How Technology Failed in Iraq 942
synthespian writes "US troops in Iraq were supposed to have a clear superiority in the battlefield because of sensors and networking devices such as aircraft- and satellite-mounted motion sensors, heat detectors, as well as image and communications eavesdroppers. On April 3, 2003, the task to take over a key Euphrates River bridge about 30 kilometers southwest of Baghdad turned into a bloody hell as 'between 25 and 30 tanks, plus 70 to 80 armored personnel carriers, artillery, and between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi soldiers coming from three directions. This mass of firepower and soldiers attacked a U.S. force of 1,000 soldiers supported by just 30 tanks and 14 Bradley fighting vehicles. (...) "'We got nothing until they slammed into us"''(...). Read more about this story and the troubles and challenges the US military is experiencing in networking troops from Technology Review."
Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Technology is the least of our Middle East problems. Support for Israel may be the greatest cause of our problems.
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Can you say that the world is better with Saddam in power?"
"Don't you see the need to support our troops in this time of crisis??"
Nobody's disputing that first fact, but it was accomplished the Max Power way. If you don't know what the Max Power way is, it's from the Simpsons, when Homer changes his way to Max Power.
Homer (Max Power) - "Kids, there are three ways to do things; the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!!"
Bart - "Isn't that the wrong way??"
Homer (Max Power) - "Yeah, but faster."
Bush assumed that the US would be hailed as liberating heros when conquering Iraq, and didn't even comprehend the notion of an organized resistance, and now people are dying because of his lack of foresight. But that's not even the point I'm getting at. The point is that people can be against the war and still want the best for the troops overseas. To say that someone who is anti-war is not supporting the troops is like saying people who are anti-crime aren't supporting the work of prision guards. People do recognize the necessity of their work, but you also hope for a world where their services aren't needed, and when they are needed, you certainly don't send them out to die because of some preconceived notion that it's their job to die.
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:4, Insightful)
One might observe that the equivalent hyperbolic reply is, "So you're in favor of killing american soldiers then?"
Also when talking about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their expectations of kisses and rose pettels, one should mention General Shinseki and others, who before congress testified that this was not going to happen, and we needed approximately 3 times as many troops to secure the country. One should also point out that the initial attack on Fallujia that went so awry, was at the objection of the Marine commander and the insistance of the politicians. These are the kinds of things that marked the failures in Somalia and Vietnam. This deficit of leadership has a high price tag, and the purpetual willingness to finance it via a merry-go-round of short term loans does little to bolster my confidence.
As a person who really supports our troops, I think maybe we should do the favor of not manufacturing crises. And how John Kerry handled himself and held a government accountable during a previous deficit of leadership, really gives me something significant to think about. Were I O'Neal, I'd want to think carefully about how well my aims were served by calling people's attention to that period.
Re: Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Bush assumed that the US would be hailed as liberating heros when conquering Iraq, and didn't even comprehend the notion of an organized resistance, and now people are dying because of his lack of foresight.
Indeed, months into the reality zone Rumsfeld was still scolding reporters for calling it a resistance movement.
Some people just can't distinguish between what they want and reality.
Re: Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:4, Insightful)
To this day, they still avoid the words "Guerilla War" since that was associated with 'nam. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush will chide anybody using it.
Yet, in 'nam, the enemies were a small group of citizens that had backing from nearby nations. They hid amongst the locals and were able to operate freely.
But nah, that does not apply to Iraq.
Re: Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last night the iraqies invaded the united states, some terrorists pockets seem to be resisting the invaders.
Obviously they are resisting the abolishment of their corrupt government, the abuse of the poor by the wealthy. The beatings by police in the streets. Forced reeducation, which teaches an altered more patriotic version of history in order to garner support for their corrupt government rather than what actually happened. The masses dying of starvation on the streets.
Lets face it folks, these are terrorists. There is no possible way they could be the teaming masses united against a common foreign invader. There is no way they could really be those who are yearning to breathe free.
No matter how corrupt your nation allegedly is (remember, the only ones contesting the 90+% popularity ratings of Saddam are the guys supporting the war who CLAIM with NO EVIDENCE those numbers are forced, or that any of those alleged atrosities are actually happening). There ARE those who will stand together and fight a foreign enemy who has invaded their soil. If Iraq had a dictator, as far as iraq was concerned, that was there problem and a far less severe one than being conquered by the US.
Re: Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why are the shiites who were oppressed under Saddam fighting America too? What about the Marsh Arabs, who Saddam Hussein brutally tried to wipe out? The US mentioned them as a group to be liberated by the war, but one or two attacks and the US started bombing and killing them in the same manner as Saddam Hussein.
Sheesh man, go watch some news programs that aren't in english. I saw people holding their dead children's bodies and saying how the US dropped bombs that ruined the houses nearby. What about that Arab woman on Al-Jazeera who was sobbing about her dead family? (A clip of that was in Fahrenheit 9/11) How about the street riot that resulted at a checkpoint when an American soldier unthinkingly threw a Quran to the ground when searching a woman's bag? Or what about when the US helicopter tore down a Shiite religious banner, the US government denied doing it on purpose, and someone showed footage of the American in the chopper leaning out the door and cutting it down? I saw demonstrations on TV when the US shut down newspapers that were too critical of the American forces in Iraq. Did anyone here hear about the Abu Ghraib abuses before the photos came out? Failing that, did anyone read the testimony of witnesses who saw Americans (soldiers and/or contractors) raping Iraqis in that same prison? Has anyone bothered to understand that Najaf is a holy city for shiites, and bombing it like that is akin to bombing Vatican city? Najaf aside, did anyone who isn't shiite pay attention to the fact that the US troops got into a firefight and called in airstrikes in the holy cemetary, or flattened the shrine to one of the 12 Imams? You didn't hear about these things? Shiites all over the world were livid, including the moderates and pro-American ones. Did anyone notice that the US cancelled democratic elections last year, over fears that Iraqis may vote for people who don't support the US occupation? Speaking of which, even Iraqi politicians are accusing the US of acting like Israel in engaging in "Collective punishment."
Do you know how badly the unemployment in Iraq has skyrocketed? This is because the US fired all Iraqis who had any tie to the Ba'ath party (most people couldn't get a promotion unless they joined). In WWII, the Allies didn't fire everyone with Nazi ties, or else all civil servants and teachers and business owners would be out of a job. Imagine how much longer the US Reconstruction period would have lasted if the Union fired every last Southern politician.
Did you hear that people in Iraq are calling us Yazid? What? You don't know who Yazid is? Then WHAT business do we have in Iraq?
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sending solders to war and your quote are different. Think it as following. There are hostages in a warehouse filled many thugs and such. So, the police send in the SWAT team to remove the bad guys, but while doing so people are yelling that that it was wrong to send in the SWAT team in the first place.
What your quote is about is having a military force to begin with. You may be anti-war, but agree to needing a military while hoping it is never needed. Having a military and using it is a different concept.
Also, it is not the "preconceived notion" that solders can be sent of to die. But being in the military, I know it is my job to fight war. Also, you must understand that while people are protesting the war, that gives the people we are fighting hope to stick it out longer. The longer they stick out, the more of my buddies they blow holes into.
It may seem that there is no problem with openly having angst to an armed conflict, but the people who are in Iraq at this moment, bad comments, although indirect to you, affect then directly.
If America was really pro-war, the troops would get more equipment, and our enemy's moral would break sooner. I am not saying that you should not be able to talk against the war, but the sad truth is when an insurgent reads on the internet that half of America hates the war and political parties want to just "up and leave", well that gives him the hope to shoot another few people in camouflage, and abduct a few more reporters because if it lasts long enough, America might just "up and leave" just like Vietnam.
This is not a clear cut world, and this is certainty not a clear cut issue. What everyone says effects this conflict as a whole, and the people in Iraq (the troops, and the people who want the insurgents to give up) are the ones who feel it the most.
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, you must understand that while people are protesting the war, that gives the people we are fighting hope to stick it out longer. The longer they stick out, the more of my buddies they blow holes into. [...] but the sad truth is when an insurgent reads on the internet that half of America hates the war and political parties want to just "up and leave", well that gives him the hope to shoot another few people in camouflage"
To the resistance in Iraq, does it really matter if they know that the American in public in general is "pro-war", "anti-war" or undecided? A U.S.-led force invaded their country, occupied it, killed many of their buddies and family, broke normality and turned their reality into chaos. It doesn't matter whether the resitance has some kind of "right" to fight back or not, or if they were or are "pro-Saddam" or "pro-dictatorship" or muslim or christians or agnostics or whatever. If we think about it, wouldn't they fight back with whatever means necessary for as long as they can, just as you would? It is simply not possible to 'break' the moral of resistance like that psychologically, which has been proved over and over again. The Romans did not succed anywhere. The crusades did not succeed in Jerusalem. Israel has not succeded doing just this in Gaza. Germany did not succeed anywhere in World War II. We might ask ourselves this a retorical question: If the situation would be reversed; if a technologically superior force invaded and occupied the country we live in and enforced the same type of government that exist in Iraq today, wouldn't you try to fight back until the enemy was gone, no matter what?
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I wouldn't call creation of a state which lasted some 1000 years, more than 400 of it pretty close to its maximum size, "lack of success". Galia: completely latinised, Spain - the same, (Northern) Africa, including Egypt - the same. Hell, 1000 years after the Fall of the Western Empire, Greeks in Byzantium still called themselves "Romans". I would say Romans were doing pretty well as occupants. Of course, we have to remember their few remarkable failures: German tribes (due to huge political and diplomatic mistakes during the rule of Tyberius), Palestine (due to incredible resistance of Jews, based mostly on Jews' sense of being "the Chosen Nation", so based on religion) and few others. But as a whole Romans did pretty well.
What was their way?
- "divide et impera": play on disputes between your opponents
- be cruel to rebels but reward loyalty
- don't destroy, rather modify (for example: don't change customs, religion, just add yours)
- leave local elite in charge, just add some control over them
- show possibility of becoming "a Roman" - with all good things coming with it.
And so on...
So basically as little change as possible, as long as they pay the taxes, let Roman goods in, provide soldiers, and don't talk about seccesion. And let "the Roman way" creep in into their lifes, slowly...
I think it worked, especially considering means of communication in those times: it is in some way much closer now from NY to Baghdad than it was from Rome to Lyon or Athenes.
Raf
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Objectively speaking you can definately say that the world was a better place with Saddam in power. Just in the last month there have been bombings in France, Egypt, indonesia, israel, palestine, and of course all over Iraq. That's just in one month. Since the start of the war (when saddam left power) there have been devestating bombings all over the world. remember Bali, Spain, and the hotel bombing in kenya.
The world is much worse off since Saddam has been removed from power no matter how you measure it.
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:3, Insightful)
NO.
You think that muslims are beheading old men and woman in Thailand has to do with the war in Iraq?
Absolutely
How quickly we forget history. Terrorism actually dropped after 9/11. We went into Afghanastan (kinda) and low and behold, much of what was going on in the world slowed down. Then we invaded Iraq. The speed with which we moved in was frightening. and IIRC, there were few reports of terrorism during that time. But
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Iran and North Korea are moving their nuke programs at full speed. In fact, both have sped up when we first invaded Iraq (but that could have more to do with getting information from the pakastani minister).
EU is trying to get Iran to stop, but considering that Russia is helping Iran out with supplies, they are not likely to do much. Israel will almost certainly have no choice but to go in and do the job themselves with our bunker busters. When they do, the middle east will go crazy.
Apparently, Libya never made any progress and had given up nukes during Clinton's time.
Re: Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:4, Insightful)
- a) Let them stay at home, in (relative) comfort, and (relative) safety, or
- b) Send them out into the most unstable part of the world, surrounded by tens of thousands of natives who resent their presence and spend much of their time shooting at them, bombing them, and otherwise making their lives a misery?
Huh?Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:4, Insightful)
War should be difficult, to keep people from using it as a solution to problems that could be solved in another way, or in this case, by admitting that the problem of WMD's in Iraq doesn't even exist.
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where have you been? Improved technology has allowed a political climate to make killing civilians more difficult.
In ancient times, logistical issues meant armies could raze cities, rob food stores, etc., because they needed to survive. WWII the technology to only hit military targets didn't exist so carpet bombing killing tens of thousands of people was an accepted convention of war. Now a bomb goes awry and kills a half dozen people and the news jumps all over it.
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Informative)
You might need to ask yourself the same question.
About 50% of those who died in WW2 were civilian, up from 10% in WW1. In the US invasion of Panama in 1989 about 13 civilians were killed for every military death.
Iraq's ratio of civilian to miltary fatalities is currently running at about 33 to 1, and there is no reason to think that trend will not continue.
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there anyone who honestly believes that our military and government wouldn't prefer to line up all of the combatants in a field where we could battle it out? Unfortunately, we don't get to choose the playing field. If we're going to engage guerilla targets, that means going where the guerillas are. Definitely not a preferred state of being, given our strengths and weaknesses.
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:3, Insightful)
> hadn't been in Baghdad in the first place.
As much as that's an argument for another time, I will say this. What trouble? The article starts out on the premise that there were massive failures in iraq, and goes to state some info about one in particular.
Without comparing to what has happened in the past.
30 years ago it wouldn't be uncommon for 10,000 iraqi soldiers and 1000 american soldiers meeting to end up with most of the americans a
Know what your government is doing: Read books. (Score:3, Insightful)
MODERATORS: Whoever moderated the parent comment as Flamebait is not smart enough to be called ignorant, he is iggerunt.
The parent comment says, "Support for Israel may be the greatest cause of our problems." The king of Jordan says this is so. The foreign minister of Iran says this is so. (They were both interviewed on the Charlie Rose show.) Osama bin Laden said U.S. government support for Israeli violence was one of the two reasons he attacked the United States. (The other reason was U.S. government s
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't discuss technical failings without considering political and moral problems? You must have been a liberal arts student.
You are certainly welcome to discuss your political views, but it's ridiculous to say that they are inseparable from the technical issues. Here's a little example for you: Let's say that I believe that cars are the cause of moral decay, because they destroy the small-town communities of yesteryear. You don't have to agree -- it's just my personal opinion. Now let's have a discussion about steel.
Since I despise cars, I likewise despise steel; after all, it's the primary ingredient in cars. Next, suppose that steel quality was declining. Certainly this is welcome on the automobile front -- it makes cars more dangerous and expensive, and therefore less useful and common. Unfortunately it also kills people while they sit in their steel-framed office building, or while they ride their bicycle across a steel bridge. But hey, that would be an incomplete technical evaluation -- when you consider the big picture it's not so bad, because automobiles are in decline.
However you feel about the war in Iraq, those feelings would likely not be different if we were fighting them with muzzle-loaded rifles hard doughnuts -- IT'S NOT A TECHNOLOGICAL PROBLEM, AND YOU CAN'T FIX IT BY CHANGING THE TECHNOLOGY. It's been said a thousand times, about a thousand subjects. You can't fix social, moral, ethical, political, spiritual, or any other non-technical issue with technology, or by ignoring technology. Computers will not end world hunger, but they might be used to calculate an optimal planting pattern. Skies will not prevent hypothermia, but they might help you get in from the cold faster. Technology is only a tool; it does not start or end wars.
Maybe the war in Iraq was a terrible idea. You're welcome to feel that way, to tell other about it, and to try to fix it. Refusing to fix military technology seems like a bad plan though. What happens when China decides that they want the oil in Alaska, and they "don't need no stinkin' EPA approval"? When we've meet whatever standard you set for reasonable military action, you'll want the technical issues to be resolved.
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Troop levels. Most of the military observers belive that more troops would have done a better job. Estimates on the ideal number of troops range from 200.000-400.000.
2. Taking Bagdad fast.Yes I know that bypassing some of Saddams forces was intentional. But when they captured Bagdad they stood there with what? A couple thousand soldiers and some tanks/APCs/trucks? And without a plan.. People I have talked to say it took several weeks before troopl levels in Baghdad reached the level they needed to control the central ares in Baghdad.
3. Armor on the 5 ton truck. Non-existant. Say no more. Allready in 1995 Russia discovered that chechnyan "rebells" attacked their underarmed and unarmored supply vehicles with small arms fire and IEDs. This forced the Russians to use up to 60% of their forces for protection/guarding/convoys etc.
4. Armor on APC's and HUMMVEEs. How many of the humvees had some form of armor/extra splinter protection? 15? How long did it take before they started to improve this? 8 months? And what about the M-113; uppgrade program going on for the last ten year and still some without the scheduled armor upgrade?
5. Availability of "bullet-proof" vests. I don't know much about this one. But the litle that I have heard about old flak vests doesn't exactly put the upper managment in a very positive light.
6. Disbanding the Iraqi army. 250.000 young males without a job. Riots in Baghdad.
7. Lack of guarding the Iraqi barracks, storages and weapon sites/dumps. Yes Iraqis do have an extensive weapon culture with AK's, grenades and maybe an RPG stacked under the bed "just in case". But few people store 200 pound bombs in their homes for future IED-use so they must get it from somewhere!
8. Mass-arrests in autumn 2003. Probably prisoning a lot of innocent people. Alienating suporters.
9. Abu Graib torture scandal. A nice mix of contarctors and the CIA. Enough said.
10. Scaling down troop levels in February 2004 and strategy of moving out of many small cities/villages into larger camps.
11. Leaving some areas, effectivly handing them over to the insurgents and making them no go zones.
12. So far, failure to train enough Iraqi troops of high enough quality.
The strange thing is that;
a. To some extent I find it hard to blame the Army/Marines on some of the above mentioned points as no one told them about the need to fight the kind of war they know are fighting.
b. Many of the points are related to non-existant political planning.
c. All the issues are related to #1. Troop levels. With more troops many of them would not have been a problem. So Rumsfeld should resign IMHO.
Yes, I know I'm only some 5 Karma Star Armchair General in front of a PC and it's easy to critize but still...
Point "a". (Score:3, Insightful)
a. To some extent I find it hard to blame the Army/Marines on some of the above mentioned points as no one told them about the need to fight the kind of war they know are fighting.
I find it impossible to blame them (except for #9). We did not ramp up our troops or equipment levels and the US population still has not been asked to make any sacrifices for the troops in the field.
Compare this to WWI and WWII. You'll see the difference. We should have had all the kevlar
Re:Point "a". (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, chill out. To compare Gulf War II to World War II is... how should I put it... showing a lack of understanding of the scales involved...
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:5, Insightful)
and in a democracy citizens are supposed to judge how how well run the country is (which includes how well run its military actions are) and vote accordingly.
Re:Technology? TECHNOLOGY?? (Score:3, Insightful)
5 ton trucks are supposed to be protected by other units, not to be some kind of independent battle fortresses. For troop carrying needs in combat zone there are armored
Seems like the need more a disconnected model (Score:5, Interesting)
But the problem came about because tey cannot always be, that while in motion or at great distances they pretty much lost the network meant to make tem most effective.
They need to figure out how to better keep intact the lines of communication, but also how to operate more effictively in a disconnected mode, and make the most of connectivity when it is degraded (seems like if they had email links up some primitive but useful data could have been transmitted to them as well - like an OGRE style text map of the area with enemy uints marked!).
Re:Seems like the need more a disconnected model (Score:3, Interesting)
There are supposed to be wargames and field testing of these sorts of technologies, but it almost sounds like none of that was done here. Did these technologies get screwed up the same way t
Re:Seems like the need more a disconnected model (Score:5, Insightful)
Loading people up with technology to fight guerrilla warfare is like using touch screens to fix voting problems. The current push in warfare before and after Sept. 11 is to make the Armed forces leaner and meaner. So they do things like load the shit out of the army with tech, make a missile defense system, etc. Hoping it will help them enough in battle they can do with less men.
What happened in Vietnam? What happened during the American Revolution? It was guerilla warfare! "Better" tech. failing to a leaner, meaner, smarter force. Now called "Terrorism."
Why did they rig the tests? Why do they keep pushing an incompetent missile defense system? Because there are no government contracts to be won for fighting real guerilla warfare.
Re:Seems like the need more a disconnected model (Score:5, Interesting)
It was called Battle Plan Under Fire [pbs.org]
and the guys's name was U.S. Marine Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper - he gets talked about halfway down the transcript.
Makes you wonder - what would happen if in the next war, a whole bunch of what looks like "Coca Cola" delivery trucks pull up in major cities of the enemies of america, and then the Pres gets on TV and says that if the enemy country doesn't aquesce to demands of oil and abandonment of nuclear weapons programmes, those trucks will blow up at say 1000lbs of TNT each. Closer inspection of the trucks shows that they're highly sophisticated robot drones, monitored from space, with fake drivers, and rigged to explode if tampered with.
Plenty of time to get civilians out of the area, and it would smash things like major factories and what not.
When confronted with using "Terrorist Tactics", the Pres smiles disarmingly and says "Well, we've had it up to here with you. We figured, if you can't beat 'em, become exactly like them."
Re:Seems like the need more a disconnected model (Score:3, Insightful)
There would be more enemies of America. How do you think Americans would feel if other people destroyed their cities? Besides, you would need mo
Re:Seems like the need more a disconnected model (Score:4, Insightful)
Like the US doesn't already use "Terrorist Tactics" or their equivalents. The only reason US troops don't act as suicide bombers is because 1)They can't 2)They don't have to
They can't because US grunts will refuse the order to blow themselves up. They don't have to because the US air force can drop bombs from the sky at will.
In terms of threats/exhortions the US has repeatedly threatened to bomb and attack countries unless their demands are met. This is a standard tactic of any military organization / State with sufficient muscle and is no different in principle from terrorist demands.
Re:Seems like the need more a disconnected model (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd read page 5 of the article, you'd know that they fought pretty damn well in "disconnected mode". The battle mentioned as being a "bloody hell" in the original post was a bloody hell for the Iraqis, not the Americans. The Americans only had 8 wounded, and none seriously. This despite being almost totally isolated and without real-time information.
There is no substitute for good training and good equipment, and that's what won the battle that day. The danger, and this is how the article concludes, is that the plan is a total change of the structure and equipment of the army in order to take advantage of this new technology, and if the technology then fails, watch out. The Americans succeeded in the battle on that bridge because they had their M-1 tanks that were able to take out vehicle after vehicle while absorbing Iraqi fire - in the new networked army, heavy tanks will play little or no role and the army will really be little more than roving bands of lightly armed and lightly armored guys carrying PDA's.
The idea is if everybody knows where everybody is all the time, there's no need to travel in these long armored columns, there's no need for heavy armor to spearhead a major battle and there's no need for lengthy and vulnerable supply lines. When massive numbers are needed to counteract an enemy force, these smaller units can quickly swarm from all directions to surprise, surround and kill that force, coordinated with air support that's got the same info as the ground units. The problem is, if everybody in such an army doesn't know where everybody else is, then you're back to simply being completely outnumbered by an enemy who's no worse off for real-time info than you are.
This new, networked army is one of those ideas that sounds good on paper (and it's the idea the Republicans have latched onto), but will probably never really work in practice - every war is different, and every layer of technology you add is simply one more thing with the potential to break. Technology will continue to play a major role in the future, and new weapons will continue to be developed - time marches forward, not backward. But in the end, when you're talking killing somebody or destroying a vehicle in a straight fight, the guy with the bigger gun, the thicker armor and the better training is the guy who's going to win. And the advantages of networking are really limited when you're talking about insurgencies, when you've got basically civilians just leaving explosive devices on the side of the road to get run over by the next passing Humvee, or guys who open fire from an otherwise nondescript house or building.
I think the Iraq war will temper some of the rush in transforming the army, because the only thing that saved us in Iraq was the fact that we were fighting such a poorly trained and poorly equipped force. If we start downgrading our reliable weapons and armor in favor of unreliable technology, we're going to be in a heap of trouble. I think the way things are going now with the insurgency basically prove that we need more guys than we have at the moment, not less, and this article basically proves that we won the war initially despite the technology, not because of it.
Re:Seems like the need more a disconnected model (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, it worked for the Marine in Doom 3.....
Technology isn't the cure-all (Score:4, Interesting)
Faith is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget about heart. Many times in history the smaller force has won because they believed in their cause. I'm not trying to say this is 'wrong war' or 'wrong time' but people who join a fight because they believe it's the fight of their generation often win.
Many of the soldiers in Iraq are inexperienced (National Guard), naive ("We'll roll over Bagdad") or they think they don't belong there (Blood for Oil). Take into account the belief that Iraq was nothing more than an upscale Afghanistan - it's far from it. More like Western Europe with sand. When Saddam "fell" they faced resistance from militias and that depressed them (because civilians were kicking their asses).
All in all, the soldiers were lied to. Not so much about why they were fighting, but who they were fighting. A war against Saddam has turned into a war against Iraq - something they were never prepared to fight.
Re:For Further Reading... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that there have been a lot of racist books written about arabs and muslims (I am not saying this is one I haven't read it). The problem gets multiplied when influential people read those books base foreign policy on them.
One of the major reasons this administration didn't forsee this insugency is that the neocons all based their opinions about how the iraqis would act by reading "The Arab Mind" which is racist book. It depicts Arabs as automatons who aonly understand force, shame and humiliation. It pretty much depicts Arabs as less then human insect like beings who have no nuance of emotion or intellect. Not surprisingly it was written by a Jew.
The 'Arab Mind' is filled with learned behavoirs.. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's funny, I haven't seen any of these, but I have seen a number of books describing how arab/muslim culture is thouroughly corrupt, self-destructive, and an obvious dead end.
That's not racist, because no one is saying "Damn doon-coones are a bunch of murdering terrorists from birth," but they are saying that their culture- LEARNED BEHAVIORS -leads to suppression of women, backwards thinking, economic failure, b
Re:Technology isn't the cure-all (Score:3, Insightful)
Just my 0.00002c =)
The Problem with Technology is Dependancy (Score:5, Insightful)
We come back, again, to the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Intelligence is knowing how to fix your external camera feed, wisdom is knowing that you can look out the window.
No the problem is over-estimation (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past a bigger bomb or a better gun had clear understandable benefits and results in a war. However in modern times, people seem to have this belief that better technology will result in better results. Aircraft and satellite motion sensors? Gee, wow like thats helpful in a dense urban area like Baghdad when you have to worry about ambushs, which means your opponents are staying still waiting. Heat detectors? Again, useless in a dense area (is that red blob holding 'something' a policeman or an insurgent preparing to launch an ambush?) Eavesdropping gear? Nice, but we're not talking about spying on the Soviet Union anymore, we're talking about trying to spy on Casual Muhammad while he talks to his next door neighbor.
Sometimes the most basic solution is the best one, having men on the ground handing these situations face to face. Having two or three extra billion dollars worth of aircraft in the air won't do you any good when you're too scare to open fire in fear of killing civilians.
Re:No the problem is over-estimation (Score:3, Insightful)
* Motion radar/ladar: Too many targets to track, not enough information passed back about targets.
* Heavy explosives: Collateral damage is bad -- it pisses off the locals. You may also compromise integrity of structures that you need to be able to take.
* Jamming equipment: If the enemy relies on passed notes, hand signals, and other subtle methods, you're just wasti
Re:No the problem is over-estimation (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but I can't help thinking that they're the reason some of it's hostile in the first place...
Re:The Problem with Technology is Dependancy (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of it. We have soldiers fighting iraqis so we can make them obey Allawi instead of somebody else. That does not seem right to me. If the people of sadr city don't want to be ruled by Allawi and instead want to follow Muqtada why should we care? Better yet why should we kill them just to make them obey allawi?
Finally everything I have read about Allawi seems to indicate that he a pretty brutal guy. Maybe not as bad as Saddam but definately has the makings of a mini Saddam.
Superiority.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Superiority.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that this attitude (displayed here in such a crude form and without the usual spin doctoring) is exactly why US troops are facing resistance. They went in their to crush and occupy a country until a compliant stable puppet government could be set up. The last minute humanitarian objectives (democracy, freedom, etc..) are just post-occupation justification pablum.
It's not about Saddam, he has been out of power for a long time and
context sensitive ads? (Score:5, Funny)
"See How IBM Middleware connects people, processes and information.
Middleware is Everywhere. Can You See It?"
sheesh.
It's called the fog of war (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a simple algorithmic problem. The more advanced warfare becomes, the faster and deadlier it is. Military technology will probably always end up trying to reach the speed it has itself dictated for the battlefield.
To eliminate the fog, you need an Oracle (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things they nated was that Afgan special forces units were independant nodes just wired together - and that connection was maintained by an "Ubergeek" of the group. So perhaps what they needed in Iraq was a few more UberGeeks in units to ensure the maximum transmission flow possible for the situation.
Well the main problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem here isn't that the Technology failed. I think the problem is that the American administration is completely misuing it. The technology the American army is based around is designed for very specific things: long-range strikes and getting a specific job done quickly and completely. The War in Iraq really vindicated this-- the beginning of the war was masterful. The problem was what happened once the "war" ended and the "occupation" began. At this point America started using a bunch of technology designed for one purpose for a purpose it just wasn't any good for-- holding territory. Um, this doesn't work so well. The Bush administration should know this, many of the people in the administration are the same people who campaigned within the defense department for these technologies in the first place. When you start trying to take an army that's equipped and trained to do one thing and then send them to do something totally other, you get situations like the ones described in this article.
In the end, it comes down to troops. (Score:3, Insightful)
Tech will not help after the war.
To re-establish order, you need people on the ground. Lots of them. You need leadership. You need a strategy.
Destruction is easy. It's re-building that is the problem.
What wins a guerilla war (Score:3, Insightful)
Bomb from UAVs and you're just a faceless enemy drumming up new recruits.
Could the technology work at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans are basically like aliens from a different world. They even don't look human with all the body armor and gear. And if they patrol in a city then everyone escapes from their way, the society opens up before them and closes immediately after they have passed. The patrol moves essentially in a vacuum, the streets desert at the sight of a Bradley, and they don't have any contact with the real world around them.
It is similar to shooting an octopus with a shotgun - the bullet passes right through the soft tissue and doesn't do any significant damage.
So it makes me wonder - would we have been any more successful if we didn't put that much effort into technology but human contact instead?
British soldiers don't wear sunglasses. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Visit bugmenot [bugmenot.com] to circumvent registration)
Re:British soldiers don't wear helmets. (Score:4, Informative)
Phillip.
Human Contact is the ultimate weapon. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you: the war would be over. Iraqi's would get to know Americans. Americans would get to know Iraqi's.
Right now, the war is perpetuated by the thin layer that exists between Iraqi and America (uniform, weapon, ammo, base camp). Get rid of that layer, and you'll have no more war.
Human contact is highly effective at finishing war. Imagine if those cruise missiles were delivering water pump parts to Darfur, instead?
And, before the hard-ass warmongers come down on me as a 'non-realist', and try to remind me that if you throw away your weapons, you're setting yourself up for a headshot, let me just say that its a damned good thing that your type haven't figured out how to weaponize human relationships
Yes and no (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Could the technology work at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
He says from the safe comfort of his home...
If it was a real liberation, this alienation wouldn't be needed.
When my grand-parents were liberated at the end of WW2, the canadians/british/polish soldiers didn't have to worry about this.
Slate article on that very subject. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Sorry, Dr. Rice, postwar Germany was nothing like Iraq."
yep yep (Score:5, Insightful)
The TR article does mention hours-long downloads and network outages for soldiers in the field, making it sound like our info-warfare is not yet ready for demo, let alone rollout.
Re: yep yep (Score:3, Informative)
> The TR article does mention hours-long downloads and network outages for soldiers in the field, making it sound like our info-warfare is not yet ready for demo, let alone rollout.
I know a guy who works on Army technoprojects, and he says the bandwith problem was because of too much crap on the network, especially with endemic rank-pulling to grab bandwith for things that may have been useful, but weren't within the scope of what the system was designed for. By the time it got down to the guys on the
Microwave uplinks that require you to stop (Score:5, Funny)
Oh great. All that money and all we get is someone yelling "BEHIND YOU!!!"
5000-10,000 Iraqis? WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:5000-10,000 Iraqis? WTF? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:5000-10,000 Iraqis? WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example: it has been estimated that several thousand civilians died in the first few days of the war (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ [iraqbodycount.net]). You would think that this was a major tragedy and worth talking about. What was reported? Little. Where were the pictures of the effects of the war, the analysis?
Both NBCs Dan Rather http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,717097 ,00.html [guardian.co.uk]
and NPR's Morning Edition host Bob Edwards http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030423.as p#3 [mrc.org]
have questioned the propaganda
that they (the media) delivered to us. Dan Rather called it "patriotism run amok" and said that it was in danger of trampling freedom of the press.
Another example: why did the woman who photographed soldier's coffins returning lose her job? Because the war news is being controlled by spin doctors, not being reported in the sense that you and I think of reporting.
Friend or Foe (Score:5, Interesting)
Amongst all that sand and stuff...
I'm sure many nations would just be happy if they got some Friend or Foe recognition technology. Then maybe they'd stop bombing allied troops.
Aswell.. a device that would show them the difference between the home of a family of 6 and a rebel/freedom-fighter safe house might be handy.
Fog of war... (Score:5, Insightful)
War is the harshest of all conditions, this has been known for thousands of years. Anything that can go wrong, will. Go back to Sun Tzu. Go back to Militaides. The basic principles of war will not change, regardless of your technology. I dont care it it is recurve bows, steel, cannons, or satellite imagery.
Don't blame technology, blame those who blindly relied on it.
Appropriate level of technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there's the AK47. Just works, desert or jungle. M16?
War's rough on kit. Highly advanced stuff tends to be relatively fragile and takes a lot of manufacture. If I was buying kit for an army, I'd be putting words like robust, standardised/interchangable components, ease of manufacture at the very the top of the list of desirable features.
Did you read the article? We crushed them. (Score:5, Insightful)
"In the early-morning hours of April 3, it was old-fashioned training, better firepower, superior equipment, air support, and enemy incompetence that led to a lopsided victory for the U.S. troops. "When the sun came up that morning, the sight of the cost in human life the Iraqis paid for that assault, and burning vehicles, was something I will never forget," Marcone says. "It was a gruesome sight. You look down the road that led to Baghdad, for a mile, mile and a half, you couldn't walk without stepping on a body part."
Even when our troops were grossly outnumbered we still did quite well:
Yet just eight U.S. soldiers were wounded, none seriously, during the bridge fighting. Whereas U.S. tanks could withstand a direct hit from Iraqi shells, Iraqi vehicles would "go up like a Roman candle" when struck by U.S. shells, Marcone says.
Technology did not fail in Iraq, it allowed us to kill lots of enemies even when those enemies were completely unexpected.
Spin! (Score:3)
So, rather than saying that American forces overcame an ambush by an overwhelming force, the magazine spins this as the failure of the vaunted U.S. technology.
It's a load of crap.
Number of Iraqi military victims? (Score:5, Interesting)
But while some people do at least try to count the civilian victims of te latest Iraq war (here [iraqbodycount.net]),
I never heard any estimates on the number of Iraq military victims.
Does anyone now of any estimates?
Re:Number of Iraqi military victims? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there is the problem of getting a count of the dead. When Americans do their business in a serious conflict, all that is left is giblets. How do you count bodies when there are no bodies left?
Add to that the fact that terrorists are killing more civilians than Americans, and you see another problem. Are we supposed to be held responsible for people that the terrorists kill? If we get in a firefight, and they start shooting children, are we responsible for the children's death? Of course not. That is absurd.
Will there ever be an accurate count? Unfortunately, no. While I admire IBC's ambition, I doubt their method's accuracy.
Excused me... Remember Viet Nam? (Score:5, Interesting)
The big difference between that conflict and the present one is a major player other than the US is in the region and has a whole lot of nukes.
The difference between those two conflicts (Score:5, Funny)
Fascinating article (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming everyone had working satellite phones, and perhaps that was how they were getting email, it seems to me that throwing more people at it could be at least a temporary solution. Simply call up or send an email "Approaching 3 degrees north by 73 west, please advise" might elicit a human reply "20 tanks and 60 vehicles within 5 miles, may be transport. At your current speed, you will intercept them in 30 minutes, they are 4 miles north by northwest of you."
Farther in the future, a computer should be able to extrapolate that information from the satellite images and transform it into plain text that the troops can then download by logging in to a website or something, or perhaps vector graphics and low resolution images could supply them with the information they need. All they need to know is the enemy's position relative to theirs. While this might sound like some sort of tank game from the mid 80's, based on the article it would seem that this rudimentary level if information would have been invaluable to them.
This whole thing reminds me of the book Human Error [amazon.com]. Tight coupling (C depends on B, which depends on A, so objective Z will fail to be met if any of the previous 25 points fail) meant that the otherwise available information was unavailable to the people who needed it the most. A looser system, like the one used in Afgahnastan would have worked in a wider range of situations. The methods of communication were flexible rather than fixed, and could therefore be used in a wider range of situations.
Hopefully the next generation of military technology will fail gracefully. That is, still be usable even when bandwidth is low.
I also have to wonder about what will happen, as it always does, when the current cutting edge technology is commonly available. Okay, it's not likely anyone else will have satellites any time soon, but when our enemies can track our movements quickly and easily, share information amongst themselves and have their own un-manned vehicles, what strategic advantage will we have? Once you reach the point of dimishing returns (just how detailed a map can you download if you have broadband in your tank? How detailed does it need to be? Can it have real time satellite images? etc.) what happens to our advantage?
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
What it has demonstrated it's absolutely useless at is occupying a country and dealing with an insurgency. I'm no expert, but from what I've read a fair whack of blame should be placed on the political leadership that didn't do any planning for this. However, there is also an issue that the US doesn't train or prepare its military for such jobs. That's just asking for trouble.
Being in the (Score:4, Insightful)
another view (Score:3, Informative)
PBI still needed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure the airforce, artilery and technology all have their place in helping take and hold ground but without training in dealing with whatever will be encountered - from conventional warface to counter-terrorism, pacification (ideally by getting locals on your side rather than alienating them) - technology is worth bugger all.
Article's title is misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
The failure? As the
The result of this failure? 8 American soldiers wounded in a battle that left a mile to a mile and a half stretch of road toward Baghdad so choked with Iraqi casualties that you couldn't walk without stepping on body parts.
Maybe the intelligence layer failed to warn the US, but that's only one technology. The US tank armor is also a technology, and it held up against direct hits by the Iraqi tanks. US tank rounds blew the Iraqi tanks to smithereens.
The Iraqis got slaughtered, the US took eight wounded, and this is a "failure"? With failure like that, who needs victories?
Surely there's other, better examples where intelligence failures cost the US more, but this ain't it.
Military flash mobs (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea is to distribute decision making, such as what ocurred in Afghanistan, and to Keep It Simple, by using robust technologies such as email and web browsers.
The big problem that the troops encountered in Iraq was outrunning the capabilities of the microwave-based communications systems. They even outran line-of-sight communications.
One solution to that would be to plant "trees" in the desert. The idea would be to air-drop large numbers of communications relays that would have a spike on the bottom. When it hits the ground, the spike keeps it upright, and the batteries run it for a couple of days. The "trees" form a resiliant packet-driven communications mesh much like the internet.
Chip H.
Re:Weapons... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Weapons... (Score:5, Insightful)
You forgot the disclaimer: unless the leaders on one side are convinced that the second coming is near and that their faith will save them in the end. But of course, that's just a theory, no sane leader of the free world would be thinking along those lines...
Re:Weapons... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Weapons... (Score:5, Informative)
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einstein http://www.quotationspage.com/ [quotationspage.com]
It was really an observation that science was coming up with some really scary ideas in the realm of making things that go "BOOM"
Actually that's where you're kind of wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though there tanks cant really do much to ours, there were still other personell there that could have been killed.
Re:Actually that's where you're kind of wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
The overall tone of the article was that the new n
Re:Technology doesn't fail... (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't work. Let me provide you with some obviously false counter-examples:
Chicken doesn't taste like chicken. People taste like chicken.
Computers aren't made of silicon. People are made of silicon.
People don't make mistakes. People make mistakes.
As you can see, just making the claim isn't enough for it to be true. That last one doesn't even make sense.
On that no
Re:Technology doesn't fail... (Score:4, Informative)
The form is: 'X (linking verb) not Y Z. Z Y Z.'
So,
Chicken doesn't taste like chicken. People taste like chicken.
There's no sensical direct conversion (beyond stating P is ~P; P is P), but here's one that uses a few of the components:
People don't taste like chicken. Chicken tastes like chicken.
Computers aren't made of silicon. People are made of silicon.
Computers aren't made out of silicon. Computers are made out of computers.
People don't make mistakes. People make mistakes.
People don't make mistakes. Mistakes make mistakes.
His example is "Technology doesn't fail [people]. People fail [people]." which fits the form. Your only real argument against that is to claim that the implied words aren't "people" but something else in which case you'd be right it fails the form.
Re:failure compared to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the 21st century. (Score:5, Insightful)
Falkland Islands
Grenada
Panama
I study history and nothing comes to mind.
Well then.....
There are many people on Slashdot that just hate Bush, and Americans in general, those people are hopeless useful idiots and they will complete ignore the fact that American and British Planes(The French sent only one plane, that flew rarely if ever), were being shot at daily. That should have been enough to resume hostilities as it was.
We invade Iraqi airspace and you claim it is their fault?
Add to that Mass Graves, the support of terrorists (this is 100% true, you can't deny it), and you have a major wild card out their that you just can't have in a post Sept. 11 world.
Iraq has never supported anti-US terrorism.
Why couldn't we leave Iraq? The containment was working. Iraq wasn't a threat to anyone.
I could go on and on, about the UN oil for weapons... err... food program, but I really don't see the point.
RTFA. Those "weapons" you're talking about sure did a lot, didn't they?
Re:Welcome to the 21st century. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, let's split hairs when it comes to state-supported terrorism.
Saddam did have ties to al Qaeda. He is well documented as a supporter of Palestinian terrorists. He has not, however, been shown to have a connection to 9/11... But who said he did?
So all he is is a brutal tyrant and a mass murderer who has killed between 300,000 and 500,000 Iraqis, not counting a similar number of Iraqi deaths in the Iran-Iraq war, and a supporter of the murder of innocent Is
The reports don't seem to support that. (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it strange that the 9/11 report from Congress does not include that then. How fascinating.
Maybe you'd be interested in this other story on
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/
Maybe YOU'D better reread that report (Score:3, Informative)
Odds on this being modded funny vs flamebait? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Come on, people (Score:5, Insightful)
Occupation of Uganda by Tanzania in the 1970's comes instantly to mind. Also German occupation of Denmark in WWII, (and possibly Norway if you ignore outside raids). British occupation of Egypt. Numerious other examples.
I study history and nothing comes to mind.
This would be the Janet and John Children's History of America?
There are many people on Slashdot that just hate Bush, and Americans in general,
Seems to be an awful lot of Americans that hate Bush too. Generally the intelligent and non-xenophopic ones.
Add to that Mass Graves, the support of terrorists (this is 100% true, you can't deny it)
Which support for terrorists? There was NO connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Quite the reverse as Ba'athism and Islamic Fundementalism don't mix - as you'd know if you'd ever read any Islamic history.
and you have a major wild card out
Iraq was quite nicely contained. Now you're just cutting heads off the Hydra
You Europeans just keep on electing your little Socialist "take care of me cradle to grave" governments
At least we have a civilized attitude to public health (see previous slashdot article) as opposed to the positively barbaric american system. A civilization should be viewed by how it treats it's most vunerable members, on which basis America is a complete and utter failure.
point to the US and complain how we are the cause of every problem in history of the world and we will sit over here on the other side of the pond and kindly ignore you.
Oh, if only you would sit on your side of the pond and ignore everyone else, instead of sticking your big fat uneducated noses into every world situation and making it worse becuase you don't understand history or diplomacy. Vietnam, Chile, Columbia, San-Salvador - the list is endless.
Re:Networking works both ways (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting then, that with respect to quelling violence in the power vacuum following the invasion, the (underresourced, as ever) British f
Re:Any truth in... (Score:3, Informative)