperate with turning over the combatants out of sheer terror of the bombers. But the world opinion would turn against America, certainly to punitive isolation and perhaps even to the point of invasion. Which would be exactly what both the hawks and xenophobes of the extremist right wing want.
So the US plods along, killing a Taliban here and a Taliban there, never making much progress. It's a quagmire, plain and simple.
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Actually, such brilliant things were said after the invention of the cross bow and the machine gun. And let us not forget the war to end all wars. Peace lasted, what two decades?
None of this old-fashioned junk... (Score:2)
> net result is we're bringing the war to them using technology we have and they don't.
Oh yeah. None of the old-fashioned junk like Stealth Bombers. Why, I picked one of those up from a neighboring cave for cheap, just last month. :)
It's powerful new tech, though, and useful--more because of the increased visibility and flexibility brought on by the drones than because of lowering the risk to the pilot of being shot down.
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Don't forget incidental risks due to human error, namely the deaths of innocent civilians. Which is another way to lose the war.
Our track record is NOT perfect. Not by a longshot. In fact, it's a Big Problem.
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Does it really qualify as "murder"? Isn't that just war?
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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My double-standard sense is tingling.
The Geneva convention was set to clearly divide militaries from civilians. If there is a double-standard in there, is it that States agreed to follow these rules but not the rebels.
If you are wearing a military uniform, using an aircraft with military marking, and target enemy militaries, you are doing war.
If you disguise yourself as a civilian, you are a spy or a terrorist, and outside of the convention.
Although completely unfair, your Afghani rebel is free to openly charge to Vegas in his non-existent pla
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Re:Fly-by-wireless-link for the win! (Score:5, Insightful)
But he cannot cowardly hide behind a disguise to kill. Maybe unfair to non-States, but those are the rules.
Had we followed those rules in the 1770's, we'd still be British subjects. The rules of war are devised by powerful state actors to magnify their strengths, prohibit the exploitation of their weaknesses, and minimize their losses. A small state actor -- or a sub-state entity -- which finds itself at war with a powerful state isn't cowardly for refusing to follow rules designed to ensure its defeat; it's intelligent. We leave aside the question of whether it was very smart for the Taliban to allow al Qaeda to provoke a war with the United States. But once engaged in a fight with the United States, the various Afghan factions have three options: fight according to the rules of war and guarantee their defeat, surrender immediately, or fight dirty. And given that option three worked against a Soviet invasion next to which the current American incursion is a pinprick, it's not surprising that they've decided to try it again.
Once you come to accept that, you will see that you post was, maybe unwillingly, a troll.
Once you come to accept that, you're just a chauvinistic cheerleader for whatever imperial power you've chosen to identify with to compensate for your lack of self-esteem, making empty legalistic excuses for modern warfare, and trying desperately to divert attention away from what modern warfare actually is: an exercise in which the overwhelming majority of casualties are not among the combatants of either side, but rather civilian bystanders in whatever third world shooting gallery the arms industry has found an opportunity to drive sales of their products.
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It is very tempting to imagine that we can wage a war that is bloodless on our own side.
However the fact of the matter, at this point, is that there are still soldiers fighting street to street under a hail of sniper fire and rpgs. These troops certainly gain something from the new close air support, but they still have to kick down doors, peer around corners and walk through mined fields.
We must not allow ourselves to be wowed by new technology and forget about the plight of our soldiers. They are paying t
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Before 9/11, we didn't feel we had the God-Bless-American-Right to kill foreign terrorists without a trial. After 9/11, we suspended all those nice legalities and started butchering the bastards.
I don't know which is worse. All I know is I like America 2.0 a whole lot less than I liked the previous version of America.
Face-to-face combat (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the people of the world including the leaders would think twice if they (that is, all leaders and followers) had to do this old-style with rocks and clubs. The readiness to kill is somewhat lower if you have to be involved face-to-face. It is highly problematic if you can kill as if it were a computer game. There is no better prevention than to have your own life on the edge. Yes, I do know there are people willing to do anything regardless the consequence, but I think there would be a net benefit for all if you had to kill face-on.
Re:Face-to-face combat (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be great if wars could be fought just by the assholes who started them?
Re:Face-to-face combat (Score:4, Insightful)
You think wars are just fought by people who want money? Not all of them. Some are fought because people are hungry.
So people who are hungry .... don't want money?
Wait, run that by me one more time?
Some are fought because people are desperate -- they're afraid their culture will disappear, their natural resources will be used up... And it's hard to be civil when your neighbor next door has giant refineries and everyone has a car, and an education, and wears clean clothes.
Yeah, nature's a cruel bitch. How do you think the human race evolved? How do you think we managed to achieve our current status?
Whether you like it or not, living systems thrive on competition. While I abhor suffering and would love to see everyone on the planet living in peace and prosperity, the fact of the matter is that not all systems are equal, and not all are good. Some beliefs deserve to be abandoned. Some societies deserve to die out. If your belief systems and your culture are unable to sustain you in the modern world, the answer isn't to go out and murder the civilian population of nations who are better off than you - the answer is to change. You don't improve your lot in life by pulling everyone else down to your level.
Those people aren't assholes. They're human beings.
That's like saying "these apples aren't green, they're apples".
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The readiness to kill is somewhat lower if you have to be involved face-to-face. It is highly problematic if you can kill as if it were a computer game.
Those people know what the hell they're doing. They're killing someone. You think the people that sat in nuclear silos at the height of the cold war didn't know what that red button would do? You think they didn't break out in cold sweats at night, hoping and praying the day would never come when they'd be ask to do their last duty for their country? It's disgraceful to think these people are calloused to the fact that they are killing people just because it happens on a computer screen instead of splattere
Re:Face-to-face combat (Score:5, Insightful)
You've apparently missed the last 40 years of psychological studies that demonstrate what the factors are that reduce the psychological barriers to abusing another person. Reducing psychological barriers also reduces the psychological impact. One of those factors is how personal the abuse is.
Your argument might work for you, and that's great and all. You, however, are not the rest of the world.
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Really? You studied the psychological impact of someone cleaving the face of a thousand people, and compared it to the impact of launching a nuclear missile?
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I suggest you read "On Killing" and "On Combat" by Dave Grossman. Distance from killing definitely makes killing less traumatic, and much more palatable or sometimes even desirable. These days, infantry training is designed to densensitise you enough that even pulling the trigger and seeing a man drop from your shots is not as traumatic as it once was.
And now you have killing from the comfort of a computer screen, from halfway around the world. This is no coincidence or accident -- the military wants it thi
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Here's what the OP claimed:
The readiness to kill is somewhat lower if you have to be involved face-to-face. ... which is not at all the same as claiming that there would be no emotional effect at all.
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Isn't that exactly the opposite of what the history of warfare shows us?
Frankly, I'd rather be shot than have to face a Marine with a knife and his war face on.
Toys (Score:3, Interesting)
Latency? (Score:2)
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People problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure we'll hear lots about the technology, but when you're in the field, surrounded by your fellow soldiers, then blowing the shit out of a car full of people is a shared experience. You can rely on your friends and fellow soldiers to help you deal with the fact that you just helped end a bunch of lives. Yes, it was the right thing. Yes, it was you or them. But all the justifications aside there's an emotional price to be paid that every person who's been in combat or seen it, or similar.
Now we have guys sitting in rooms filled with computer screens blowing people up, and is there anyone there to talk to about it? Can they light a cigarette after, put a fist in the wall, and say "Goddamnit, I wish there'd been another way!" No. You're stuck in a sterile environment, air conditioned, quiet, and after blowing the fuck out of someone you can get up and go get yourself a soda from the vend, grab your coat, file some paperwork, and drive home.
Huge disclaimer -- I'm not in the military, I don't know what these guys to for stress relief, or to deal with the emotional consequences of what they're doing. But I do know the dangers of becoming emotionally numb to violence, and without advocating for or against what the military is doing, I want to ask -- what are we doing to help these soldiers deal with those issues? For that matter, is it even an issue? I don't really know. But I think it helps to look someone in the eye if you have to kill them. To know they were a real person. To remember what you've done -- even if it was the right thing to do, even if there was no other choice, it's a statement about the value of human life.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
There was a report on NPR about it a while back, and you pretty much captured the issue.
Also, these people watch the missile they launch until impact, in many ways it is more up-close and personal than flying a bomber.
That with the complete disconnect from surroundings (Killing people than going to the soccer game), is creating a new situation, that the full mental impact is not fully understood yet. But the drone pilots are being watched, and the military is aware that it is new, and the ways to help are
Re:People problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Talk to other people about it? You mean besides all the other remote drone pilots?
Or the next guy up your chain of command? Or your military councilor? Or your spouse? Or your priest/rabbi/whatever?
Hell, there's probably forum those guys hang out on.
If there's one thing that's lacking in the modern world, finding people to talk to isn't one of them.
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Technology and all the options it brings will never change the very human fact that people in emotional distress will always feel there is no one to talk to, no one who will understand, and nothing that can be done about it. The facts being otherwise do nothing to change those facts. And I can assure you our UAS pilots do not want to go home and tell their family about it.
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You think they don't talk to other people in their un
What's worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Soldiers that come home shell shocked, traumatized for the rest of their lives but on the other side some becoming writers or what not and sharing the horrors of war with the general public.
Or soldiers largely untouched, but treating their experience like it was a video they watched on digg or a video game, completely detached from the inhumanity of it all - heck, during their lunch break, they may go to Walmart to get a game that will be more exciting to play after work. Even a current fighter pilot faces death, if somewhat distanced to what his weapons do on the ground.
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It doesn't matter.
It's like saying "What's worse? Being shot at with a bullet or having a limb sliced off with a sword?"
We're switching to bullets anyway.
Re:What's worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
All of you motherfuckers have no clue. Hunting people is not very different at 20 yds then at 2000 miles.
So you've done both, then?
And no, I do it because I don't want my two little girls to be property. That is the cost of loosing.
First off, it's "losing". And secondly, if you really believe that's the "cost of losing" you're a moron of the highest order.
How many motherfuckers are there in the US army who still can't grasp the fact that *they* are the invading power in this war? you're there, you can answer me can't you?
The Playstation at War (Score:2)
#dronepilate: Got missile lock, about to fire
#badassbomber: Hold off dude, it looks like a wedding
#dronepilate: I hate weddings
count on more "terrorism" (Score:3, Insightful)
not looking forward to the further freedoms I'll lose as an american when the agents of these militias start killing these pilots, and probably some others in the attempt to, on US soil.
im confident the overzealous US government will use this as an excuse to 'protect me' by further tracking my identity and tabs on my life.
point is: keep these pilots who are killing people the fuck away from urban american areas, or we're all going to be targets. and in case you say 'we already are', i don't see any reason to make it worse.
damn mythical 'war' is getting to negatively impact my life more and more, and i'll happily vote for, pay money to, or pledge allegiance to whatever i can to not be involved with the warmongering that this country has been engaged in. pretty confident our behavior in iraq and afghanistan has not generally enhanced the safety for much of anybody, compared to the consequences...
overall, this is a step in the wrong direction.
diden't they do this in a movie? but it was people (Score:2)
diden't they do this in a movie? but it was people playing pc games / arcade games controlling bots that where killing real people but it was billed as a game?
any ways what happens if the bot get's lagged out / jammed?
The irony of military robots is... (Score:5, Interesting)
The irony of military robots is that we are using them to enforce a global economic system that is based on forcing humans to do labor in exchange for the right to consume the fruits of industry. Why not just build robots to do the work directly instead? Why not use global networks to freely share information about how to make the world a better place that works for everyone? The same is true for nuclear missiles intended to fight over oil and land instead of using the same technologies to build nuclear power plants (or solar ones and wind ones) or to create self-replicating space habitats or seasteads for endless new land. We need to start thinking in 21st century terms now that we have 21st century technology. Otherwise, we will likely accidentally kill ourselves with the tools of abundance.
As Albert Einstein said:
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html [stanford.edu]
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
Or further:
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/nuclear1.htm [aip.org]
"""
"Concern for man himself must always constitute the chief objective of all technological effort -- concern for the big, unsolved problems of how to organize human work and the distribution of commodities in such a manner as to assure that the results of our scientific thinking may be a blessing to mankind, and not a curse."
"""
Or more on how Einstein was more than the disconnected absent minded professor he is made out to be:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/eins-s03.shtml [wsws.org]
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm [sacred-texts.com]
It is not the nukes and drones that may kill us all eventually, it is the unrecognized irony.
YouKILL.com! (Score:5, Funny)
Announcing a new on-line game for all of you armchair warriors: YouKILL.com! With the U.S. Airforce now introducing new Predator drones with 10 cameras each and more and more battlefield "robots" (like BigDog) everyday, there is far too much sensory data for our overtaxed professional soldiers to process. So, now we allow YOU the average citizen to partake in this wonderful way to defend democracy and earn gaming points at the same time!
First stage SCOUT - after showing that you are a U.S. Citizen and 16 years of age (wink, wink), you (and 10 randomly selected other fellow citizen scouts) are assigned a real-time video feed STRAIGHT FROM THE SKIES OVER IRAN / I mean AFGHANISTAN. If a majority of you click on the button "Suspected Bad Guy" at the same time, the video feed is instantly passed on to the next level, TARGETING. When you've proven to our computers that you're a good scout by having a excellent record of detection and (as compared with your other teammates) a "low" number of false positives you'll be promoted! (Sorry, hot babes don't count!)
Second stage TARGETING - Can you take out an insurgent at 3km without harming the orphanage next door? Here again, you (and 10 newly selected random fellow citizen targeters) will wait for "the perfect moment" to pick off the bad guys. In this level, you'll need to consider range, airspeed, armanent, cover and, of course, COLLATERAL DAMAGE. When a majority of you and your teammates think the time has come to fire your feed will be instantly passed to the final stage: FIRING. If you, as measured by the our computers, are consistently picking the best time to shoot compared to your colleagues, we'll promote you to...
Final stege FIRING - Here's where the fun REALLY begins! Now, you'll be able to take out bad guys FOR REAL! Feel the excitement as you unleash high speed rockets tipped with explosives at the enemy! Not only will you get to keep your online footage of each kill but you'll receive a commemorative coffee mug! (Just don't get too trigger happy otherwise you might get a visit from some of our military lawyers.)
Not a U.S. Citizen? No problem, we have a bunch of other suppression activities... I mean games available. If you're British you can play YouCOP which takes advantage of England being the video surveillance capital of the world. Here you (and 10 other "Brits") watch for illegal activity and report it! For now, no weaponry involved. But don't worry about it!
Not a U.S., or British citizen? Care to remain anonymous? Through special arrangement with some other governments we also have a new gaming site: YouREPRESS! Here you can target Tibetans, punish the Palestinians or any other group that our clients want to suppress. All we need is your eyeballs and a good twitch reflex! Remember, points you earn in our games will be tradable for virtual items and maybe even induction into the armed forces of your choice!
NeoOCP - crowdsourcing for the benefits of Big Governments worldwide! (Not a big government but a big corporation instead? Don't worry, we'll be announcing new crowdsourced spy products for you too! Like our new YouDRM; we'll make it profitable for people to snitch!).
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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They have. [defensetech.org] And even with fuel cells [techradar.com]. And helicopters [popularmechanics.com], too.
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Similar, but different authors. Earlier story you point to does has more technical info and includes some cool photos, including one of the user interface [esquire.com].
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I've got no problem with killing an animal in a fair fight[...]
You strap on antlers and go head-to-head with rutting stags often? Hunting ain't exactly a fair fight...not even bow hunting, really.
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One should always avoid a fair fight. The object of a fight is to win, not to make it fair. Next, I expect you to tell me that in a boxing match, the one who is considered a strong boxer should have to fight with one arm tied, or under the influence of a CNS depressant, or with weights on the upper arms to cause slower punching, in the interest of fairness?
Uh-uh. If you have to fight somebody, you make it as unfair as possible in your favor. If somebody pulls a knife and demands your wallet, pulling a gun w
Hobbyists already have small UAVs (Score:5, Interesting)
RC airplane flyers already have planes with real-time video feeds and some of them even have head-tracking goggles. Of course, they tend to be much smaller and short-range than a military drone.
You can search Youtube for 'fpv flight': http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fpv+flight&search_type=&aq=f [youtube.com]
One guy already weaponized one for the 4th of July: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBn1h0x-37E [youtube.com]