Technology Leveling The Playing Field In Modern War

The IEEE spectrum site has up an article written by the author Robert N. Charette describing the 'empowerment of the individual to conduct war' through technology. In the piece, entitled Open-Source Warfare, Charette describes the cheap, inexpensive, but clever ways that militants are adapting to modern warfare. "As events are making painfully clear, [counterterrorism expert John Robb] says, warfare is being transformed from a closed, state-sponsored affair to one where the means and the know-how to do battle are readily found on the Internet and at your local RadioShack. This open global access to increasingly powerful technological tools, he says, is in effect allowing 'small groups to...declare war on nations.' Need a missile-guidance system? Buy yourself a Sony PlayStation 2. Need more capability? Just upgrade to a PS3."

what a nonsense

the germans did pretty good with old technology, and I think that even today they'd make most smaller countries think twice about attacking them if they 'only' had wwII era weaponry.

In fact all that tech is quickly becoming a weakness.

Think about South Korea, more afraid of North Koreas conventional weaponry and artillery then of their nuke (assuming they really do have one).

http://rndpic.com/ [rndpic.com]

Re:what a nonsense

Ghengis Khan did not build a government that could outlast the absence of his troops. His empire fell apart right after he died. The Khmer Rouge fell apart at the first sign of foreign intervention. The Germans did significant damage to their rear-area security on the Eastern front by terrorizing local populations and creating fertile ground from within which Soviet saboteurs could operate.

The Romans were mostly successful because they extensively employed the strategy of Pax Romana, which basically the antique equivalent of the modern concept of soft power [wikipedia.org]. You see, for most of the peoples around the Roman Empire, war was endemic (for example, the Germanic tribes raided each other on an annual basis) and they knew that life would be longer, more prosperous, and more peaceful if they joined their larger neighbor.

There are many kinds of power (power being defined as the ability to influence events to your advantage). The ability to inflict damage is one, the ability to entice others to your position is another, the ability to bring economic factors into the game is another, political will is another, and so on. Also, power is non-fungible, that is, being powerful in one area does not compensate for a great weakness in another area. This is why the EU, which is a great economic power, is not considered a world power as it lacks the political will to act in concert. Similarly, India's large population and military might (they are a nuclear power) do not compensate for its economic weakness.

Fear works to some degree, but only in concert with other elements of power. You can only build a stable system if the majority of people within that system agree on its fundamental precepts (this is one aspect of political power). So, if we try to build a government in Iraq based on fear, we are going to run into problems that the power we exert in one arena (military might) will not compensate for our failure to exert power in other arenas, such as political will.

Developing a strategy that will bring several elements of power to bear is doable, but very difficult. That is why, in the future, we should avoid electing uneducated people (an MBA is not an education), or at least elect uneducated people who will appoint educated advisors and then listen to them instead of the veep.

Re:Machiavelli

That's why it's kind of mind-boggling to see the US fail so miserably in its imperialist occupation in Iraq.

Not at all. Great powers have been defeated repeatedly by insurgencies since Machiavelli wrote. Reading a slim tome on inter-state relations in renaissance Italy hardly gives one the understanding necessary to defeat a well-organized, well supplied insurgency in a hostile country. Also, characterizing this as an imperial action is stretching the term a bit... to the point that it seems you are using it for its pejorative value rather than as an actual characterization of the war.

the part where they disbanded the Iraqi army instead of giving them at least tokens of power is especially laughable in this respect

Hindsight is always 20/20 from our comfortable arm chairs. I can give you a dozen historical examples of where this strategy worked. (Germany & Japan in WWII, the South in the civil war, etc). I can also give you a dozen examples of where leaving the enemy's army intact in a token position backfired (Germany after WWI, Caesar after Pharsalus, etc).

it shows that Bush, along with his merry band of war criminals, is most certainly as stupid and ignorant as he looks.

Bush is not a war criminal. Please do not cheapen the term.

Machiavelli laid this out in The Prince [gutenberg.org] centuries ago. It's a very readable book

While it is true that Machiavelli is, along with Hobbes, one of the founding authors of what is known as the "realist" school of thought in international relations as a study, his thought processes are largely obsolete. A number of things have changed since then, including the rise of nation states and the institution of sovereignty, the advent of international institutions, and the increasing importance of trans-frontier relations in the day to day lives of people. Most importantly, in my mind at least, is the fact that he assumes an uncrossable barrier between domestic and public spaces, which experience has shown not to reflect reality. I would really recommend that you read "Anarchy is what states make of it" by Alexander Wendt, "International Institutions: Two Approaches" by Robert Keohane and, of course, "Soft Power" by Joseph Nye if you would like to see a more modern interpretation of power politics.

Re:Crime against peace

All your points amount to NOTHING because Cheney stated exactly what would happen as well when he supported 41's decision not to invade Baghdad. Even Dick (the heartless devil) Cheney knew what would happen and told us clearly concisly and with conviction. Its not some self-fulfilling prophecy, it was the inevitable result of our actions. Clear to ANYONE who knew anything about Iraq, even some of the Vulcans; Cheney knew, Powell knew, and Armitage knew. Bush didn't even know who the Kurds, Shia, and Shite were when he invaded.

European opposition was like an adult saying to a teenager "don't drink and drive or you'll smash into a tree or worse kill some poor family who are driving home." Then the kid goes out gets drunk and smashes his Dad's suburban into a minivan full of kids at 95 mph. That's Iraq. That's not 20/20 hindsight. Just because you did not have the ability to model the results of a US invasion of Baghdad does mean other people didn't know what was going to happen.

If the EU is trying to "assert" themselves against us why is NATO in Afghanistan? Why because it was a legitimate target and one that needed attention. Iraq at the time was just another shit hole ruled by an asshole with limited ability to extend its power beyond its border. What poower it did have still acted as a counter balance to Iran.

That isn't exactly correct

That isn't exactly correct, and, more importantly, war doesn't boil down to just having the best tanks. What's more important is how you use them.

1. German tanks _were_ weaker. Yes, everyone knows about Tigers and Panthers later, but in 39 we entered the war with Pz-I and Pz-II. That was the bulk of the German army. The I series was little more than an armoured car with two _medium_ machineguns in a turret. They were intended to be training tanks, but got pressed into the war because of lack of anything better.

Plus a couple of better ones, half of them captured from the Czechs, but they were anything but the bulk of the army.

Most German soldiers were equipped with a bolt action rifle until the end of the war.

Where Germany excelled were the doctrines. I.e., how you use that equipment.

E.g., tanks were weaker, but that was ok, because they were only supposed to punch through or bypass, take some important position, then let the enemy attack you to take it back. And then you could use the 88mm FLAK gun to kill any better tanks the enemy might have had. That was Blitzkrieg.

E.g., the soldiers may have had bolt action rifles, but that was ok because the German infantry doctrine had the squad machinegun as the central piece, and the rest of the squad was mostly support for it. (By comparison, the Americans saw it the other way around, so they were saddled with the shitty BAR as a piss-poor substitute for a squad MG.)

2. The Soviet union was more technologically advanced than you seem to think, grasshopper.

The T34 was years ahead of anything anyone else had. The 76mm gun could break through any other nation's tanks' armour even with the high explosive round. And the front armour was just short of invulnerable to anything Germany had on a tank.

The T34 was one of the reasons why Germany rushed to attack the USSR early. Hitler couldn't risk waiting until it's produced in large numbers.

You know the (in)famous German Panther? Well, that was a shameless copy of the Soviet T34. Really. The initial proposal was to just start manufacturing T34s, but it was seen as a matter of national pride to not be that obvious about it. So they changed the gun on it and a few other details, but otherwise it was still just a modded T34.

The KV-1 and KV-2 were a nightmare for the German army too. It took quite literally hundreds of hits to disable one. That was _years_ before the Tigers.

Add other advances, like rocket artillery, early semi-automatic rifles (and mass use of SMGs, far ahead of the numbers the Germans had), etc, and the Russians weren't technologically handicapped at all.

Heck, even their AT guns, Germany used any they could lay their hands on. There were whole series of vehicles built with captured soviet AT guns. That says something, doesn't it? They wouldn't have used something that's two generations behind.

3. Don't get me wrong, the USSR did have its own problems and handicaps. But it wasn't as handicapped as most people seem to assume anyway.

The biggest and foremost problem the USSR had wasn't technological at all. Their army had just gone through Stalin's purges, and was (A) lacking competent officers, (B) paralized with fear of being the next scapegoat if they show any initiative, and (C) put under the control of comissars who were there just for political reasons, not for any military competence. The USSR, including the army, also had a _massive_ morale problem. At least half the people (and almost all the minorities and non-Russian Soviet republics) would have been happier to fight against Stalin than for him.

_That_ is the main factor that almost doomed the USSR in the early days of Operation Barbarossa.

A second problem -- again, mostly because of doctrine and political idiocy, rather than technology -- was that the Russians didn't believe in using radios on their tanks. They had them in homeopathic quantities, if at all. So once they were buttoned up in combat, each tank was almost on its own and had no clue what the others are doing. Whole units just naturally lost all cohesion and turned into individual tanks as soon as the fight started. And one invariant of war, from the Greek phalanx to Roman legions to Waterloo to WW2, is that the unit which loses cohesion first loses.

There were technological issues too. The steel in Soviet tanks was marginally weaker for example. (But they compensated by having extra-thick armour anyway.) The optics on Soviet tanks were slightly poorer than those on German tanks. (But the 76mm projectile had a flatter trajectory, so it wasn't _that_ horribly big a disadvantage.) The APHE ammo used by the Soviets had inferior penetration compared to the APCR rounds everyone else used, and the charge tended to detonate prematurely anyway. (But it didn't matter until later, because even the HE round could tear a Pz-II or Pz-III a new one. And later they did switch to better ammo.) Etc.

Sure, those made some difference too, but still, not that decisive.

Nah

Nah, most of their tanks came from Tankograd [wikipedia.org], a city they built pretty much from scratch around some enormous tank factories.

Microsofts marketing

I can see Microsoft's new marketing campaign now. "PS3's are for terrorists"

You what?

Need a missile-guidance system? Buy yourself a Sony PlayStation 2. Need more capability? Just upgrade to a PS3.

Because it's well known that all Sony consoles have missile-guidance software built in to their firmware!

Seriously, WTF? How does a Playstation have any benefits over other smaller, cheaper, lighter computer hardware for guiding missiles? How does cheap computer hardware have any benefits at all when you don't have the software to run on it? How would hardware and software have any benefits at all when you don't have any guided missiles in the first place, and if some rogue state (or the CIA, depending on whose side you're on) wanted to supply you with them, they could just supply you with guidance systems at the same time?!

Oh, I'm sorry...

the cheap, inexpensive, but clever ways that militants are adapting to modern warfare.

I'd thought guerrilla wasn't exactly a new concept...

/* BTW inexpensive == cheap */

Pitchforks anyone?

The premise seems flawed. It's not open source that's enabling militants to intelligently fight armies, it's the militants' own intelligence and adaptability that lets them use whatever happens to be there to fight the occupying forces: centuries ago it was pitchforks, now it's open source, tomorrow it will be flying cars.

Re:Pitchforks anyone?

exactly. It's like my friend (a vet) says, he walks in to a diner and sees weapons everywhere,

Wow.

I didn't know veterinarians were so militant.

Though I can see the rationale... if you're going to spay (or bathe) a cat, you'd better be learned in the arts of war.

We are in effect training them how to fight us.

The real problem with expending your military might in an endless fight is the same as abusing antibiotics. You train your enemy how to adapt to your attacks and how to generate new ones against you. This is one reason why we had the Powell Doctrine. You attack with a clear goal, a clear exit strategy, and overwhelming force. This is what we learned in Vietnam. Powell & Armitage were the only members of the Bush administration who were in the army and we told to shut up by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Cheney. Now we have trained a new generation of Mugahadin on two fronts how to bleed the US Army. In fact this was Bin laden's stated policy. He said he could run a $100,000 opperation against us and in turn we would spend billioins to fight him. At the time of this post "The War in Iraq Costs $471,396,995,064. Wow Bush et. all could not have done a worse job of responding to asymmetrical warfare. This is how Afghanistan defeated the U.S.S.R. and in some ways Afghanistan was the straw that broke the camel's back. Now we as a country have run up or credit cards only to run up or mortgages on s speculative bubble only to run up of national debt to what end. The dollar plunges, the rate of abortions goes up, and the federal government expands its powers. For what?

PS3 is too much work for a guidance system

I dunno, maybe you could make it run on DC...Prolly could get away with a power inverter. Still though, would you don't really want moving parts and it's a lame way to do it.

http://www.u-nav.com/picopilot/picopilotn.html [u-nav.com]

$500 gets you a solid state autopilot programmable with GPS waypoints. It also already has a interface to servo's.

Just because you could build a guidance system from a game system, doesn't mean it's really going to have any advantage in the real world.

It's not the technology, it's the men

Sure, technology helps. But what you really need is to find some way to inspire men to kill. As present experience shows us, as long as you have that ideology that inspires men to plant a bomb in a market packed with people, that's all that matters. Dynamite is a 19th century invention. As is throwing bombs into crowds.

Bruce Simpson

on the subject.. remember Bruce Simpson and his DIY cruise missile that various governments stamped on?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3302763.stm [bbc.co.uk]

http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/ [interestingprojects.com]

He's talented and not afraid of controversy and his part in the infamous "jet carts" episode from Scrapheap Challenge is excellent. I always thought he had a point about this one.

btw. I always though IE D from the article was a very misleading term - many of these devices are NOT improvised the insurgents pack them out on a factory line and some of them are relatively advanced in the design and detonation system - as far as I can tell from the news reports.

Long article, not much in it

In the piece, entitled Open-Source Warfare, Charette describes the cheap, inexpensive, but clever ways that militants are adapting to modern warfare.

Such as? I couldn't find much at all in the article except for some vague references to IEDs and cell phones, terrorist manuals found on the internet (most of which, according to TFA are terribly inaccurate) and ridiculous comments such as the one about PS2 being used as a missile guidance system. Sounds like someone came up with a new buzzword "open source warfare" and thought it was so cool that it warranted a 5 page article. People have used guerrilla tactics forever and I don't see anything terribly new here except perhaps detonating bombs remotely using a cellphone.

That's what you get for declaring "War on Terror"

Cheap terrorism becomes "global warfare".

Calling the World Trade Center attacks an "Attack on America" just upgraded a couple of lunatic terrorists to warfaring guys that can attack a nation.

What a bunch of bullcrap. But good for the security industry. They can sell a bunch of crap on that. The Iraqis are now used to live with a big one every week. America turned into a bunch of pussies because of one lousy (OK, it was pretty good, but it was still just one) attack. I am from Germany and we went through this before. The RAF formed in the 70s and the whole nation went ape shit crazy. Anti-Terrorism-legislation went unanimously through parliament that was against basic rights and the constitution on many accounts.

I think this makes terror work in the first place. If we don't pass legislation. If we don't go ape shit. Then we win against them. The loosing starts by calling them terrorists. They are a bunch of lunatics that badly need to be put behind bars. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Modern warfare"? This article marks just another loss.

Its fear mongering, don't fall for the bait.

Its an article written for the people who think the devil is in the computer. Its needless fear mongering, so don't fall for the bait.

To summarize the article:

Despite America's best efforts to bomb the guerilla fighters into the stone age, they are still managing to get hold of cell phones and laptops. In theory, we blame thier new fangled abilities to communicate on a broad scale for America's inability to adjust to asymetrical warfare waged by non nation states. We threw in the bit about using PS2s to fly cruise missles to mislead you, its worked before. Consumer electronis are the new weapons of mass destruction. So are you afraid yet? Vote Republican or the terrorists win.

Whee! This article is buzzword compliant!

"Open Source" is so 1995. Good lord, he even makes reference to "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." Could this article be more hackneyed? Time to update the buzzwords at least. This is Warfare 3.0! (Or is that too 2002?)

The insurgency has an advantage in that all they really need to do to win is continue to create a lot of chaos. That's a somewhat more modest objective than invading and occupying another country on the other side of the globe, which no number of PS3s and radio shack components will enable any guerilla army to do any time soon. They aren't particularly high tech, unless you were naive enough to think Iraqis didn't have cell phones and the Internet prior to the war. So technology isn't really leveling the playing field at all; it's just the nature of counter insurgency warfare.

It's a shame we lost a $100,000 robot to disarm a much less expensive IED, but that's why we built the robots. Ideally they'd come back from every mission, but if they don't it's quite an improvement over losing a solider, as we might have done in Vietnam.

Those open source terrorists!

Well it was about to happen..

In studying the behaviors of insurgencies in Iraq and elsewhere, as well as organized-crime syndicates and other groups, Robb noticed the many parallels to the open-source model in software.

Re:Those open source terrorists!

Given their extremist political views, I'd think they'd use Subversion instead of CVS.

I resent that

I resent the association between war and Open Source. It's bullshit.

This is a good thing

Guerrilla warfare is never waged without the support of the people. Now that guerrillas have gotten so effective we should not fear any invasion, as it will be sent home with its tail between its legs in short order.

Forget the PS2

If you need a PS2 or PS3 to run guidance algorithms, you don't know how to write guided missile control software. A 68000 is more than most missiles have.

What surprises me

I a total lack of reference to The Anarchist Cookbook [wikipedia.org] which seems like a natural for an article that references re-purposing tech for war and making stupid associations with the Open Source Movement.

"United by that vision, they exchange information and work collaboratively on tasks of mutual interest."

I mention the latter because the association is tenuous at best, and could as easily be made with any other information sharing that occurs. In other words, it's not Open Source, it's the connectivity itself. It seems to me that virtually any group sharing situation utilizing the internet would apply, including MMRPG teams, Teacher-to-Teacher networks that develop course ware for some subject or other, and pimp-my-ride or mod-my-box communities.

A horde of PS2-guided missiles? Really?

I seriously doubt we will see many cobbled-together anti-aircraft missiles with Linux guidance programs in the near future. The testing phase alone (to make sure it wouldn't lock onto something else, like a tree) would carry too much of a risk of discovery. It is far more effective for them to load a truck full of fertilizer, propane, or fuel, and drive it into a building. Oh, and even if they do pick a government building as a target, it's doubtful to be a military building. Those are too much of a hard target. They would go after an office building full of civilian government employees.

Look at that. Doesn't sound like warfare, does it? Sounds more like run-of-the-mill terrorism and defending against that is incredibly difficult without adversely affecting Liberty itself. The price of not living in a police state is that, sometimes, bad people will manage to do bad things. Horrible cost, but that's life. Anybody who tells you differently is selling something.

Maybe our children's children will finally find a solution. It is not going to be our generation; so do your best to teach the children the value of life and freedom. At the very least, they can push forward some more and will not spend their time trying to build missiles out of their PS2.

Oh dear God!

...and the know-how to do battle are readily found on the Internet and at your local RadioShack.

Dear God, if they can wage battle with RadioShack, please keep them from knowing about Digi-key http://dkc1.digikey.com/us/en/pdf/Current.html [digikey.com]

Parity isn't that important

At first glance, spending $100k to take out a cheap IED doesn't sound that useful, but there are two really important things to remember. First, that the insurgencies need to pay people $500 to $1000 (roughly) to plant those bombs. There's also risk that either someone gets caught or an innocent party gets killed (both which can cause serious problems for the insurgency). And second, the insurgencies have far less resources than the US government does. Two orders of magnitude spending difference may be sufficient for the US to beat these insurgencies.

Oh, look! Everybody is a terrorist.

I realize everybody here is probably well aware of how this game works, but it's still important to call the lies when you see them, cuz they're certainly not going to shut up and hand their heads when you point our their psychotic bullshit.

And so, here are a few of my favorite quotes from the article. . .

To understand open-source warfare, it's instructive to revisit Eric S. Raymond's 1997 manifesto, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, in which he describes how a large community of open-source software hackers created the operating system Linux. "Linux is subversive," Raymond wrote.

Wow. So there it is. Writing software in your spare time for the fun of it is now 'hacking', 'subversive' and linked to terrorism. They've been trying like crazy to connect those synapses for years now, but this is the first time I've read an article which says it with such bald-faced impunity.

In studying the behaviors of insurgencies in Iraq and elsewhere, as well as organized-crime syndicates and other groups, Robb noticed the many parallels to the open-source model in software. [. . .] members of the group don't report to a central authority; they operate relatively autonomously, and they tend to be well educated, media-savvy, and comfortable operating in a globalized, high-tech world.

Well, thank-you Robb! You just described everybody living in an industrialized nation with an internet connection. He's not describing the community living in a bombed out Iraq or Afghanistan, where they can't even get running water with any reliability, let alone electricity and an internet service provider. Nope. He's describing you and me.

But this article isn't just about trying to make every day activities seem suspicious. The whole thing is a giant sell-job. It just takes for granted that terrorists are real, that brown people defending their country against invaders are our natural enemy and that defeating them is merely a technical problem requiring trillions of dollars. Little robots for detecting road-side mines which cost $100,000 each? Jeezuz. Give me a $100,000 and I'll build you a fleet of frickin' radio-controlled Tonka dune buggies with mini-Canada Arms. Those $100,000 robots are the best indication of exactly what this war is really all about. Money. Hoovering up as much cash from the over-taxed citizens as is possible. Money. You are a terrorist if you write your own software instead of buying Microsoft. (--Money, and that loony little Christian-cult-of-apocalypse-Christ-Rising-In-Babylon(Iraq) thing.) But we know all of this! I'm just repeating what has been said a few thousand times already. And guess what? I'll keep on repeating it whenever I see evil sell-jobs like this dumb article.

Here's a new term: How about, "Closed-Source Propaganda"?

Somebody is paying this 'counterterrorism expert', John Robb's bills. Now who in the great Homeland could that be?

Money from the top. He's not writing this shit in his spare time while panning for donations. He's a soldier for the Neocon Pathocracy. Those secretive bastards are as closed-source as you can get.

-FL

Caveat

When you buy that PS2 don't forget to pick up the "missile tracking" module as well, or it won't do you much good.

BTW: where can I find a Radio Shack in the vicinity of Iraq or Libya?

Ozzy is to blame

I think it's Ozzy's fault!

This Topic Is Not A Joke

For all the people making fun of how technology levels the playing field, all you need to do is look at how the Iraqis use cell phones to remotely detonate IEDs. Apparently other technologies are being adapted and used as well.

Think you need an actual rocket for a guided missile? How about a big model airplane and a GPS? Did you know that one group of hobbyists a couple of years ago built a model airplane that flew autonomously across the Atlantic ocean? It used a GPS, gyros, and had a satellite radio uplink to report its location http://tam.plannet21.com/ [plannet21.com].

How about model airplanes that give you the view from the cockpit for remote piloting to the intended target? http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2237947353453839215 [google.com]

All the little gadgets and gizmos that are out there give the creative terrorist a lot of possibilities. Think this article is sensationalistic and stupid? Think again. This stuff isn't hard to do any more.

Level playing field?

Targeting/hiding behind women and children is not a level military playing field, its terrorism. The only reason these technologies are effective against modern warriors is because they are used against a country that has some sort of conscience. You can debate how strong that conscience is but the fact is the playing field is only leveled because one side can hide behind women and children and the other side has qualms about simply annihilating who ever stands in the way.

The reason the playing field is leveled is because of tactics, not technology.