THE US MILITARY'S HUMONGOUS CRAP SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PROJECT IN IRAQ: Gadgets, gizmos, unblinking eyes, rayguns and bomb-sniffing bees flop
The US military has always been vulnerable to crap science.
Real science requires critical thinking in abundance, the ability to come up with good questions as well as good experiments, and the intellectual honesty to accept the truth in what nature gives you.
All of this is anathema to the American military way.
The military way is "Can do!"
If something needs to be done, then a way must be found to do it! Nothing is allowed to be impossible.
In the war against Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq, the US military has come up against the impossible. And it was not intellectually flexible enough to realize it.
At least that's the way your friendly neighborhood GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow interpets the Washington Post's "You can't armor your way out of this problem," published earlier this week here.
The Washington Post's interviews show military men who are woefully ignorant in the ways and history of science, people with a weak grasp of this country's actual technological achievements what it took to accomplish them.
Our military leaders instead latch onto slogans, bromides and sloppy thinking -- the kind of things which would get them laughed out of the auditorium at any grad student seminar in a hard science department from the academies in this nation.
"Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, who headed the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, lamented the failure of American science to vanquish the roadside bomb," reported the Post. "If we could prematurely detonate IEDs, we will change the whole face of the war ... [for a] country that can put a man on the moon in 10 years, or build a nuke in 2 1/2 years of wartime effort, I don't think we're getting what we need from technology on that point."
This almost sounds reasonable until the stark realization hits home: Neither of the technological achievements mentioned by Mattis are in any way like what he wanted to have done. (We'll get to how this idiotic meme poisoned clear thinking in the military in a minute.)
The Post's reporter documents how one attempt involved implementing something called "the unblinking eye," an all-the-time surveillance of a bomb-attacked road called Route Tampa. It was all to be accomplished through state-of-the-art technology.
The problems: The much hyped technology of surveillance drones and aerial videography and photography can't achieve the level of magnification and observation required. Much data can be provided but while it appears to be an ocean, it's still not enough and people required to observe, align and sift it can't do the job without their attentions wandering.
"Numerous images showed Iraqis in pickup trucks staring into the sky and making obscene gestures at the [recon] drones, which were as noisy as lawn mowers," reported the Post in one part of its series.
[Ground surveilling radar] was bedeviled by false positives, including oil barrels and car hulks. The Iraqis ... were [also] 'wonderful buriers.'"
"The most disheartening day came on Thursday, Nov. 4. By chance, virtually all surveillance assets — satellites, U-2s, drones — happened to be focused simultaneously on one small swatch of Route Tampa. Traffic appeared normal. Two hours later, another sequence of images revealed a scorched crater where a bag of artillery shells triggered by a detonation wire had just killed one American soldier in a truck and severed the leg of another."
So much for the unblinking electronic eye, a realization, the Post reports, which would take the military months to arrive at.
The US military in Iraq was possessed with having a "Manhattan-like Project" to fight IEDs.
Now, you know those questions Jay Leno likes to embarrass people outside his studio with?
"What was the Manhattan Project?" should be one. Any guesses on how many people would know?
In any case, the US military in Iraq certainly did not know, even though it professed to.
The Manhattan Project was the US effort to develop the atomic bomb and it was staffed by the finest high energy nuclear physicists, chemists and metallurgists in the world. It was led by a group of people who either were or would become Nobel laureates.
There aren't Nobel laureates in Iraq. There aren't any in the military. And there most certainly weren't any working on the science of improvised explosive devices.
The development of the atomic bomb was built upon nature's unchanging laws --a hard bedrock of solid physics and chemistry. It was a project which required hard scientific thought and a good number of achievable technical solutions for the fast generation of a supercritical mass of uranium or plutonium, a mass which would allow a well-defined fission reaction to quickly go to completion, consuming all its fuel in a tremendously destructive release of energy.
However, the nature of uranium, plutonium and fission reactions did not change during the development of the bomb and still are as they have been for all time.
The neutron cross-section of the various metals used in the bomb do not change in the way Iraqi methods for developing IEDs change in apparently infinite and often unforseeable ways.
The atomic bomb incontrovertibly changed the history of the world. It led to the development of the hydrogen bomb and national ability to slay nations and exterminate the human race.
IEDs have changed only the US military in a war it should not have been asked to wage.
"Whether the nation could conjure an IED solution, as the Manhattan Project had delivered the atomic bomb in 1945, also remained uncertain, given how little of the country seemed mobilized for war," wrote the Post's reporter, with unintentioned humor.
"Uncertain."
DD is certain.
The US military and its scientific servants didn't have the brainpower for it. More precisely, they didn't have the brainpower with the intellectual honesty to tell them what they didn't want to hear.
"Joe Votel, the Joint IED Task Force director, had come to regret [John Abizaid’s] Manhattan Project allusion," reported the Post. "The metaphor implied a facile, scientific solution to IEDs, a technological silver bullet."
In this, the Post reporter perhaps delivers a spin Votel did not intend. The Manhattan Project was, obviously, neither a facile accomplishment nor a technological silver bullet, as history has shown.
“That was easy ...” said Votel to the Post. "You were in a sanctuary, you developed a bomb, you dropped a couple of them and it was done."
Yeah, easy.
In any case, the Post's statement and the military's argument comparing IED countermeasures to the Manhattan Project was senseless. It showed an inability to think things through.
The atomic bomb was, only in a broad sense, a technical solution to the devices of the enemy. The solution was in that it potentially enabled the total annihilation of the Japanese.
In that sense, it IS a solution for the IED problem in Iraq. Totally annihilating the enemy.
The Post's series also dealt with other gadgets and gizmos -- dodgy electronic rayguns made by Israeli scientists and a variety of jammers -- junk that either didn't work or presented its own set of limitations and problems.
IEDs hits went up, anyway.
It would take wisdom and guts to realize IEDs are a problem that cannot be solved as long as the US military must remain in contact with a civilian population that wants it gone.
The Post's series also dealt with the certified idiot's idea of bomb-sniffing bees, a DARPA/National Lab boffin's contribution to detecting IEDs.
The bomb-sniffing bees were bunk.
"The practical applications [of bomb-sniffing bees] in combat seemed limited," reported the Post. "'How does, say, 1st Platoon manage their bees?'"
"After an analysis concluded that the honeybee's 'explosive-detection capabilities have significant reliability issues,' as a Defense Department official put it earlier this year, the Pentagon withdrew its support."
In November of last year, DD blog wrote of the crap science involved in the bomb-sniffing bee project:
"And then [we envision] the comedy when local police forces [and the military] buy into the phlogiston of bomb-sniffing bee-keeping only to find a number of things to be true: (1) They're not so good at bee-keeping, [and] (2) the bomb-sniffing bees don't work so hot, so can't we go back to using dogs because you can tell them what to do and they wag their tails?"
Read the rest here.
Armchair Generalist reflects on the bomb-sniffing bees.
The US military has always been vulnerable to crap science.
Real science requires critical thinking in abundance, the ability to come up with good questions as well as good experiments, and the intellectual honesty to accept the truth in what nature gives you.
All of this is anathema to the American military way.
The military way is "Can do!"
If something needs to be done, then a way must be found to do it! Nothing is allowed to be impossible.
In the war against Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq, the US military has come up against the impossible. And it was not intellectually flexible enough to realize it.
At least that's the way your friendly neighborhood GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow interpets the Washington Post's "You can't armor your way out of this problem," published earlier this week here.
The Washington Post's interviews show military men who are woefully ignorant in the ways and history of science, people with a weak grasp of this country's actual technological achievements what it took to accomplish them.
Our military leaders instead latch onto slogans, bromides and sloppy thinking -- the kind of things which would get them laughed out of the auditorium at any grad student seminar in a hard science department from the academies in this nation.
"Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, who headed the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, lamented the failure of American science to vanquish the roadside bomb," reported the Post. "If we could prematurely detonate IEDs, we will change the whole face of the war ... [for a] country that can put a man on the moon in 10 years, or build a nuke in 2 1/2 years of wartime effort, I don't think we're getting what we need from technology on that point."
This almost sounds reasonable until the stark realization hits home: Neither of the technological achievements mentioned by Mattis are in any way like what he wanted to have done. (We'll get to how this idiotic meme poisoned clear thinking in the military in a minute.)
The Post's reporter documents how one attempt involved implementing something called "the unblinking eye," an all-the-time surveillance of a bomb-attacked road called Route Tampa. It was all to be accomplished through state-of-the-art technology.
The problems: The much hyped technology of surveillance drones and aerial videography and photography can't achieve the level of magnification and observation required. Much data can be provided but while it appears to be an ocean, it's still not enough and people required to observe, align and sift it can't do the job without their attentions wandering.
"Numerous images showed Iraqis in pickup trucks staring into the sky and making obscene gestures at the [recon] drones, which were as noisy as lawn mowers," reported the Post in one part of its series.
[Ground surveilling radar] was bedeviled by false positives, including oil barrels and car hulks. The Iraqis ... were [also] 'wonderful buriers.'"
"The most disheartening day came on Thursday, Nov. 4. By chance, virtually all surveillance assets — satellites, U-2s, drones — happened to be focused simultaneously on one small swatch of Route Tampa. Traffic appeared normal. Two hours later, another sequence of images revealed a scorched crater where a bag of artillery shells triggered by a detonation wire had just killed one American soldier in a truck and severed the leg of another."
So much for the unblinking electronic eye, a realization, the Post reports, which would take the military months to arrive at.
The US military in Iraq was possessed with having a "Manhattan-like Project" to fight IEDs.
Now, you know those questions Jay Leno likes to embarrass people outside his studio with?
"What was the Manhattan Project?" should be one. Any guesses on how many people would know?
In any case, the US military in Iraq certainly did not know, even though it professed to.
The Manhattan Project was the US effort to develop the atomic bomb and it was staffed by the finest high energy nuclear physicists, chemists and metallurgists in the world. It was led by a group of people who either were or would become Nobel laureates.
There aren't Nobel laureates in Iraq. There aren't any in the military. And there most certainly weren't any working on the science of improvised explosive devices.
The development of the atomic bomb was built upon nature's unchanging laws --a hard bedrock of solid physics and chemistry. It was a project which required hard scientific thought and a good number of achievable technical solutions for the fast generation of a supercritical mass of uranium or plutonium, a mass which would allow a well-defined fission reaction to quickly go to completion, consuming all its fuel in a tremendously destructive release of energy.
However, the nature of uranium, plutonium and fission reactions did not change during the development of the bomb and still are as they have been for all time.
The neutron cross-section of the various metals used in the bomb do not change in the way Iraqi methods for developing IEDs change in apparently infinite and often unforseeable ways.
The atomic bomb incontrovertibly changed the history of the world. It led to the development of the hydrogen bomb and national ability to slay nations and exterminate the human race.
IEDs have changed only the US military in a war it should not have been asked to wage.
"Whether the nation could conjure an IED solution, as the Manhattan Project had delivered the atomic bomb in 1945, also remained uncertain, given how little of the country seemed mobilized for war," wrote the Post's reporter, with unintentioned humor.
"Uncertain."
DD is certain.
The US military and its scientific servants didn't have the brainpower for it. More precisely, they didn't have the brainpower with the intellectual honesty to tell them what they didn't want to hear.
"Joe Votel, the Joint IED Task Force director, had come to regret [John Abizaid’s] Manhattan Project allusion," reported the Post. "The metaphor implied a facile, scientific solution to IEDs, a technological silver bullet."
In this, the Post reporter perhaps delivers a spin Votel did not intend. The Manhattan Project was, obviously, neither a facile accomplishment nor a technological silver bullet, as history has shown.
“That was easy ...” said Votel to the Post. "You were in a sanctuary, you developed a bomb, you dropped a couple of them and it was done."
Yeah, easy.
In any case, the Post's statement and the military's argument comparing IED countermeasures to the Manhattan Project was senseless. It showed an inability to think things through.
The atomic bomb was, only in a broad sense, a technical solution to the devices of the enemy. The solution was in that it potentially enabled the total annihilation of the Japanese.
In that sense, it IS a solution for the IED problem in Iraq. Totally annihilating the enemy.
The Post's series also dealt with other gadgets and gizmos -- dodgy electronic rayguns made by Israeli scientists and a variety of jammers -- junk that either didn't work or presented its own set of limitations and problems.
IEDs hits went up, anyway.
It would take wisdom and guts to realize IEDs are a problem that cannot be solved as long as the US military must remain in contact with a civilian population that wants it gone.
The Post's series also dealt with the certified idiot's idea of bomb-sniffing bees, a DARPA/National Lab boffin's contribution to detecting IEDs.
The bomb-sniffing bees were bunk.
"The practical applications [of bomb-sniffing bees] in combat seemed limited," reported the Post. "'How does, say, 1st Platoon manage their bees?'"
"After an analysis concluded that the honeybee's 'explosive-detection capabilities have significant reliability issues,' as a Defense Department official put it earlier this year, the Pentagon withdrew its support."
In November of last year, DD blog wrote of the crap science involved in the bomb-sniffing bee project:
"And then [we envision] the comedy when local police forces [and the military] buy into the phlogiston of bomb-sniffing bee-keeping only to find a number of things to be true: (1) They're not so good at bee-keeping, [and] (2) the bomb-sniffing bees don't work so hot, so can't we go back to using dogs because you can tell them what to do and they wag their tails?"
Read the rest here.
Armchair Generalist reflects on the bomb-sniffing bees.
posted by George Smith at 3:32 PM
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