What if smart weapons are so smart there's no collateral damage

I was thinking today that if smart weapons did not create the collateral damage that they do today that the political impact for the US government would be greatly reduced. I am wondering if this is being considered at the highest levels and if there is reasonably funding to obtain that objective?

Anyone have any insight on this and know if this concept is receiving current funding? If not I will set up a company of industry experts to do this job because while it might serve the military industrial complex which I loath for their naked aggression in their own self interests I hate to see this collateral damage taking place and would provide technical services adequate to address the problem and do it on the cheap to save lives if requested.

Every time I hear of a US drone attack killing entire funeral parties to get one Jihadist leader I want to cringe. When they kill an entire group to kill one man it is still murder. These people can not be guilty of a crime without due process and neither can the target if no warrant by a judge exists for his arrest.

reply to post by wayouttheredude


Who's going to stop them from doing this? Answer: No one...and they know it. They will continue to murder anyone they want for oil...I mean...peace.

The US did announce recently that they have a new type of explosive that has the same penetration power, but with much reduced explosion, therefore limiting "collateral damage"...

I forget what it was called, I will try and find the info I saw..

reply to post by stumason


Links people links. Thanks for the generalized response but if you have any video or other web links please give us the links and share the info. Thanks

Originally posted by wayouttheredude
Every time I hear of a US drone attack killing entire funeral parties to get one Jihadist leader I want to cringe. When they kill an entire group to kill one man it is still murder.

Depends on whether or not the amount of force used was proportional to the value of the target and whether or not efforts were made to minimize collateral damage. NB, collateral damage must be minimized, not reduced to zero.

These people can not be guilty of a crime without due process and neither can the target if no warrant by a judge exists for his arrest.

Well, sure, but military attacks rarely have any kind of judicial or punitive component. And arrest warrants never authorize military or covert action.

reply to post by FurvusRexCaeli

These attacks took place in Pakistan for the most part. Are we at war with Pakistan? I was not aware of that. Without a declaration of war how do we justify these killings in international law?

reply to post by wayouttheredude

For years, the shadow governments have been looking for ways to achieve a "clean" kill.

Spies, long range rifles, super soldiers, and now robot bombers.

Such killings have been quite numerous, and for the most part go unnoticed. A lot of them are diagnosed as heart attacks or even cancer! If someone uses one of the more "dirty" approaches, you can assume that they are either desperate or actually want the killing to be public, and people to get upset about it.

The killers are criminals. You can't assume that there is a lot of rationality behind all of this. It may seem cold and calculating, but in a lot of ways it's very impulsive. I don't worry about "smart" weapons nearly as much as I worry about "stupid" people!

What if we had smart diplomats and leaders, then there would be no need for any damage.

No matter how much quality is put into weapon construction it will still rely on human intelligence in its deployment and collateral damage will continue. Even with all the resources and time involved with capital punishment it still goes wrong and collateral damage continues.

Originally posted by wayouttheredude
reply to post by stumason

 

Links people links. Thanks for the generalized response but if you have any video or other web links please give us the links and share the info. Thanks

Sorry old bean, told you I'd get it though

www.bbc.co.uk...

Smart weapons? Sod that! The fact is when you are trying to kill one person, you do NOT launch missiles, you do NOT do a raid of twenty men, hosing down anything that moves with gay abandon... no, you get ONE man, with all the tools, to do the job clean. Sniper rifle, garrotte, knives, hell gas powered pellet launcher firing ricin coated balls of steel for all I care.

But there will never be a point at which governments want to take the clean option over the dirty one, because the clean option doesnt mean as much funding for thier cronies in the military equipment trade, and that means less kickbacks, and that means they cannot hire as many maids, or buy as nice a house as they might have otherwise, or get that spangly new limo to replace the year old one on thier damned driveway.

The only reason we have never had a zero collateral weapon made before, is that theres no will for it. No one is prepared to die to avoid killing an innocent (cowards) and no one is prepared to take a paycut to get the industry into line (grubby , money grabbing sons of whores the lot of them).

reply to post by stumason


Thanks for the link. The material looks like a promising one for warhead applications. Still even if the missile's shrapnel is consumed in the explosion it is still going to kill everyone in the car and likely in near by cars in the case of the Al Alawaki take down.

Hey, remember when Collateral Damage was called Murdering Civilians?

No? Well it wasn't that long ago. But, people started protesting this, so TPTB came up with a new softer name for it, very P.C!! Yeah TPTB!!!

The smarter the weapon the more readily they are used.

These smart weapons and precision tactics are why the world has essentially traded the occasional large scale war for what basically amounts to a perpetual state of world war.

Give everyone in the world a mandatory RFID card with remotely triggered cyanide in it and you'll have one of the smartest weapons possible and war will rage nonstop with individuals being gassed left and right at seeimingly random times. No collateral damage yet plenty of death.

I dont know about you but for me collateral damage isnt exactly the one blemish on the perfect face of war if you catch my drift.

Personally I miss the massive occasional war. The sheer scale of it was enough to change minds for years if not decades. Now we're all desensitized thanks to perpetual war. There are more and more children being raised in areas of the globe that know nothing but war and all signs point to that figure only increasing. Smarter weapons will only enable this.

The end result is global perpetual war on a population that has become so desensitized that a pinpoint bombing or other murder will be looked upon the same way idiots look upon the incarcerated: "I guess he deserved it."

Depends on your definition of colartol damage. Weapons are desigbed for one thing, killing people.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

Personally I miss the massive occasional war. The sheer scale of it was enough to change minds for years if not decades. Now we're all desensitized thanks to perpetual war. There are more and more children being raised in areas of the globe that know nothing but war and all signs point to that figure only increasing. Smarter weapons will only enable this.

Hmm maybe, until the war is actually delivered on your doorstep and your friends and neighbours become collateral damage. Then maybe you will not miss war half as much as you do now.

To be fair, whilst we are waging war a few thousand miles from our homeland, it's fine. Out of sight out of mind.

Yet when these people have the front to attack our homeland, we get all pissed off, demanding that they are nuked to kingdom come.

How about we pull all our troops home, build our defences and if they want to have a go, then come on then, let's see if you are hard enough.

Personally I miss the Cold War. Things seemed much simpler then!!

Originally posted by wayouttheredude
reply to post by FurvusRexCaeli

 

These attacks took place in Pakistan for the most part. Are we at war with Pakistan? I was not aware of that. Without a declaration of war how do we justify these killings in international law?

I think because drones are not living beings. It's some kind of loophole. We haven't sent any "soldiers" into Pakistan. Something along those lines. I know it's all bulls**t and if you were to ask me I would tell them to send those drones into Washington.

Originally posted by Cobaltic1978


Personally I miss the Cold War. Things seemed much simpler then!!

A little side note for anybody who doesn't already know, the cold war never ended. It really hasn't.

Let me address the title of the tread first. They are smart weapons because they do more than the dumb weapons that preceded them. Look at it from a historical perspective. In WWII, we sent thousands of bombers over Germany carpet bombing using dumb bombs. Whole cities were virtually wiped out to eliminate a factory or storage depot.

Today, we can take out a building, or a room, without wasting a whole block. Does that mean that once the bomb reaches its target, it can identify and eliminate the bad guys in said house and not any innocent who happens to be walking down the sidewalk in front of the building, no. Smart weapons have given us the ability to minimize collateral damage.

That being said, there is an argument to be made against the choice to use such weapons to take out a single person in the midst of other innocent people. In addition, distance based target acquisition or identification systems, like the predator drones can lead to uncertainty, and often non-combatant deaths.

I am glad we have smart weapons, but ROE's and individual judgment on the proper level of force employed needs some refining. From a commanders position, you obviously want to limit direct engagement so you don't lose your own. Loses like that don't look good in the papers, especially in today's politically correct environment. It is that environment that has pushed for attacks that use fuzzy intel, and stand off weapons. In a way, the passivist/anti-war groups aided in collateral damage.

edit: The op mentioned the political impact of collateral damaged caused by smart weapons. Can you imagine the political impact if we still had to use dumb weapons? Increased manpower, delivery systems, etc. Whole towns being bombed for a single building, and an exponential increase in collateral damage. Yikes!

Originally posted by wayouttheredude
You are really in the dark about war. War is a Black OPS operation to test mind control weapons. In space are thousands of satellites that all belong to global defense. What happened was the earth was going into an extinction from its own expansion. To understand intelligence a group called Global World Security before they had this name, used espionage to enable new emerging technology to be accepted by all countries. This technology reads the signals of the mind. To ensure there would not be beings creating war and trivial arguments by outsmarting with use of vocabulary, the controllers of the world test and teach themselves what war is! sorry if I blew you away with the truth, the title of this forum is ABOVE TOP SECRET
I was thinking today that if smart weapons did not create the collateral damage that they do today that the political impact for the US government would be greatly reduced. I am wondering if this is being considered at the highest levels and if there is reasonably funding to obtain that objective?

Anyone have any insight on this and know if this concept is receiving current funding? If not I will set up a company of industry experts to do this job because while it might serve the military industrial complex which I loath for their naked aggression in their own self interests I hate to see this collateral damage taking place and would provide technical services adequate to address the problem and do it on the cheap to save lives if requested.

Every time I hear of a US drone attack killing entire funeral parties to get one Jihadist leader I want to cringe. When they kill an entire group to kill one man it is still murder. These people can not be guilty of a crime without due process and neither can the target if no warrant by a judge exists for his arrest.

Originally posted by wayouttheredude
These attacks took place in Pakistan for the most part. Are we at war with Pakistan?

No. We're longstanding (but someone shaky) allies. We've signed a number of mutual defense, defense support, and foreign aid treaties with them. That's why they let us operate on their soil. They want to stay in our good graces and keep the dollars flowing.

I was not aware of that. Without a declaration of war how do we justify these killings in international law?

If the bilateral agreements are not sufficient, Article 51 of the UN Charter.