Mass Insanity: Latest Trend in Army Doctrine

[Surferbeetle]

Slap,

On the lighter side of the fusion of biology and engineering...Cyborgs If they actually pull that one off there will be trouble:

Pentagon’s Project ‘Avatar’: Same as the Movie, but With Robots Instead of Aliens, By Katie Drummond Email Author February 16, 2012 | 4:51 pm, Danger Room

In the agency’s $2.8 billion budget for 2013, unveiled on Monday, they’ve allotted $7 million for a project titled “Avatar.” The project’s ultimate goal, not surprisingly, sounds a lot like the plot of the same-named (but much more expensive) flick.

According the agency, “the Avatar program will develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier’s surrogate.”

Apollo 11 Tech - Kalman Filtering, systems control via prediction, observation, and correction. Still high tech for '80's era hedge funds, now run on home computers.

[Bill Moore]

Systems rule .....BUT Systems Engineering can get you into a lot of trouble when you try to apply Engineering against Biology.

Mankind has always done that, remember the 6 Million Dollar Man

That is closer to reality everyday, and now we're able to map genes and even execute genetic engineering. Nanotechnology and artificial intelligence will take into a brave new world that could in fact dominate biological systems. We missed it, but our grand kids may be turn out to be super warriors (cyborg types), or they may all get killed do to the development a superinfection that is created in a lab in someone' garage.

Tying it back to the thread, there is a serious danger of missing the boat when you tie your future doctrine and force structure based on the last 10 years of warfare.

[Bob's World]

In the SecDef's most recent strategic guidance there is a section on large scale coin operations that directs us to capture the lessons learned from the past 10 years from these operations (as in, don't just flush the experience, write it down so we don't do this process again); but then in italics makes it very clear that we will not resource the force for these types of operations as we move forward.

I think the Army is working hard to leverage that statement on lessons learned to validate force structure into the coming cuts. I also think they are reading the strategy in a light most favorable to them (as are SOCOM and all the Services), but are picking the wrong missions and the wrong "lessons" to hang their hopes upon. God knows there are few men who have spent more time dedicated to waging the current fight than the current Army Chief. He's earned his bias. But we still need to get to the force we need with the focus we need; and in most cases that is not the force we want with the focus we want.

[Fuchs]

But we still need to get to the force we need (...)

"Foreign policy" recently had an article about the perceived #1 threat to the United States; Iran with 32% in the poll.
That basically means there's no real-world threat at all.

Wrong continent, small 1970's coastal navy, worn-out 1970's air force, an army that's technologically largely stuck in the 1960's, much smaller economy and population, little technology base, no nuclear weapons and no nuclear weapons program (according to Mr. Panetta!), no missiles that reach even halfway tot eh United States, no history of attacking other countries for centuries, no history of attacking other countries for even more histories if you discard a case where a foreign ruler did it.

The force you need is the National Guard...you'll get way more than you need, no matter how the doctrine and budget discussions in Washington end.