The Shaming of American Defense Intelligence
Some in the American Defense Intelligence community and Apparatchiks at the State Department have reduced themselves and their trade to a criminal activity. Not by upholding their oaths and performing the expected duties of true US Intelligence Professionals, but by ignoring the oaths they swore, the creeds they were forced to memorize, with little to fear from the system that granted them the right to see secrets that protect people’s lives.
The Military Intelligence Corp’s Creed states, in portion, the following:
To find, know, and never lose the enemy.
With a sense of urgency and of tenacity, professional and physical fitness,
and above all, INTEGRITY, for in truth lies victory.
The last few years have seen a deluge of intelligence leaks, many from senior sources. The Bradley Mannings of the world sit in solitary confinement for breaching America’s trust and breaking the law. And so it should be. But as the saying goes, Privates get into more trouble for losing their rifles than Generals do for losing wars. A series of leaks from the Pentagon and State Department regarding the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities likely has purely political motivations: The current administration does not want to be drawn into another war before the next US election.
Whatever the motivation for the leaks, Americans should be concerned. Not about black helicopters, CIA assassins, and 9-11 conspiracies, but because many in the intelligence community don’t care about their oaths or the lives of Americans or their allies. For votes and political sway, secrets are sold–and no one goes to jail but the Army Private with a lot of personal and psychological problems. I want to see the GS-15 analyst from the Pentagon, or Colonel, hauled off in chains for giving away secrets. I’m not even sure there’s an investigation to try to weed out these creeps. But if they were E3s who inserted a thumb drive into a government computer–to the gallows!
If these people will give secrets to the media, either just to get a thrill of seeing their deeds in the news or to ensure the success of their man in the upcoming elections, imagine what they’d do for a large chunk of change offered by a foreign spy.
The West is fooling itself when it comes to Islam in the Middle East
“All of us here today understand this: We do not fight Islam, we fight against evil.” ~George W. Bush
“We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam,” ~Barack Obama
Surely we are not at war with Islam. If we were, we’d kill everyone who professed the Muslim faith. The problem with Obama’s and Bush’s statements is that they lead many to underestimate the level to which Muslims in the Middle East and Asia support the jihadists. Throwing out statistics that show only a small percentage of Muslims are responsible for the destruction wrought is a bit like saying that because less than 1% of Americans serve in the US Army, only 1% of Americans support the US military. People fail to realize the power of both the “our team” mentality and religion, especially in parts of the world where the people have little hope in this world and nation states have been shamed in war by America and Israel.
Many people throughout the Muslim world gain satisfaction when the US suffers a setback at the hands of extreme Islam. Otherwise, the extremists could not exist to the extant that they do. Polls throughout the Muslim world show that Muslims in the Middle East support the actions of the jihadists. Most Muslims, even those living is Western countries, support Sharia Law, which is fundamentally at odds with Western values. In a poll of 9 countries, Turkey was the only nation in which a majority of the people said that Sharia should not comprise the law in entirety, or be a “source of legislation.” Pakistanis, despite the billions of military and domestic aid poured into their country by the US, continue to despise Americans. Most Pakistanis also wish that bin Laden was not dead.
People shocked at the recent Egyptian election results should study some history. I’ve long said that Egypt was the spiritual center of jihadism, not Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia made good fodder for the Left because of oil. Egypt, in the poll cited above, had the highest percentage of people that believed Sharia should be the sole root of law.
The Muslim countries that have in recent years received the most American aid are Pakistan and Egypt. Approximately 25% of the money used to fund the Pakistani army comes from American aid. The top recipients of US foreign aid in 2011 are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Egypt in that order. Egypt has routinely ranked among the top nations in the world in the number of dollars given to it by the American government.
There appears to be an inverse correlation between the positive views in a country when measured against the amount of US aid provided to it. The argument of course is that America is trying to show these countries that the US is not the enemy. This method of appeasement is failing. In a poll published by the Washington Post shortly after Mubarak stepped down, 79 percent of Egyptians viewed the US negatively, with 20% saying they have a positive view of the US. This is a sharp decline from the Bush years when 30 percent of Egyptians viewed the US positively.
The problems in giving countries like Pakistan and Egypt lots of money are macrocosmic of what I saw happening in local projects in Afghanistan. The money will always find its way into the hands of America’s enemies because they are the most ruthless, devious and aggressive portions of those societies. They also in many cases have a monopoly on violence, something the state usually lays claim to–if it is not a failed state. In Afghanistan the people were not “all in” for the Americans. They really didn’t care that much, at least in areas far from Kabul, if the insurgents blew up a few American Imperialists. They’d take five bucks to plants a bombs and be on their way. In one fell swoop they’d made a month’s wage, killed some infidels, impressed the locals with their “bravery”, and maintained a semblance of national pride.
Egypt’s Mubarak held the forces of Islamic jihad at bay with the only weapon that works against it: Decisive brutality. As with Saudi Arabia, Egypt was a police state, as much because of the extremists as Mubarak. Only with extreme vigilance could the Egyptian government survive. Frankly, Mubarak may have been the West’s only hope in Egypt, but starry-eyed Westerners with a Democracy fetish ran him off, unleashing a hoard of militants, radicals and young men electrified with a rage whose dynamo was built in 1967 and 1973 during the humiliating defeats of the Egyptian Army at the hands of the Israelis. The effect of these defeats upon the Arab psyche cannot be overstated.
The Arab Spring has generated nothing resembling Western democracy and displays brilliantly the weakness of Democracy itself: People can vote for any horrific idea they choose. Hitler was democratically elected. Muslims have voted and acted exactly how we should have expected them to. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists now hold power. The Salafists in Egypt hold the same views as al-Qaeda and Hamas. Christians are trying to leave the country, fearing for their safety.
The revolutions in Egypt and Libya were hardly induced by only few extremists. In fact,it seems the revolutions enjoyed the backing of millions upon millions of extremists. It is the same sort of thing we saw in Nazi Germany. Many Germans were not Nazis or did not take part in the actual fighting. But most of them wanted to see the Nazis win. And so it is with Muslims in Libya, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. The Muslims there overwhelmingly want to thrash Israel and the United States in any manner they can. If the terror proxies can trounced by the hyperpower or the Jewish state, we can of course expect the “innocent” population of “moderate” muslims to melt back into the woodwork.
Islam unifies people against Israel and the West. As Mark Steyn writes in his book, America Alone, the draw of Western “McWorld” to the average Arab male is vastly overstated. Secularism is about as un-motivational as a Rosie O’donnell workout video. It is meaninglessness and provides no promise of power or life after death, no cloak of righteousness; something that means far more to a poor 23 year old man in Cairo than does the promise of flipping burgers.
Now Israel has a monstrous number of problems on its hand, all coming to bear at once. Iran wants the bomb and is not far off from getting it. Egyptians are muttering that they want the Camp David Peace Accord “adjusted.” 20,000 surface-to-air missiles are missing from Qaddafi’s stockpiles. The current American president’s negative comments about Netanyahu were caught on an open mic.
The vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East are not jihadists or terrorists. But most of them support the actions of extremist Islam when those actions are directed against Westerners or Israelis. Our money and McDonald’s cannot possibly fill the same void that is filled by Islam. And Democracy, as with any form of government, is only as good as the people that comprise it.
So what is the answer? Does America have to kill every last Muslim? Not any more than it had to kill every last German or Japanese. America has only to decisively defeat the front-line troops of Jihad. But decisive victory may no longer be something the West is capable of, despite its overwhelming superiority in almost every facet of military and economic might.
The Arab Spring has not created Arab states that are more stable or less violent. It has provided kindling for another 100 years of Jihadist immolation. Our children’s children will see The Long War continue.
What if Israel attacks Iran?
Rumors are flying that the recent Israeli swap of over a 1000 Palestinians in exchange for one Israeli soldier is a prelude to an Israeli attack on Iran. The hypothesis states that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted to ensure the safety of the captive soldier before taking aggressive steps against Hamas’s sponsor, Iran.
What we can probably be certain of is that Israel wants to attack Iran’s growing nuclear facilities. After all, Israel already destroyed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. Interestingly, Syria didn’t protest the destruction, most probably because doing so would have been an acknowledgement of nuclear ambitions. But there are a couple of key differences between the problem with Iran, and the growing Syrian problem in 2007.
First, America has a different president in the White House who has made it clear that he does not want Israel to preemptively strike Iran without an international mandate. The relationship between Obama and Netanyahu is reportedly frosty. What would Obama do should Israel strike Iran? Suppose America actually withdrew its diplomats in protest, or significantly reduced aid. This could encourage Israel’s enemies to attack, sensing a weakening relationship between Israel and her American protectorate. Egypt presents a worrisome problem. Things are getting so bad there that some Egyptians are demanding the military hand over power to civilian leadership. The Egyptian military may feel that war with Israel would serve as a distraction from growing internal unrest. The Egyptian government could use an attack on Iran as an excuse for Egyptian aggression. This is a truly frightening thought as the future of much of the Arab world remains liquid after the Arab spring, and war against Israel could serve to unify a fractured Arabia.
Secondly, Iran, obviously, is not Syria. Iran’s tendrils run distant and deep through the Middle East and Central Asia. Iran has meddled in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, and Bahrain, among other places. They have promoted terrorism throughout the world, and even planned the assassination of the Saudi diplomat to the US, most likely in response to the Saudi’s helping crush unrest in Bahrain. Iran has oil and lots of it. They have the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, at least temporarily, which would skyrocket oil prices all over the world. The announcement that America will withdraw all of its troops from Shia dominated Iraq will give Iran even more leverage in that country; US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta even warned Iran against meddling in Iraq, though his warning seemed to carry the assumption that America would have a long-term presence in the country. This turned out not to be true.
In other words, Iran has real power and Syria does not and did not in 2007.
Israel finds itself in a very difficult position. No one really knows the American position on Iran’s nuclear research. Would President Obama really endorse a cooperative military strike on Iran should Iran reach the zero-hour of nuclear weapons’ development? Or is he merely using populist rhetoric in demanding Israel wait for a coalition of the willing? Since Israel cannot know Obama’s true intentions, it has no way of forming a deterministic model. Perhaps Netanyahu wants to wait until the results of the 2012 American presidential elections are in, hoping that a president more sympathetic to Israeli interests sits in the White House. An attack on Iran would be a huge gamble, but so would allowing Iran to possess nuclear weapons.
The Arab Spring and global insurgency
Recently, Israeli Major-General Eyal Eisenberg predicted an “Arab Winter” in which the revolutions taking place around the Arab world culminate in a multi-front general war against Israel. While it remains to be seen if that’s the case, I take a very dim view of what’s happening in places like Egypt and Libya. Not surprisingly, many on the Left are overjoyed at the Arab Spring. To them, it’s about Muslim hippies fighting The Man. At an intellectual level, they may sense the guile and will of Jihadist Islam, but they willfully ignore this in favor of Coke and a Smile in Muslim lands.
The Arab Spring fits quite nicely into the Global Insurgency theory of modern terrorism. This theory posits that Islamic Salafists (those holding to rigid, medieval views of Islam and life in general), are not only working in local insurgencies, but hope that various uprisings around the world will eventually coalesce into a greater Islamic state. It is similar in ways to Mao’s and Lenin’s doctrines. The local fighters of course do not think at this level, worrying only about their immediate needs. But people at the top of al-Qaeda and similar terrorist organizations do think about the big picture.
We must also consider how clever al-Qaeda’s masterminds are. Jihadists, for instance, have actually studied the homosexual movement in America in order to find out how such a small group can cause so much change on its behalf. I believe that many in the jihadist movement came to recognize the Western mind’s affinity for a popular uprising. In stead of a “top down” jihad, with men like bin Laden and Abu Zarqawi getting lots of media attention, the jihadist movement is now trying to put a grassroots face on its global insurgency. And it’s worked brilliantly. There’s very little to indicate that those who’ve seized power in Egypt and Libya know very much about running a country, but al-Qaeda got what it wanted: the removal of secular Arab leadership from the Sinai Peninsula with all the trappings of state power left intact and with no Western troops on the ground to make sure things turn out the way the West would prefer.
The Palestinian cause represents the great Red Herring for al-Qaeda. Arab despots and terrorist groups need the Palestinians because it keeps the worlds eyes off what those Arab leaders are really doing. No mater what happens, they can keep pointing to Israeli “oppression”, which is why Palestinians never really want to come to the discussion table and cut a real deal; they’re being manipulated and funded by terrorists in order to maintain pressure on Israel. The Palestinians are being used as a classic, global insurgency agitation tool. The Palestinians will continue to sucker-punch Israel. Al-Qaeda et al hopes that Israel will respond in a way which negatively changes world opinion against the Jewish state, thus opening Israel to attack by Arab states without Western intervention.
The Long War gets longer
Moammar Gaddafi has been wrenched from power by a group of rebels whose composition remains ambiguous and possibly quite dangerous.
In the end, it seems like the West is worse off than it was a year ago; the entire Sinai Peninsula is essentially under the control of the combined forces of al-Qaeda in Iraq, The Muslim Brotherhood, and a rag-tag group of insurgents whose loyalties will likely go to the highest bidder. We now have to worry about Gaddafi’s massive stocks of surface-to-air missiles and his alleged loads of chemical weapons. What? WMD you say? The rebels descending on Tripoli have already raided some of the Libyan military’s weapons stores. We must assume that al-Qaeda has operatives stalking the land trying to get their hands on weapons not otherwise easily obtained. After all, the highest numbers of foreign fighters that entered Iraq to join the insurgency were from Libya and one of the Libyan rebel leaders admits to fighting and recruiting for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Without NATO forces on the ground, expect chaos to reign and civil war-lite to be the order of the day in Libya.
Meanwhile, the media largely ignored events in Egypt prior to the recent death of Egyptian security officers in clashes between Palestinians and the IDF. Egyptian prisons were opened up after Mubarak resigned, releasing hundreds if not thousands of hard core jihadists. Many Egyptian police stations are subject to attack and some have been abandoned. The gas pipeline between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai has been attacked 5 times. Yet nary a peep from the media, whom loves a good revolution. A look at history shows bad things happen in Egypt when the jihadists are released from jail, even in an act of goodwill. Sadat paid the price for such folly.
Perhaps most troubling is that Egypt and Libya border one another. While it may not be the Caliphate, it seems the same forces are active in both countries, and their proximity will make whatever plans al-Qaeda has in the region all the more tenable.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and its the elements that are most willing to employ force in the Muslim world that always fill the voids. Fundamentalist Islam has doomed the Muslim world to these options: Either a heavy handed if anti-extremist ruler controls the country with harsh laws and uses of his security forces to crush extremists; religious extremists maintain power in many of the same ways while funding proxy terror orgs, as Iran does; or fundamentalist militants rain chaos and destruction, such as in Somalia and Yemen.
None of this bodes well for Israel, and ultimately the West. The Long War just got longer.
We can blame ourselves for this
The Iranians are sending escorts for new aid ships to Gaza.
We can blame ourselves. Our weak response in backing the Israelis two weeks ago may actually initiate a war.
Krauthammer: Those Troublesome Jews
Charles Krauthammer thinks the same way I do about the situation in Israel:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304287.html
The Inevitability of Armageddon
“Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. 16 And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. 17 And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. 18 And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.”~The Book of Revelations
The recent incident involving the aid-for-Gaza ship illustrates the inevitability of a catastrophic war in the Middle East. Israel can only fight a defensive war, fending off attack after attack, responding to past damages. Israel’s enemies on the other hand, can repeatedly attack Israel and than scream bloody-murder when Israel responds. And the media cooperates.
Israel cannot, for political reasons, preemptively attack, with the intent to eliminate, its enemies. To do so would risk losing America as an ally. Should America disown Israel, Israel will cease to exist as a Jewish state; her enemies are too numerous. The Israeli government is forced to rely on retributive and defensive operations which do not root out the enemy’s hive, but only swat at individual wasps in a swarm. While the hive exists, there will always be more swarms.
Various Islamic nations call for the destruction of Israel, all the while attacking her through proxy terror organizations such as Hezbollah. And yet, the call now is for Israel to rid itself of nuclear weapons. Iran, it is now believed, has enough fissile material to produce two nuclear weapons. Given the nature of suicide attacks, even the threat of a massive nuclear retaliatory strike against Iran may not be enough to stave off an initial nuclear attack on Israeli soil. Though many reports focus on Iran’s nuclear delivery systems, those systems are not nearly as important to Islamic fundamentalists as the weapons themselves. A suicide bomber is the ultimate smart weapon. In addition, an atomic suicide bomber presents a greater chance of plausible deniability. A missile launch would be easily traceable as to its origin. A man annihilated in a nuclear blast passes into oblivion.
So because Israel cannot destroy her enemies before they build an ultimate weapon, Israel can only wait until the ultimate weapon is used. Her enemies repeatedly remind us that the destruction of Israel is at the top of their wish list. Not world peace, not that their hungry are fed, not education of the masses, but the death of millions of Jews. The calls for the destruction of Israel occur so frequently that the threats seem to mean nothing. Many assume that the promises of this destruction are only rants or calls for attention. The Arab-Israeli Wars, the thousands of rocket attacks and suicide bombings, the incessant political posturing, all of that means nothing to the cynics. Too many believe that Israel merely wishes to make Palestinians suffer for no real reason. So much so, that the reports of suffering have become hyperbolic and the aid and concessions given to Palestinians are all but unreported.
And it is clear what Israel will do if her existential fears materialize. They will use their own ultimate weapons, just as we would. And then we shall see the prophecy recorded in the Book of Revelations become reality. Some will say it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, that religious zealots read the prophecy and did what they could to make it happen. I’ll say a self-fulfilling prophecy is nonetheless a prophecy fulfilled.
Videos show the truth
These videos shows the people on the Gaza aid ship rushing to attack the first Israeli Commando that lands. The first 5 of the 6 ships surrendered peacefully.
The Quickening
I knew there was going to be trouble–big trouble–when it was reported that Israeli was sending commandos to intercept a pro-Palestinian aid ship. The ship carried a mixture of journalists, protestors and aid-workers who’s goal was to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
During the operation, 10 people–perhaps more–were killed, presumably from Israeli gunfire. Military night vision cameras show commandos rappelling onto the deck of one ship and then being immediately engulfed and beaten. The commandoes carried paint-ball guns, probably loaded with pepper-dust, but some felt so endangered that they resorted to lethal weaponry. Some even jumped into the ocean.
I knew that little good could come from this. Israel was bound to appear a bully, even if all went peacefully. Yet if they allowed the ships to pass, they would be allowing the reinforcement of Hamas, the Palestinian state government that has declared war on Israel. Now, Israel’s allies are calling for inquiries and the usual totalitarian, End of Times Islamic nations are calling for Israel to be treated like the Jewish hero Sampson in the hands of the Philistines. Perhaps even more worrisome is the Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, calling Israel’s actions, “state terrorism.”
There was no winning here, only varying shades of defeat.
Several things should stand out to rational people (something decidedly scarce when it comes to the Iraeli/Palestinian conflict).
1) Israel, with all of its past political troubles, knew how dangerous this mission was, politically and militarily. This is proof enough that intentionally killing the people on the ship would be out of the question. Israel knows where it stands in the eyes of the world–especially with an American administration in place that hasn’t displayed the usual pro-Israel leanings.
2) If, in fact, Israel didn’t care about political outcomes and international backlash, they could have just sunk the ships instead of placing their own soldiers in danger.
3) The people on board the ships knew, too, that Israel was in a no-win situation. They immediately attacked the commandos, and I’m sure the protestors knew full well that they’d garner plenty of international sympathy.
I’m usually resistant to hyperbolic Doomsday forecasts. But I honestly cannot remember another time where everything seemed to be going so wrong. I have a pretty good sense on these things. Sometimes I can’t always put it into words, but for whatever reason I’m good at seeing outcomes. I don’t know the outcome of all that’s going on in the world, but I don’t think it’s good.
Hopefully my Spidey Sense stops tingling, and soon.
War Deniers
George Orwell said that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it.
The left has a way of helping us end wars: They deny they even exist. They’ve mocked the term: “Global War on Terror”. It was a denial of its existence. They fail to see or even feel, the boiling hatred of Wahhabism. And when they do, they join the Wahhabists in blaming America.
Islam is being swallowed by the ultra-violent sects. If it were not so, a man could not walk into a mosque, detonate himself in the name of Allah, and fail to rouse anti-extremist fervor amongst Muslims. Instead, there’s barely a murmur. There are however a few speeches given by the War Deniers assuring us that: “This isn’t really Islam.”
What is it then?
Do the same rules apply to Israel and Hamas?
An EU report cites Georgian shelling as causing the Russian/ Georgian war. I’ll assume they lay the same blame on Hamas’ aggression on Israel.
Israel will be the martyr for NATO’s cause in Iran
As I said here, I don’t think Obama will do anything militarily to Iran. The administration has known of the secret nuclear research facilities for two months now. Still nothing.
We’ll wait for Israel to pull the trigger, then sit back and watch the media frenzy and fundamentalist attention-mongers cry foul. Israel takes even more heat than the US does.
Or Iran will have nukes. And from there, it’s a nuclear armed Hezbollah.
Want to hear Ralph Peter’s prediction? It’s scary.
“How will it end? With desperate Israeli attacks that do only part of the job, followed by Iranian counterstrikes on Persian Gulf oil facilities, the closure of the Straits of Hormuz and oil above $400 a barrel.”~Ralph Peters, New York Post, Sept. 2009.
Should Israel attack Iran?
And so do I at this point. The Iranian regime has made it clear what it thinks about Israel’s existence and what it will do with nukes should it get some. The Obama Administration is unlikely to take any military action, regardless of the threat posed. Iran will lie and lie and this president will keep being a True Believer.
Armored Warfare–Is it dead?
Post-Modern warfare has lessened the dominance of the main Battle Tank.
The US’s dominance of Phase III battle has forced our enemies to resort to guerilla warfare. Any confrontation by battalions and brigades on the field of battle will and has resulted in the utter defeat of our enemies.
WW I established the armored fighting vehicle as the determining factor in linear warfare. No longer could a single man, armed with his rifle, stop the advance of platoons and companies. And those companies could advance faster than ever, riding in the holds of Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Today’s IFV’s are armed with auto-cannons capable of laying down withering fire from, spraying 25mm HE rounds at enemy positions. The US’s Bradley IFV is armed with TOW missiles capable of destroying any foreign armored vehicle.
The Israelis, in their recent war with Hezbollah, discovered that modern armaments have outstripped the defensive capabilities of armored vehicles. Hezbollah troops, reportedly armed with advanced Russian HEAT missiles such as the Kornet, were able to score numerous mobility kills. A significant amount of Israeli injuries occured in tank crews, Remember, the Israeli Merkava MBT represents the cutting edge of armor and weaponry, and yet individuals, armed with man-portable anti-tank missiles wreaked havok on them. We have come full circle, finding ourselves in the same position as armored knights, ponderous and outdated, feeling safe behind walls of boron/ carbide matrix, but then scorched by third-world soldiers carrying not blunderbusses but tandem RPG-29 rounds. We have been forced to meet them on their terms, in the dirty streets. Door to door, house to house–hand to hand.
The elephantine and half-blind tanks are now at a severe disadvantage in todays small-wars. IEDs, RPGs and conventional mines are the substitute for super-advanced tanks capable of defeating our M1A2s. We have countered with the advanced Warlock System; electronic countermeasures capable of disabling command-detonated IEDs.
The late Keith Laumer, author and creator of the awesome BOLO series of military science fiction, envision a future battlefield dominated by huge and computer controlled tanks called BOLOs. The picture at the start of this blog entry shows one artist’s interpretation of a BOLO unit. BOLOs with their artificial intelligence flintsteel armor were capable of defeating any enemy on Laumer’s battlefield. Even nuclear missiles were no threat thanks to heavy armor and nuclear dampers. The BOLOs sported Hellbore cannons, huge weapons refitted from spacecraft, plus the BOLO had flechette rounds for dealing with infantry. The BOLO’s ability to monitor the battlefield would have put any Ticonderoga Class cruiser to shame.
Alas, current technology prohibits us from deploying any BOLOs. From an engineering perspective, the sheer weight of the BOLO would make it incapable of crossing bridges and moving through extremely muddy terrain. Its size would prevent a BOLO from moving into cities–where todays forces are needed most. An d without the imaginary nuclear dampers or flintsteel armor, a BOLOs size would be a huge detriment: it could be seen for miles away. Also, Laumer’s BOLO could move far faster than what would be capable by tracked armor.
Maybe we’ll achieve some of the near-magic technology used by the BOLO–someday. For now though, we have taken some small steps in minimizing the ability of non-linear fighters to effectively engage our troops. The Stryker Infantry Fighting Vehicle displays the attributes of an excellent counter-insurgency system: It’s fast and mobile, modular, and can be armed with the Boomerang anti-sniper system, which can triangulate incoming sniper fire and the Raytheon Quick Kill anti-rpg system. The Quick Kill detects the launch of RPGs and fires its own micro-missile in order to intercept the incoming round. The Stryker can carry a 9- man squad too. Oh yeah–it can carry all sorts of remote weapons systems too-so no more cheap kill son our soldiers who are sitting in turrets.
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