(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Why take the meat? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-10-23  

Let’s imagine a modern tank. Huge amounts of armor, necessitating huge amounts of power to move it. The weight of the armor alone adds tons to the tank; but why is it so heavily armored?

The simple answer: To protect the fragile meat inside the tank, which is there in order to drive, fire the weapons, and load the cannon.

Now imagine a tank only a foot tall, carrying the same armament. The crewman who loads the cannon is replaced by an automatic loader, already used in certain tanks. The three man crew is replaced by a seven man crew: A commanding officer, a weapons officer, a communications officer, and four observers.

The difference is that the whole crew is operating the tank from a remote location. The tank is therefore much lighter, smaller, stealthier, and equipped with a larger number of crew, which makes it more effective. Because there is no need to protect the fragile meat, the tank can be much more lightly armored, making it much less expensive. And with the addition of artificial intelligence, the tank can react much faster. Being smaller, it is less vulnerable. Existing wire guided technology can make interfering with its electronics much more difficult.

So-called “drone“ technology has been around for decades. The United States should have led the world in this kind of technology, and recent warfare, even in the last 20 years, has shown that this technology is going to take over the battlefield. The war in Ukraine has made this clear, but other recent conflicts, such as the Turkish slaughter of Syrian and Russian personnel a few years ago and the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, entirely dominated by Azerbaijani drones mostly supplied by Turkey have made this abundantly clear.

And yet… The United States is still building unbelievably expensive aircraft carriers that, at this time, are incredibly vulnerable to drones of the simplest type.

Imagine a slow-moving submarine, completely uncrewed, hiding stealthily near the bottom of the Persian Gulf. Because it doesn’t need life-support, it can stay there a very long time. As an American battle group moves above it, it releases 100 small super-cavitating missiles, which reach the ships above them in a few seconds.

Do you think this is impossible? it just hasn’t happened yet. When it does, we’re going to find out how completely useless aircraft carriers are, and how impossible it is to defend them against drones.

“What about the industry? Thousands of people will lose jobs!” I can hear the complaints already. Those people who are involved in making very expensive obsolete weapons need to look at the way that Ukraine has eliminated the Russian navy in the black sea. It’s happening right now, but the voices of the captains of industry are too loud, the profits are too large, the companies make too much money to shut them down easily and bring them into the 21st century.

The war in Ukraine has made this unbelievably obvious, but I don’t think the United States is going to catch up that soon. this war has made it very clear that the inexpensive drone is going to replace the expensive human-crewed machine sooner than we think. but the profits driving old – style warfare are too great to be easily abandoned for more effective weapons.

I think the United States is in for an expensive surprise.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/23/2278880/-Why-take-the-meat?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/