Popular Science article calims that the Navy calls for 1/3 of all vehicles to be unmanned by 2015. Now. Does anyone else see this as bad news for other countries? I hate war and casualties but American casualities does more to stop military pursuits than actual expendatures. Are we going to see more war?
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Bullets have always been unmanned, but that has not changed the nature of war, only its course.
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But bullets have allowed those who first acquired them to kill more while maintaining less casualties yes? I'm simply arguing that the more your remove American casualties from war, the more likely the state will war
Of course, the state is more encouraged in getting into war if it means less casualties... I agree Dyke
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I hate war and casualties but American casualities does more to stop military pursuits than actual expendatures. Are we going to see more war?
I feel like we will. I wonder with whom the war will be, though. I would assume that an attack on Iran would come sooner than 2015, so who knows. I definitely agree with that first sentence.
In a strange and perhaps sick way, perhaps this is a demonstration of marginal utillity. Acknowledging of course that people do not own other people, and (private)slavery is not an institutional condition for most of the world, the existence of other people like many other things beyond human control, while not a subject of human action, is a factor, like the weather that plays into human valuation of any resulting state of affairs.
Since most people, tend to connect to and value those "nearest and dearest" to themselves first and foremost, i.e. their family, friends, colleagues etc, extending outward to neighbours, nation members etc, the loss of those distant means something quite different to that of who we consider close. Hence, this partly illustrates how foreign causalties can and do tend to be tolerated much more by the civilian populace.
Now this classification is by no means a priori, there are certainly those who may consider themselves altruistic, for whom a value scale may run differently. Another factor is ideology. Arguably, trade, globalisation and technology, in the sense that ehy connect those who across the world would otherwise consider themselves distant may play a large role in countering ideologies like nationalism, which emphaisize and reinforce the ordinal bias I mentioned above.
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Good call. The whole thing about unmanned this, unmanned that has been to reduce casualties in order to be able to have even more wars. The US has been notoriously eager to take part in wars, but just as reluctant to risk casualties.
For example I recently learned the Bush administration intervened in Somalia in 1992 for no other reason than to take attention away from Bosnia, where it did not wish to intervene militarily for fear of casualties. As we recall the US then pulled out of Somalia after an incident in which only 19 military personell were killed.
A somewhat different example would be the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in which the aircraft were flown above 15,000 feet where the anti-aircraft artillery facing them was not a threat - so as to be sure there would be no losses. But as this negated NATO's ability to hurt the opposing military it meant the choice was now between admitting defeat and targeting the nation's economy instead. I think this is a point worth having in mind. The United States' reluctance to take casualties has not so much served to reduce the number of wars, as it has meant that the civilian population in places where the US intervenes is harder hit than it otherwise would be. An example would be the criminal US rules of engagement in Iraq, where numerous Iraqi families were slain on checkpoints, because to the policymakers a dozen dead Iraqi families - cut to pieces by American soldiers - represent less of a setback than a single dead soldier. One thing this could also influence is increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks on US soil. Possibly the more difficult it will be to target US military personel the more tempting the idea of targeting American civilians will become.
Since it is the Navy I think this is just them going into the 21st centrury by being able to have vendors show off stuff to the brass and then brass then able to submit reports asking for a bigger budget. As far as being bad for other countries...I do not know. It will certainly be worse for the US. As the Cold War proved, an opponent can be defeated by economic collapse.
I suppose the advantage might be that instead of as many flag drapped coffins we will instead have flag drapped recycling containers.
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Ehhh... I wouldn't be so sure. If there's one thing I've learned this past economic crisis, it's that:
1. Don't EVER make predictions about what politicians will do. There are incentives and so forth that can influence the decision making of politicians, but many of them are too dumb to take them into consideration and all the other ones have their heads buried too deep in the state's collective arse to see what's actually going on.
2. The not-only-Austrian point about uncertainty needs to be taken into consideration more seriously.
So we have an impending budget crisis with Social Security and Medicare. We know something will be done - will this entail cutting the war budget? I'm leaning towards "yes," but I don't think it'll be cut significantly. Does this mean the DoD will be cutting down on all of their high tech gadgets? I don't really know. There are problems with corruption; maybe the DoD will just cut their lower tech spending in order to keep expensive contracts going. Or maybe they'll cut the high-tech gadget budget to make room for relatively cheap grunts (still expensive as hell though). Who knows?
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Absolutely. But I would not say the watching public is not the only reason the US is reluctant to take casualties. I would say that ultimately there is a reason that is even more importantant. It is the unwillingness of US soldiers themselves to be put in harm's way (in the sort of wars post-WWII US takes part).
The military rank and file resents many of the tasks they are given, humanitarian interventions, nation-building, hearts and minds... these things mean nothing to them. It is not something they want to get shot over. This means that normally it would be much harder to meet the recruitment standards, the soldiers would either have to be paid much, much more to impersonate social workers while in the middle of Pashtun tribesmen or to go to combat (in some bullshit war) knowing they will be denied air support if there is a danger of it resulting in civilian casualties. So either the soldiers would have to be paid much more, or they would be inclined to grow quickly disaffected and revolt against the war - it would not be what they signed up for. So the brass and the politicians preempt the situation - although they send soldiers into wars that are at least in part sold to the public as humanitarian efforts done for the benefit of civilians in targeted countries - they in practice conduct their warmaking in a way that weights the death of own soldier a far, far greater loss than that of a native civilian (think of the Vietnam and Korea bombing campaigns). And they also encourages the units on the ground to do whatever they feel will lessen the danger they find themselves in - regardless of the number of civilian deaths that will result in (think of the practice of US vehicle convoys in Iraq to after being hit by a roadside bomb to open fire on everything in their sight.)
In this way the grunt at least feels the higherups have his back in regard to his survival and that there is not the slightest expectations that he will have to sacrifice himself in the name of winning hearts and minds and for the sake of natives he does not care about.
As someone who used to be in this field (soldiering) I'd say that increased foreign wars are the least of your concerns with a shift like this. As much as people love to demonize them among the anarchy crowd an extremely small percentage of the forces are bought and sold on the whole "state over all" concept. They aren't power mongers. A lot are just guys that bought the line about innocents needing protection and a lot more got into support jobs as an economic choice. Military service is one of the few ways to claw ahead if you're on the low end of that poverty scale that most ancap and austrian texts mention being made by the gov't. There are some real sons of bitches to be found, particularly in the upper ranks, but a lot more were just raised in a culture that philosophically disarmed them regarding the full ramifications of their choice, usually made very early in adulthood. More than you think have "wtf" moments and extricate themselves asap (again like me). My point being that increasing automation removes that human element. A mass of philosophically confused pseudo-indoctrinated soldiers can be motivated (for a while) to fight in relation to cultures and political situations they really aren't grasping (although the high suicide rates, exits from the service, and crippling psychological issues indicates that even that is profoundly damaging), but those same guys are not going to look at it the same way about posting on main street and rigorously enforcing a serious attempt at martial law. Some would, but most wouldn't. With automation you don't even have that shred of potential. Unmanned weapons platforms will sit right in the middle of downtown and shoot whoever the hell they're told to. Unmanned surveilance will maintain operations well beyond the point that human beings would realize what is happening is bizarre and sick. In other words I would worry more about what these developments will be doing to you personally than overseas. The increase in foreign military action is going to be tragic, but it becomes hard to focus on when the State-o-matic 9000 is enforcing curfew outside your front door.
Kaiser434 In other words I would worry more about what these developments will be doing to you personally than overseas. The increase in foreign military action is going to be tragic, but it becomes hard to focus on when the State-o-matic 9000 is enforcing curfew outside your front door.
Kaiser434
In other words I would worry more about what these developments will be doing to you personally than overseas. The increase in foreign military action is going to be tragic, but it becomes hard to focus on when the State-o-matic 9000 is enforcing curfew outside your front door.
This is a great point. A recent Popular Mechanics article speaks about a test pilot in Finland, Germany, Austria and France for an aggresive system of roadside surveillance. It claims that such elaborate methods will reduce traffic fatalities by 10,000 per year, yet, there are only 11,000 total fatalities from speeding in all of Europe (according to the same article). At some point in time i'm going to start putting on my tin hat
AFAIK unmanned craft are not autonomous. They are remotely controlled.
I bet it feels like playing a game to the pilot of one of these.
One more reason, if more are needed, to gain nukes. The faster the better.