New Weapons, New Ideas, But The Same Old Game

"One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." Joseph Stalin's observation still holds some truth. Stalin didn't have to worry about members of the press making each death personal. Embedded journalists equipped with high speed cameras, and twenty four hour news networks covering the unloading of casualties have managed to take hundreds of deaths from a war and make them seem the single death that is still a tragedy.

Americans are very sensitive to casualties in a war. It quickly erodes support for a conflict in a distant land, particularly when the goals seem ambiguous. The American Military establishment is keenly aware of this, and has taken expensive technological steps to avoid casualties whenever possible.

Advanced armaments and precision ordinance combined with startling precise satellite imagery produce quick, dramatic victories. American losses are kept to a minimum, and the photo opportunities are abundant. Against an enemy without an enormous defense budget, and years of research the results are startling. It has yet to be tested against a similarly armed opponent, thank goodness.

But, after these early successes comes the muddy, awful difficulties of consolidating military positions, and advancing the goals that led to the conflict initially. Here is where the strains of a protracted engagement begin to take a toll on the American will.

It is very difficult to “find, fix and finish” a guerrilla force that is content to wage a terrorist campaign against a larger, technologically superior opponent. Costs aside the drain on soldiers is terrible and the image of wounded, crippled or dead young men is horrendous.

Enter the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones. Death no longer rides a pale horse, it circles silently overhead. These are the latest attempt to use applied technology to reduce the loss of life. Drones are used to find, fix and destroy individuals, hiding behind the wall of humanity. Watchful, waiting and ready to strike, individual target weapons.

America’s newest weapon circles lazily, for hours, as a controller in Arizona mans the console observing the target area. When the conditions for engagement have been met an attack is initiated. With luck somebody is eliminated. Of course drones provide reconnaissance, and assist in many command and control procedures and decisions, but, as the name implies, their job is to attack. And they are being used extensively in every theater of operation.

So, where does that lead? Pretty much down the same rabbit hole, stuck in a foreign country, with no clear path to victory. Unwelcome, and mostly viewed as invaders, until the expense and slow but steady attrition erodes the American will to continue.

Drones are useful tools, and all political rhetoric aside, this genie will never be put back in the bottle. In fact The Joint Chiefs and General Dynamics are working diligently to make them more effective, and lethal. But, in the end it is still a weapon that will only serve to delay the inevitable.

America and other powers need to start the “offensive” long before it is time for lethal force. Building stable governments in distant, foreign lands is expensive, difficult, and time consuming but it is the only choice left, the old game is no longer working.

One step forward, and there is the abyss.

The history of the world is a history of violence. Other things happened, but, far and large it was the biggest, and strongest who wrote the tale of the times. Often times it was technology that defined who was the most able to control the narrative.

The Assyrians, it is believed, mastered using iron to make weaponry, which was much more widely available than bronze, used by most armies. Of course, they used their weapons with brutal and ruthless efficiency. But, learning to forge iron gave them an advantage.

Many people feel that the Mongol bow was the premier projectile weapon until the invention of the firearm. It took a great leader to bring the widely scattered tribes into a mobile, lethal, devastating army of horsemen. But, the bow gave them an edge.

Now the pace of technical innovation has changed the way things are calculated. There is no way of knowing what the future holds, but it is safe to say there will be breakthroughs undreamed of even now.

Albert Einstein said "the release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known I should have become a watchmaker." Unleashing the awful power of the atom is the most extreme example, but there are constant breakthroughs in technology that make the destruction of our enemies easier, more efficient, and "sanitary."

Now, the Air Force wants to make drones smarter and deadlier. Killing an enemy from the comfort of an air conditioned room thousands of miles away makes a cold, calculated sense. And building in an automated response system to deal with threats is perfect. Killing, and destruction, represented in an algorithm.

War has always been about choices, would the costs outweigh the benefits. And for most of the worlds history war could be a very profitable enterprise. Countries who were good filled their treasuries with the gold from conquered nations. Now, the formula is different. Our ability for destruction has irreversibly removed any real benefit from the equation.

But, if we find a way to make it less costly in human lives (at least our human lives) will that variable change again? These weapons are here to stay, but we, as a race, the human race, need to find a way to work together without the use of explosives. Finding common grounds to work together and build is liable to be much more difficult than finding ways to destroy but we no longer have much choice.