Fifth Generation of Warfare (5GW) is "indistinguishable from magic"

[don]

Re: Fifth Generation of Warfare (5GW) is "indistinguishable from magic"

That blurb is ripe for de-construction. Love the "innocent abroad" tag. The newer film version of the book with Michael Caine is closer to Greene's story.

[Woodsman]

Re: Fifth Generation of Warfare (5GW) is "indistinguishable from magic"

The Quiet American

by Graham Greene, Robert Stone (Introduction)

Graham Greene's classic exploration of love, innocence, and morality in Vietnam

"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," Graham Greene's narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous "Quiet American" of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas.

As young Pyle's well-intentioned policies blunder into bloodshed, Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter, finds it impossible to stand safely aside as an observer. But Fowler's motives for intervening are suspect, both to the police and himself, for Pyle has stolen Fowler's beautiful Vietnamese mistress.

Originally published in 1956 and twice adapted to film, The Quiet American remains a terrifiying and prescient portrait of innocence at large. This Graham Greene Centennial Edition includes a new introductory essay by Robert Stone.

the movie is also well done.

Well done, but not at all the story Greene wrote. At that time Greene was denounced as “anti-American” by many leading US critics who deliberately distorted or ignored the story’s unambiguous condemnation of US covert operations in Vietnam. A New York Times review in 1956 suggested it was full of “custom-made characters” and regretted the absence of an “experienced and intelligent anti-Communist” in the story.

Two years later, Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed a Hollywood movie of the book staring Michael Redgrave and former US war hero Audie Murphy. Mankiewicz twisted the story to present Pyle as an innocent but courageous fighter for democracy and dedicated his film to the US-backed South Vietnamese puppet regime of Ngo Dinh Diem.

Mankiewicz consulted the infamous US military counter-insurgency expert Edward G. Lansdale on the script and told the press that “anti-Americanism” and “Communist footsie-ism” was “loose in the world”. Lansdale, who helped establish “third force” proxies in the Philippines and Vietnam in the 1940s and 50s and was a senior US advisor to Diem, was one of the models for Pyle in Greene’s book.

Greene condemned Mankiewicz’s movie as a “propaganda film for America” and defended his book, explaining that rather than his characters being contrived or “custom-made” there was “more direct rapportage in The Quiet American than in any other novel” he had written. He described Mankiewicz’s distortions as “treachery” and commented that the film appeared to have been “deliberately made to attack the book and the author”.

US intelligence regarded Greene as “dangerous”. He was defined as a “communist sympathiser” and for a time barred entry to the US, despite the fact that he vetoed publication of his novels and short stories in the Soviet Union for many years in protest over the Stalinist political repression in Eastern Europe and the USSR.

According to documents obtained last week by Britain’s Guardian newspaper under Freedom of Information, Greene was under constant surveillance by US intelligence agencies from the 1950s until his death in 1991. US officials, according to the newspaper, “went to extraordinary lengths” to spy on Greene, reading his mail when he was temporarily refused entry to the US, and gathering reports by US diplomats and other shadowy figures on his travels, particularly in Latin America, and international public appearances.

A better and certainly more honest film is "The Ugly American."

Written by the same authors as "Fail Safe", it told the story of how communism was spreading through SE Asia - helped on its way by the stupid, arrogant behavior of the Americans there.

But the hero of the novel - an American engineer called Homer Atkins - behaves differently. He goes and works in local villages to help the local people develop and modernize. Then an American military officer points out that what Atkins is doing is exactly the same as Mao's revolutionary theories set out to do - "win the minds and the hearts" of the local people.

The Ugly American was a runaway bestseller and was later made into a film starring Marlon Brando. Senator John Kennedy was gripped by The Ugly American. In 1960 he and five other opinion leaders bought a large advertisement in the New York Times saying that they had sent copies of the novel to every US senator because its message was so important.

Adam Curtis has an interesting piece where he ties this in with torture and the Iraq/Afghan adventures and the disastrous counter insurgency strategies employed to such awful effect then and now.

[don]

Re: Fifth Generation of Warfare (5GW) is "indistinguishable from magic"

The Quiet American

by Graham Greene, Robert Stone (Introduction)

Graham Greene's classic exploration of love, innocence, and morality in Vietnam

"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," Graham Greene's narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous "Quiet American" of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas.

As young Pyle's well-intentioned policies blunder into bloodshed, Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter, finds it impossible to stand safely aside as an observer. But Fowler's motives for intervening are suspect, both to the police and himself, for Pyle has stolen Fowler's beautiful Vietnamese mistress.

Originally published in 1956 and twice adapted to film, The Quiet American remains a terrifiying and prescient portrait of innocence at large. This Graham Greene Centennial Edition includes a new introductory essay by Robert Stone.

the movie is also well done.

[BlackVoid]

Re: Fifth Generation of Warfare (5GW) is "indistinguishable from magic"

Where to buy this book in ebook format and DRM-free?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Remembering the Past

we are in a war economy......
next up

http://www.defenseinnovationmarketpl...Initiative.pdf


http://breakingdefense.com/2014/11/h...-technologies/

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/12/d...out-some-help/


whos going to run the DOD just nominated Mr Carter?

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/...means-more-war

Logical and conventional thinking for areas of focus to attempt to maintain overmatch against peer/near-peer countries moving forward.

Unfortunately, it largely neglects two future guarantees:

1)A healthy percentage of military equipment in the US inventory has burned through it's useful life faster than originally planned and it is being ignored or payed forward like a rather expensive hot potato.

2)Beyond some opportunities with sensor miniaturisation(particularly cost) and swarming, none of this will help the US to improve the stability and security of current and future mega ghettos…which is where the people increasingly live(well over 50% of global population living in urban centre of >1 million, likely to be 70% in the next 1-2 decades).

Wars happen where people live.

-----

The technology in question will certainly help to ensure things like SLOCs(Sea Lanes of Control/Communication) which provide leverage for influence/control over national/regional/global trade.

But I think we will be facing situations where superpowers will be able to continue to influence and control sovereign states via conventional high tech power projection.

But they will be increasingly unable to influence and control un/under-governed mega ghettos of the present and future.

I reckon nothing would frighten a contemporary western commander more than having to develop a plan to seize/control(politically impossible and militarily untenable) or even just assist/influence a host nation's efforts to gain effective governance of current/future mega-ghettos where everyone is increasingly living.

It reminds me a bit of McNamara's Whiz Kids of the 1960's.

Some of that is totally relevant and forward thinking.

Some of it is absolutely asinine as found when very, very expensive efforts were made to penetrate the jungles of Southeast Asia with remote sensors. And while the ability for sensors to penetrate jungle canopy has made leaps and bounds in the last 40+ years, it's still imperfect.

It took people to do it.

The urban jungle, particularly in the developing world where Google Street view can't or doesn't exist, is going to be an increasing problem for both host nation government and global powers who desire influence over parts of it.

[bill]

Re: Remembering the Past

Afghanistan, longest war in US history . . . serial invasions of Iraq . . . numerous smaller incursions, many unacknowledged (including soldiers' combat status withheld for official denial purposes) . . . no definitive 'winning' closure.

Is it any wonder . . . .

we are in a war economy......
next up

http://www.defenseinnovationmarketpl...Initiative.pdf


http://breakingdefense.com/2014/11/h...-technologies/

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/12/d...out-some-help/


whos going to run the DOD just nominated Mr Carter?

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/...means-more-war

[don]

Re: Remembering the Past

Afghanistan, longest war in US history . . . serial invasions of Iraq . . . numerous smaller incursions, many unacknowledged (including soldiers' combat status withheld for official denial purposes) . . . no definitive 'winning' closure.

Is it any wonder . . . .

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Remembering the Past

http://www.militarytimes.com/longfor.../?sf34440316=1

That's a pretty good article and tells a story that aligns with what I'm hearing from my friends in the service in the US.

Due to the incredible advances in trauma care(the loss of life from massive bleeding and tension pnuemothorax have dropped considerably) battlefield fatalities have dramatically reduced compared to previous conflicts.

But the horrific IED blast injuries will result in huge long term financial costs to support the wounded long-term, as well as the genuine but nebulous costs associated with traumatic brain injuries(TBIs) down to lower levels including folks involved on the periphery of IEDs as well as explosive breaching.

To me, I get the sense the US military is heading into a post Vietnam funk.

Not a change from conscription to professional, but a change from war-fighting by many(anyone in teeth arms in Iraq mid decade), to war-fighting by only some(JSOC/SOCOM).

So not a peacetime military as such, but one that is pulling back from a decade plus of high tempo combat operations.

There are always big problems and attitude shifts required in that shift.

The greatest value acquired is in the institutional knowledge hard earned since 2001, which walks in and out the door every day(much like companies on civvie street). Retention of subject matter experts and proven commanders is going to be critically important and sounds like there is room for improvement.

What is not mentioned is the wear and tear on gear, to match the wear and tear on people(and the high future costs associated with broken bodies/minds).

When weapon systems, aircraft, and vehicles are designed, planned, procured....they have a measurable life.

The "lives" of these systems are planned out decades and include contingency operations and even wartime hard use.

But I doubt the plans conducted in the 70's/80's/90's included anything near the extremely high tempo and hard use of a large chunk of the US inventory over the last 14+ years.

There will be some very serious lifecycle replacement(probably sustainability of increasingly old equipment) issues and costs in the next decade or two because of what happened since 2001.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Remembering the Past

is morale a factor in these raids?

US officials have defended the commando raid in south Yemen early on Saturday that led to the deaths of two hostages, saying they did not know the soon-to-be-freed South African teacher Pierre Korkie was being held at the site they attacked.

Korkie and a US photojournalist, Luke Somers, were in the same room and were apparently killed by their captors when a US special forces squad was within 100 metres of their mountain compound.

A senior US administration official said intelligence experts had concluded, before the raid, that two hostages were being held side-by-side. “One was assessed to be Luke Somers,” the senior US official told the Guardian. “We did not know who the second hostage was.”

While Somers’ fate had remained unclear, a South African charity said it had been close to finalising a deal to free Korkie, who was seized along with his wife, Yolande, by al-Qaida in May 2013. The couple had been in Yemen for four years with two teenage children; he worked as a teacher and she did relief work. Yolande was released without ransom in January after negotiations conducted by Gift of the Givers, a South African charity.

The charity said on Saturday: “The psychological and emotional devastation to Yolande and her family will be compounded by the knowledge that Pierre was to be released by al-Qaida tomorrow.”

News of the deaths was still sinking in in Sana’a. Baraa Shiban, an activist who campaigns against US counter-terror policy in Yemen and met Somers during Yemen’s 2011 uprising, said: “He was a victim of the same process that he himself was trying to advocate against. I knew his politics. He was anti-drones, he advocated for the Guantánamo families.” This, he said, made the way he died particularly difficult to bear. “It hurts that he got caught in the middle of this mess.”

Gregory D. Johnsen, the author of a book on Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen who was nearly kidnapped on the same street in Sana where Mr. Somers was abducted last year, said he was troubled by the United States’ approach.

“When the U.S. unilaterally takes all the other options off the table and leaves itself with only the military option, then if that goes wrong, the results can be tragic,” he said. “There are a lot of different ways to negotiate even without paying ransom. It calls for innovative diplomacy.”

It was the second attempt by United States forces to rescue Mr. Somers from Yemen in less than two weeks.

The challenges of distance, weather, equipment failure, pinpoint intelligence — and unpredictable actions by the adversary — are ever-present.

A raid in July by Special Operations forces against an Islamic State safe house in Syria also failed to free American hostages, who apparently had been relocated in advance of the mission.

In the case of the raid Saturday, the intelligence on Mr. Somers’s location was accurate.

The compound, which was located in a remote, hilly area, surrounded by scrub, was guarded by about half a dozen gunmen, already jittery about a possible repeat of the previous rescue attempt. And the approach to the compound was sufficiently difficult that the commandos had virtually no element of surprise, which they typically plan for and rely on. The commandos were detected when they were less than 100 yards from the compound. It was not clear what alerted the militants.

“It was very difficult to catch them by enough surprise to prevent them from having time to execute the hostages,” said the senior military official, who monitored the operation overnight Friday into Saturday.

Heavily armed and wearing night-vision goggles, the commandos breached the compound and knew in which building the hostages were being held. But their advantage was already lost: The commandos saw one of the militants go into a small building long enough to shoot the hostages and leave. By the time the Americans reached the building, the militants had already fled. The commandos recovered Mr. Somers and Mr. Korkie, who were both gravely wounded. One of the hostages — officials did not say which one — died on the Osprey ride to the amphibious assault ship Makin Island, from which the rescue mission was launched off the Yemeni coast.

The other hostage died on the operating table after reaching the ship.

In the village where the rescue attempt took place, in the southern province of Shabwah, a tribal leader, Tarek al-Daghari al-Awlaki, said the American commandos had raided four houses, killing at least two militants but also eight civilians. He said that one of the civilians killed was a 70-year-old man.

“The shooting caused panic,” Mr. Daghari said. “Nine of the dead are from my tribe.” He added that villagers had spent the rest of Saturday burying the dead.

Local people said 11 people had died, including a woman and a 10-year-old child.

The successful hostage rescue mission(I think it was 8 hostages from the region recovered) less than 2 weeks ago reportedly just missed Somers and Korkie(moved 2 days prior), hence the followup mission reportedly based on short notice threat of execution to one or both of the hostages, even though negotiations were underway.

I don't know, I wasn't there, but some things to consider:

1)Who was conducting the hostage negotiations for Somers/Korkie? A charity like on Yolande's behalf?

If so, were they effectively liaising with diplomats? It's an open secret that a good few countries pay ransoms, some more easily/rapidly than others.

This can lead to an escalating cycle of kidnappings/ransoms(Japanese in Mexico in the 90's, everyone in Iraq in the last decade).

It can also lead to incidents when efforts are not deconflicted such as what happened with the successful rescue of Giuliana Sgrena by Italian forces(ransom paid) in Iraq in 2005.

2)Was the claimed death of a 70 year old man, woman, and 10 year old child, and 5-8 additional civilians if the first 3 were not combatants verified?

Often times(but clearly not always) these civilian(elderly, women, children) casualty figures are inflated and used for propaganda purposes.

3)There are consequences for failure. In the Linda Norgrove hostage rescue it was found she died due to wounds sustained by a grenade thrown by a rescuer. It is believed this had career ending consequences for the rescuer in question.

Australia's Director of Military Prosecutions charged 3 commandos serving in Afghanistan a few years ago for using a grenade to clear a room from which they were being fired on by an insurgent. Unfortunately, several children were killed.

There would have been literally thousands of kill/capture type raids conducted in the region in the last 10+ years.

In terms of the mechanics of conducting such raids, there's never been a higher level of capability. Hostage rescue missions would be at the very top of the pyramid, making up only a very small percentage of those thousands of raids.

Sometimes things don't go your way.

Bad intelligence or the "time and space" going against you in being able to do anything about it.

Sometimes you get compromised by a dog, goat herder, or a bad guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sometimes mistakes happen.

As far as morale being a factor, it certainly could be, but I reckon on the part of the Yemen government. The successful raid conducted two weeks ago was advertised as a "joint" Yemen/US raid.

Morale could also be a factor for the other side regarding the local casualty count. If true, it would be more than a bit troubling.

I think it's safe to say it was US led, but probably sold locally as Yemen led/US supported mission to strengthen perceptions of Yemen security force capabilities and indirectly Yemen government governance.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Remembering the Past

Double Post

[don]

Re: Remembering the Past

is morale a factor in these raids?

US officials have defended the commando raid in south Yemen early on Saturday that led to the deaths of two hostages, saying they did not know the soon-to-be-freed South African teacher Pierre Korkie was being held at the site they attacked.

Korkie and a US photojournalist, Luke Somers, were in the same room and were apparently killed by their captors when a US special forces squad was within 100 metres of their mountain compound.

A senior US administration official said intelligence experts had concluded, before the raid, that two hostages were being held side-by-side. “One was assessed to be Luke Somers,” the senior US official told the Guardian. “We did not know who the second hostage was.”

While Somers’ fate had remained unclear, a South African charity said it had been close to finalising a deal to free Korkie, who was seized along with his wife, Yolande, by al-Qaida in May 2013. The couple had been in Yemen for four years with two teenage children; he worked as a teacher and she did relief work. Yolande was released without ransom in January after negotiations conducted by Gift of the Givers, a South African charity.

The charity said on Saturday: “The psychological and emotional devastation to Yolande and her family will be compounded by the knowledge that Pierre was to be released by al-Qaida tomorrow.”

News of the deaths was still sinking in in Sana’a. Baraa Shiban, an activist who campaigns against US counter-terror policy in Yemen and met Somers during Yemen’s 2011 uprising, said: “He was a victim of the same process that he himself was trying to advocate against. I knew his politics. He was anti-drones, he advocated for the Guantánamo families.” This, he said, made the way he died particularly difficult to bear. “It hurts that he got caught in the middle of this mess.”

Gregory D. Johnsen, the author of a book on Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen who was nearly kidnapped on the same street in Sana where Mr. Somers was abducted last year, said he was troubled by the United States’ approach.

“When the U.S. unilaterally takes all the other options off the table and leaves itself with only the military option, then if that goes wrong, the results can be tragic,” he said. “There are a lot of different ways to negotiate even without paying ransom. It calls for innovative diplomacy.”

It was the second attempt by United States forces to rescue Mr. Somers from Yemen in less than two weeks.

The challenges of distance, weather, equipment failure, pinpoint intelligence — and unpredictable actions by the adversary — are ever-present.

A raid in July by Special Operations forces against an Islamic State safe house in Syria also failed to free American hostages, who apparently had been relocated in advance of the mission.

In the case of the raid Saturday, the intelligence on Mr. Somers’s location was accurate.

The compound, which was located in a remote, hilly area, surrounded by scrub, was guarded by about half a dozen gunmen, already jittery about a possible repeat of the previous rescue attempt. And the approach to the compound was sufficiently difficult that the commandos had virtually no element of surprise, which they typically plan for and rely on. The commandos were detected when they were less than 100 yards from the compound. It was not clear what alerted the militants.

“It was very difficult to catch them by enough surprise to prevent them from having time to execute the hostages,” said the senior military official, who monitored the operation overnight Friday into Saturday.

Heavily armed and wearing night-vision goggles, the commandos breached the compound and knew in which building the hostages were being held. But their advantage was already lost: The commandos saw one of the militants go into a small building long enough to shoot the hostages and leave. By the time the Americans reached the building, the militants had already fled. The commandos recovered Mr. Somers and Mr. Korkie, who were both gravely wounded. One of the hostages — officials did not say which one — died on the Osprey ride to the amphibious assault ship Makin Island, from which the rescue mission was launched off the Yemeni coast.

The other hostage died on the operating table after reaching the ship.

In the village where the rescue attempt took place, in the southern province of Shabwah, a tribal leader, Tarek al-Daghari al-Awlaki, said the American commandos had raided four houses, killing at least two militants but also eight civilians. He said that one of the civilians killed was a 70-year-old man.

“The shooting caused panic,” Mr. Daghari said. “Nine of the dead are from my tribe.” He added that villagers had spent the rest of Saturday burying the dead.

Local people said 11 people had died, including a woman and a 10-year-old child.

[vt]

Re: Remembering the Past

http://www.militarytimes.com/longfor.../?sf34440316=1

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Remembering the Past

I think there might be some problems with this, in terms of an end to local acceptance of vaccination drives and other world-health related concerns. If it is known that every westerner is a potential agent, you've got a seriously hard problem preventing less developed nations from turning into breeding grounds for everything from AIDS to ebola.

I can certainly understand a desire for unlimited tactical intelligence, but surely you agree that a full strategic analysis might extend beyond the military and even diplomatic realms? A chance to eliminate forever something like polio or malaria is not a temporary achievement for a nation, but a permanent one for all mankind! Is the loss of these opportunities really just acceptable collateral damage?

Something to bear in mind is that the US already deploys US Army SF and FBI agents to many countries around the world on a regular basis, possibly even the majority.

A lot of that work is capacity building training/liaising with local counterparts. It's not always(or at times often) about shooting people in the face directly or indirectly "by, with, thru" the local counterparts.

I see it as an additional layer of coal-face diplomacy that works beneath conventional diplomacy which rarely, if ever, shows it's head or knows it's way around the mega-ghettos of today and the even bigger/badder ones of the future.

A State Department FSO working out of an embassy would be very hard pressed in terms of training/experience/latitude to meet directly with the Boss Tweed of West Lagos to facilitate US resources used to mitigate an Ebola outbreak, for example. The kind of unconventional diplomats I'm talking about would have a better chance of facilitating it.

I'd honestly never considered the possibility of a city that could swallow the whole US military without a trace. I rather assumed that even non-nuclear carpet-bombing could pretty much wipe out any city. It certainly has in the past.

David Kilcullen's book "Out of the Mountains" is a good primer of how and why you will never see a western army seize and hold a current or future mega-ghetto.

The force structure, political will, societal patience and appetite for losses, and money needed to do so doesn't exist.

Will the west still intervene when and where it thinks appropriate? Yup.....but I'm thinking it will be very small and very discrete cross functional teams that will be disclosed, but maybe not publicly(or at least immediately).

Like a mashup of Gangs of New York, Bladerunner, and Soylent Green.

But I take your point. A military solution cannot be limited in scope without intelligence. My concern is not with limiting the scope of the Intelligence directorate, however, but rather the Operations. (In particular, those operations that have nothing to do with gathering information, but everything to do with eliminating targets.)

What's interesting is how when you have state on state violence and artillery barrages with massive casualties, while horrifying and distasteful, is accepted as part of conventional war.

But a drone strike discretely targeting an unlawful combatant, also horrifying and distasteful, is considered unacceptable in an irregular war.

Definitions of war are backwards.

Conventional(regular) wars are relatively rare and uncommon

Irregular wars are extremely common, we have been surrounded by them constantly our entire lives.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Remembering the Past

Thanks, lakedaemonian. It was indeed the mention of the Act of Killing that brought up some dark and long-dormant thoughts, which may have permeated my writing here.

Dehumanization and detachment are certainly candidates for the most chilling, and perhaps even the most damaging, consequences of war. Both of these can be achieved with frightening ease in a day in Riceville, IA or Palo Alto, CA, but for some segment of any society, they become inescapable in an environment steeped in fear and desperation, when shadows make people disappear into the night.

And while the Act of Killing might be one of the most vivid documentations, it is not the first, and won't be the last. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is another one. There is no terror so great that it cannot be brought about by perfectly sane, mild-mannered people going about their daily lives, quite confident that they are good people doing their best in a difficult world.

You point to technology as an amplifier of this disconnect, and I agree. I also recall agreeing with at least some of your arguments on the topic of drones. The increased asymmetry of warfare presents a very real moral hazard. While poison gas and biological weapons are purportedly banned due to the heinous nature of their mechanism, another key benefit of the ban is that these extremely asymmetric weapons are no longer available to amplify the moral hazard of war. Is it perhaps time to view sufficiently asymmetric weapons - regardless of their mechanism - as inappropriate for that reason alone? While this isn't the "linked revolution in human behavior and development" that one might hope for, perhaps it could be made functionally equivalent in the interim?


It seems like the next obvious technology-driven update to the treaties of war already in the world.


I'll be honest, though. I don't really expect a unilateral disarmament of these tools as a political possibility. It would lead directly to greater casualties for the same projection of force. What leader has ever said, "this fight is necessary, but let's do it in a way that costs more of our soldiers their lives, just so we really feel its impact too?"

I certainly don't want to put words in your mouth, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but as someone who spends at least part of your time making soldiers more efficient than they already are, I can only assume that you might resist this as well. I don't mean to get personal here, my point is really that the entire history of war has been a relentless drive toward maximizing the very asymmetry of impact we are talking about. Increasing the combat effectiveness of each single soldier represents a push on the same continuum, and in the same direction, as increased technological leverage. So could the services, or their civilian leadership, realistically choose to unilaterally reverse this historical trend? If there is a bright line that qualitatively distinguishes these force multipliers (in terms of their moral hazard) I am not yet able to see it.


So instead, perhaps the challenge is to find a way to offset the newfound ease of killing with a higher moral cost, through some other external structural reform.


I suggest that perhaps a radical increase in transparency might serve a role here. While it is troubling when drones are used at all, it is truly frightening that they are used by the CIA, presumably in the sorts of missions that will never be known. That a person or location, somewhere in the world can be targeted, and simply turned into an explosion of dust by a barely-visible speck in the sky, with no one ever having to acknowledged that this has even happened is more than worrying. It is the technological equivalent of the "disappearing" of people, only without any limitations on geography or physical presence.

I know that my opinions are colored. I believe you mentioned, in an earlier post, "wannabe Einsatzgruppen." As someone whose grandfather vanished without a trace one day, presumably to the originals of these, I feel pretty strongly that this isn't a good thing to permit in the world. But I think that even setting aside that personal bias, this could be something reasonable people can agree on.

Is it perhaps time to restrict the most advanced tools of war into the exclusive domain of publicly-acknowledged strikes? To radically curtail the capabilities of the less-acountable services?

After all, other technological advances came with this exact limitation, based on their nature. A nation couldn't, for example, deploy a nuclear weapon and expect to maintain deniability. I would argue that this is probably a major reason that we haven't experienced a nuclear attack since WWII. And while ascertaining the origins of chemical and biological agents isn't always trivial, at least the mechanism of death is evident to a physician, and the list of organizations possessing the capability is finite.

Perhaps it is time to consider the fragments of a drone-dropped guided munition in that same category of war-crime evidence, when the shards are unaccounted for, or missing attendant legal process.

I like your post, but I think it's too aspirational and lacks the practicality needed for the grey world we live in.

I think the doctrinal use of drones is actually based on an iTulip perspective.

The huge hourly operating cost combined with the huge cost of precision weapons when employed( not even factoring in the drastically reduced lifecycle availability for contingency operations) of say an F15E Strike Eagle orbiting day and night in Afghanistan is simply staggering.

I'd be guessing something like $100,000 an hour......possibly far higher when factoring in expeditionary logistics cost per hour flown.

Then it's another $25,000 up to several hundred $K if a weapon is released at a target.

In order to destroy 2-3 guys paid $500 to emplace a $100 IED.

It's economically unviable for conventional high dollar weapon systems/sensor platforms to continue spending hundreds to thousands of $ per enemy $ spent.

So either you don't do it(which I think most on this forum would prefer to see), or you attempt to find a less insane ratio of dollars spent to negate every enemy dollar spent.

Off the shelf drone technology and off the shelf weapon systems that provide a much improved "bang for the buck" against asymmetric enemies(insurgents and lower order sovereign state enemies) is something that is here to stay.

I'm a huge believer in representative public oversight of even the most important and sensitive clandestine/covert programs.

When it comes to drones used directly(missile payload) or to enable a strike(say a raid) there's not enough time to allow public debate or even consensus if you're dealing with a legitimate bad guy who knows better than to stay in one place too long.

I don't see drones as evil......just like firearms....they are simply tools.

If my kid goes missing and a search and rescue drone is able to find him before he dies of hypothermia where a police helicopter is not an option due to budget and population density...that's a good thing.

If my kid is older and the search and rescue drone is upgraded to include real time mobile phone interception and geolocation capability to track my now older son because of something texted on his phone...that's a bad thing.

It's about the people(who we all know are all too often weak, lazy, and too easily led astray) and robust control measures we put in place.

We will always relentlessly keep producing more efficient tools of all kinds...some of them relate to our ability to surveil and destroy each other.

I think it's a people problem, rather than a tool problem. I don't see us "un-inventing" a tool.

As far as chem/bio/nuclear weapons not being used. It's really not used much recently(outside of small outlier incidents).

Those horrible things can't be "un-invented" and I suspect a few will inevitably attempt to use them again......like in an asymmetric fashion.

There were numerous examples of their use since 2003......I know of 1 person seriously affected by a chemical IED attack in Iraq(I think he may have cooperated with the recent NYT articles on it).

Sadly, asymmetric subcritical use of nuclear materials is pretty likely at some stage, in my amateur opinion.

[astonas]

Re: Remembering the Past

As I understand it, the legislation that encompasses US national security and foreign relations foundation consists of Title 10(military), Title 22(foreign service/State Department), and Title 50(which includes intelligence/covert/clandestine operations and emergency powers).

That would be a good place to start for some insomnia inducing reading.

I do know there's a heated argument and turf war over bridging the gap between it all in the form of specialized military personnel conducting some additional operational scope(with oversight) rather than the cumbersome and convoluted task of falling under CIA for some operational activities such as having to be "sheep dipped" for legal purposes. I believe that had to occur in the Bin Laden raid for example.

As best I can tell, this would mostly involve US Army Special Forces(who spend the majority of their time as culturally immersed and language trained advisors and trainers....like an unofficial parallel diplomatic service).

Where it gets weird is with contractors "green badgers" working directly(and others indirectly) on behalf of US intelligence.

It's not all nebulous and problematic. As it was two CIA "green badgers" and former servicemen who died defending US personnel in Libya, along with the death of two "blue badger" US State Department permanent employees.

Here's some articles that might offer a sense of where things can start to get muddled:

http://www.businessinsider.com/cia-o...ce-2014-1?IR=T

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/wo...nted=all&_r=1&

I can relate to some minor aspects of this. I conducted a number of tours to Afghanistan where I was specifically requested to work as a contractor on behalf of our version of the State Department after a number of incidents occurred that raised the threat level and freedom of movement for our permanent diplomatic personnel at a time when some "halo" nationally associated projects were at risk.

While my total time on the ground pales compared to most folks I know who served there(a few I know spent 6 out of the last 13 in uniform there), my time was almost exclusively 24/7 living and working right amongst the Afghan people, not hiding behind Hescos, razor wire, and machine guns.

There were some high risk areas and boundaries we didn't cross(such as only flying back and forth from Kabul to the Hindu Kush due to high kidnapping risk), but overall it was safe-ish for us if we randomized our schedules and used discretion.

It was like a watered down live action version of one of my favourite books Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean.

And in the conduct of our jobs we would run into all kinds of interesting and unsavory characters and interesting coincidences.

Our job, while adventurous, was not the least bit covert or clandestine. But we were living in and visiting communities and accessing local nationals overtly in ways that is hard to put a value on.

Serendipity comes into play, such as finding yourself having lunch with 2 strangers(amongst other acquaintances), 1 of which with great family influence, who were far from home and hailed from a very insular provincial village where 30 Americans were killed in a single contact. There's value in such overt and open source coincidental opportunity.

But I wonder about the risk of disconnect where oversight exists for "blue badgers" and in house operations.

But does that always apply consistently with contracted personnel and contracted operational activities?

In the case of Robert Levinson(CIA contractor missing since 2007, after a ridiculously ill advised trip to Iran) it might be argued that the CIA possibly failed to follow it's own internal rules in the management of contractor operational latitude/operational approval and payment.

I reckon there's legitimate concern for the potential for risk stemming from direct contracted operational activity.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. The muddled line between intelligence gathering and military operations is clearly a very rich subject, on which you shed much light. I suppose that while I do see the increased use of unaccountable contractors to be a troubling trend, I see those generally as limited in scope to their task, and hence also as a (comparatively) limited threat to broader society.

The greater concern (to me) is the degree to which the CIA can operate extralegally or illegally. While some of this may be achieved by keeping an arms-length with contractors, I suppose I have come to assume that a some portion of this must be performed in-house. (Perhaps it a bad assumption, but I guess I assumed that while the intelligence side of the house could be outsourced, operations would be more closely held.)

Given disclosures about the gaps between what is revealed to congressional oversight committees and what is stated publicly, I have far less faith than before that even the portions disclosed to oversight bear much resemblance to what is actually happening.

I guess I have some insomnia-inducing reading to do, should I want to know more about the intended checks on clandestine power. Thanks for providing the reference.

But I also think one of the most underutilized resources for intelligence collection, particularly in dealing with asymmetric opponents, is ethical overt open source networking with NGOs for atmospherics , confirmation of other sources, and targeting for new sources.

If I had my way, I'd recruit several hundred US Army SF and FBI agents in their 40's/50's/60's with a few decades of experience, put them through language/culture coursing(most will have already done it repeatedly earlier in their careers), and deploy them around the world to live in local communities working in arms length partnership with the conventional State Department diplomatic infrastructure and just overtly network the hell out of the place with local military/law enforcement and local governance(think 3rd world versions of Tammany Hall and local political machines) and map the legitimate and illicit networks. And leave them there.

There's already heaps of retired guys permanently living(and often married to locals) in the developing world in places they trained in uniform. Why not leverage that existing community trend by vetting and shaping it?

I think there might be some problems with this, in terms of an end to local acceptance of vaccination drives and other world-health related concerns. If it is known that every westerner is a potential agent, you've got a seriously hard problem preventing less developed nations from turning into breeding grounds for everything from AIDS to ebola.

I can certainly understand a desire for unlimited tactical intelligence, but surely you agree that a full strategic analysis might extend beyond the military and even diplomatic realms? A chance to eliminate forever something like polio or malaria is not a temporary achievement for a nation, but a permanent one for all mankind! Is the loss of these opportunities really just acceptable collateral damage?

If something horrific happened in Lagos, Nigeria the solution could never be to deploy troops, invited or not. That city(and many like it around the world) would swallow the entire US military without a trace.

The effective answer, if it involved anything beyond just watching from a distance, would likely be a very small mashup cross functional team driven by accurate ground truth.

I'd honestly never considered the possibility of a city that could swallow the whole US military without a trace. I rather assumed that even non-nuclear carpet-bombing could pretty much wipe out any city. It certainly has in the past.

But I take your point. A military solution cannot be limited in scope without intelligence. My concern is not with limiting the scope of the Intelligence directorate, however, but rather the Operations. (In particular, those operations that have nothing to do with gathering information, but everything to do with eliminating targets.)