Laser Gunships

New laser gunships are about to make the battlefield easier to take and hold, but will the lessons we teach our enemies come back to haunt us?

By Roy D. Follendore III

February 1, 2006

According to recent news reports (www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/laser.htm) the military is about to produce a devastating weapon for the battlefield. The new C-130H gunship will contain a new powerful laser that will destroy a tremendous number of soft ground targets in milliseconds. The targeting system when combined with thermal computer sights will see and dramatically contribute to every living heat source that is found. Supposedly this new efficiency is supposed to eliminate collateral damage. (I and I am sure many other people have been predicting this since Boeing began the project to 'defend against incoming missiles.")

The truth is that it is the next step in a rapid escalation of battlefield robotic systems that will eventually range widely to suppress occupied territories. It is a matter of time before the more intelligent versions of the Predator technology is driving a new class of autonomous ground force suppression gunship. In the name of eliminating improvised explosives, such gunship's will be sweeping the roads with lasers. In that process, groups of people, including the innocent who happen to aggregate near roads will also be 'swept.' It will dawn on our enemy that the same problem will eventually make the repercussions of new technology moot. How are we Americans to know who we are attempting to assassinate , and who in their right mind will believe us? Sure, at first, because our military controls the media, none of this will of course be accurately represented in the news. Once again, warfare will seem easier and we will always have the notion that we must support and protect our troops to fall back on. To hell with the consequences.

About the only thing that has held our military commanders back from setting off more explosives in civilian populated areas is the notion that "collateral damage," the deliberate destruction of buildings, innocent men, women and children creates a clear political victory for the other side. Our side likes to claim that our enemies deliberately put civilians in harms way. While this may be true, it is also just as true that because of our technology, any military opponent that we face will not be able to maintain the kind of logistics and lines of support that is independent of civilian population. Our technological choices impact on theirs and we end up making the choices for them.

What is also true is that each time we use technology, in ten to twenty years it usually ends up backfiring and being used by our enemies on us. The moment we use a new weapons system, that weapon system becomes a priority to our enemies. To put this in another way, we are essentially teaching those who oppose us new ways to wage war against us. The perfect annotate to a robot will be another robot. There should be no doubt that the robotics war involving the ray-guns of the future are here now and the implications will affect the security and freedom of each and every American. As these terribly impersonal solutions begin to emerge America will not be able blame our enemies for this. We have done it to ourselves because we have underestimate our opponents.

We need to get some battlefield planning people in charge in the Pentagon who have a grasp of technological history and culture as well as engineering.

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