[size=18]Weapons of War Now Include Lightning Guns[/size]The Washington Post is running a lengthy article today about Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems, an Indiana-based company that says its developed a nonlethal weapon that shoots lightning bolts. This article is an in-depth look at a company that's stirred up some controversy on Slashdot in the past. From the article: 'Lightning guns, heat rays, weapons that can make you hear the voice of God. This is what happens when the war on terror meets the entrepreneurial spirit.'
[url=http://slashdot.org/articles/05/08/28/1758228.shtml?tid=126&tid=187]Slas...
Weapons that make you hear the voice of God?
lol that's nothin, I talked to my boss at the pentagon a while back about transformation (the process the dod is going through right now to streamline and rely more on technology) anyway, there are some craaaazy things coming onto the field.
Soon enough there will be no need for regiments, battallions - any of it - since information will be so precise and orchestrated by field navigation devices we will be able to spread out and cut forces dramatically.
Imagine fighting a war like a video game, with a little map in the bottom left hand corner showing where all the friendly and enemy individual units within a 300 mile radius, and being able to call airstrikes directly from the field - from a robot at a base 100 miles away.
crrraaazy
that will only work if only one side has the technology. And only in open terrain. what about street fighting? or riots?
The technologists generally get lost on the fantasy of it all.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
lol actually street fighting and urban warfare is precisely what the intelligence systems are being constructed for. It is the traditional achilles heal of the US army.
Basically the idea is that we already have the intelligence - we just don't have the systems to bring that intelligence to the troops on the field during actual engagement - to that extent warfare of 2005 is exactly like warfare from 2005 BC. We rely on industrial age bureaucratic measures like chain of command structure to try to alleviate some of the communication problems - but the fact of the matter is that Al Qaeda is squarely beating us in the communications department with cell phones and other consumer products.
They can network better.