Since the end of Gulf War I, in 1991, military forces around the world have been touting the benefits of 'high tech' weaponry. Quicker victories, smaller casualty lists, less overall damage; such things are only the forerunners of war that will hurt no one other than an occasional, unseen, enemy and salve the conscience of those who oppose war "but, well just this once as long as you're not too messy about it and I can enjoy the fruits of victory without acknowledging said victory.HmHm. That smacks of demagoguery and pontification. Ah, well, let it pass.
The point is that there is quite a lot of high tech and we need to decide if it is a good or a bad thing.
Some of the bad things are:
1) V-22 Osprey A couple of decades in R&D now, still not operational, many promises, little delivery and a fair number of friendly dead due to crashes. 2) Smart bombs. A completely misnamed contraption, there's nothing 'smart' about them. They get to their targets strictly at the behest of a controller somewhere, by following a laser dot, or GPS coordinates, or using mapping technology. The success rate on them has been overrated, frequently falling far short of the promised (by various talking heads) 98% accuracy and they are chillingly expensive. 3) Aegis Cruisers Remember the shoot down of thAirBusian AirBus a few years ago? Not the brightest moment for our Navy. 4) Stealth Aircraft Which are apparently not always as stealthy as we would like, and one of them was shKosovon in Kosovo a few years ago. 5) M-16 Rifle FamouVietNam the VietNam war for its stoppages, lack of stopping power and overall fragility. 6) Bradley fighting vehicle An astonishing tendency to die when hit by tank rounds. This failing was never corrected. 7) GPS receivers Too heavy for the individual troops and not accurate enough. Here are some of the good things. (Strictly at random, I assure you.) 1) V-22 Osprey Everything listed above is true. However, the aircraft does seem to be improving and the potential for use appear to be outweighing the problems.
2) Smart bombs Not smart, but much more accurate than the traditional 'dumb' bombs. May not be hitting the 98th percentile, but they are vastly better than the 3 (or less) percentile of the dumb bomb era. People don't seem to notice that bombing complaints now are about individual targets that have been wrong, instead of carpet bombed towns. Seems like an improvement to me.
