Snipers Regret

Howdie,

I haven't posted in quite a while, but I thought this poem of sorts would be interesting for you lot.

Snipers Regret

I wonder in the night time
I wonder who will hear
I wonder if they know . . . . .
How close, I am near.

Do they have a family?
Do I give a #?
They will only live . . . . . .
If they #ing duck!!

The first one did not duck,
The other looks my way.
I crank another round home
And send him on his way.

It’s baggage and I know it.
Man, it really sucks.
If only I’d not been there and . . . . . .
If only they had ducked.

Semper Fi
Patrick Johannesen, U.S.M.C.

Thanks for the Poetry.

In todays high speed social structure it is good to see that someone can give pause and put pen to verse even on such a subject as warfare.

My favorite poem of this type is titled

In Flanders Fields.
by John McCrae

A Brit if I recall correctly. Wrote it in the horrid trenches in WW1. Quite a moving piece if I say so. A poem I keep bookmarked.

Thanks Goose. Hope all is well on your end.
Orangetom

My personal favourite is "Dulce et decorum est" (pro patria mori) by Wilfred Owen. This is latin for "It is good and honourable (to die for ones country)". It is, in fact, a demonstration of the futility of self-sacrifice in the realm of modern warefare. Written in WWI, it lets the reader feel for the suffering of the individual Tommy in the trenches.

[edit on 29-10-2005 by PaddyInf]

I have looked this up too. Bookmarked it next to In Flanders fields.

Thanks again,
Orangetom

Also Goose..my appologies John McCrae is a Canadian. Sorry for the mistake. Orangetom

Originally posted by orangetom1999
I have looked this up too. Bookmarked it next to In Flanders fields.

Thanks again,
Orangetom

Also Goose..my appologies John McCrae is a Canadian. Sorry for the mistake. Orangetom

Hey

No need to apologise Orangetom, I will be honest, I haven't heard of this poet [Correct Spelling?], I haven't really had the chance to really read up on this side of warfare, but I do get items passed to me, every so often.

Following the Sniper Theme, another.

Marine Sniper
By: Bradley Karr Holland

I am a Marine Sniper
Alone and fearless I fight
I sit still not making a move
As I wait in the pale moonlight
I wait for some helpless soul
To walk into my sight
I slowly squeeze the trigger
As a shot rings out through the night
A red mist fills the air
I can smell the blood from here
As I put away my gear
I take one last look in my scope
His head was blown completely off
He did not shed a tear
And when it troubles me in my sleep
I try to get my conscience clear
I will see their faces for the rest of my life
But this is the burden I choose to bear

I thank you all for sharing your favourites with each other!

- Phil

The 'Real' Sniper's Regret is when they set up a trap and catch him and his observer.

Because then they get to peel his skin off over about 3 days before sending the observer home with his screaming head in a bag so that momma and wifey can have 'something to remember their man by'.

These days, sniper finding gear in either acoustic/Q-pulse or IR varieties makes the whole deal with the 'Clear and Present Danger' ghillie warrior nonsense _exactly that_. You either get counter sniped or they lay down VT indirect on your head and then come find you by the smell of your venting entrails.

And 'funny part' is that we have known since at least the late 60's that a posted sniper rifle removes ALL biomechanical and 'nervous' elements as a function of differentiating between the 'skill' of a sniper and the 'bravery' of an ordinary soldier who doesn't have the time to low crawl into a shoot position. These days, Talon/SWORDS and similar robotic systems can even be equipped with stereographic cameras which treat scenes as a photogrammetric array of infinitely scaleable cells. You designate the cells you want 'serviced', give permissive release to the system and the fully automated receiver swings and engages each with a speed completely beyond any bolt firing shooter _and_ the same precision (because the weapon is more rigidly mounted and there is less biometric shift as you swing the muzzle or cycle the bolt).

Soldiers have no place on the battlefield. Generals keep them there because they can only retain their own power by having living bodies to command. And they wonder why '2,000 bodies later' (+400 contractors) everybody is sick of watching the barbarians employ _PROPER_ COE tactics instead.

Contempt Of Engagement.

A doctrine by which no fixed number of Iraqi kill count is worth a single American corpse. Nor does American /policy/ deserved to be jeopardized by the perception that even our 'elite' forces (six Marine snipers slaughtered because they were THERE to be so) are vulnerable to mere idiots that have all the training of a life in a gangland environment.

Might is Right only so long as it is overwhelmingly displayed to be perfect.

It's a sad moral commentary but it's a fact of life, today. And human vs. human risked sniping just doesn't stand tall to that requirement for 'clean' wars.


KPl.

ch1466,

The 'Real' Sniper's Regret is when they set up a trap and catch him and his observer.

Because then they get to peel his skin off over about 3 days before sending the observer home with his screaming head in a bag so that momma and wifey can have 'something to remember their man by'.

These days, sniper finding gear in either acoustic/Q-pulse or IR varieties makes the whole deal with the 'Clear and Present Danger' ghillie warrior nonsense _exactly that_. You either get counter sniped or they lay down VT indirect on your head and then come find you by the smell of your venting entrails.

Can a robot sniper choose when and where to fight?
Can it get in close and be sure of the shot hitting?
Can it act like a scout for a unit?
Can it track and hunt a unit of men with no outside help?
Does a regular infantry unit carry around; "acoustic/Q-pulse or IR varieties "...no I doubt a regular squaddie is qualified in that kind of engineering..

No offence mate but a robot cant and wont replace humans in combat, why?
Because, once we totally remove ourselves from behind the trigger then we will forget what war costs..it will just become one less robot not one life gone.
Sorry for going off topic goose.

Nice poem, reminds me of "Dulce et decorum est", I was allowed the pleasure of memorising it at school for an english exam. The saddest and most moving one I've read and heard sung is Private William McBride" sometimes called "Green fields of france". Very moving..I always listen to it when I hear about a UK soldier being killed...


[edit on 26/02/2005 by devilwasp]

Originally posted by ch1466
These days, sniper finding gear in either acoustic/Q-pulse or IR varieties makes the whole deal with the 'Clear and Present Danger' ghillie warrior nonsense _exactly that_. You either get counter sniped or they lay down VT indirect on your head and then come find you by the smell of your venting entrails...

...It's a sad moral commentary but it's a fact of life, today. And human vs. human risked sniping just doesn't stand tall to that requirement for 'clean' wars.
KPl.

This is obviously coming from someone who has got no concept of the role of the sniper in modern warfare, and who is using this post as a vent for their anti-war views.

The sniper is the embodiment of the clean warfare doctorine. It doesn't get any cleaner than one shot per target. Sniping is probably the most efficient and cost-effective method of waging warfare. There are many documented cases of a single sniper team holding up entire battalions for hours or even days by taking out key targets. In this role, sniping actualy reduces the body count in a battle while achieving major tactical goals. As for DFing the sniper, well, this is alot harder than you would think.

This is typical of the 'technology better than man' brigade. People die in war. That's a fact. If nobody died then it wouldn't be war, it would be a video game.

The idea of this thread is to demonstrate the mindset of the man against man method of fighting, and to bring home the fact that warfare is about men taking the lives of other men. This act is unnatural, and has a profound effect on the individual soldier.

Sorry to remove context from this fantastic thread, but this is something I believe had to be said.

[edit on 30-10-2005 by PaddyInf]

[edit on 30-10-2005 by PaddyInf]

Every armed soldier of good concience knows and understands the job they are trained to do. If not this lesson is soberly brought home the first time they see a horrible injury or the bodies of the dead. Every soldier I've ever met who will speak soberly frankly and in good concience of these experiences...the lessons remain with them for the rest of thier lives.
Paddy you did not remove the context from this thread...you put it in the X ring.

Thank you Paddy,
Orangetom

DW,

>>
Can a robot sniper choose when and where to fight?
>>

As much as any man can. When you are the occupier but not the /owner/ of a given threat battlespace, you react when someone else initiates.

See the French fighting the Vietminh and later our own path to destruction vs. the Cong. In Daylight we pretend to own the country. At night, we curl up and shiver behind locked doors as the indigs come out of the woodwork to dance by the pale moonlight.

OTOH, if you can flood the field with them, the very act of robotic _aperture_ presence acts as it's own inhibitor to threat action in the maneuver-to-contact (logistics in action) phase of their own attack. The difference? The robot will see, record and pass on the face of anyone who attacks it, even as it _does not_ 'die bravely' fighting back.

You absolutely cannot send a single soldier into a FIBUA environment filled with ENEMY civillians of a totally different phenotypical appearance and expect him to live. Sending teams only increases the profit:risk factor for the calculating enemy and makes it look like you are hanging it out there daring him to get inside your OODA loop.

>>
Can it get in close and be sure of the shot hitting?
>>

A robot has better statistical accuracy than any man alive. Just as a function of vastly better visual acuity and rock steady aim. It can carry a heavier caliber rifle (up to SPRs) with ten times the ammo count and it is _utterly_ brave.

It can deploy further robots in smaller scales down to the size of a toy car, making it immensely less likely to be detected while scouting or of taking a shot on a target whose face is 'kinda like the guy' in the biometric database. But not quite.

OTOH, man sized closure with the enemy usually only makes YOU predictable in the approaches defense (in depth) techniques that they can use to channelize and compromise your ingress for a couple hundred meters before they decide to ring your neck.

>>
Can it act like a scout for a unit?
>>

Pfffft. Can a man run at 35mph? This is the _traditional_ problem with infantry of all sorts and SOFies choicers in particular. They look all tough and ugly when they are set up on a ridgeline, their 70-120lb packs by their knees, dug in and calling down air on a satcomm radio. But they cannot keep pace with maneuver warfare demands and IN AN URBAN ENVIRONMENT EVERYTHING IS MECH.

If you want to 'scout' you play recce along the side of the road looking for IEDs 15-20 seconds before the convoy goes by.

>>
Can it track and hunt a unit of men with no outside help?
>>

Theoretically? Yes. As of now? No. The difference? A patently absurd belief that the men doing the hunting are more 'elite' than those fighting on their own turf, in their own time, with all our playbook laid out before them, written in their own blood, to reference.

See the dead-SEALs incident on the AfG/Pak border.

OTOH, 'absent nightfall and a safe helicopter LZ' it can sure as hell provide better SAW-man 'covering fire' when the enemy starts attacking with recoilless or HMG from atop a canyon crest 1,500m out and the Mk.4's are all pissing 5.56 in the wind at anything over 300m.

Even as it almost certainly has the armor protection to require precision explosive fires to first-hit incapacitate. And thus adds another layer of scarcity-of-resources difficulty to the monkey force threat.

>>
Does a regular infantry unit carry around; "acoustic/Q-pulse or IR varieties "...no I doubt a regular squaddie is qualified in that kind of engineering.
>>

Read up on the 'Viper' sniper finder. It is a Swallow UAV mounted system which looks DOWN on shooters and both spots and classifies muzzle plumes before cross associating the secondary acoustic reverb to give 'our side, their side' differentiation on near/farfield range overlap.

The DIFFERENCE still being that Ronnie the Robot takes a helluva lot more to kill him than a 7.62X39 above the interceptor vest.

And yes, he could probably carry a similar system if that's what it comes down to. Whereas the absent ability to hump or 'understand' the technology at the grunt level only serves as further indictment against the principle of manned presence.

>>
No offence mate but a robot cant and wont replace humans in combat, why?
Because, once we totally remove ourselves from behind the trigger then we will forget what war costs..it will just become one less robot not one life gone.
>>

No. We have already forgotten that. We FORGOT THAT at Nuremburg in 1945 when we were so interested in punishing the losers that we forgot all the established precedents (our own West for one) by which an established, largely peaceful and stable, nation is rolled over by a more advanced one that the descendants of both might be made stronger.

When WAR is labelled a 'crime against humanity' then the WARRIORS sole purpose must be to prevent the attack of madmen who would risk their very lives to commit such a _criminal_ offense.

Unfortunately, the reason Saddam was not rolled over in 1991, 1992 or 1994 is _we did not want him to be_. Since as long as Iraq was excommunicated from OPEC, the remaining Gulf states got fatter taking up the slack and we got a cheap-oil kickback.

While the military, operating at tempos twice that of the Cold War period got to retain the budgetary (ops account) dominance of a militarist/adventurist 'democracy in action'.

By acting as mercs for Arab oil (blame the American Satans, get rich doing it).

That did not protect the average Joe U.S. citizen on 9/11. When a self righteous Arab decided he'd had enough of the infidels on Arab holy dirt. And 300 billion dollars later, buck thirty oil is but a fading dream. And the 'war' is not acknowledged as much as won.

You won't win this war until you make it clear that Pax Americana means we will have peace, whether the bad guys are exterminated or among the breathing. And so the notion that a 'sense of blood loss' is what's at risk is completely ludicrous. Because we love our enemies and our victims more than we love ourselves.


ARGUMENT-
Remember the old saying "Crime wouldn't pay if the government ran it!" ??

That's how most of us increasingly feel. Because we are being told to go about our ordinary lives while those lives are completely disrupted and the only thing the President and Official Mouthpiece for Federalist Big Business can say is "There will never again be a time when we can guarantee safety..."

We are paying for a criminal activity which is not being acknowledged because to be so, it would have to be shown to be the HISTORICAL failure that it is as a function of making our ENEMIES pay for our expenditures.

In such a condition, my IMO is the exact opposite of yours. In that, robots offer a way out by making the average grunt think twice about dying in an attemt to gain coup over a silicon chip. Whether that grunt be a man in uniform who knows he is obsolescent and has been since autofire rifles and radio control bombs became standard. Or a mutt in mufti who thinks God Smiles upon those who murder anonymously for a cause.

CONCLUSION-
If every man was told that fighting outside his borders was worth an instant trip International Court for death penalty trial. No one would bring none and there wouldn't /be none/ because the national leadership could not crouch behind officialdom.

And Ronnie the Robot would make for a helluva lot better 'scout' over in Peshawar land wherein we DO NOT KNOW whether the bag is full or empty of the ONE MAN that this war should be focussed on finding and making a terrible example of.

What we need to focus on is the ever increasing application of Precision Engagement and Policing (UN rights to enter into any nation in search of criminal X) capabilities to control a world NOT in global conflagration. So as to be able to draw down a military which is dead set 'roles and missions' designed to instigate such an activity.

THAT is the real danger here. For the U.S. mindset counts psychological coup just as much as the barbarian sand monkey. And as long as we maintain attachment to boots on the ground dying for squat, we will not want to make their losses for nothing by pulling out and 'refocusing' elsewhere.

Even if the consequences for those that soldiers _cannot protect_, at home, are even worse than the embarrassment of yet another Vietnam.


KPl.


P.S. What is the song sung at the end of 'We were soldiers once'?? Nice and Cold. The reality of life-end as a soldier dying in some back of beyond for little to nothing but the man next to you who should /also not be there/.

Originally posted by ch1466
As much as any man can. When you are the occupier but not the /owner/ of a given threat battlespace, you react when someone else initiates.

No the robot would ethier be in one of 2 control systems.
A) open
B) closed

One requires a controler or some kind of sensor, the other doesnt.

See the French fighting the Vietminh and later our own path to destruction vs. the Cong. In Daylight we pretend to own the country. At night, we curl up and shiver behind locked doors as the indigs come out of the woodwork to dance by the pale moonlight.

"our" ?
I didnt know britain had entered that war..
Also I dont quite get where your going with that..

OTOH, if you can flood the field with them, the very act of robotic _aperture_ presence acts as it's own inhibitor to threat action in the maneuver-to-contact (logistics in action) phase of their own attack. The difference? The robot will see, record and pass on the face of anyone who attacks it, even as it _does not_ 'die bravely' fighting back.

Right, I think ethier you or I is getting spun around here.
First are you talking about using them as "recon" as in going in as a sheep to see who the enemy is?
Or using them in a combat role?

You absolutely cannot send a single soldier into a FIBUA environment filled with ENEMY civillians of a totally different phenotypical appearance and expect him to live. Sending teams only increases the profit:risk factor for the calculating enemy and makes it look like you are hanging it out there daring him to get inside your OODA loop.

Thats a misconception, snipers can enter those situations with ease and dissapear with ease.
They never work alone, always in 2 man teams and they onnly need to be withing 600 yards of a target or find a nice tall building then your sorted.

A robot has better statistical accuracy than any man alive. Just as a function of vastly better visual acuity and rock steady aim. It can carry a heavier caliber rifle (up to SPRs) with ten times the ammo count and it is _utterly_ brave.

It may be more accurate, it may have more ammo and a larger size but can the robot think tactfully?
Can it decide if it should kill now or wait?
No, it falls back onto its program and programing is not that advanced yet.
Just because its exspendable means you want to lose it.

It can deploy further robots in smaller scales down to the size of a toy car, making it immensely less likely to be detected while scouting or of taking a shot on a target whose face is 'kinda like the guy' in the biometric database. But not quite.

Yes you can do that but think about it, the smaller the robot the smalller the gun.
Can you hide the noise of an electric motor? How would it move? Crawl? Tracks?
Noise and movement will give it away.

OTOH, man sized closure with the enemy usually only makes YOU predictable in the approaches defense (in depth) techniques that they can use to channelize and compromise your ingress for a couple hundred meters before they decide to ring your neck.

The enemy wont know your there because your sitting about 600 yards away looking like any old bush.

Pfffft. Can a man run at 35mph? This is the _traditional_ problem with infantry of all sorts and SOFies choicers in particular. They look all tough and ugly when they are set up on a ridgeline, their 70-120lb packs by their knees, dug in and calling down air on a satcomm radio. But they cannot keep pace with maneuver warfare demands and IN AN URBAN ENVIRONMENT EVERYTHING IS MECH.

No in urban it is all manpower, the germans learned that when they went into russia.
Why do you think they send in infantry FIRST into a city before the tanks?
Can a robot act stealthly and track an enemy unit and scout for infatry?
No it cant.

If you want to 'scout' you play recce along the side of the road looking for IEDs 15-20 seconds before the convoy goes by.

Who is talking about convoy's , this is about regular warfare, scouting is required for EVERY unit.

Theoretically? Yes. As of now? No. The difference? A patently absurd belief that the men doing the hunting are more 'elite' than those fighting on their own turf, in their own time, with all our playbook laid out before them, written in their own blood, to reference.

Its not absurd, its good thinking.

See the dead-SEALs incident on the AfG/Pak border.

OTOH, 'absent nightfall and a safe helicopter LZ' it can sure as hell provide better SAW-man 'covering fire' when the enemy starts attacking with recoilless or HMG from atop a canyon crest 1,500m out and the Mk.4's are all pissing 5.56 in the wind at anything over 300m.

Its a good turret I agree but it cant think for itself, it needs a controller and orders.

The robot cant get to places a human can, its simply not got the mobility.
Sure it can spray and pray alll night long but frankly thats not much help to the commander other than having a mobily gun enplacement.

Even as it almost certainly has the armor protection to require precision explosive fires to first-hit incapacitate. And thus adds another layer of scarcity-of-resources difficulty to the monkey force threat.

"Monkey force"?
No all it requires is a few sniper shots at the barrel and its history.

Read up on the 'Viper' sniper finder. It is a Swallow UAV mounted system which looks DOWN on shooters and both spots and classifies muzzle plumes before cross associating the secondary acoustic reverb to give 'our side, their side' differentiation on near/farfield range overlap.

Yes its a UAV, not a regular infantry.
You need an UAV team, a launcher, a coms trailer and a regular infantry team to use it.

The DIFFERENCE still being that Ronnie the Robot takes a helluva lot more to kill him than a 7.62X39 above the interceptor vest.

Ronnie the robot cant climb vertical slopes, ronnie the robot has a limited range, ronnie the robot costs more than a regualr infantry man.

And yes, he could probably carry a similar system if that's what it comes down to. Whereas the absent ability to hump or 'understand' the technology at the grunt level only serves as further indictment against the principle of manned presence.

Do you know everything about the robot?
Not everyone does, your thinking about replacing the infantry man with technitions.
More later.

We have not forgotten, replacing a man with a robot does nothing other than simply remove the cost of war.
You want to try and do that ok, but frankly it will make us forget the cost of war.

DW,

>>
Can a robot sniper choose when and where to fight?
>>

As much as any man can. When you are the occupier but not the /owner/ of a given threat battlespace, you react when someone else initiates.

See the French fighting the Vietminh and later our own path to destruction vs. the Cong. In Daylight we pretend to own the country. At night, we curl up and shiver behind locked doors as the indigs come out of the woodwork to dance by the pale moonlight.

OTOH, if you can flood the field with them, the very act of robotic _aperture_ presence acts as it's own inhibitor to threat action in the maneuver-to-contact (logistics in action) phase of their own attack. The difference? The robot will see, record and pass on the face of anyone who attacks it, even as it _does not_ 'die bravely' fighting back.

You absolutely cannot send a single soldier into a FIBUA environment filled with ENEMY civillians of a totally different phenotypical appearance and expect him to live. Sending teams only increases the profit:risk factor for the calculating enemy and makes it look like you are hanging it out there daring him to get inside your OODA loop.

>>
Can it get in close and be sure of the shot hitting?
>>

A robot has better statistical accuracy than any man alive. Just as a function of vastly better visual acuity and rock steady aim. It can carry a heavier caliber rifle (up to SPRs) with ten times the ammo count and it is _utterly_ brave.

It can deploy further robots in smaller scales down to the size of a toy car, making it immensely less likely to be detected while scouting or of taking a shot on a target whose face is 'kinda like the guy' in the biometric database. But not quite.

OTOH, man sized closure with the enemy usually only makes YOU predictable in the approaches defense (in depth) techniques that they can use to channelize and compromise your ingress for a couple hundred meters before they decide to ring your neck.

>>
Can it act like a scout for a unit?
>>

Pfffft. Can a man run at 35mph? This is the _traditional_ problem with infantry of all sorts and SOFies choicers in particular. They look all tough and ugly when they are set up on a ridgeline, their 70-120lb packs by their knees, dug in and calling down air on a satcomm radio. But they cannot keep pace with maneuver warfare demands and IN AN URBAN ENVIRONMENT EVERYTHING IS MECH.

If you want to 'scout' you play recce along the side of the road looking for IEDs 15-20 seconds before the convoy goes by.

>>
Can it track and hunt a unit of men with no outside help?
>>

Theoretically? Yes. As of now? No. The difference? A patently absurd belief that the men doing the hunting are more 'elite' than those fighting on their own turf, in their own time, with all our playbook laid out before them, written in their own blood, to reference.

See the dead-SEALs incident on the AfG/Pak border.

OTOH, 'absent nightfall and a safe helicopter LZ' it can sure as hell provide better SAW-man 'covering fire' when the enemy starts attacking with recoilless or HMG from atop a canyon crest 1,500m out and the Mk.4's are all pissing 5.56 in the wind at anything over 300m.

Even as it almost certainly has the armor protection to require precision explosive fires to first-hit incapacitate. And thus adds another layer of scarcity-of-resources difficulty to the monkey force threat.

>>
Does a regular infantry unit carry around; "acoustic/Q-pulse or IR varieties "...no I doubt a regular squaddie is qualified in that kind of engineering.
>>

Read up on the 'Viper' sniper finder. It is a Swallow UAV mounted system which looks DOWN on shooters and both spots and classifies muzzle plumes before cross associating the secondary acoustic reverb to give 'our side, their side' differentiation on near/farfield range overlap.

The DIFFERENCE still being that Ronnie the Robot takes a helluva lot more to kill him than a 7.62X39 above the interceptor vest.

And yes, he could probably carry a similar system if that's what it comes down to. Whereas the absent ability to hump or 'understand' the technology at the grunt level only serves as further indictment against the principle of manned presence.

>>
No offence mate but a robot cant and wont replace humans in combat, why?
Because, once we totally remove ourselves from behind the trigger then we will forget what war costs..it will just become one less robot not one life gone.
>>

No. We have already forgotten that. We FORGOT THAT at Nuremburg in 1945 when we were so interested in punishing the losers that we forgot all the established precedents (our own West for one) by which an established, largely peaceful and stable, nation is rolled over by a more advanced one that the descendants of both might be made stronger.

When WAR is labelled a 'crime against humanity' then the WARRIORS sole purpose must be to prevent the attack of madmen who would risk their very lives to commit such a _criminal_ offense.

Unfortunately, the reason Saddam was not rolled over in 1991, 1992 or 1994 is _we did not want him to be_. Since as long as Iraq was excommunicated from OPEC, the remaining Gulf states got fatter taking up the slack and we got a cheap-oil kickback.

While the military, operating at tempos twice that of the Cold War period got to retain the budgetary (ops account) dominance of a militarist/adventurist 'democracy in action'.

By acting as mercs for Arab oil (blame the American Satans, get rich doing it).

That did not protect the average Joe U.S. citizen on 9/11. When a self righteous Arab decided he'd had enough of the infidels on Arab holy dirt. And 300 billion dollars later, buck thirty oil is but a fading dream. And the 'war' is not acknowledged as much as won.

You won't win this war until you make it clear that Pax Americana means we will have peace, whether the bad guys are exterminated or among the breathing. And so the notion that a 'sense of blood loss' is what's at risk is completely ludicrous. Because we love our enemies and our victims more than we love ourselves.


ARGUMENT-
Remember the old saying "Crime wouldn't pay if the government ran it!" ??

That's how most of us increasingly feel. Because we are being told to go about our ordinary lives while those lives are completely disrupted and the only thing the President and Official Mouthpiece for Federalist Big Business can say is "There will never again be a time when we can guarantee safety..."

We are paying for a criminal activity which is not being acknowledged because to be so, it would have to be shown to be the HISTORICAL failure that it is as a function of making our ENEMIES pay for our expenditures.

In such a condition, my IMO is the exact opposite of yours. In that, robots offer a way out by making the average grunt think twice about dying in an attemt to gain coup over a silicon chip. Whether that grunt be a man in uniform who knows he is obsolescent and has been since autofire rifles and radio control bombs became standard. Or a mutt in mufti who thinks God Smiles upon those who murder anonymously for a cause.

CONCLUSION-
If every man was told that fighting outside his borders was worth an instant trip International Court for death penalty trial. No one would bring none and there wouldn't /be none/ because the national leadership could not crouch behind officialdom.

And Ronnie the Robot would make for a helluva lot better 'scout' over in Peshawar land wherein we DO NOT KNOW whether the bag is full or empty of the ONE MAN that this war should be focussed on finding and making a terrible example of.

What we need to focus on is the ever increasing application of Precision Engagement and Policing (UN rights to enter into any nation in search of criminal X) capabilities to control a world NOT in global conflagration. So as to be able to draw down a military which is dead set 'roles and missions' designed to instigate such an activity.

THAT is the real danger here. For the U.S. mindset counts psychological coup just as much as the barbarian sand monkey. And as long as we maintain attachment to boots on the ground dying for squat, we will not want to make their losses for nothing by pulling out and 'refocusing' elsewhere.

Even if the consequences for those that soldiers _cannot protect_, at home, are even worse than the embarrassment of yet another Vietnam.


KPl.


P.S. What is the song sung at the end of 'We were soldiers once'?? Nice and Cold. The reality of life-end as a soldier dying in some back of beyond for little to nothing but the man next to you who should /also not be there/.



>>
quote: Originally posted by ch1466
As much as any man can. When you are the occupier but not the /owner/ of a given threat battlespace, you react when someone else initiates.

>>
No the robot would ethier be in one of 2 control systems.
A) open
B) closed

One requires a controller or some kind of sensor, the other doesn't.
>>
The reality then being that NOT having a controller does not lead to mad dog robotics ala ED-209. Because the robot has the ability to decamp under fire without having to respond to the threat, lethally. What man can juggle a smoke mortar on his back and an M-16 in his arms with the tazer or rubber bullet gun or maceball shooter in his web gear while running at 35mph? If you say "There will be no lethal response to threats in this area _PERIOD_, for X mission duration; the robot will faithfully obey. Asking a human to do so is unfair because his life cannot be put back together with a trip to Radio Shack. i.e. The bogeyman fear you attempt to instill is exactly the OPPOSITE of reality. The robot has more self discipline than any man ever will.
On a related note, the notion that the drone cannot manage it's own navigation and recce role autonomously, dialing into a local EPLRS or similar (TTNT, whatever) network to ask a systems manager "Hey, this is new, what do I do?" also underrates the ability of the machine to housekeep it's own basic existence. Much as humans do for the 70% of the time we are tying our shoes, walking to the bathroom, or or or. GPS and inertials alone will let a robot navigate with perfect memory of where it has been and unerring notion of it's final objective. Mass will protect it from incidental contact with humans that get the hell out of it's way or else. A scanning LIDAR or MMW device that evaluates terrain elevations can define widthXheight extremes where it cannot go. Even as a simple contrast (light:dark) monitor will keep it centered in the street or sidewalk.
IF THE INTERNET GOES DOWN the mission goes on.
While the presence of a human /behind/ the Robot allows for much more effective radiated power 'in proximity' for conditions where direct human operator interactivity is required. In conditions where said meatbag is protected from simultaneous engagement and likely has his own vehicle to run away if need be. As such, it's not likely that the Terrorists can overmatch this capability with comms denial or spoof takeover, even if they have their own Radio Shack.
About the only remaining conditional modifier is what happens when your troops decide to walk down the street to 'talk to' a guy and an attack occurs with Ronnie present in a flurry of moving legs and bodies. In this case, no matter who is 'in command' the urge to 'defend our own' may be an overriding command line in the robots ROE logic controller. The question then becomes, how can it 'tell the difference' between a human with an M16 ten feet to it's front and one with an AK-47 50ft beyond that? The answer is to put laser-tag BTID markers on the humans (think MILES in Miniature) so that as each tag is authenticated for but one mission, the soldiers who where it will have an exclusion globe around them into which Ronnie will not fire. Of course if Ronnie can move at 35mph, Ronnie sure as hell doesn't need to shooting over friendly heads neither.
I _despise_ people who think of ways to incriminate a robot for using excess of force when 'humans were an available alternative'. Because the simple fact is that the only thing a robot needs to do is take a threat's picture and RETREAT while the presence of humans exacerbates and escalates a threat by giving it a psychologically recognizeable coup mentality that basically comes down to "Hey, I can kill that guy, even if I die (trying)!".
Barbarians have nothing. Therefore they don't care as much about losing it. When we give them popup targets in easily identifiable uniforms, WE PLAY INTO THEIR GAME. And that is where the BS about 'war becoming cheap' runs afoul it's own hypocritical mirrored image.
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quote:
See the French fighting the Vietminh and later our own path to destruction vs. the Cong. In Daylight we pretend to own the country. At night, we curl up and shiver behind locked doors as the indigs come out of the woodwork to dance by the pale moonlight.

"our" ?
I didnt know britain had entered that war..
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OUR. Me + My Nation. The one spending 300 BILLION WITH A B DOLLARS to save a bunch of ungrateful pissants from themselves. It took approximately 420 billion before we learned our lesson in SEA.
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Also I dont quite get where your going with that...
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Sigh, the implication of your comment is that of a 'Jackal' situation wherein the robotic assassin with it's heavy gun misses the target and sprays down the innocents. This is BULL. Because the robot is a better shot than ANY HUMAN LIVING OR DEAD.
OTOH, if the man is going to avoid being put in a situation where the enemy fires over the heads of his own people as bullet shields, he can only do so by festunging himself into remote firebases and 'only killing those who come near'. As indeed is in the process of happening in Iraq as we (politically, in time for the 2008 elections) prepare to handoff to the Iraqi 'Security Forces', willy nilly.
This is how you lose a contested battlespace.
Because while you are playing at 3 Monkeys, the insurgents are out there 'winning votes' and pistol whipping the people until they realize that they cannot stop being hurt /by/ the bad guys until they help them kick your sorry ass out of country.
I doubt seriously if we are actually 'in control' of half as much of the battlespace as we pretend. But we COULD BE if we used robots. Because they are better armored, faster and ultimately _have no relatives_. Such that one Bolo can cover the area of an entire platoon for mobility and at least match a Squad for firepower. Even as it asserts Presence-with-a-P. For Photography.
If I want to gut an insurgency, I need to make it a CRIMINAL ACTIVITY SUPPRESSION EFFORT. The only way to get there is to make everybody have a 'drivers license' of biometrically held ID. Faces, Body Proportions, Fingerprints, DNA. Matched to Addresses and Relatives and Workplace. Fail to have an ID or Lie about any of the latter data and you are eligible for a Field Court and rifle squad. Fail to turn in someone you KNOW is doing 'bad things' because you live and work with him (and another law allows for neighbors to come inspect each other's homes and vehicles) and so are you.
The ROBOT need only be standing on the street corner take the picture which begins the evidence trail that leads to an arrest.
Whether it is armed or not, it's ability to be present and take names (not ears) makes it TEN TIMES as valuable as the human which cannot be 'exposed' to such a threat. Alone.
>>
Right, I think ethier you or I is getting spun around here.
First are you talking about using them as "recon" as in going in as a sheep to see who the enemy is?
Or using them in a combat role?
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Snipers best roles are often as observers. YOU were the one who used the term 'scout'. But humans cannot stand there and take it. Cannot bust out of an ambush WITHOUT use of lethal weapons. Cannot in fact even /carry/ sufficient weapons, incapacitants and obscurrants to give them an option. This in a mass autofire age where, even if artillery is present, you may not have time to call it in.
That said, my suggestion was that of scaled carriage and remote telemetered (radio or cable waldo) vehicles which can go up stairs or into rooms while the main vehicle is safe outside. Because even a robot has a fixed replacement cost. And because a Tamiya RC car is going to make for a lot smaller auditory and visual signature than an R-Gator.
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Thats a misconception, snipers can enter those situations with ease and dissapear with ease.
They never work alone, always in 2 man teams and they onnly need to be withing 600 yards of a target or find a nice tall building then your sorted.
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Crap. This is NOT Vietnam. There are no triple layer canopies or wide open nothings. EVERYWHERE has /SOMEONE/ living in the spatial volume.
Which is why 6 Marine snipers. 'Best Of The Best'. Were slaughtered like sheep thinking they could come and go at will when their very differences of appearance and patterns of movement became predictable indicators of behavior. If I'm an insurgent and I want to scrape a little bit off the image of U.S. 'elite forces now, better watch out!' invincibility, I am going to CREATE a situation in which the local commander turns to his scout snipers and says, "Okay, I'm interested and you're up."
Because once I know the objective (having created it) I can pretty much guess the likeliest routes and offset obspoints. And then it's just a matter of dropping a building on them or blowing up a trash can beside them.
The same is true of the SEALs on the border. They died because they thought they were too damn good to be caught. And once they were proven wrong in their first misconception, they didn't have the armor or the staying power to wait for a proper night extract. Thus killing all those who went to 'save them'.
A robot can be put down in an LZ five miles from the in-contact threatened forces and BE THERE in under 5 minutes at 35mph. It can then use /whatever/ fires (40-60mm mortar) to CREATE the hole in the enemy envelopement. Simply by saying: "Okay, the unit is at X GPS coordinate. Create an exclusion bubble of 20m around that coordinate and obliterate anything outside it." NEVER ENTERING the enemy line of battle. Never putting itself at risk. Something that no 'manned' rescuer can manage as he puts himself and 15 others at equal risk ("Your government mourns your loss...") to save FOUR men.
God, People. Are you REALLY THAT STUPID!?

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It may be more accurate, it may have more ammo and a larger size but can the robot think tactfully?
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Targets are fleeting. If you can make the shot then you should do so. If you cannot, then don't. If the MISSION is not to shoot bullets but film, then do so. How many times have we seen /insurgents/ doing some evil deed on night vision scopes? How many times have we LOST the info war because Al Jazeera doesn't have to willfully NOT choose to publish U.S. forces observing a massacre by Arab against Arab?
In any case, if a robot cannot statistically make a kill because the risk to others is too high, it won't. Only a man can override mission orders, find himself less than the challenge after all. And then have the relevant service cover up for his mistake because they can't afford to condemn him for it.
Robots are thus not only more lethal but more merciful or as you put it 'tactful'.
>>
Can it decide if it should kill now or wait?
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If it has a window to achieve a mission in it will kill to make that window. If it has a 'call us up on acquisition' it will point a directional antenna up at a pseudolite comms relay UAV and ask for permission. The one thing it will /never/ do is take a shot because it feels exposed. So really, the 'human factors' element remains the same. It's just that the decision mode is offboard and/or preprogrammed for conditional modifiers before the robot enters the mission area. This is actually a GOOD THANG because it allows a man not stressed to make the best use of an entirely _expendable_ asset while having that JAG lawyer standing over his shoulder saying "Nope, see those smaller fastmoving dots all around him? Those are kids. No women, no kids."
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No, it falls back onto its program and programing is not that advanced yet.
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This is the typical excuse by which robots are chained to the limitations of humans who somehow believe that they can make a 'better decision'. So long as they are never challenged on-point. On-merit. For a robot that has no mission to _supplant_ human activity X will never be 'taught' the interactive ROE codes to achieve human-or-better level rational cognitive discipline.
And while such an ontologic level of reason is utterly unnecessary for combat /because/ the robot is never going to fear for it's life; it serves to preserve the human mendacity of superior discretion. Which is simply not present. Because those six snipers would have fought like wild tigers to get out of an ambush. And they are too few to assert scout-presence as a photojournalist alternative _by mission order_ to shooting at all.
Robots are better shots. They are instantly trained to that level of capability. Their mercy is inherent to their 'immortality'. They are available in numbers such that there is no reason to refuse a mission because your assets are too limited as human master class shooters are. They are thoughtlessly noble.
ROBOTS ARE BETTER WARRIORS THAN HUMANS EVER WILL BE.
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Yes you can do that but think about it, the smaller the robot the smalller the gun.
Can you hide the noise of an electric motor? How would it move? Crawl? Tracks?
Noise and movement will give it away.
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Oh please. I can design a gun, complete with a 50rd rotary drum magazine, that will fit into a smoke alarm. It's .22lr and with a 2" barrel it will put a bullet RIGHT THRU YOUR EYE at anything up to 50m.
OTOH, as long as the parent vehicle has the payload margin to carry BOTH the mini-UGV /and/ the .50 SPR, then it can hide behind a building. Send the car out front to erect an camouflage net that is AMLCD 'active' across it's 1X1ft frontal area.
And, /looking through the film projector/, use a 35mm zoom digital camera system (COTS all the way) to take snapshots of whoever. The only 'gun' that the minivehicle thus needs has upwards of 16GB of 'ammo' in a card the size of a matchbook and ZERO recoil from a unit mounted through the centerline between the tires.
Do you see the facial signature match little rover? Yes? HQ, I have flash traffic, is this our guy? Yes? 2EOT (Two Eyes On Target) confirmation. The UGV rolls out from behind the building and shoots the Al Zarquawi through the chest with a .50 round.
Mission done, it recovers or cuts-tether abandons the self-safing mini-vehicle and RUNS.
No human can match that capability. Because at a thousand meters no ordinary vision will see EITHER the prone sniper. OR the Tamiya RC car UGV. And at 50m the car will make less noise and indeed have a _smaller_ visual signature than any human. Even as the 'expectation zone' (could a human be there and not be noticed?) of it's presence is similarly expanded to places which no human could low crawl to.
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The enemy wont know your there because your sitting about 600 yards away looking like any old bush.
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Not in a MOUT environment. Are you deaf? It's not like I haven't said it before.

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No in urban it is all manpower, the germans learned that when they went into Russia.
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The Germans would have levelled Baghdad. The Germans would have instituted a policy by which, for every one German who died, 100 civillians would. For every 10 Germans who died, 1,000 civillians would have. For every 1,000 Germans who died, 10,000 civillians would have. Additively and Exponentially until the local populace made the choice to side with the folks who had the most bullets.
OTOH, if you are talking Stalingrad, you are missing the point. They were never invested in SGrad as an occupation force. They had no control over the far bank logistics effort. They sent their /best/ A-level armored formations SOUTH to play in the mountains when they were outnumbered from the moment they arrived.
If you want to take Stalingrad, you take it like you 'took' Warsaw: First you envelope it. Then you level it. Then you shoot the survivors as an example of what happens to those who don't 'surrender first'. This is basic MECH warfare 101.
But rather than give you further lessons in martial history, let me simply state the obvious: If there is a fire in a neighborhood, do you send your firemen to the blaze on foot? With horse drawn wagons? By helicopter? NO. You put their sorry asses into trucks and you drive there. Fighting an insurgency is nothing if not the act of putting out a 1,000 small conflagrations, popping up here, there and yonder. The difference is that if your enemy exploits vehicles to both emplace IEDs and Small Ambush forces and you are 'living it up' in Festungs away from their direct reach; you had damn well better be prepared to DRIVE to the fight yourself. Or you will never be able to catch them. Or evac your wounded when the 2nd and 3rd leave behind bombs go off as you arrive.
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Why do you think they send in infantry FIRST into a city before the tanks?
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Thunder Runs anyone? Tanks moving down streets with infantry crouched behind in Berlin and Seoul and Hue and and and?
When you channelize yourself on a street and the crossfired MG begin to hammer you, you have literally 2-3 seconds before they butcher you all like /sheep/ in an abatoir chute. Armor makes them resort to explosive fires and acts as a mobile pill box proof against anything up to 20mm. If it has a disadvantage in urban warfare is that when they /do/ kill it, it blocks the road for followons. And that too is something whereby taking a wiesel sized mini doesn't really decrease the frontal protection but gives you good cause to pull the morons taking up interior volume in trade for a thicker hide and the ability to push on with another when the lead vehicle runs over a bomb in the street.
Do you understand ANYTHING of military history?
Sigh. Fine. Conventional Warfare is what happens when the cowboys roll into town, guns blazing and their warfaces on and nobody has the balls or the firepower to obliterate this mythical image of juggernaut intensity.
Then the insurgency happens when you set up camp among the defeated and they see that you defectate with your pants down like anyone else.
The irony of opposite similarities being that while sufficient shock-of-contact can rout particularly a primitive force construct, primitive (gangland) coup psychology can equally unseat a conventional force which is restricted from mass reprisals to make the insurgents realize that if they don't give up, they will simply be exterminated.
I.E. INSURGENCIES DON'T HAVE TO WIN TO DEFEAT A CONVENTIONAL FORCE.
They just have to use proper COE (Contempt Of Engagement) assymetric attacks to make them bleed until they cry and go home.
Infantry exist because they are filthy cheap compared to a six million dollar MBT which is disabled by a LAW class weapon from the sides or rear.
But where HUMAN COSTS are the driving factor in Assymetric (COIN) ops; you cannot treat the human factor as an insignificant trade by virtue of the 'heroic cause'. For a cause has to have an objective (goal) endpoint to be measured-for-worth against. And an insurgent only has to make the apparency of his never giving up stretch that goal out to the event horizon of infinity to prevent the hero-psychology from applying.
We NEED a replacement for both. Something which has the power (heavy weapons, massive ammo counts, mobility above and beyond) to supplement the tank as a cheaper mobile fires platform. Just as we NEED to replace the human altogether. For his presence is what drives mothers to weep when they realize how cheaply their son died 'saving' a bunch of savages.
And his /vulnerability/ to that mortal fate is what gives those savages a reason to believe Allah will welcome them as Shahine for letting go the mortal coil while clenched in a deathgrip with another living being. But the Koran says not a damn thing about dying at the 'hands' of a silicon chip.
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Can a robot act stealthly and track an enemy unit and scout for infantry?
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Sure it can. It's called a UAV. OTOH, if the UAV's are weathered out, you still have GSR and FLIR based optics on a masthead which can see /kilometers/ further than any man can.
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Who is talking about convoy's , this is about regular warfare, scouting is required for EVERY unit.
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Indeed. But every unit moves to battle or between logistics points on trucks. Don't belittle mechanization sir. Being a truck driver is the A#1 most lethal MOS in Iraq right now. Because while you can send out foot patrols on their own two hoofs, you can't feed them or treat them when they come back 'with their shields or upon them' if you don't have the ability to transport TON MILES of equipment.
Insurgents attack that CS/CSS capability, often with similar vehicles (Cement Truck Bombs are very popular right now). And they at least 'resent' the Hummers and IFV/LAV that gob together 5-10 troops into one nicely colocated target matrix with similar tenacity.
The difference is that a robot doesn't transport troops so it doesn't need to be bloated with their vulnerability as well as it's own. And it doesn't die so it can support convoy operations on the 'still have to eat' basis of occupational existence without being itself exposed as a lone 'scout' for IEDs etc.
quote:
Theoretically? Yes. As of now? No. The difference? A patently absurd belief that the men doing the hunting are more 'elite' than those fighting on their own turf, in their own time, with all our playbook laid out before them, written in their own blood, to reference.

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Its not absurd, its good thinking.
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Any SEAL, SAS or Beret on the planet can be killed with a bullet between the eyes. Much of the equipment which formerly gave them an advantage on the battlefield (NVD, satellite network comms, LAW and Remote Detonation weapons) are now so commonplace on the battlefield as to be almost classifiable as 'civillian'. OTOH, helicopters have always been contemptible machines whose intimidatory factor has long since been exceeded by even /unguided/ shoulderfire rockets. Even as Sprey and others noted as long ago as 1965 when it became clear that, after the first 6 months helicopters lose all their 'Stukian' powers of psychology.
What is more, the notion that the 'superb conditioning' of a snakeeater makes any difference is largely invalidated by the notion that these men are carrying packs which weigh almost as much as they do and so are 'marching' at all of 3-4mph in air so thin that even the natives know better than to sprint. Yet because they are moving cache` to cache`, they are doing 7-10mph with little more than an AK, a bag of rice and a blanket.
FIGHTING LIKE YOUR LEGS MATTERED IS ABSURD.
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Its a good turret I agree but it cant think for itself, it needs a controller and orders.
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Only if it has to fight for friends or among civillians. Somebody brings it to a robot and it can run away. Or lay waste. And a BTID tag (IR reflective and shortrange laser-barcoded) on OUR guys gives good security even when supporting own-troops.
The problem is that these pathetic pack mules _cannot keep up with_ the robot. And so THEY are the point of decision around which an engagement MUST be accepted. Or can never be joined.
And that means you've lost all your initiative, all your 'smart monkey' reasoned tactical skills, right there. Because you are fighting them exactly like they fight you. Bullet to bullet, back pack to back pack. And your life, all half a million spent bringing you up. All the love of your parents and your wife and your kids. Is worth the 23 cents of a bullet.
Morons.
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The robot cant get to places a human can, its simply not got the mobility.
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More crap. When the Anaconda thing went completely south as we had forces trapped between a ridge and a town where only an IDIOT would hi-lo threat put infantry, the CH-47 'rescue force' had to come FORTY FIVE MINUTES out from their staging point. When we lost 3 of 4 Apaches in the first 30 minutes they turned those Chinooks around because the LZ was too hot to insert. And do you want to know what was in the back of those hulking targets? The /very same/ aircraft as would later be shot down like a rat in a sack? 6 Gator assault carts.
Systems which, if they had had no men to carry and decent weapons/sensor systems could have been dropped 7-10 miles out, run in at 15-20mph and put the serious hurt on the OTHER GUYS who were busy shooting up the backs of infantry looking upslope at a sophisticated, interlocking, series of fighting positions with heavy weapons well deployed and mines /everywhere/.
WHY would it have been necessary to go all out on a civillian vill? Because MEN were on the battlefield and they lacked anything more serious than PBA to stop the inbound rounds.
Throughout AfG, even today, it is common to let the Gator carry the 'camping gear' including radio and medical because everybody is so overloaded with 40lbs of interceptor and a patrol load of ammo that may well be 15 mags or more. Throw in some water and a first aid kit and you are just barely able to function above 8,000ft.
I know, because I live in Colorado and as a native _I_ can barely function with nothing at all but my clothes in our 9-10,000ft passes.
How much smarter to NOT risk losing everything when the Gator gets first-round killed. But rather to put the weapons and sensor systems ON THE GOLF CART. And pull the men altogether.
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Sure it can spray and pray alll night long but frankly thats not much help to the commander other than having a mobily gun emplacement.
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And you cannot use 'spray and pray' in the same argument in which you have already admitted:

"It may be more accurate, it may have more ammo and a larger size but can the robot think tactfully?"

So sorry, but you either accept that an mechanically armatured weapon is the ultimate 'bench stable' accuracy point. Or you don't. And you have already yielded that point.
And then there is a the 'psychological factor'. Gunners get messy (to the point that it took 50,000rds per M16 kill in Vietnam vs. 15,000 with the M1 Garand in WWII and 1,000 per Springfield/Enfield in WWI) when somebody shoots back.
66.102.7.104...:0uCrzRDekHIJ:www.comebackalive.com/df/guns/boystoys.htm+Number+of+bullets+per+kill+in+WWI&hl=en
Robots don't. You want useless destruction, you 'spray' autofire around at the point of 20yr old's muzzle. Scared to death and realizing what an incredible lie the whole 'let your training save' _BS_ this current random death murder system of insurgency represents.
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"Monkey force"?
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The Russian word for indigenous forces around whose ability to maintain weapons or hold to doctrine a 'war of liberation' warfighter strategy had to be implemented. You see, at least until the Bear Went Over The Mountain, they knew better than to fight with their own forces to fight their dirty little wars for places they had no need to win so much as despoil for our own 'Capitalist Running Dog Economic Gain'.
And we are stupid enough to think that we can do better. Can 'bring everyone together'. When even our own history of the west shows that you back ONE side and come hell or high water, make them the victor. Before you slit their throats and throw'em on a reservation.
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No all it requires is a few sniper shots at the barrel and its history.
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I have no clue what you are trying to say. If you feel the need to shoot at a .50 caliber through 25mm (about the range of calibers you need for COIN ops) you be my bloody guess. No matter how good a shot you are, 70% of the time you'll miss. 20% of the time you'll ricochet off (especially at 'survivable' distances) and the other ten percent, I will have my boys stand up in a row and lob 10 RPG-7 at the robot and _kill the vehicle completely_ while you're trying to play Robin Effing Hood.

The problem then being what to do about the second robot 2,000m back or a 20,000ft overhead, which sees the ambush happen and calls down Steel Rain to finish it.
In any case the reality remains: Fighting Mech required Heavy Weapons. And heavy weapons cannot be lugged on foot by them any more than by U.S.
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Yes its a UAV, not a regular infantry.
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Which only furthers my argument that any infantry which isn't in the field is another target that a 'sniper' doesn't have to protect from other snipers. Or from an IED (which he can only attack the emplacers, hours before).
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You need an UAV team, a launcher, a coms trailer and a regular infantry team to use it.
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None of which have to be on the battlefield and the last of which can be replaced by a robotic patrol vehicle. You see, it even /helps/ to have the UAV not saturated by large numbers of firers. To _encourage_ the enemy to make that 'one careful shot'.
So that the UAV-turned-UCAV can put a Viper Strike, Hellfire or GBU-39 right down his throat.
What you seem to fail to understand is that I WANT THEM TO TRY.
I _want_ the enemy to shed his blood noblely for a robot.
Not another man.
And the reason is quite simply the same psychology as your own.
Because beneath it all, you cannot accept that man has no place on the battlefield lest your 'interest', whether professional or cheerleading, also be rendered to little more than that of an accountant or tech.
And it is THAT very fear of inadequacy which will end war. Because if man finally realizes that no matter how many machines he kills, they will always come back while he can only lose **once**. He will cease to listen to old fools that insist they have the right to send him to his death for their ideals. Whether they be Mullahs at the corner mosque. Or some git that thinks free college is worth it for the President he has never met. Or the folks at home who are told to 'live as if there was no war'. Because there is no threat. To them.
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Ronnie the robot cant climb vertical slopes, ronnie the robot has a limited range, ronnie the robot costs more than a regualr infantry man.
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Insurance on a 'regular infantryman' is about 100,000 bucks. Training on that muzzle mutt is another 35,000 dollars. Take that training up to a specialist MOS rating like 'sniper' and you can make it a further 20 grande, easy.
>
While some of the operational costs of today’s military aircraft have been discussed earlier, the acquisition costs of today’s combat aircraft coupled with the expensive maintenance costs, parts replacement costs, and logistical needs, dwarf other weapons systems in the U.S. arsenal by comparison. It costs today anywhere from $5 to 7 million just to train a combat pilot. It only costs only about $35,000 to recruit and train a basic infantry soldier.
>
66.102.7.104...:mBYkp3CkcsgJ:www.veteransforpeace.org/The%2520Economic%2520Costs%2520of%2520Modern%2520War.doc+what+does+it+cost+to +train+an+infantryman&hl=en
This /before/ the 13 grande it takes me to pay that worthless E-1 fresh out of Basic. And the continuation training that comes after. And housing him in anything more than a squalor. And his families separate benefits if he has a wife and kiddies living ib an off base allowance.
www.dod.mil...
NOW. You want to talk /cost/? Consider that, to the Marines, the _minimum_ deployable force considered fit for independent operations is a BATTALION. Of some 900 men.
THEN and only WHEN you have factored in the costs of all those men. And the half a million bucks their parents spent raising each of them for 20 odd years.
Can you tell me how 'cheap' a man is compared to Ronnie. Because when JQ Smith get's his legs blown off and loses control of all his bodily functions as the darkness comes. After singing in high soprano for his mom for the last 20 seconds of his life while a bunch of Iraqi sand monkeys dance around him, laughing as they kick his breathing corpse.
Ronnie will lie there quietly. Waiting for the recovery crew to come take him home to be reborn.
Snipers exist to exploit those numbers. To make large kill counts 'work' with a small force that seems so much more 'elite'. But without those numbers, neither our best shots nor theirs have anything to shoot at.
THAT is what a Ronnie is for. So that once they get past this hormonal angst some call patriotism, once they've SEEN war and want to come home because they know beyond learning that nothing has been done but butchery and that largely random against a phantom foe. Maybe some of those men can live to make a real contribution.
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Do you know everything about the robot?
Not everyone does, your thinking about replacing the infantry man with technitions.
More later.
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There is an old saying: "To kill your enemy make him your friend by sharing what's yours." As usual they got it half right.
To OWN your enemy put him in a situation whereby his death makes it clear that you will control all that he holds dear if he does not submit immediately and forever.
I think an old Marine put it the best: "So that he knows you will enslave his son, have his wife and kick his dog."
And there won't be a damn thing he can do about it.
War has a purpose. It is to amalgamate rather than isolate resources, cultural and strategic, under a common law and share.
Even lowly Pirates had this much right.
We do not.
Because we make every act of vile conflict be based on some servile notion of 'duty' in righteous vengeance for an attack we induced upon ourselves.
Because we have chosen not to make our enemies believe how deadly serious we are, our own people no longer believe in the rewards of an ultimate victory (Spice Must Flow) so much as the moral of morale by which we 'play' at conflict until bored or gored badly enough to come home.
Under such a condition of sport warfare, there is absolutely no excuse to demean the 'technician' in us. Because at least a technician knows that his logic must be ruthless and perfect. Or the machine will not work.
And never you fail to doubt sonny. We are tool using creatures no more. The tools are become autonomous. Because they are better than us.
If you won't use war to make an end to war. War will make an end of YOU. The warrior wannabe.
>>
"Anything is a weapon in the hands of a master."
>>
Including the pen or the keyboard. How ironic you seem to forget that when you describe something like this-
www.nellis.af.mil...
No wonder the Almighty Air Farce thinks of infantry as brute thugs and gets the lions budget share because of it. They know how to fight a war based on Contempt Of Engagement. And they fight to win. If only against their fellows.

KPl.

Hello,

I don't think you have grasped the concept of this thread ch1466, its not about what machine can replace the man on the ground its about how it becomes a personal act in ending another persons life in the course of their duty. Frankly, I believe that it will always be man vs man in the end, wether practical or not, its the most noble in my mind.

- Phil

GUK,

>>
its about how it becomes a personal act in ending another persons life in the course of their duty.
>>

A man picks up a sword, executes a flourish of respect to his opponent that ends with the edge of the blade before his eyes, so that both men may KNOW that death's finality lies between them.

And they fight to a finish from which no grudge may be taken because both accepted the fight equally.

That is 'honorable' because both men are within mortalities razored reach of each other. And neither had to worry about dying anonymously if they simply said they were sorry and willing to make amends for the offense given.

Yet when the victor, in his greater skill, not only defeats his opponent but uses his display of power and lethal grace to lord it over any remaining bystanders/audience, (for what is glory if you do not have someone else to toot your horn in announcing it for you).

Then he becomes a bully.

Because they were never a part of it and now they must suffer his frustrated ego in no longer having the willed focus of the man who was.

Depending on how vicious and despotic his exploitation of them, in their resentment, they will analyze how the fight /really went/ and, realizing how easy it is to kill a man when you have TEN swords and he must turn his back on at least five of them.

They will plot his end.

On that day, killing for the safety of the group becomes an activity whose outcome can only 'honorably' be assigned to all it's members. So that all may have a hand in it's success or failure.

And personal honor departs the field as War is birthed a screaming demon of 'unfair' necessity upon it.

What I find most disturbing is that you claim to think a sniper looking through a telescope at a mans face as his brains explode out the back of his skull, 50 to a 1,000m away, somehow 'knows personally' that man well enough to justify his act of detached-indifferent killing.

Which is ludicrous. Because he will never see that man's family crying over the body. Will never know that that man was an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer or perhaps his children would have been, if he had only been there to raise them.

He doesn't even know why that man is there, whether conscripted or volunteer. Innocent, Deluded or Fully Aware of the rights and wrongs that led to the fight.

He _cannot_ know this because he is both the bully and the flinching coward. The man who uses personal elite-skill to destroy a life he doesn't partake of and never will.

As a butcher who exploits the art of war to remove himself from his enemy's surviving friends identification and retaliation that is personal stand-up fighter acknowledgment of the deed that -others- must judge him 'honorably' for.

i.e. YOU want it both ways. To have the inimitable (undeniable, matchless) ability to kill. But not the realization that now that you own the fallout of that man's life, you must take care of what he has lost lest it turn upon you.

This is not 'Noble'.

It is the hypocrisy of a rogue lion facing a pack of hyenas and knowing it cannot win a straight up fight.

And as a soul-deep LIE to a sapient conscience; it is reflected in what happens to snipers when they are finally caught and pulled to pieces, slowly, by those they have victimized.

Because not even our own forces will say much when they come across the body of a own-team tortured sniper. Since his very existence justifies any similar 'specialist killer' acts by the opposing side. And they know what it is to be blotted from life, randomly, all too well, whether he is 'that good' or not.

If there is nobility in War it is inherent to the notion that one day, when the final victory is won. And no man can exploit slave labour to make himself rich. And no man can steal the lives of those under him because he is stronger than they and they refuse to be assassins.

On the daym effectively, when the globe-state becomes _stable_ as all are held equally before commercial and statutory law.

Then on that day, War Itself may end.

If you are not dedicated to that cause. If you are just in it for the sporting event thrill kill; however 'professionally noble' you cloak it in the mystique of skill.

Then you do not know half of what it is to be a //warrior//.


KPl.


Nukes pointed the way forward. For they showed us how the inability to deflect the /intent/ of machinery from killing. And indeed further showed how any degree of assumed machine-like 'precision' in destroying them first would never be enough to offset the risk to the many inherent to the failure of the one in defeating them.

Could be exploited into such a cold fear of martial inadequacy as to make war an activty that could not be won as a function of triumphant survival.

Such is the key to understanding man's willingness to kill himself and his fellow species for little or no cause. For if you make it impossible to stand over a dead body and vent a feral scream of victory. If you make it clear that your 1,000th victory is just as meaningless as your first. Because it was /never/ alive.

Then you remove the inherent sense of mastery and grace that is the 'humanity' of war. Not it's horror. But it's me.vs.you challenge.

As such, every time someone claims that snipers are 'better' because they are more sociopathically detached from their conscience (just /read/ that first post) I will laugh in their face because they don't know what real skill is.

For they are not a machine.

Too many people destroying this thread with rhetorical speel about subjects that they have no-doubt read about, but have no practical experience.

This thread is about the emotional trauma of man against man, not flippin robocop. This is obviously a subject alien to many of you. It is not something that can be read about in a book.

Get back on track, and stop trying to dazzle everyone with the books that you read.

Originally posted by PaddyInf
Too many people destroying this thread with rhetorical speel about subjects that they have no-doubt read about, but have no practical experience.

This thread is about the emotional trauma of man against man, not flippin robocop. This is obviously a subject alien to many of you. It is not something that can be read about in a book.

Get back on track, and stop trying to dazzle everyone with the books that you read.

Agreed paddy!

Ps, can you make a podcast so I can pick up your accent again?

Originally posted by devilwasp
Ps, can you make a podcast so I can pick up your accent again?

I'd like to help you out but I have rules. You know the score mate - As my last CO used to say "No names, voices or identifiable photographs please"!