Build a cruise missile in your garage!
This guy's attempt didn't work out but it's only a matter of time.
Posted on 11/24/2007 11:36:14 AM PST by John Jorsett
ROAD TO PERDITION: In early 2005, engineers stationed in Iraq were inspecting this road when an improvised explosive device went off. An officer and his interpreter died in the blast. At the upper right is an iRobot PackBot used to investigate IED sites.
On the afternoon of Thursday, 8 April 2004, U.S. troops stationed in Iraq deployed a small remote-controlled robot to search for improvised explosive devices. The robot, a PackBot unit made by iRobot Corp., of Burlington, Mass., found an IED, but the discovery proved its undoing. The IED exploded, reducing the robot to small, twisted pieces of metal, rubber, and wire.
The confrontation between robot and bomb reflects a grim paradox of the ongoing conflict in Iraq. The PackBot's destruction may have prevented the IED from claiming a soldier's life—as of 31 August, IEDs accounted for nearly half of the 3299 combat deaths reported by coalition forces. But the fact remains that a US $100 000 piece of machinery was done in by what was probably a few dollars' worth of explosives, most likely triggered using a modified cellphone, a garage-door opener, or even a toy's remote control. During the past four and a half years, the United States and its allies in Iraq have fielded the most advanced and complex weaponry ever developed. But they are still not winning the war.
Although there has been much debate and finger-pointing over the various failures and setbacks suffered during the prolonged conflict, some military analysts and counterterrorism experts say that, at its heart, this war is radically different from previous ones and must be thought of in an entirely new light.
“What we are seeing is the empowerment of the individual to conduct war,” says John Robb, a counterterrorism expert and author of the book Brave New War (John Wiley & Sons), which came out in April. While the concept of asymmetric warfare dates back at least 2000 years, to the Chinese military strategist Sun-tzu, the conflict in Iraq has redefined the nature of such struggles [see photo, “Road to Perdition”]. As events are making painfully clear, Robb says, warfare is being transformed from a closed, state-sponsored affair to one where the means and the know-how to do battle are readily found on the Internet and at your local RadioShack. This open global access to increasingly powerful technological tools, he says, is in effect allowing “small groups to…declare war on nations.”
Excerpt. For full text of article, click here
> But they are still not winning the war.
???
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
An unbalanced look into the matter IMO.
For example, how many wanna be Jihaddies have blown themselves to bits during construction of such devices?
How many have failed to work or work improperly?
Add in the mix of Iraq as Arsenal and to get a clear picture is difficult indeed to paint in the dots.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
“But they are still not winning the war.”
“???”
I think the “they” he’s referring to is the high-tech weaponry and gadgetry, not the American military.
This article asserts technology won wars in the past, and is not winning this war because guerrillas are proving more adaptive. That’s nonsense on stilts. Technology alone has never won guerrilla wars. The decisive war-winning tactics taken in the past are simple, but brutal. Simply put, they involve starving or killing the population that supports the guerrillas. The tactics of the Indian Wars and the Civil War are what worked - the essence of it is that any population that supports the guerrillas will have its physical property burned to the ground. (Non-European warfighters have been much less considerate - their premier tactic has been to kill all, loot all, burn all. Japanese tactics during WWII were simply rehashes of tactics used by the Chinese and other Oriental armies since antiquity). The Roman attempted to get their denizens of their conquered lands to love them with massive public works, but they made sure that locals at least feared them. (Note that decimation is a word of Roman origin).
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Build a cruise missile in your garage!
This guy's attempt didn't work out but it's only a matter of time.
This new way of war is absurd. There’s a reason we bombed Dresden and other places. We ended up with a population that was willing to deal with us. A population that had supported the Nazis just a short time before.
Kinda like a big duh!!
I’m with you on that
This is an article that everyone who wants to understand how the terrorists fight should read. These wars will not stop until everybody decides they want to stop. One man with the will to fight can keep it going.
I think a bit of hero worship of the terrorists is evident in this article. Linux is good, and Windows is bad. Terrorists are good, and the Pentagon is bad. Therefore, terrorists must be Linux and the Pentagon must be Windows. In reality, our grunt infantry pass on all kinds of ideas upwards because the penalty for seeming to doubt the wisdom of their superiors is at most a delay in promotion and perhaps an early departure from the military (given its up-or-out philosophy). Terrorists practice democratic centralism, which is another way of saying the leadership decides what the followers will do, and the followers "democratically" carry it out. The penalty for seeming to show a lack of respect for a terrorist leader by disagreeing with him can mean an early, unexpected and painful death. How many Americans have been sent out as unwitting suicide bombers for disagreeing with their superiors?
Which is why one has to wonder about this;
The PackBot's destruction may have prevented the IED from claiming a soldier's life—as of 31 August, IEDs accounted for nearly half of the 3299 combat deaths reported by coalition forces. But the fact remains that a US $100 000 piece of machinery was done in by what was probably a few dollars' worth of explosives, most likely triggered using a modified cellphone, a garage-door opener, or even a toy's remote control.
When excellent remote control model cars are available for a thousand dollars or less and wireless digital cameras are out there for a few hundred dollars why are we paying $100K for a backpack robot to investigate a road side bomb?
Even if this robot has special capabilities a cheaper version could be sent in first.
No doubt this is a product of some industry in John Murtha’s district.
In the past, when collective punishment was instituted, that man's community handed him over to avoid suffering the consequences of his actions. Under today's ground rules, your assertion is true. But there is an antidote - and it would involve changing the ground rules about collective punishment. The fact is that no amount of technology has ever prevented individuals from mounting their private wars - historically or now.
Note that historically, the Mongol armies usually managed to get neighboring kingdoms to hand over the sovereigns (turned rebels) of the kingdoms they had overrun. Was this because these neighboring kingdoms hated the defeated sovereigns who sought shelter with them? No. It was because they feared being attacked by the Mongols.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Why can’t they just send a high powered signal within the ranges of where these ied devices are and remotely trigger them to go off (if they are there)? Take all the RC freq’s and cell phone freqs and send a sweeping signal up and down the ranges and see if you can’t cause it to blow up?
You've diagnosed the problem, but misdiagnosed the solution. The insurgency continued for four years in Iraq because the Sunni-Arabs were convinced that if they hung on long enough that could outlast us and then go to town on the Shiites. They have finally been disabused of that notion by the tenacity of President Bush our troops and, more importantly by, what the Shiites did to them after the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. In effect, the Shiites undertooks sectarian cleansing of large parts of Baghdad in 2006. They beat the Sunnis and their proxy, Al Qaeda, in the battle for Baghdad. That is what finally convinced the Sunni-Arabs that the insurgency was a loser.
One example of this change in mindset can be found in recent made comments made by the leader of the Sunni Religious Endowments, Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al Samarrai, who criticized the Association of Muslim Scholars for directing Sunnis in 2005 not to join the American-backed Iraqi Army and local police forces
The Association has been an obstacle in the way of entry of our sons (Sunnis) into the ranks of the Army and the police. ... [In] April 2005 more [than] 60 Iraqi clerics gathered and we published a fatwa (in favor of) joining the ranks of the Army and the police.
The Association's leaders announced on the television screens that the Association disavows this fatwa, and they took into account members of the Association who issued the fatwa with us. Because of this, tens of thousands of our people have been reluctant to volunteer in the ranks of the Army and the police. ... [This decision] upset the balance [and led to a] catastrophe.
As Samarrai notes, the failure to join the Army and police forces is was a catastrophe for the Sunnis, because it gave the Shiites a free hand to use the Army and polices forces to cleanse Baghdad of Sunni influence.
With cell phones it is a bit more complicated because it takes a coded signal to make a cell phone ring.
On the other hand they may be able to use microwaves to burn out the electronics. But they would also burn out any other electronics close by.
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