Anachronisms
As regular readers will know, I have a perverse fondness for bizarre examples of baroque weaponry. So I am very happy to share with you the latest example of forward-thinking militaria to be drawn to my attentiion (thanks, John and Simon!). No less august a periodical than Defense Review reports on the Stavatti TIS-1 infantry combat system ...
a "white paper" proposal that was submitted to the U.S. Army for the Stavatti TIS-1 (Tactical Infantry System-1) Gasdynamic Laser Weapon. The TIS-1 is a laser rifle that utilizes a hypersonic jet of gas to create photonic energy in the form a very powerful laser. Thus the term "gasdynamic". The Stavatti TIS-1 was submitted as a possible technology for the U.S. Army's LFLAN requirement. "LFLAN" stands for "Light Fighter Lethality After Next". LFLAN involves small arms technology proposals that would not be implemented until 15-25 years down the road. In other words, truly futuristic technology.The laser itself looks pretty reasonable, in an if-we're-talking-about-laser-weapons way ("laser" and "weapon" belonging in the same sentence in the same way as "automobile" and "rubber-band powered"), but the power supply is what makes this one special. In search of the ultimate in infantry-portable enemy-slaying goodness, Stavatti have one-upped all previous attempts by proposing to use a radioisotope generator containing 750 grams of Polonium-210. This would, of course, provide the necessary 100 kilowatts to power the man-portable death ray. It would also provide 125 petaBecquerels of radiation (as compared with the 100 pB of Cesium-137 spewed out by the B reactor at Chernobyl), and the need to pressurize it to 4000psi leads me to agree with my military informant's summary that "it might actually achieve the near-impossible feat of making Project PLUTO look environmentally benign by comparison."
I will also confess that my suspension of disbelief took a slight knock when I got to the bit about the TIS-1 also sporting a bayonet lug.
Anyway, I'd just like to say that I fervently hope the Pentagon's planning and procurement folks give this proposal the attention it undoubtedly deserves. As Polonium-210 is accounted for (when you can buy it) at a market price of roughly $12 million per gram, this weapon system will cost roughly $54Bn per rifle per year to run — the US Army could afford almost an entire squad, and thus might have to scale back their other projects accordingly.
(PS: 100 kilowatts is, in automobile terms, about 130 horsepower. So if you were to ditch the Dr Strangelove power supply the gadget could plausibly be mounted on a HMMV or Land Rover. But I find that idea somewhat disappointing ... and anyway, what would be the point of sticking a bayonet on a vehicle-mounted laser cannon?)
Comments
Is it a laser bayonet?
Posted by: Andrew G | March 4, 2007 5:52 PM
Pah! You're looking at it the wrong way round. Instead of mounting the magic ray gun on a car and using the car to power the gun, I want a car that runs off this polonium engine thing. Who cares about laser weapons anyway? We'll gloss neatly over how I'd take an eight grand car and put a fifty billion dollar engine in it, and just think about how I'd never have to venture into a motorway service station ever, ever again...
Posted by: Stuart Langridge | March 4, 2007 6:21 PM
'the US Army could afford almost an entire squad'
And they will, while people starve to death on the streets.
Posted by: Kevin Doran | March 4, 2007 6:47 PM
A bayonet ona vehicle mounted laser cannon? Why, thats so you can spear the genetically modified fighting beasties that get past the laser.
The comments at the bottom of the defense review article all pan it.
Posted by: guthrie | March 4, 2007 6:48 PM
"You can shoot at each other all day. But the bayonet is the weapon that takes you FORWARD!"
And if it means having pressurised Po210 BEHIND you, who would take a backward step?
Posted by: Alex | March 4, 2007 7:11 PM
Kevin @3, I suspect you might have missed the joke ...
Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 4, 2007 7:48 PM
No, no, Charlie. You're forgetting the basic principles of Mad Science.
Everyone knows you don't mount laser guns on jeeps. You mount them on SHARKS.
Jeez, kids these days...
Posted by: Ross Smith | March 4, 2007 8:55 PM
Charlie - radioisotope generator containing 750 grams of Polonium-210.
Outstanding. They can call it the Litvinenko 1000 or something...
Posted by: Dave Hutchinson | March 5, 2007 12:12 AM
Forget the laser--sounds more like tech for a grenade.
Posted by: Bryan Taylor | March 5, 2007 12:21 AM
What I'd really like to see are giant airships bristling with laser cannon powered by onboard reactors. We could have some really impressive battles up in the stratosphere, anything with a LOS is a target...
Posted by: Andrew G | March 5, 2007 12:59 AM
Yeah, researchers should never consider anything outre or risky...
Posted by: S.M. Stirling | March 5, 2007 1:22 AM
There is a prizeworthy line in the bullet points for the proposal:
They failed to complete the sentence: Unless They Are Raving Batshit Insane!
Also, it has the bizarre statement at the end that they expect it to deliver a recoil force of approximately 90 lbs forward on discharge. Say what? As described, it's a closed system, except for photons.
Posted by: Clifton Royston | March 5, 2007 1:29 AM
Yeah, researchers should never consider anything outre or risky...
Well, it's really the power supply that's the problem. A RTG is rather expensive and dangerous, making it impractical.
That's not to say that an energy weapon like this won't be possible some time this century. Right now you could get that sort of output from a fuel cell, and given the demands from the electonics industry to jam more and more power into smaller spaces, I fully expect that by 2040 there will be a power supply that can provide 100kw of power to something the size of a rifle.
Given that combat exoskeletons are likely going to be introduced sometime in the same time period (especially if the power supply gets worked out), we're going to need small arms much more powerful than those we have today.
Posted by: Andrew G | March 5, 2007 2:39 AM
...but with powered armor, you get to carry much bigger "normal" firearms. A suitably large suit, in the 4 meter height class (weighing, say, two or three tons) would be able to mount a nice-sized gatling gun (in the 12mm to 20mm range), or a single-shot high-velocity "sniper rifle" of up to 60 millimeters without recoil being too much of an issue.
Lasers, for ground troops, are a bit problematic, especially with really high powered ones like the one in the article. At low altitudes, the burning dust particles in the atmosphere would light up the return path pretty nicely, making counterfire a certainty (and a hundred snipers firing at those multi-billion dollar radioactive power supplies would screw up someone's day quite nicely - see "Gust Front" by John Ringo and think of God-Kings on saucers).
A hundred kilowatts gets into the "main battle tank cannon" range of energy. I hope they won't need that much for house-to-house fighting...
Posted by: cirby | March 5, 2007 5:08 AM
Ross, loved the sharks idea. LMAO. Dunno if lasers work well underwater (I guess it depends on frequency and power)but I presume they don't. Would it be possible to train the sharks to leap out of the water when they get near their target? Also, with that much plutonium, you're going to get some really Bad-Tempered Mutated Sea...Sharks.
Firepower for the average grunt has stayed (roughly) the same since the introduction of hand grenades. Sure, the guns are lighter and they shoot more bullets faster, but really, I don't see a guy with a laser strapped to his back having much of an advantage over a guy with a AK47, or a decent RPG. Of course, you could use it to take out tanks and artillery. For the guys who actually know weapons and science (Charlie and Stirling, i'm guessing) how effective would it be to make the armour on the tanks and aircraft highly reflective? (Apart from the, um, slight impact that would have on stealth))?
Posted by: Colin | March 5, 2007 8:40 AM
Cirby, don't you mean "house-through-house" fighting?
Posted by: Colin | March 5, 2007 8:50 AM
...how effective would it be to make the armour on the tanks and aircraft highly reflective?
Negligibly. No mirror is perfect, and with a laser powerful enough to damage armoured targets, even the small fraction absorbed by the mirror (on the order of 1% for the best modern mirrors, if I remember correctly) will be enough to vaporise part of the surface, quickly reducing the reflectivity enough for the laser to burn thrugh it.
In fact it would probably do more harm than good, because of the danger that the briefly reflected beam might hit a friendly target.
Posted by: Ross Smith | March 5, 2007 9:21 AM
I'll see your laser and raise you a compressed gas EFP next to the water truck, anyway.
Posted by: Alex | March 5, 2007 9:29 AM
Colin #11: mirrors are no use. However, you can degrade the performance of a laser weapon by 90-100% by just blasting lots of water droplets into the air around the target. And you can degrade it lots by using an ablative coating -- some surface with a high specific heat capacity that's designed to burn away, carrying energy with it. And you can degrade the efficiency of a laser some more just by presenting a moving target so that it dumps most of its energy into the air around the target or into heating a wide swathe of the target's surface rather than focussing on a single point and obtaining burn-through.
Cirby, Andrew G: my take on the future of weapons is that battle armour and big expensive weapon systems are, IMO, as much a dead-end as the all-big-gun battleship: they'll probably get built, but they're not really relevant. The future is robots and RPVs, diminishing in size and increasing in numbers until we're confronted by millions of stealthed, killer mosquitos providing air cover for suicide-bomber dung beetles. The guys with the powered battle armour or MBTs will be able to drive their heavy metal into enemy territory but they won't be able to climb out of it for a cigarette break without something the size of an angry yellowjacket flying into their ear and exploding. The heavy metal drivers will be like fighter pilots today; demanding better jet fighters like the F22 so they can go dashing around, pulling 9G turns, not realizing they're as obsolete as cavalry officers.
But if you asked me what the future of warfare would be ... I'd have to say, the big lesson of the 20th century is that warfare is capital-intensive and you can't recoup the costs by occupying a developing country. Whether it's feasible to invade and profitably occupy a developed nation that's helpfully turned itself into a panopticon surveillance society (thank you, Tony Blair) is a question that doesn't appear to be being asked yet ...
Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 5, 2007 9:41 AM
Charlie, I disagree - you're talking about a nastily hostile EW battlefield which would burn little drones to junk in short order.
If anything makes tanks obselete, it'll be powered-armour portable railguns...
Posted by: Andrew Crystall | March 5, 2007 10:19 AM
Charlie : Yeah, I agree the battle armor / exoskeleton idea is probably a dead-end, especially considering, inter alia, (a) 4m high targets are good for artillery spotting, and (b) something that big is going to be a really good trigger for a landmine, and (c) it can't fit through the a standard doorway in a house without bending over/crouching.
Thanks for the info on the mirrors/reflectivity, everyone. I remember a brief discussion in a book sometime ago about reflective coating for ICBMs and I seem to recall they came to the same conclusions.
Posted by: Colin | March 5, 2007 10:20 AM
Andrew, from what I've seen on current research, portable railguns are about as difficult to achieve as portable lasers. The power requirements, again, are huge; although the results are certainly worth it, since you're talking pure "kinetic kill". Most proposals I've seen involve mounting railguns on battleships. Plus they're technically very complex, requiring composite materials, etc, so they're not cheap. Most common payloads simply get vaporised before it leaves the rail, or spot-welds themselves to the rails. There are obviously ways of overcoming all of this (and they have been overcome in several prototypes, including amateur homebrew versions), but I still don't think portable versions are practical. It would be cool, though.
Posted by: Colin | March 5, 2007 10:28 AM
You can't use railguns to usefully drive projectiles that travel much faster than high-velocity gun projectiles already do as:
A) air resistance will melt/vapourise them if they have to travel any distance and
B) Make them lose kinetic energy in flight. This is the reason for depleted uranium and tungsten penetrators -- they keep their high speed over a long ballistic path better.
The only real use for ultrahigh-velocity projectiles is at very short range. A slow projectile that hits and damages the target reliably is a much better bet. That involves intelligence and control surfaces and a slow enough projectile that the electronics, sensors and actuators have enough time to track to target.
Posted by: Robert Sneddon | March 5, 2007 12:05 PM
Robert, well, discuss that with the US since they're looking at them for tanks. Anything slow enough to track is going to be dead meat to even near-future defence systems - Isralie tanks allready have defence systems which make using anything but NATO or Russian front line missiles against them highly chancy.
(And the systems they're deploying later this year can apparently track and destroy conventional tank cannon rounds)
Colin, 4m? Try 2m. Light armour and carrying capacity...
Thing is, the chobham armour of todays tanks is excellent against HEAT warheads, but against high velocity projectiles from a railgun, they're brittle. Perforated and electrical-charge armours have even more issues defeating them.
Posted by: Andrew Crystall | March 5, 2007 1:53 PM
Colin, why would they be bothered about getting into a house whilst wearing armour? On the current track record, the standard response is to flatten the house with an air strike.
All this talk of lasers with improbable powerpacks reminds me of Arthur C Clarkes short story narrated by the defeated Space ship admiral. Those of you who have read it will know what I mean...
Posted by: guthrie | March 5, 2007 3:09 PM
Ah, science marches on. Turns out there are now artificial metamaterials in the lab with reflections of as near zero as you like (though they can't yet handle 100 kW of continuous power).
As for taking out even heavily-armored exoskeletons, the current anti-tank self-forging armor-piercing warheads would do quite nicely. I hear there was a cute system produced as a one-off in the late '70s, early '80s involving an artillery-launched bus carrying a dozen or so PGMs with AP heads. The bus spun like a frisbee over the target area while launching its submunitions. Now that's Ultimate Frisbee!
Posted by: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) | March 5, 2007 3:34 PM
I wasn't thinking of anime stule mecha, but rather man-sized suits that agument the user's strength a couple times while providing the protection of a light vehicle. Something that 20mm conventional round could stop, but not traditional small arms.
Even if drones do come to dominate the battlefield, there will be a need for human infantry even if it's a small one. And in an environment with high energy weapons and drones, you're going to want to protect that infantry as much as possible.
What I see is something like a squad of power armored infantry supported by a couple dozen drones which they command using on board systems in their armor. Unless we develop true AI, we're going to want someone nearby commanding the drones.
Posted by: Andrew G. | March 5, 2007 4:23 PM
Andrew, re tank-based railguns: An APDSDU spear-based projectile clears the muzzle of a modern tank's gun at about 1000m/s, maybe a bit more. During its trip to target (which can take about 2-5 seconds) it suffers from significant heating from air friction as well as loss of KE. The high density and high melting point of the DU spear both work to keep the KE up and to prevent the spear from melting or even vapourising en route to the target.
To be "better" than conventional guns, a battlefield railgun's projectile will have to clear the muzzle at 2000m/s and more (the railgun record at the moment is about 17,000m/s). Unfortunately, doubling the speed means eight times the air resistance (which increases as the cube of velocity). The projectile also suffers from heating in the railgun due to eddy currents and friction so it's hot to start with.
First-world militaries are looking at railguns, yes, but high velocity is not the real advantage they're seeking as they can get that with rocket-boost and ramjets (see Sunburn/Moskit for an example of reducing the "over-the-horizon to target" time to obviate defensive missile and gun systems). Railguns could work well as short-range weapons but they don't have the ability to crack tank armour at three kilometres range, and that's what winners of tank battles have to be able to do.
Bruce: heavily-armoured exoskeletons have to walk on the ground. Mostly they'll sink into it unless they stay on paved roads and even that might not save them. There's a reason a tank's treads are wide and long. A 70-tonne exo will have to have feet nearly as big as an Abram's treads to prevent getting bogged down.
Posted by: Robert Sneddon | March 5, 2007 4:35 PM
A few more thoughts:
Drones and such aren't going to be too reliable for close-in combat use, unless they're 100% autonomous. Remote control depends on the EM spectrum for sending data, and anything EM is subject to jamming or other countermeasures. We're getting some good use out of drones, but only against non-sophisticated enemies. Anyone with a decent electronic warfare program will happily knock all of your drones out of the sky, or jam them to the point of uselessness.
...and no, there's no such thing as "jam-proof" or "nondetectable" communications.
Lasers are vulnerable to countermeasures, and are very, very vulnerable to detection (anything with enough power to be useful is basically a big spear pointing back to the firing soldier). And on the modern battlefield, if you're seen, then you're dead. They're already working on stealthed bullets for personal firearms, so the upcoming countersniper tracking systems won't be able to target the firing soldiers.
The F-22 and other stealth planes aren't going to be obsolete for a good long while, since we're a couple of decades away from having a smart enough (and trustworthy enough!) AI that can handle the sort of missions packages that are going to be needed without constant communication to a real person.
As far as personal weapons go, we can already make handheld weapons that can punch through any known armor, for people (a .50 sniper rifle can easily make holes in anything a person could wear and still walk, even with power assist), or for tanks (RPGs and missiles that cost less than one-tenth of one percent of the vehicles that they can kill). Anything big enough to resist regular rifle bullets will also be expensive enough to make shaped-charge weapons cost-effective.
A Barrett firing a SLAP round (Saboted Light Armor Penetrator) can put a bullet through most light armored vehicles - lengthwise. Tungsten bullet going 3,000 fps at 1,000 yards.
Steyr, by the way, is working on a 15.2mm smoothbore APDS rifle that tosses a 20 gram tungsten penetrator downrange at 4700 feet per second, and can make holes in 1.5 inch armor plate at 1,000 yards.
Posted by: cirby | March 5, 2007 5:01 PM
It doesn't seem to have explicitly been stated yet, so I'll say it: this is a hoax. One point of many: RTGs can't be throttled down, so the device would always be emitting its full capacity as waste heat. (It probably doesn't help that said full capacity would be declining quickly, as the half-life of Po-210 is 138 days.)
I know these things because they were pointed out to me at some length when I said, "I found this on the web, does it look sort of reasonable?" on Usenet a decade or so ago. :)
Posted by: Trip the Space Parasite | March 5, 2007 6:04 PM
Here's what I see as one part of the future of ground combat.
Imagine one guy, dug in in a heavily camouflaged (and IR-resistant) foxhole, somewhere on a hillside. Spread out over a couple of square miles around him (and also camouflaged) are a hundred or so TOW missiles (anti-tank, optical wireguided) which are linked back to him via camouflaged fiber-optic cables, so that he can scan from their location and eye-guide any of them to a target. (If you like, give him one of those 0.50 cal sniper rifles with the SLAP ammo for last-ditch defense if someone spots and tries to close on his location; but mostly he's just hiding.) That one guy can stop or severely damage a present-day tank column, or force it to detour miles around him. EM jamming won't help. Air recon is unlikely to find him. Carpet bombing might get him, or destroy enough of his TOWs to neutralize him, but it's a matter of luck. He can't challenge and pursue armor, but he's great for zoned defense, and if you've got a lot of these guys spread around strategic passes, they're a nightmare for an armor commander.
Note that this is all present-day technology, just deployed a bit differently. I was wondering if the Iraqis would try something like this in 2003, but they didn't.
Posted by: Clifton Royston | March 5, 2007 6:27 PM
Robert:
On the question of railguns, the U.S. Navy is in the process of developing a system to mount on its next-generation warships. The two selling points are range (the Office of Naval Research is looking at being able to lob projectiles 200 miles down range) and being able to nail small, fast targets at relatively close range (by naval standards).
The two biggest hurdles seem to be barrel life, because of the extreme wear and pressure on the rails during launch, and developing warhead electronics that would survive the launch.
Posted by: Henry Kenyon | March 5, 2007 6:33 PM
... All of which -- and three dollars -- will get you a mug of latte in the face of an urban counterinsurgency situation where the other side uses suicide bombers and your own allies' approach to public relations includes displaying the kneecap- and skull-drilled corpses of their ethnic enemies by the roadside.
Hint: I'd rate a technique for speed-teaching troops any major human language (and the customs of its speakers) just 20% faster as far more strategically valuable than ship-mounted railguns or suit of powered battle armour (or man-portable unobtanium-powered ray guns) any day of the week.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 5, 2007 7:15 PM
Robert, the warhead electronics shouldn't be a problem. There have been artillery-launched TV-guided shells for more than 25 years now, which means cameras that can withstand 7-10,000 g, and the first generation used vidicon tubes! While a railgun might have higher g on launching, the jerk won't be anywhere near as bad as being fired from a gun tube. Those cameras must have to withstand at least a million g/s.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | March 5, 2007 7:19 PM
Charlie:
I agree with you. But unfortunately, things like instructional systems or even AI-driven logistics technologies aren't as sexy as Big weapons systems when it comes to getting R&D and procurement money.
Posted by: Henry Kenyon | March 5, 2007 7:21 PM
You're right, Charlie, that having troops trained and equipped for the war they're fighting is more important than glitzy weapons systems. I heard one commander last week bitching about the fact that they'd just gotten the troops heading for Iraq trained for insurgency warfare, and the first such group had to deal with sectarian civil war instead.
We all know why these systems are even being considered:
1. There's a $1.0E11 per annum industry that needs to perpetuate itself. And that's only income from the US government. Count in sales to other countries and that figure goes up considerably.
2. The Maginot Line Effect: mediocre generals (the ones most likely to survive the politics and get to high rank) are always preparing for the previous war, in this case the Cold War.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | March 5, 2007 7:28 PM
All this talk about drones and such reminds me that there's at least one initiative in the US military research community that actually makes sense. Given that we'll always need infantry (so commanders can have someone to blame the clusterfucks on, if nothing else), there are some ideas on how to help the pbi (poor bloody infantry) a little.
We don't know how to make completely autonomous robots, won't for awhile yet, but we can build robots that don't require all of a human's attention to at least follow a trooper around and hand him ammo. So they're working on the Mule, to carry equipment. Nice, because even with the best pack around, humping more than 60 kilos or so over a hill is asking too much if you expect even troops in the best of physical shape to arrive at the target able to fight worth a damn. As technology gets better, the robots will pick up some other tasks, like guard duty, covering and suppression fire, taking out the other guys' robots, etc.
So maybe in 20 years or so we can build the "Soldiers' Apprentice" like the software apprentices we've been trying to build since the '80s. A trooper can say into into his mike, "Charlie two, suppression fire on target Alpha," and his number two robot will fire some default number of bursts of automatic fire at a pre-designated target. It seems a lot more likely than autonomous combat robots, or teeny-tiny drones that can be taken out en mass by a hand-grenade size EMP bomb.
I keep trying to think up a good future combat story to use these things in, because I want to call them NPCs (Non-Player Characters for the non-rollplaying amongst us). Trouble is, that's the only reason I would want to write about combat; other than that the idea's just not attractive to me. So if any of you wants to use the name, go right ahead with my blessing.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | March 5, 2007 8:14 PM
Why stick a bayonet on a vehicle-mounted laser cannon?
'Cause it would look so cool!
Posted by: Guise | March 5, 2007 10:13 PM
Why stick a bayonet on a vehicle-mounted laser cannon?
And where else can you stick your frankfurters and hamburgers when you want to cook them with the laser?
Posted by: Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | March 5, 2007 10:43 PM
Imagine one guy, dug in in a heavily camouflaged (and IR-resistant) foxhole, somewhere on a hillside. Spread out over a couple of square miles around him (and also camouflaged) are a hundred or so TOW missiles (anti-tank, optical wireguided) which are linked back to him via camouflaged fiber-optic cables, so that he can scan from their location and eye-guide any of them to a target.
Imagine an artillery bombardment, including smoke.
Posted by: Tony Quirke | March 6, 2007 2:19 AM
Better still, imagine a mile-wide fuel-air explosion. Crisps all the sensors, the cables, and probably the missles too.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) | March 6, 2007 3:06 AM
Quick back-of-envelope calculations suggest that even an ordinary machinegun has an average energy output of several kilowatts. not all of it in the bullet.
And, no, a Maxim gun doesn't let you make a nice hot cup of tea. The cooling water tastes foul.
As for lasers, the primary kill effect is the explosive vapourisation of the surface layers of the target. It's a lot like HESH in how it does damage through armour.
This can do nasty things to aircraft and missiles, knocking them out of line with the airflow and creating openings for the airflow to rip open the skin.
Reliability is also a big problem.
Laser weapons tech made some sense in the days of Cold War SDI, since you didn't need to kill every incoming warhead. It was enough to make it hard for the enemy to destroy your missiles by shooting first. In a world of rogue states, it isn't good enough. Almost by definition, they'll not be deterred by the threat of retaliation. A nuke out in the Great Plains is bad, but not for so many people, but a country can't afford to lose a major city.
Or maybe the USA can. What was New Orleans a rehearsal for?
Posted by: Dave Bell | March 6, 2007 9:54 AM
Railguns: Their acceleration characteristics are actually gentler than cannon projectiles as they produce a consistent force on their projectile as it runs down the rail. In contrast a cannonshell's acceleration is highest close to the breech when the propellant gas pressure peaks. A short-barrelled gun (cf the carronade) can throw its projectile at close to the same speed as a longer-barrelled gun.
Using a railgun to fire a projectile 200 miles inland? Bull's supergun designs achieved that sort of range but they worked by firing the shells in a high parabola as quickly as possible to reduce or negate air friction heating and KE losses.
I don't know how far off deployment this proposed USN "conventional" gun system is:
http://tinyurl.com/2jzk94
"The 155-mm gun will provide coverage up to 100 nm miles inland at the rate of 10-15 rounds per minute." No railgun tech needed, and a DD-21 could carry as many as 1200 shells to keep it fed. The two-barrel version drops into a standard foredeck VLS quad-cell with no exotic power and control requirements unlike ship-based railguns.
Posted by: Robert Sneddon | March 6, 2007 11:28 AM
Yes, that could be reasonably useful, but for practically all purposes, "blowing up stuff" is a solved problem.
Charlie, the scary thing about your language-teaching question is that we invented the Joint Service School for Linguists during the second world war, which used immersion teaching to do something similar, and kept it going in the early part of the cold war on a feedstock of National Servicemen who scored better than average on a test.
Not only did it provide Russian speakers, it also gave us quite a few good writers.
Posted by: Alex | March 6, 2007 12:38 PM
Bruce, in broken or urban terrain the tanks are going to have a heck of a time spotting a two meter tall, stealthed power suit before it nails the tank. In the open desert, sure, might be different.
Robert Sneddon, the problem is that the conventional tank shells are very detectable. And the Isralies new defence systems will be able to knock them down no a regular basis. A far smaller railgun projectile? Not so much. Also, railguns aer far more effective against modern armours.
There are limits on what you can make a HEAT projectile out of which simply don't apply to a "dumb" railgun projectile. The first use is apparently likely to be on a ship - where cooling and power usage is less of an issue.
As for weapons vs power armour...sure...but the majority of current armies and especially irregular fighters DON'T have anything like that on hand. And you can't spray that kind of fire arround. And there are psychological problems with sniping which don't apply so much to rifle-type weapons..
As to the guy on the hillside, use a few conventional-explosive EMP bombs. Oops, crispy fried control links.
Posted by: Andrew Crystall | March 6, 2007 1:17 PM
(Robert)see Sunburn/Moskit for an example of reducing the "over-the-horizon to target" time to obviate defensive missile and gun systems
Do you happen to know anything about the Rolling Airframe Missile thing the Americans have installed which is supposed to be able to shoot those down? I'd be intrigued to know just how it goes about hitting something that spends its final approach dodging all over the show.
Posted by: Adrian Smith | March 6, 2007 2:38 PM
Robert, according to the Navy the railgun would get the range by firing the shells in a high parabola. There are contracts out with firms like General Dynamics and Lockeed Martin to design the projectiles.
As for the 155mm gun, I am aware of the program. The shells use a rocket assist to achieve the range. The railgun is a follow on technology designed to replace the 155mm guns when/if it becomes mature enough for operational use.
A note on energy weapons. Lasers get a lot of press because they're sexy, or rather everyone has seen their representations in popular fiction. As many of the posts here have noted, there are lots of practical reasons why you're not going to see soliders carrying around laser weapons anytime soon. Certainly not lethal ones, although both the US and China have developed sysetms to dazzle or blind people/infantry.
There's been a lot of work on solid-state light-emitting diode-based lasers with the goal of getting one into the 100 kilowatt range-which is considered the minimum for weapons-grade use. The advantage of these systems is that their power comes directly from the vehicle and not a lot of dangerous chemicals (big problem with the airborne laser). There are prototypes in the 50 kilowatt range. But these are vehicle-based (mainly aircraft) weapons.
The energy weapons that aren't getting a lot of press, and that the government and contractors are really tight lipped about are microwave devices. They have the advantage of not being affected by atmospherics (as much). And as Andrew mentioned, if you fry the electronics on a cruise missile, a command post or any advanced platform, it's out of the fight. It's what the US military refers to as "mission kill"—the platform has been rendered as useless as if it were blown up. And in a really fast moving battlefield, there is a good chance that the war may be over in days. (A caveat. I'm referring to state-on-state conflicts here. Not things like insurgencies. Consider this an ideal scenario).
Posted by: Henry Kenyon | March 6, 2007 2:46 PM
Clifton, the man in the foxhole kills one or two tanks, and then a dismounted infantry platoon sweeps the hillside and kills him.
Or he gets gassed, or killed by artillery prep, or blinded by smoke, or the control cables to the launchers get severed by fragments.
And what exactly do you tell this man? How's he going to feel about being left on his own (actually as part of a four-man STA team) to stop a tank offensive? Where's his route in and out? What's his E&E plan? How are you going to redeploy him when the breakthrough happens 20 km to the south instead, or when he's eaten his fourteen days of compo?
Henry: first use of lasers as an anti-personnel weapon in war: 1982, the Falkland Islands, by UK forces against Argentinian ground attack pilots. Allegedly (it's illegal to use blinding weapons).
Posted by: ajay | March 6, 2007 3:35 PM
It's all good, clean fun, but would anyone like to input some ideas about actual costs for weapons that in all liklihood won't work in the rain (like the F117 and B2).
Or is every envisioned future conflict the USA expects to engage in going to be a desert war? The man in the Kremlin would like to plan accordingly, and his ideological brother in Beijing.
Posted by: Martyn Taylor | March 6, 2007 3:39 PM
Adrian,
The RAM is basicly a modified AIM-9 Sidewinder, with radar target seeking in addition to the original IR seeker. The Sidewinder has a well-proven ability to hit franticly maneuvering targets. Those Sunburns are probably bigger than some of the fighters Sidewinders have shot down. Of course, the Sunburns were designed to take down a CVN with one hit so you realy do have to intercept or decoy them all.
Posted by: Steven Rogers | March 6, 2007 4:45 PM
If only the Americans can afford to use such weapons, you avoid fighting Americans.
And if you have to, you don't fight the battles they expect to fight.
Generals have been attacking their enemy's weaknesses for as far back as we have records of war.
Osama bin Laden is only the latest of a long line.
Posted by: Dave Bell | March 6, 2007 5:08 PM
Does anyone here really believe in these "knock tank rounds and RPGs out of the air" systems?
Posted by: Alex | March 6, 2007 5:19 PM
It's not that I believe in them, it's that the IDF has demonstrated them.
Posted by: Andrew Crystall | March 6, 2007 5:36 PM
Andrew, there's a big difference between a demo and a genuine operational capability. And there's a big difference between being able to field a specific weapon in a carefully planned scenario -- e.g. defending fixed locations such as settlements within rocket range of the Lebanese border -- and fielding a system that "just works", out of the box, on the move and amidst the confusion of battle, whatever conflict you drop it into.
Arguably, even the M16 or SA80A2 rifles don't meet that final requirement adequately.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 6, 2007 5:48 PM
"In a world of rogue states, it isn't good enough. Almost by definition, they'll not be deterred by the threat of retaliation."
This suggests to me that there should therefore be a steady stream of outrageous provocations by rogue states.
Posted by: James Nicoll | March 6, 2007 7:42 PM
Charlie, Andrew:
The first version of any complex weapon system that gets fielded is almost guaranteed to be flawed. Viz the M16 (for years you couldn't put more than 16 rounds in the clip without guaranteeing a misfire), the Main Battle Tank (air conditioning problems, I think. Can't function if your crew is literally toast), F-111 (they put the flap control just a little too close to the wing retract), F-104 (plane flies faster than the 20 mm shell it fires), UH-1 helicopter (didn't have a gun pintle; try doing a pickup in a hot LZ without at least 1 machinegun), B1 bomber (wing tanks crack and spill fuel all over the engines) and those are just off the top of my head.
This is complicated by the fact that military R&D and procurement is a bureaucracy with a large CYA index. The US Army knew about the M16 for years, and refused to fix it. Is it any wonder that grunts take new equipment very suspiciously? And it tends to be "expended in combat" so they don't have to use it?
Posted by: Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | March 6, 2007 8:52 PM
There's also a good deal of federal money coming into continuous-speech natural language translation. The NLP community has demonstrated enough ability to deliver that I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it worked in ten years or so.
I can't tell whether this will that America's ill-conceived military adventures will end up working out better than they otherwise would have, or whether it will end up tempting our leaders to pick ever more dubious cases, so that the marginal invasion remains as cack-handed as ever.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami | March 7, 2007 12:34 AM
Pah. The SA-80A2 is a fix of a very badly-designed weapon. It might be up to "adequate" standard by now. The by-word for reliability in assault rifles is the AK-47; even if the build quality tends towards rubbish, it at least maintains that level in conditions that make its puny western cousins sputter and die.
Also, Uzis, sand, etc.
Posted by: NelC | March 7, 2007 2:44 AM
The single biggest problem with the M-16 was when they cheaped out and used the wrong powder in the bullets, which caused jamming and fouling. Other issues also came up from "saving money" (Robert McNamara should burn in hell).
AK-47s are okay as long as you have an outrageous amount of ammo handy to spray bullets all over the place, but not so good if you actually need to hit anything specific from more than a hundred yards. Note how those "crappy" M-16s let US troops dominate the opposition in the last couple of wars, while you're at it. Being able to hit a target with a portable, lightweight weapon makes a huge difference, and reliability under extreme abuse is only really necessary for equipping second-rate soldiers (moderate abuse is one thing, and all soldiers to that to their firearms, but the AK was designed for people one step up from the short bus).
Then you also get into the "make the weapon do something it was specifically designed not to do" issue, such as the Humvee (a light truck that people decided to use as an armored vehicle after we took it into war for about the third or fourth time).
Posted by: cirby | March 7, 2007 4:37 AM
The RAM is basicly a modified AIM-9 Sidewinder, with radar target seeking in addition to the original IR seeker. The Sidewinder has a well-proven ability to hit franticly maneuvering targets. Those Sunburns are probably bigger than some of the fighters Sidewinders have shot down.
Yeah, but inbound at nearly mach 3? Not the same as when something's running away, unless my intuition of the geometry of the situation is completely mistaken. And fighters have pilots, who lose bladder control at high gs.
Of course, the Sunburns were designed to take down a CVN with one hit so you realy do have to intercept or decoy them all.
Carriers have lots of sealable internal bulkheads afaik so I don't think you could sink one with just one hit, though you could probably make it unhappy.
Posted by: Adrian Smith | March 7, 2007 6:23 AM
"In a world of rogue states, it isn't good enough. Almost by definition, they'll not be deterred by the threat of retaliation."
There's only one real live'n'dangerous rogue state on the planet right now, and with any luck it'll go away of its own accord on March 1st, 2008.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 7, 2007 9:20 AM
Charlie, well, they're rolling the system out to operational status this year. Taking down the rockets is an entirely different problem...the tank systems can't defend anything not within a few meters of the tank for a reason.
And want to take out a carrier? Shival II supercav torpedo with a tactical nuclear warhead. China probably have those too.
And Charlie, you're saying that Iran's gonna disolve on Marsh 1st 2008? (yes, that IS sarcasm..). I'd be more impressed if it wasn't for the handful of Iranian elite troops who got caught napping in Lebanon...
Posted by: Andrew Crystall | March 7, 2007 10:38 AM
Which handful? Links and cites, please.
Posted by: Alex | March 7, 2007 12:39 PM
Two seconds with google...
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51470
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5192990.stm
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8009
Iranian Revoloutionary Guards, tyvm...
The missile (a C-102)which crippled an Isralie ship during that conflict was also an Iranian design, and it's strongly suspected (but not known) that Iranian technicians were involved in the firing.
Posted by: Andrew Crystall | March 7, 2007 1:10 PM
Andrew, Iran is predictable. It's only really a regional problem for Israel; if the US wasn't so heavily into Israel as a regional sock-puppet it wouldn't be a problem for the US, either. It's also -- seen from the outside -- no less democratic than the USA. (Here's a hint: both countries, if you don't kowtow to the dominant ideology, you don't stand a chance of being allowed to win an election. The mechanisms of enforcement are different, but the outcome is the same.)
Incidentally, on the subject of states sponsoring sock-puppets abroad in order to promote their own militarist agenda -- it seems to me that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and what Iran's doing in Lebanon is no different from what Israel was doing with the Phalangists, years ago, or the USA is doing in the Middle East with Israel.
Pot. Kettle. Non-white colour.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 7, 2007 1:22 PM
Andrew, I had a look at the BBC report you tagged. It did not mention Iranian Revolutionary Guards being found in Lebanon. It reported an Israeli cabinet minister *saying* they were there but not actually producing any tangible and verifiable proof of their involvement. Quelle surprise.
Worldnetdaily is a kook news website which I do not patronise TYVM.
I fully understand your belief that Hezbollah are a bunch of illiterate wogs who ride camels and live in tents and can't be expected to be able to operate anything more technically advanced than an SMLE so they imported those devious Persians to do the dirty work for them. It's the same sort of thinking that posits the Iraqis (the most literate and technically savvy Arab country in the region courtesy of its secular ruler until he was deposed by the US and replaced by loony fundies) can't build EFP IEDs despite their home-grown CBNW programs in the 80s and 90s (and don't forget Bull's supergun...)
The second-most stupid thing to do in military terms is to underestimate your enemy. The Israelis committed that sin last summer during Operation Destroy Lebanese Democracy and they paid the price. Hopefully they have learned from it.
The most stupid thing? Don't start a land war in Asia.
Posted by: Robert Sneddon | March 7, 2007 2:11 PM
Charlie,
There is a substantial difference both practically and in international law between supporting the legitimate government of a country, and supporting a political parties armed wing.
Israel cut their ties with the Phalangists. Syria and Iran have not cut their ties with Hizbolah. This, as with most unilateral climb-downs, has had extremely poor consequences for the side which climbed down.
(And find where I said I agreed with the Lebanon occupation...I never did. But...since it ended, there have been constant acts of war committed by a Lebenese political party, who by their own statements should of disbanded their armed wing when Israel withdrew...)
If you don't like America's involvement in Israel, you need to do "something" about arround 2% of America's population, and their demographic concentration in particular. Oh, and the American defence industry, which does VERY well off cooperation with Isralie companies.
As for myself, I don't think reprisentative democracy is stable in even the moderate term. And it's not proving so, is it?
Rifles. Nuclear centifuges. Fuel air bombs.
Posted by: Andrew Crystall | March 7, 2007 2:15 PM
And want to take out a carrier? Shival II supercav torpedo with a tactical nuclear warhead. China probably have those too.
The first job you're going to have is getting within six miles of an American carrier to fire this unguided torpedo. In a war situation, the Chinese are NOT going to be able to do this, unless they get extremely lucky. Ditto for most of the missiles they would try to fire and kill carriers with.
The problem with most "ship killers" is that they're BIG, and take a correspondingly large ship or ground location to launch. The SS-N-22 Sunburn is fast, sure, but it's huge - 4500 kilograms. It has an effective range of only about 120 kilometers - nowhere near long enough to get into effective range of an American carrier group during a war situation.
If we're in a war status with China or Iran, there's not going to be a working launch/guidance system anywhere near a coast or in the ocean that could handle the job.
The missile (a C-102)which crippled an Isralie ship during that conflict was also an Iranian design, and it's strongly suspected (but not known) that Iranian technicians were involved in the firing.
Israel has reported that it was a C-802 (not a 102), a Chinese design, and it was fired at close range (as these things go), at a ship that had its ECM and other active defenses turned off. Actually, they fired two at the Israeli ship, and only one managed to hit it, while the other hit an Egyptian merchant ship.
Not exactly a shining endorsement for that level of tech. A 50 percent hit rate on an undefended target falls into 1950-era US technology.
Iran supposedly only has about 60 of these things, by the way, mostly at one base (they only have a few ships that can fire these missiles), so one quick air raid and most of their antiship capability goes up in smoke.
Sure, it's a big mistake to underestimate your enemy, but as recent history keeps showing, the other guys have been underestimating the US military for most of the last couple of decades. Up until early 2003, the US was supposed to lose upwards of 50,000 troops during the early part of the Iraq invasion. Ditto for the first Gulf War. Afghanistan was going to be the grave of the Americans, except we've been killing about 20 to 50 Talibanis for every Allied life lost...
Posted by: cirby | March 7, 2007 2:40 PM
Cirby: I caught a brief report a short while back where an American carrier group in the Far East recently had a Chinese sub pop up to the surface within the group's defensive perimeter before it could be tracked and intercepted.
Surface warfare guys have a naive belief that they can successfully fend off determined submarine attacks. Submariners call them "targets".
Re "grave", it's not an open-battlefield situation that is a problem for the US Army/Marines. With control of the air they can smash anything they desire and avoid any threats they don't want to meet at that time. No-one with any knowledge of the situation really expected the US forces in Gulf War 1, Afghanistan or the Iraq invasion to lose lots of troops during the initial push (excepting a Galahad-style incident).
It's the colonial occupation that costs in terms of blood and treasure (Iraq, about 2600 combat deaths and 500 billion dollars of "emergency" expenditure with no end in sight).
As for Afghanistan, great, you're killing 20 to 50 people (I'll even give you that many of those are actually Talibanis and not just locals caught in freefire zones) for every American life lost. So, being generous, by the time you've killed a million "Talibani" you'll have lost a division, 20,000 troops, and the war will still not be won. Is there a limit to how many people you will kill on their own home ground, is there a limit to the numbers of your own people you will send to die in foreign lands to bring the benighted savages there the benefits of democracy and freedom at the point of a bayonet?
Posted by: Robert Sneddon | March 7, 2007 3:06 PM
"AK-47s are okay as long as you have an outrageous amount of ammo handy to spray bullets all over the place, but not so good if you actually need to hit anything specific from more than a hundred yards. Note how those "crappy" M-16s let US troops dominate the opposition in the last couple of wars..."
I'd just like to point out that although this is the case for battlefield situations outside urban areas, the majority of places US troops are currently engaging in combat are inside cities. Which are places where the terrain is quite built up and often LoS is less than a hundred yards.
Posted by: Stephen Shevlin | March 7, 2007 3:11 PM
Charlie, have you read Robert Kagan's "Dangerous Nation"? It's a look at early US foreign policy (18th & 19th centuries). There has always been an interesting disconnect between how the US views itself and how the rest of the world views it (as a dangerous nation).
To Americans, or a large segment of them, everything the US does is justified. The wars with the native americans are a good example. The federal government want to peacefully absorb and modernize the indian nations. Unfortunately, there was a large section of the electorate that wanted to settle the west. What usually happened was some settlers arrived, exercised their "natural right" to develop "unused" land, and settled on lands granted by treaty to the indians. The government couldn't do anything about it, if they did the government would change in the next election. Then, once the indians struck back against the settlers, there was a huge uproar and the government was forced to send in the militia, break treaties, and suppress in the indians in support of illegal squatters. If the didn't, an more settler-friendly government would be elected in a year or two.
Our relations with Spain, France, and the UK were similar because we saw their presence in North America as being a direct threat to US security. And Europeans knew this, they knew that sooner or later the US would force war if they stayed in the Americas.
To the rest of the world the use were gold and land hungry expansionist and warlike. To Americans, the US was the guiding light of civilization and the champion of freedom, progress, and liberalism alone in a world divided between despots and savages.
We still see the world this way.
Posted by: Andrew G. | March 7, 2007 3:18 PM
That sounds about right, Andrew.
Posted by: guthrie | March 7, 2007 3:47 PM
The first job you're going to have is getting within six miles of an American carrier to fire this unguided torpedo.
There's a maritime museum in Sydney with a fun exhibit -- a decommissioned diesel-electric submarine.
Among the associated memorabilia in the museum is a photograph of a CVN -- I forget which one -- taken through the periscope at a range of 3000 yards. Point-blank, in other words, slap bang inside its destroyer screen.
It was taken during the Vietnam war, but the point stands: as the submariners say, "there are two types of ship: submarines, and targets".
The US army hasn't been involved in a symmetric conflict with a real enemy since Korea -- and we're getting a reminded of its incompetence in dealing with asymmetrical struggles right now.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 7, 2007 3:48 PM
To the rest of the world the use were gold and land hungry expansionist and warlike. To Americans, the US was the guiding light of civilization and the champion of freedom, progress, and liberalism alone in a world divided between despots and savages.
Chosen People syndrome, innit. Another reason why the Israelis inspire a loyalty verging on imprinting.
Posted by: Adrian Smith | March 7, 2007 3:59 PM
The second-most stupid thing to do in military terms is to underestimate your enemy. The Israelis committed that sin last summer during Operation Destroy Lebanese Democracy and they paid the price. Hopefully they have learned from it.
I read one article that mentioned the surprise of some Israeli troops when Hizbollah fighters called out to them in Hebrew, which they had apparently assumed was too difficult for Arabs to learn or something.
Posted by: Adrian Smith | March 7, 2007 4:10 PM
Cirby,
The Shival II, unlike the I, is guided. And the chinese wouls be perfectly happy to lose 20 of their small hunter-killers to nail a carrier group.
There's a reason America is trying to develop a supercavitating machine gun for underwater point defence.
"Israel has reported that it was a C-802 (not a 102)"
Cite? All the news sources I saw said a C-102. And yes, it's confirmed that the Israelie ship didn't have its active missile defence online. (It MAY have jammed, and as we know from the Falklands that means missiles can lock onto other targets....)
Adrian, more that most Arab fighters don't bother because of cultural reasons. But it does reinforce the point that the Hizbollah forces killed were, by and large, hardened fighters every bit as good as the active forces of...say...the Syrian Revoloutionary Guard and they can't get replacements in an instant.
Posted by: Andrew Crystall | March 7, 2007 4:19 PM
Adrian, more that most Arab fighters don't bother because of cultural reasons.
Cultural inferiority to the Israelis, YM?
But it does reinforce the point that the Hizbollah forces killed were, by and large, hardened fighters every bit as good as the active forces of...say...the Syrian Revoloutionary Guard and they can't get replacements in an instant.
Can't help thinking you're working mighty hard to find a silver lining there.
Posted by: Adrian Smith | March 7, 2007 4:34 PM
The USN brass hats have a big problem admitting that their CVNs can get hurt. Wargame designer Mark Herman gave a very entertaining talk at an ORIGINS convention back in the nineties about his arduous-but-successful effort to convince the USN to accept the validity of simulations that showed CVNs going to Davey Jones' Locker.
Posted by: Steven Rogers | March 7, 2007 4:37 PM
Somebody may have nabbed an Iranian General:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2007/03/iranian_intelli.html
Posted by: Steven Rogers | March 7, 2007 4:47 PM
Chosen People syndrome, innit. Another reason why the Israelis inspire a loyalty verging on imprinting.
I suppose a large segment of their supporters see them as bringing civilization to an otherwise barbarous region. The region was sadly neglected under Ottoman rule, and the Palestinians did get to do much with it either. It's the same rational that causes Americans to view North America as a pristine wilderness before they came.
Posted by: Andrew G. | March 7, 2007 4:57 PM
Andrew G, #71: yeah, that sounds like a solid analysis. And it's fostered by the incredibly propagandized self-portrait of the USA that's disseminated via the media. The First Amendment is a brilliant agitprop tool -- after all, knowing you've got freedom of speech means you don't have to waste time worrying about whether what you're being told is true.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 7, 2007 5:57 PM
"I'd rate a technique for speed-teaching troops any major human language (and the customs of its speakers) just 20% faster as far more strategically valuable than ship-mounted railguns or suit of powered battle armour (or man-portable unobtanium-powered ray guns) any day of the week."
DARPA presents....
http://www.tacticallanguage.com/tacticaliraqi/
It doesn't teach the entire language, but it teaches a core subset aimed at basic conversation and culture - politeness, getting directions, and the like. The combination of traditional training, arcade-game drills that force you to speak the language, and missions which force you to speak and designate appropriate gestures, soak the material into your head quite efficiently.
It's an excellent piece of training software.
Posted by: James | March 7, 2007 6:11 PM
Adrian,
Difference, not inferiority. And don't think it's a "silver lining", think it's the point - trying to paint Hizbolah as being able to bounce back by simple recruiting isn't true, and their bases are so much rubble. Hence why the Lebenese government is now pushing them, poltically and economically.
And as to the American view, heck yes. You can't even get the concept that their worldview might be biased at the first pass to them. I *know* my bias, dosn't stop me from holding it but I make a point of reading the other side as well.
Posted by: Andrew Crystall | March 7, 2007 6:26 PM
James #82: this leaves me scratching my head. Because if they've got it, why ain't they using it? It's not as if the idea that the US army is occupying Iraq is new -- at this point it's five years since they began invasion planning -- and the idea that they might not want to be dependent on native interpreters should have sunk in within, say, a year of the start of the occupation. But there's apparently a huge shortage of Arabic speakers, both in the State Department and the US military. The mind, she boggles: if you're going to set yourself up as imperial occupation power in a region, it behooves you to be able to cross-check what your collaborators are telling you ...
Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 7, 2007 6:28 PM
if you're going to set yourself up as imperial occupation power in a region,
You hit the nail on the head right there -- the US doesn't want to be an imperial occupying power. That may be what we're doing, but we're going to pretend that we're not.
We're a liberating ally of Iraq, not occupiers, so we don't need translators. :)
Posted by: Andrew G. | March 7, 2007 6:50 PM
Andrew: I know that, but every time I force myself to confront it is a *headdesk* moment.
(It's deeply peculiar to watch, from the outside, an imperial hegemon deep in existential denial.)
Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 7, 2007 6:54 PM
Would you rather we went for full-on Empire? I wouldn't.
Posted by: Steven Rogers | March 7, 2007 7:18 PM
A few late comments:
Drones - in Iraq, they're being used against a low-tech enemy which lives off of Saddam's depots (and some US stuff, for the Shiites). In that environment, drones are very survivable - like tanks, aircraft and even helicopters. Against a higher-tech opponent, drones would still be very useful. The differences would be that they'd be used up faster, the ratio of expendables to durable drones whould be higher. Commo links would generally be tight-beam, supplemented by limited autonomous actions (such as return-to-base if communication was severed for a certain amount of time).
The big thing is that going to war against a higher-tech opponent with a drone force optimized for a lower-tech opponent would lead to severe problems. If the US was relying on non-expendable drones and high-quality communications, the drone force could be decimated rather quickly.
M16's and US military superiority - last I heard, *nobody* in the US military wins by gun-to-gun superiority, any more than hand-to-hand superiority. The US uses every gadget available.
Posted by: Barry | March 7, 2007 7:30 PM
Re AK47s vs. M16s:
Most rounds expended in infantry combat are intended to make the other fellow keep his head down, so accuracy isn't much of an issue. Furthermore, the general availability of full-auto personal weapons has degraded the average accuracy of the combatants. It's really hard to get the average soldier to care about aimed single shots when he can hose down the target with a high probability of at least one hit. On top of which, the kind of combat we're in these days involves broken terrain (often including buildings) with short LoS. There's a reason why the M4 rifle the US is using in Iraq is basically an M16 with a lower effective range.
On another axis of comparison, the M16 was designed to be maintained by a high-tech rear-echelon repair facility. If a weapon is captured by the enemy in an assymmetrical theater the hope is that it won't stay reliable enough to be used. By contrast the AK was designed to be dragged through the mud and maintained with Iron Age tools if necessary. A lot of the AKs in central Asia have never been within a thousand kicks of Russia; they're copies made by tribal metalsmiths on lathes run by yak-power. A perfect weapon for insurgencies and other guerilla operations.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | March 7, 2007 8:45 PM
Charlie: regarding #84. Just because its being developed doesn't mean they're going to use it. DARPA programs are by their nature, experimental. When they get spun off into an existing procurement/development program is when they really reach their potential. A lot of DARPA programs are run just to see if something it technically feasible.
....and when something is developed, sometimes good old fashioned military conservatism gets in the way. Case in point, the so-called Pain Beam that the Defense Department developed as a way to disperse crowds and for use when less than lethal force is necessary. By all accounts its ready to go. Commanders in Iraq have been begging for it (especially the Marines), its been tested to death. ...but the military keeps pushing the deployment date back. Previously they wanted it in the field this year, I believe. Now they're talking 2010. The scuttlebut is that the brass is unsure of how to exactly use the system, and there's a fear of negative PR is someone claims they got cancer/burns/ingrown toenails from exposure.
Anyway, just an example of how a variety of things can conspire to prevent a technology from getting into the field.
Posted by: Henry Kenyon | March 7, 2007 8:59 PM
A couple of folks have remarked on how easy it is to get a sub inside a carrier task group - in peacetime. In a war situation, that's not so easy. There's going to be active pinging and countermeasures all over the place, and no, even having one of those cute little diesel-electrics won't help. Iran has three, count 'em three, Kilo-class submarines, run by a navy that's, at best, third-rate. They'd be operating in shallow waters, from bases that are certainly kept under 24 hour surveillance by air and by sea. This is not conducive to making a good attack run on a full Carrier Task Force run by the most powerful and technically advanced navy on the planet.
The Shkval-2 isn't really a true homing torpedo - it has to drop out of supercavitation to activate its homing head and retarget, then go back into inertial mode, which means it can still be spoofed or blown out of the water by countermeasures. It's basically still an autopilot/inertial nav weapon, and is only effective if you put a tactical nuclear weapon on board.
China has a decent chance of taking out one or more carrier task forces, if they don't mind the fact that we'd reduce their military to zero ships and zero planes in about a week, as a start for World War IV...
On the M-16/AK-47 issue: the "spray and pray' tactic that the AK-47 was designed for is paying off in Iraq in one way - they're using up all available stocks of ammo for the weapon. International 7.62 ammo prices have more than doubled, since they've used up the in-country stocks of available ammo way too fast, and need a whole lot more to keep up operations. This also makes it easier to find the bad guys, since they're the ones bringing in truckloads of 7.62 ammo for their friends.
The C-802 and Israel: globalsecurity.org says it was a C-802 (an improved 801), and that the press got it wrong. Iran has had C-801 and C-802 missiles since 1991.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/c-802.htm
Posted by: cirby | March 7, 2007 9:05 PM
Charlie #86:
I don't think we're seeing denial of hegemonic ambition here in the US, so much as a complete lack of understanding of the necessary consequences of our actions. In fact, as I've said on so many occasions that most of my friends are sick of hearing it, at least in the last couple of generations, if not before, our educational and social systems have conspired to foster the belief that well-intended actions can't have bad consequences. We're not evil emperors, just dysfunctional ones. Not that that matters in the least to the people on the other end of the barrel.
There is another aspect to it: most of us still believe for some reason or other that our government represents our long-term best interests. Didn't think I could put "government" and "our interest" in the same sentence, did you? So even when the Pres has less than 30% approval, the disapproval is over relatively narrow issues of not having pulled it off right, rather than of having lied, cheated, stolen, brow-beaten, etc., the nation into doing something that's very bad for it and everyone else around.
Lest I be deluged with flame over this comment, I hasten to point out that I am not anti-American; it's my country too. I'm just looking for the appropriate place to provide a good swift kick to get it back on the track it's supposed to be on.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | March 7, 2007 9:19 PM
WWW.strategypage.com has had quite a bit to say over the past few years about the contrast between the "spray and pray" insurgents and the laser-tag trained US troops. It seems that one way to tell which side is which in a firefight is that the Iraqis (both sides) tend towards rock and roll while the Americans tend to use single shots.
The website also gives another reason for the worldwide AK-47 ammo shortage: The US is buying gobs fo the stuff for marksmanship training of Iraqi government troops which consumes a vast amount of ammo. Also, Americans use the AK-47 as well. As has been pointed out, in urban combat the Ak is good accurate enough most of the time. Another reason for AK usage is that the M16 and AK47 sound very different when fired, and G!s using the AK don't immediately announce themselves as being Americans.
Posted by: Steven Rogers | March 7, 2007 9:22 PM
Henry Kenyon #90:
That whole non-lethal weapons initiative has had a rocky road to get past the deep conservatism of the Pentagon brass. After all, conventional wisdom says you want to kill the other guy, not leave him around to attack you again. What they've missed completely is that non-lethality is the only way to ameliorate the severe propaganda advantage of the unconventional side of an asymmetric war. It may hurt like hell, and you may get cancer 20 years from now, but in the meantime you've just been prevented from {blowing your enemy up,killing enemy soldiers,starting a riot to use for cover,whatever} and you haven't even created a martyr for the cause.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | March 7, 2007 9:28 PM
It's not going to diminish their propaganda advantage. The body counts will be embellished anyway. Keeping prisoners alive hasn't helped too well in the propaganda war either. And on the flip side, to lesson their fear of being killed will only encourage them to fight longer.