A unique Canuck view towards the future US Military

Great Debates
1

I’m convinced that the biggest weakness for the US military today is the popular abhorance of losing American lives through deliberate policy. It seems to me that in reviewing the recent history, fatal casualties in a major war do not even come close to the Vietnam War or previous, yet Americans are nervous. Its clear to me that no cause in the modern day will find civil support for war if the casualties are assumed to be of the order of WWII.

The enemy whoever they are or might be know this. The means to their objective, is not technology but simple terror to be inflicted on the morale of America. The enemy is no longer trying to gain the high ground and keep it. It is simply destroying lives including the precious American lives. America does not have te option to pursue surrender. The enemy knows or think they know that America will give up. America backed out of Vietnam like the French, backed off on Gulf War I and makes lots of noises about backing out of Gulf War II. In each case, the daily tally of American dead is a topic for the 6 o’clock news.

America needs to review the need for vulnerable “boots on the ground”. Yes, intimate presence and contact is neccessary for control but when you limit the rules of engagement you don’t get to control Iraq like Saddam did, who did a superb job of it. Instead, American troops are simply little more than targets.

America does have a high kill ratio though. that has been accomplished by technology, an American strength. But instead of pursuing the minimalization of American troop casualties, the Pentagon should pursue the elimination of casualties. This is possible I believe if the focus is eliminating the need for ground troops.

Take for example Gulf War II. The simple objective was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. The only person that needed to be pursuaded was their leader. Yet it took some 130,000 bodies to accomplish that and some 3000 American lives to live up to the responsibility expected because of their presence in country. Kosavo was much simpler.

What if instead of Generals, Lieutenants and Privates in country, American forces were comprised of Awacs, Drones and Mini-drones. It wouldn’t take much to mount a six shooter mechanism, video camera, audio transmitter, and GPS control on a model airplane. Communication relays from mini-drones , to drones if neccessary, to Awacs planes could connect all the way to a major American military base. This base could house platoons of physically unfit soldiers, men and women, connected to their VDT viewing the scene as their “mini-drone” cruises the street looking for trouble. The “mini-drones” could also include choppers to hover while communicating verbally with informants.

I could spend more time on this, but I don’t want to get carried away . Is there any merit to this proposal?

2

Reluctance to risk lives for debatable causes, or even spend money on them, is hardly a uniquely American characteristic, eh?

In fact, shifting risk from people to machinery has been the thrust of military development for many decades already.

3

[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
Reluctance to risk lives for debatable causes, or even spend money on them, is hardly a uniquely American characteristic, eh?

[quote]

We’re pretty reluctant to risk lives for any cause. Partly because we don’t much care what happens outside our borders.

True. They’re working on it. But making a killer drone is not easy. To be honest, right now they’re even more vulnerable than humans, because the technology is simply not very robust. Shoot a robot, and it breaks as badly as a human will.

Drone aricraft are a much more likely technology right now, and experiments continue. Drone subs may be seen in the future, but drone tech is not as important at sea.

4

It is an item of popular opinion (to the point of cliché) that Americans shrink from the risk of dead American soldiers to the point that they will opt out of military confrontations to avoid that.

I don’t think that is true. What recent (and semi-recent) history shows is that Americans do shrink from having American soldiers die in some stupid senseless pseudowar that appears to lack purpose and goals. I suspect there wouldn’t be a whole lot of domestic support for blatantly predatory wars (e.g., openly declared intent to conquer in order to acquire land or resources). Less to our credit, I also think there is seldom a very high level of domestic support for chivalrous military ventures on behalf of other people (e.g., saving a threatened country from conquest by another, or a people from vicious treatment by their own or another government).

Vietnam, Somalia, Serbia, and Gulf War II have all been unpopular to an extent because the US appeared to be getting mired in wars with no apparent end goal, for reasons other than our own national defense, at increasing risk to our own soldiers.

In the case of Vietnam and GW II, add in a generous dose of domestic piss-off associated with the perception that US leadership had sold the idea of the war on false pretenses and then resorted to stonewalling when confronted on it.

But if, hypothetically speaking, the US was attacked and a concession demanded of the US as a condition of ceasing the attacks (e.g., “Quit supporting the nation of Israel and we’ll quit planting bombs in the US”), I think you’d see a different spirit.

It’s one thing when the dead American soldiers are widely seen as having died because of our own leaders’ initiative, another thing entirely if they were seen as victims of some other agent’s activities.