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U.S. Gov. Space/Air Force Possible Plans For Future 66

Posted by Hemos from the cool-reading dept.
We had a reader send us a link to the United States Air Force Report on plans for possible futures. They've looked at the next 30 years, envisioning different scenarios and created the areas that the USAF needs to work -- the role of space obviously becomes more important, and they've got some interesting conclusions about what to expect. There's /reams/ of data here, and I've only started to read through it, but it's pretty cool stuff.
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U.S. Gov. Space/Air Force Possible Plans For Future More

U.S. Gov. Space/Air Force Possible Plans For Future

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  • Fear and anxiety (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16, 2000 @03:19AM (#1130189)
    The fun thing to notice was that in one of the scenarios, "Digital Cacophony", when individuals gain power and authorities have no longer much to say, the world is marked with "fear and anxiety".

    I disagree. I'd say it might well be a happier place without the stupid who command and the more stupid who follow.
  • The term comes from the Spanish for "little war" and originated in the Peninsular Campaign of the Napoleonic wars, when Spanish guerillas assisted by British gold, British ships and some Spanish regular soldiers made life hell for the French armies and French pupper regime.

  • Perhaps it's a litlle far fetched for 2025, but I can see a scenario where the Information Corps becomes utterly crucial. Not just a vital support/espionage/sabotage operation, but actually the heart of the war.

    Consider. War is essentially a matter of getting another country to do what you want. You could do this in various ways:

    1. Kill off everyone living there and colonise it with your own supporters

    2. March in a land army, kill off all the current rulers and their troops, install a regime, backed by said army, that will make the people do what you want.

    3. Do enough damage to the country with sanctions, bombs, etc. that the current regime decided to do what you want to get you off their backs

    Now consider the information Corps solution:

    4. Take over their data networks, and send orders on behalf of the current regime to do what you wanted anyway. More sophisticated versions include faking input data to the regime so that it decides to do what you want, etc. An extreme version of this applies where the population of your enemy country has neural interfaces, and you hack those -- make the enemy people WANT to do what you want by hacking their brains.

    In this scenario, the Information Corps is the "leading edge" of the war. Once you control their top-level C3 infrastructure, you have won, there is nothing else left to do. Other forces would be in support roles like nuking unhackable backup stores, kidnapping people who know key passwords, infiltrating secure areas to make network connections, destroying systems to trigger less secure failover procedures, etc.

  • Well, at least 25 of them are left, that's 80%, right?
    I wonder how much of this is dis-information? They seem anxious to make sure anyone can read it

    /begin plagarism/
    Internet Format (HTML and PDF)

    Unlimited Distribution. We converted our "pre-production" Microsoft Word document files to HTML and Adobe Acrobat formats to make an "electronic" final report available for research and search engine purposes. These documents are "living" documents and will be tweaked in the future to correct format conversion errors (all of the text is present, but some formatting information, e.g., tabs, centering, has been lost), improve figure (picture) quality and to add more hyperlink/hypertext functionality in them.

    To support the widest possible user base (Unix, Macintosh, and Windows), the 2025 Final Report is available in HTML and Adobe Acrobat (PDF) formats. The Acrobat viewer is available free of charge for Unix, Macintosh, and Windows platforms.

    If you do not have Adobe Acrobat, click on the icon below to go to the Adobe Acrobat home page to download the viewer.

    This document was last modified on: 06/20/97 16:37:38
    /end plagarism/

  • Because some of those countries that fear us would be invading/bombing/terrorizing us if they didn't fear us, and *THEY* will be developing in any aspect of military science in which we are not.

    Why do so many people who assume that the US Government is composed of nasty war-mongering fascists fail to realize that the governments of other countries are more so?

    Over here, they at least have the check that if they're truly off their nut, people will vote 'em out of office. That isn't true in, say, Libya, Iraq, China, etc.

    Hell, even our allies are fascists. Germany today is only a hairline short of the way they were in the 1930s.

    And don't get me started on where Brazil will be in 25 years. They're damned close to us geographically, and damned far away philosophically.

    As for space being for scientific development; not if we suddenly wake up one day unable to get there anymore, because somebody else walled it up like a fortress and we didn't keep up.

  • Cool! The "God's eye view" turns warfare into a real-life game of Tiberian Sun or Total Annihilation! I just hope the expansion packs are good.

  • You can't own or take over parts of space - this whole thing is very wrong at a fundimental level.

    Umm...why? Whats wrong with someone owning a chunk of space? There is certainly enough to go around... If nothing else, then property rights in space will encourage people to put effort into development. Would you build a home if you knew that anyone else could come along and take it from you?

    Did the human race evolve to a certain point and then suddenly start to degenerate?

    Well, duh! At one point a few years ago we could walk on the moon and were well on the way to infinite sources of clean energy...now we're stuck on one planet (we can't even reliably get into orbit) with essentially no advanced power generation research going on.

  • But your dissinformation point kind of falls apart when you note that the US spent billions of dollars on SDI research. We were not treating it as a dissinformation campaign, we treated it as a technology development project. SDI-derived technology is still leaking out to this day, and will be for many years to come.

    The failure of SDI had more to do with crappy management and politics then it did with any physical limits on whats doable.
  • > Things like a "Solar High Energy Laser" could be very scary, what are they going to do with it, blow up the sun?

    Yes, just like solar-powered cars are meant for driving around on the sun.

  • Actually, I think that "space superiority" is a much more applicable term than "air superiority". It is absolutely impossible to "hold" a region of airspace; any plane you send up has to come down sometime. In space, however, you can throw a defensive platform up into an orbital, and bang, you've got a semi-perminent base of operations.
  • IIRC really came about in the Boer war (South Africa). The Boers (farmers) did not fight in the "conventional" way, which caused the British troops no end of problems. The British also "invented" concentration camps during that war.
  • Just for the record, Reagan wasn't the only guy to try to put weapons in space. There was an article in Popular Science last year (or was it Popular Mechanics? I'm not sure,) about the USSR's own plans for space weaponry. They had plans to mount anti-sat missles and defensive lasers on Mir, among other things. I think they might have actually flown some of them, but I don't remember the article well enough.
  • All this stuff about "attack microbots" and "God's eye views" makes for interesting reading on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

    But the truth is that the USAF's fleet of B-52H strategic bombers is expected to soldier on until the year 2040. The last of these planes rolled off Boeing's assembly line in the early '60s. Already, they're older than most of the people who fly them, and they're supposed to outlive both the B-1 and B-2 bombers.

    I'd take "Air Farce:2025" a bit more seriously if it weren't for those 80 year-old bombers my grandchildren might fly.

    Radical New Jersey separatists downed another B-52, the third in four days. JLF spokesmen claimed credit and charged the USAF with illegal use of cluster microbot munitions, outlawed by the Harari Convention of 2016. President Sharpton issued a statement categorically denying the charge. The bomber was downed near Trenton, in the southern no-fly zone...

    http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~ pettypi/elevon/baugher_us/b052i.html [csd.uwo.ca]

    http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa /bomber/b-52.htm [fas.org]

    k.
  • This stuff was expected in 2025, that is, it was expected in 2025 4 years ago, and with the exponential speed of technological improvement, this stuff can probably be expected in the next 10-15 years.

    On another point, whats scary is that they're actually planning on doing some of this stuff.
  • Of course, now that the lowest federal court has spoken, all those higher courts shouldn't worry if the judge got it right.

    By the way, you forgot several cases in your description of government work.

    Government employee saves contractor millions: Contractor's highly paid employee's unable to solve problem. Government employee suggest solution. Contractor saves millions, awards their employees with money. Government employee gets nice placque.

    Contractor Gives Optimistic Technology Prediction to win Contract: Government emplyee warn superiors contractor not likely to perform due to overly optimistic assumptions. Superiors rly on contractor because if the employee was any good, why is he working for the government? Contractor cannot perform. Government pays to fix contractor mistake.

    I don't know any federal employee like you describe. I know there are some. Most federal employees are hard working, honest individuals. Just remember one additional thing, all those individuals you hated at the government, have twins working in the private industry who are just as duplicitous and evil as those you describe.

    Note: I work for the Air Force as well. In fact, I worked with some of the individuals who wrote the report that generated this discussion. They would never let the sort of behavior you describe go on.

    As far as cutting the budget, well as long as they do it smartly, that justs the breaks. Unfortunately, while the budget has gone down, our committments have gone up. Research is at an all time low, with no end in sight. To be honest, I don't think the Internet would be funded now. It's link to fighting a war is just too remote.

    RSwan
  • Since when have people ever been peaceful?

    At the moment, their are active (i.e. people dying) insurgencies and wars going on in South America, Africa, and Asia. Asia, Europe and North America supply much of the arms. This has been true for... pretty much the entire century. For prior centuries, replace with different conflicts.

    Right now, as you read this, somebody is probably getting shot with a cheap AK-47 or clone (distributed worldwide during the Soviet era, and cloned by the PRC; a particular choice as it's mechanically simple and known to be VERY reliable in adverse conditiosn), being mutilated with a machete, or possibly blown up with a car bomb. Or, perhaps, simply starving to death when either a rebel movement or a government army seizes food shipments.

    People will, almost certainly, remain warlike until they go extinct. After all, there are not only a finite number of resources on the planet, but also substantial power structures that conflict with each other. Consequently, it's quite anticipate conflicts and attempt to deter them before they occur, ala the reasoning behind nuclear arsenals -- which LOWER the chance of an enemy being willing to attack you, as long as you have a credible delivery system.

    In this case, there are other nations which are more than capable of developing significant resources towards the militarization of space, such as Russia, if it can divert its attention from the Chechen situation and perhaps boost its economy with some oil contracts; and China, which has an aerospace program that *we* (read: Hughes, Lockheed, and the Depts of State and Commerce, IIRC) significantly boosted.... and both are known for belligerent positions versus the United States.
  • Heres the list of what they want within the next 25 years:

    - Global Information Management System
    - Sanctuary Base
    - Global Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting System
    - Global Area Strike System
    - Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicle
    - Space High Energy Laser
    - Solar High Energy Laser
    - Reconnaissance Unmanned Air Vehicle
    - Attack Microbots
    - Piloted Single Stage Space Plane
    Things like a "Solar High Energy Laser" could be very scary, what are they going to do with it, blow up the sun?

    Mark Duell

  • Some of these acronyms... (Score:4)

    by NOC_Monkey ( 73018 ) on Sunday April 16, 2000 @07:03AM (#1130206)
    I'm sitting here laughing myself silly reading about the "Standoff Hypersonic Missle with Attack Capability". This is a weapon that will have a range of >1000 nautical miles and be deliverable by land launch, conventional aircraft launch (B-52, F-15E, etc.), or by launch from the "Supersonic/Hypersonic Attack Aircraft". The official USAF acronym for the aircraft is "SHAAFT [af.mil]" (can ya dig it?). The missle is called "SHMAC [af.mil]". There is a line in the report that has just caused me to go into convulsions:

    "In short, there will be no escaping the oncoming SHMAC."

    I'm glad to see that the people working on this had some sense of humor. I'd like to see anyone talk about SHAAFT dropping a SHMAC on the enemy and keep a straight face.

  • What is understood by "Global Area Strike System"?

    Does that mean, the next moment I look out of the window my neighbour's house could be destroyed by some sort of satellite weaponry?
  • The reason that space appears to be the next area of confrontation is because it is the one of a few next great economic development areas. Every economic development area throughout time has been fought over at some point. Oil, coal, religion, food, etc have all been fought over. Space will be an area where great development will occur in the next 20-50 years and there will be people who want to take advantage of investments the US have put into space. The Air Force has to position itself now for funding in 10-20 years to develop the weapons that take 10-15 years to build. This is just a document that was released a couple of years ago to get the Air Force leaders and current young officers and NCO's (Non-Commissioned Officers) to think about the future might hold. It is also kind of a power grab of the Air Force over the other forces for money. The Air Force is claiming Space as its domain. It is saying that if Congress wants to spend money on space, it should go to the Air Force because the Air Force has the best ideas for space and has a clear path towards developing US assets.

    I hope this doesn't sound too much like flaimbait but this is just the way I see it....

  • Especially if you are on the USAF's list as a Belligerent Emulous Enemy Yearning Overtly To Conquer Humanity, and you have an Armed Subversive Swarm.

    You'd better look out before they put the SHMAC down on your ASS, BEEYOTCH.

  • After reading a few papers on the site, one can conclude that:

    A)They can do all this stuff now.
    or
    B)They want to do this stuff in the future.

    If it is A, I'm reminded of president Regan and his use of "Star Wars" technology as a negotiation tool. For those to young to remember, when the Star Wars movie was at the height of it's popularity, the president went on national television and proposed "laser beams in space" to intercept long range balistic missiles before re-entry, and deployed billions into fruitless research. Of course, at the time none of this was even in the relm of possibility, but the russians didn't know that.

    This forced the Russians to funnel enourmous funds into similar (impossible) research in order to assure their people that they would be safe. In the end. the Russians (Gorby) came to the negotiating table begging the US not to deploy the system. This proved to be a wonderful negotiating tool to ask the russians for concessions.

    If it is B it forces other countries to move funds into pursuing a "global network" to try to match these capabilities (that may just be pie in the sky dreams).

    Either way it's (Score 5:Interesting) for the US.
    ___

  • Wasn't Star Wars around 1976? So that would have been who, Ford? Carter?
    You bring up a good point, regarding Star Wars and the release date. My intention was to show how and why the media dubed it "star wars" instead of SDI (Strategic Defence Initiative). I may be off on when Star Wars was at it's peak, but I'm sure about it being a Reagan thing. He even showed animations of these little lasers in space shooting down enemy MIRVs as they came down. History has shown it to be a driving force behind getting Gorby (the Russians) to the table to negotiate and is a classic example of (successfull) dissinformation on the grandest scale.
    ___

  • Worldwide Information Control System (WICS) (Score:4)

    by Money__ ( 87045 ) on Sunday April 16, 2000 @02:04AM (#1130212)
    A snippet from the article: Access to space will be available to any country that can pay for it. Most countries will be on the same technological level in the war-fighting arena. With the technological edge diminished, the US must focus on developing ways to best gather and distribute vital information; on a global scale, in near real time.

    another blurb: . .. . by providing the "God's eye view" commanders have always longed for, it would bring about a revolution in the manner in which forces are managed.

    All they want is god like powers?! Is *that* all?!?!
    ___

  • And this kinda stuff is why I got out of the Air Force after 9 years of service. The generals and such spend all their time sitting around dreaming up this stuff all the while neglecting what needs to be done (like take care of the troops). It's a sad day when I noticed my military buddies using food stamps becuase their military pay checks don't cut it. The military, especially the Air Force, love to dream about all this high tech gear, yet most can't even manage to remember their password for more than a week. To bad they aren't noticing the lines and lines of us techies walking out the door seeking better employment. As a network administrator in the Air Force, with 9 years under my belt, I was making $24,000 net a year. Boo on the Air Force. Horay for being a civilian.
  • "A third world is a scary future in which information and biogenetic technology is dispersed, giving individuals and small groups untold power."
    This is the whole point of the 'net, and open source. The fact that the AF and therefore the US Gov't fears this scenario, makes me wonder what our future will be like.
    -Fungol

  • First of all, I don't think that the Air Force should have anything to do with space. It seems to me that the Navy has far more experience being able to navigate in three degrees. They also have a great deal of experience dealing with large areas far away from any of their much needed resources and isolation.

    Face it, submarine people are ideal for long space voyages.

    As far as all of the whining resorted from the next topic, one of the first topics here, moderated up to two even though it was atopical as hell, had to do with it, so I'm going to toss in my two cents.

    The "Open Source" community and "Geek Culture" shouldn't be putting the amount of emphasis on wealth that we've been seeing in recent times. Geeks play the stock market because they think it's great that they have "inside knowledge" of who to put their money into. But face it kids, the stock market is arbitrary, and if you're going to play it and lose, don't whine.

    The last thing slashdot needs to become is a news service that perpetuates the greed of America.
    --
    If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

  • Money wrote:

    All they want is god like powers?! Is *that* all?!?!

    When your troops' lives are on the line (and quite possibly your own), you want every advantage you can get. War is all about information. The commander who can discern the enemy's strengths, weaknesses, disposition and intentions has a distinct advantage. Orbit is the ultimate high ground (presuming you're talking about a war centered on planetary surface) and gives a commander the "God's-eye view" of the battlefield - excuse me, battlespace. If Iraq had access to real-time overhead imagery during the Gulf War, they could've seen the disposition of Coalition forces, possibly allowing them to ignore the amphibious feint and concentrate their forces in the Western desert. If they'd had GPS, they could've maneuvered more effectively to counter the allied attack. This is why the air war first concentrated on dismatling Iraq's command and control before it went after forces in the field.

    The current problems are these: fusing information from multiple sources and distilling that information into a product that the battlefield commander can use. Efficient computer networks are an integral part of the solution to those two problems. Hence the recent emphasis on "information protection" and "information assurance."

    Neutron

  • A key excerpt from the executive summary of the Space Operations: Through The Looking Glass (Global Area Strike System) [af.mil] paper:

    After a review of the alternatives for a global space-strike system in 2025, the optimum solution appears to be combining a prompt response capability with a complementary flexible response capability. The prompt response capability is best provided by a system of Continental United States(CONUS)-based laser devices that bounce high power directed energy beams off a constellation of space-based mirrors. Inherently precise, megawatt-class, light-speed weapons can potentially act within seconds or minutes to resolve the rapidly developing crises of 2025. Flexible response is best provided with a small CONUS-based fleet of TAVs [Trans-Atmospheric Vehicles - Neutron] equipped with a variety of payloads, including kinetic-energy weapons, compact laser weapons, and special forces squads. Responding within a few hours of notification, a TAV can precisely deliver force and/or adaptable human judgment to crisis locations anywhere on earth.

    So it looks like a combination of space-based energy weapons and a "space plane" based in the US that can strike anywhere on the earth in a matter of a few hours. This would be a serious improvement over the current state of the force. Given that the US doesn't have an aircraft carrier cruising near the area of interest, the best the Air Force could do is a 24-hour response to a crisis. That's the very optimistic minimum time it would take to plan and execute a B-2 "Stealth" mission from a base in the US to an arbitrary point on the globe. This would require coordination with a large number of airborne tankers. Deploying a force of any considerable size would take much longer, on the order of a week or so. Again, that's an optimistic estimate.

    The TAV would take off from the US, boost itself into space (single-stage), overfly its target in a few hours, deliver its payload and then return to base. This obviates the need for a big logistics tail - tankers, maintenance, airfields close to the target, etc. The lasers could respond even faster but probably would be limited to relatively large, fixed targets. With such a system you could probably save money on carrier battle groups, but that would definitely piss the Navy off.

    Neutron

  • Kooki Monster wrote: And am I the only person to notice that the section covering "Information Warfare" (a stupid concept anyway) is classified?

    IW is not a stupid concept. We're not talking simply about zapping the enemy's computer networks. Defensive IW is even more important. The military now depends on the Internet - and yes, I mean the commercial internet - for its operations. Military sites are subject to penetration and DoS just like everybody else, except people die and the country loses wars when .mil systems go down.

    IW doctrine is still evolving, but the importance of defensive IW is evident. That paper is four years old so it's next to useless, you're not missing anything. However, defensive IW (aka "info assurance or "info protection") is a hot-button topic in the military today. Lots of stuff is classified because the military is paranoid about advertising its vulnerabilities.

    Neutron

  • Re:last modified... (Score:4)

    by Mr Neutron ( 93455 ) on Sunday April 16, 2000 @02:41AM (#1130219)
    From the "Quick Look/Overview":
    [...] The resulting study is called Air Force 2025 or 2025 for short. The team's findings were briefed to General Fogleman in June 1996 and to the Secretary of the Air Force, Dr. Sheila Widnall, in July 1996.

    So yes, indeed, this report is 4 years old. Gen Fogelman is no longer the Chief of Staff, hasn't been since 1997 or so. Gen Mike Ryan is the current Chief of Staff of the AF. Sheila Widnall left in 1998, F. Whitten "Whit" Peters is the current SECAF.

    The Air University is responsible for a) professional military education of the Air Force non-commissioned and commissioned officer corps and b) academic development of aerospace doctrine. They're the "think tank" of the AF.

    Neutron

  • For a similar US Army site, see http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/ssipubs/stdypr og.htm. It has a collection of monographs on topics of more current interest. For example, an excellent discussion of relative capabilities and possible intentions of PRC vs. Taiwan.

  • I notice that this site is actually missing a large number of current air force future goals and projects like the global range transport to replace the C-5 and the Air Theater Transport to replace the C-130. Also most of the current concepts have new names like the autonomous air combat vehicle.

    Does the Army After Next project have a website with its goals?

  • Very interesting... (Score:3)

    by Pufferfish ( 100833 ) on Sunday April 16, 2000 @06:31AM (#1130222)
    I didn't read the whole thing (yet), cause it is simply gargantuan, but it seems like they know what they're talking about. Lots of good ideas in there.

    The one problem there has always been with this sort of thing is that you can't predict stuff that there are no trends to suggest. For instance, they don't expect any truly revolutionary devices to be invented, although as everyone knows one of the things war does is show just how important a given device or technique could be: no one was afraid of U-boats before 1914, and no one really thought about guerilla warfare that much until the USA lost in Vietnam. There were probably people who suggested that these things could be important, but it took a war to really prove it. We get guerilla warfare in every conflict, but it never really swung the tide except in Vietnam (because that was all North Vietnam really had).

    In one of the papers, a Lt. General says that he does not expect that there will be a Space Corps. or an Information Corps. I'm not sure about this assertation.

    Perhaps there will be no Information Corps in the sense that it won't be on the same level as the Air Force or Navy, but it'll certainly exist. The only thing which may prevent it is if countermeasures (like crypto) become strong enough that it can't provide a big advantage. But information warfare already exists, has always existed, and will continue to exist. It's just another way of talking about espionage and certain sabotage.

    Not to mention propaganda: against a country like the USA, I would make sure that the American public got plenty of footage of blood soaked villages and starving children. One of the reasons Vietnam was so unpopular was that there was so much press coverage, and that translated into less enthusiasm. Less enthusiasm for a war means fewer volunteers (and draftees) and fewer resources committed to the war. People didn't really think about what was going on over there until the press started to draw attention to it.

    And the Space Corps...that's up for grabs. It all depends on how much technology progresses in that time. If we're still stuck in Earth-orbit, than it will just be a part of the USAF. Research colonies will probably be unaffected, so even if there are researchers on the moon or Mars, it will probably stay with the Air Force. If there are actual colonies then it may be Army/National Guard. And if, and this is a big if, we have large successful colonies on other planets which are essentially small countries, and spacecraft routinely make trips between them and Earth, it may become Navy (the spacecraft are traditionally Navy in most science fiction). Instead of Navy, however, there may be the United States Space Force (or Corps). I don't think we'll get that far in 25 years though.

    So basically, they've got good ideas and good predictions, provided that no new, unexpected technology shows up. If something big should happen, it's a toss up.

  • I just want to point out that the "last modified" date at the end of this page [af.mil] is "Wed Dec 11 09:55:15 1996"... Now I don't always update my last-modifieds (well, yes, I do) but this seems like a while ago to me... The executive summary, etc. also has a similar date ("Last updated: 1996 September 15").

    How likely is it that this document is still relevant? I am thinking it probably still reflects what the AF is thinking about the future, but is this the most current document they have on-line? Just asking....

  • Science Fiction?! (Score:3)

    by DeepDarkSky ( 111382 ) on Sunday April 16, 2000 @01:58AM (#1130224)
    So now the Air Force is engaging in science fiction writing research. They should and did read a lot of the leading science fiction writers' works and some of the popular (and consequently, quite influential) sci-fi movies to get some good ideas.

    But then, the reason for science fiction is to serve pretty much the same purpose as the ones that the Air Force intend - to extrapolate from the current state of affairs of the world and pick out possibilities, maybe merging and switching a few of those possibilities, and come up with something that seems plausible. The true outcome, we've learned historically, is never quite exactly as depicted in these fictitious glimpses in the future, but may actually fulfill some of the predicted destinies.

  • Most advances are made through the war machine.

    I would rather developments be made by a military designed for combat then a corporation designed for capitolism.

    The saying 'give me liberty or give me death' applies here. You can be enslaved by corporatism (think divx, DCMA, UCITA) which would be the loss of liberty, of benifit from the military (which exists for war, war being controlled death to acheive a goal).

    Besides, a game where you drive a tank around is always going to sell better then a game where you file paperwork for your supervisor's supervisor in a megalomerate.

    NightHawk
  • Why am I not surprised...
  • ...or am I the ONLY PERSON here that sees a problem with terms like "Space Superiority"?

    Space superiority is just like air superiority, which the USAF has been striving for for years (and pretty much achieved, now that the USSR has been dissolved).

    It's a simple concept. Air superiority means that our planes can keep the enemy planes out of the air. More or less, it's a way of saying "Our planes can kick your planes' asses".

    Space superiority is the same thing. All it boils down to is being able to secure a region of space when needed. It don't mean we own it, we just control it for the duration of the contingency.

    As far as "Stragetic Attack" being an outdated concept, it's been relavent for centuries, and is becoming more so. I'd be more afraid if it wasn't relavent - meaning that instead of stragetic attacks, we just use plain brute force (read: nuclear or biological weapons). That would be bad. The way it is now, we can attack military targets with a minimum of damage to civilian persons or property (yeah, it don't always happen that way, but's it's better than nuking everyone that the government gets pissed at).

    As far as the human race starting to degenerate, hell, it's far better than it was in the past. We don't surround a city, wait for everyone to starve and surrender, than enslave the people whose heads don't end up on poles outside the city gates. Try living through an Assyrian attack sometime.

    And am I the only person to notice that the section covering "Information Warfare" (a stupid concept anyway) is classified?

    Of course it's classified. War isn't open source - the enemy won't just call you up and say, "hey, your right flank is weak, need to put some more C4 troops in there". It's all about surprise, and making the other side wonder about your capabilities. If the enemy knows what you're capable of, and what you're not, they've already won half the war. Information warfare is more than just hacking into other people's systems, it's using information to give you knowledge and advantage in battle that is crucial to keeping the service members alive. It's not a new concept, just a new buzzword.

    Governments are like children, all fighting about stupid things that most individuals would consider silly. Corporations are the same way. Governments will always fight each other. Get used to it.

  • Shouldn't be. MILNET allows access to me at home (I'm .jp). You just won't be able to access some parts of the webservers that are deemed ".mil only". We've got too many people overseas to limit non-US addresses.
  • They work, and they work well. Why replace them?

    For instance, we use C-130 Hercules planes for just about anything besides milk delivery. Why? 'Cause the design of the planes is just as effective now as it was then. True, we won't use one for fast-cargo delivery (they're rather slow, being propeller driven, and they're small compared to other C-class planes) but they're easily adaptable into just about anything you want to do with them.

    I dunno much about the b52's (never worked on a base that used 'em) but I'd imagine it's something similar. The B52 can hold more bombs than any other plane we've got (I've seen one once - it's freakin' HUGE) and they're relatively fast (not faster than a b1, I'd imagine, and surely not a b2, but still fast enough to get out of the way).

    Why use UNIX when it's 30 years old? 'Cause it works. Our mechanics know how to fix 'em, our pilots know how to fly 'em, and just as important, our commanders know what to do with 'em.
  • Ummm, don't you see the truth already? Slashdot probably gets about 500 submissions a day. Of those, 400 deal with the plunging tech sector stock prices, particularly VALinux and Redhat. Obviously Slashdot is never going to post those articles, despite their great interest to the open source community as a whole and open source developers in particular. Then, we have about 50 "junk" submissions dealing with random garbage. Another 20 submissions are about $NEW_VERSION of $RANDOM_OPEN_SOURCE_PACKAGE is $POSITIVE_ADJECTIVE_OF_AFFIRMATION. The Slashdot crew then discards 20 more submissions about $RANDOM_OPEN_SOURCE_PACKAGE has $ENORMOUS_SECURITY_HOLE (Sendmail, BIND!?!), leaving just 10 submissions that can be used. Two of them are paeans from prominent open-source personalities (such as ESR) as they desperately attempt to keep their fortunes from slipping away as the connected and better informed than ever market realizes how little Linux companies are really worth. Three more are about $OUTRAGE_OF_THE_WEEK, wherein some $VERY_BIG_COMPANY stomps on the perceived rights of the consumer, employee, or student; the Slashdot writers really love these, since tons of Slashdot people always write to these (yes! more ad impressions). Yet another three are about a trivial interview with some random person in another magazine or discussion forum, such that Slashdot can leech off the work of others (hmmm, sounds familiar, doesn't this?). And the last two are stories like these, dealing with topics that are years old becuase there simply isn't anything else pro-Linux or anti-Microsoft to post!!!
  • ...or am I the ONLY PERSON here that sees a problem with terms like "Space Superiority"?

    You can't own or take over parts of space - this whole thing is very wrong at a fundimental level. I'm sat here hoping that in 25 years a "Strategic Attack" will be an outdated concept...

    Did the human race evolve to a certain point and then suddenly start to degenerate?

    And am I the only person to notice that the section covering "Information Warfare" (a stupid concept anyway) is classified?

  • Another person in the AF huh?
    well, i dunno if i agree with everything you said, but a large portion of it yes. (course i've only had to put up with one base so far since school.

    email me. xianzombie@home.com
  • >> It is this final point that shows the United
    >> States Air Force and Navy are becoming rogue
    >> entities; they deny the will of the people
    >> of the United States, the considered opinion
    >> of the Judicial Branch, and repeated, vocal
    >> concerns of the Legislative.
    >>
    > That's quite serious. Want to elaborate?

    Sure. In the context of *that portion* of my yappage (a pro-linux sentiment) observe that:

    0) A majority of the people support action against MSHAFT.

    1) The President is at the helm (so to speak) of the three military branches. I seem to recall him making negative comments about MSHAFT business practices, although I can't quote them precisely at this point. I do distinctly recall an article in the paper discussing a private meeting between Gates and Clinton, and the reporter noted that "...Gates left the meeting...smiling..." while "...the President appeared to be in a state of rage..."

    Indeed, the accompanying photograph showed Clinton angry and red-faced while Gates was grinning. This was pre-trial; circa 1997 or so. I consider this an example of Executive displeasure with MSHAFT -- the leader of the military branches is (in general) displeased with Gates/MSHAFT and the costs associated with a lengthy trial.

    The Executive Branch has been shown to be unhappy about the refusal of MSHAFT to act in the country's best interest (perhaps MSHAFT's best interest? We won't go there). Yet the United States Navy and Air Force continue to adopt Microsoft products and services at an accelerated pace.

    This can only be due to Mismanagement/Incompetence, Misconduct/Bribery, or simply a refusal to accept Clinton as leader. I prefer to believe it is a case of incompetence -- that they are "short term thinkers" -- "We need Microsoft now, because the recruits come in knowing it".

    Well, short term thinking can lead to a long term threat -- a dangerous path to tread. Is the Mac or Linux interface really all that different? It is not.

    I prefer NOT to beleive it is a case of corruption or malfeasance, yet there have been many cases of this throughout history, and should such evidence arise, I will not be suprised.

    2) The judicial. Microsoft has been found guilty of violating federal law. Duh. In my opinion, the Armed Forces exist to preserve and uphold the Constitution and the law -- whether they like it or not. The President is angry at MSHAFT; the Judicial finds them guilty of federal crimes, yet the two branches under discussion continue to expand their use of MSHAFT products and services.

    3) The Legislature. Many of the most hardcore right wingers in the Senate and House have pounded out diatribe after diatribe at the podium describing the methods MSHAFT has used to terrorize their constituents. If you wish, you can search for the comments of one Orrin Hatch of Utah, or either Senator from the State of California for some interesting quotes.

    You will recall Eisenhower's famous parting comments about the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex?

    I hope I have elaborated to the extent you desired, o cowardly one. I have attempted to show that the people, the Executive, the Judicial and the Legislative have all soken freely and strongly in the face of Microsoft -- and yet the Navy and Air Force continue to ignore all of these entities -- entities they are sworn to protect.
  • My Opinion:

    The United States Air Force is, in all honesty, a bloated, poorly managed, semi-corrupt agency.

    As an employee of the Air Force (soon to be a former employee) I'm seen all kinds of jewels they come up with to help themselves at the expense of their employees and contractors.

    Scenario One: Civil Service Steals Ideas Contractors.

    1) Award a contract to one competitor among several. Civil service immediately opens several "shadow projects" like that of the contractor; they "shadow" their work, constantly stealing any progress the contractor makes and holding it up as their own, thus justifying continued civil service positions. They often justify eliminating the contractor at the end of the contract and "going civil service" since they did "an equivalent or better job" at the task.

    Scenario 2: Steal Money from contractors.

    1) Contractor A needs access to Air Force resource X.

    CS: Oh! You need *that* resource? When do you need it? Oh, six months? Well, it won't do what you need in that time frame. But if you fund a massive upgrade on it, it will do everything you need, in the specified time frame.

    In the mean time, the contractor in charge of that resource, who knows it's all lies, can't say anything without incurring the wrath of the corrupt AF/CS/Contractor structure. That contractor gets a slack/neutral review because no one uses the resource, even though it's primed and ready to go. The "upgrade" requirement is falsified to insure the CS can get brownie points for upgrading AF resources, even though it was unneeded.

    Finally, I'll toss in my "Pro Linux Speech" here: Even though Microsoft has been found guilty of holding a monopoly, the Air Force (in particular), and the Navy (in general) continue their campaign of "all Microsoft, Everywhere".

    It is this final point that shows the United States Air Force and Navy are becoming rogue entities; they deny the will of the people of the United States, the considered opinion of the Judicial Branch, and repeated, vocal concerns of the Legislative.

    The United States Air Force and Navy should have to undergo major funding cuts until they STOP the behaviors I've outlined. Furthermore, although I detest libertarians (they aren't) and Republicans (they aren't, either) I have to say that federal employment, in the form of Civil Servants *who produce rather than manage or oversee* are eroding the economy of the USA.

    The CS needs to be reduced to oversight, and all production areas closed and sent to the public sector. I can't beleive that I agree with the republicans and libertarians on this one issue, but I do.
  • ok space has always thus far been a place for scientific development. Other than reagan and his ideas on "Star Wars", Why must we look to space as a great place for Military Development? No wonder most countries fear us.
  • Star Wars was hardly at the height of popularity in 1983, when Reagan announced the program. And he never called it "Star Wars" - only a bunch of lazy journalists latched onto that name. The idea, of course, did not come from the movie, but instead from scientists.
  • If you think that the world is "evolving" into a peaceful happy and warm fuzzy place where we all live in harmony like a nice suburban neighborhood, then you have been smoking way too much wacky-weed. Put the pot down and listen: the world will always be full of bad guys! It's enough trouble to make sure your own country doesn't become a bad guy. THEN you have to make sure the truly evil don't prevail. What's to keep another Hitler, Stalin, or Mao from taking power? Where would we be if Hitler had had ICBM's? It's obvious that a country has to prepare for this.
  • You mean the ABM treaty signed with the old Soviet Union?
    A) The Soviet Union no longer exists.
    B) They violated it from the first year they signed it. They continued to violate it.
    C)Any signatory has the power to leave the treaty with less than a year's prior notice. It's in the treaty.
    D) This is no obvious way, leaves you "screwed".
  • Well, perhaps the Soviets were genuinely and realistically scared of the US's ability to design and deploy something like this ten, twenty years in the future if they really put their minds to it?

  • Reagan never thought of it as a negotiating tool; Reagan thought it was *real*. When the Russians begged him to give it up, he wouldnt he saw it as far to important, even when his advisors told him it was fruitless. He was a senile OLD MAN, he slept during foreign policy discussions, G. Bush did most of the work on those.

  • Heheh, I'm remembering a story a friend of mine who was doing research in this field was telling me. I heard it a long time ago, and its third hand, but its funny.

    Picture a press conference. Scientists are trying to explain that the SDI defense is, at the time, a long way off. They say that the best they can do is x*10^11 when what they need is X*10^21. The response is, of course "Oh my god, we're already half way there!"
  • Yep, there were no end of scientists explaining why SDI couldn't possibly work... been there, heard that. Fortunately, the physical world has always been remarkably unimpressed by the beliefs about it held by even the most distinguished scientists.

    What's interesting is that the scientists "refuting" SDI generally weren't involved in the military end of their field's explorations. On top of that, there were some bright engineers who, not being aware of (or impressed by) the scientific failings, went ahead and did things that "weren't possible..."

    There were (and are) many components of SDI; as with any information about the military community's capabilities, the public knowledge of SDI capabilities is a mix of contradictory information -- and yes, disinformation. Some of the disinformation says that certain things are possible; some says other things are impossible.

    ---

  • I'm reminded of president Regan and his use of "Star Wars" technology as a negotiation tool... the president went on national television and proposed "laser beams in space" to intercept long range balistic missiles before re-entry, and deployed billions into fruitless research. Of course, at the time none of this was even in the relm of possibility... This proved to be a wonderful negotiating tool to ask the russians for concessions.

    Ummmm... interesting concept, with a couple of grains of truth in it (we did in fact spend the Soviets into bankruptcy in the technology wars). But why do you think that the goals of SDI aren't achievable? Or for that matter, haven't been accomplished in part and reduced to technology (or even in limited deployment) right now?

    One thing for sure, you aren't anywhere near the inside loop in the military/aerospace community. (I'd tell you more about it, but you know that old joke...)

    ---

  • Tactical Mobile Hinged Mechanical Interior/Exterior Personnel Transfer Apparatus a.k.a., a door on a truck. I came up with this one on drill this weekend with the Guard.
  • s.d.i. is possible, and it always has been. the 'scientific' objections to it were politically motivated.

    current plans for defense systems owe quite a bit to s.d.i. research. difficult does not equal impossible.

    by the way- what the chair force needs to do is stop wasting money on hyperexpensive fighters of limited use. that money would be better spent elsewhere in the military. I am thinking specifically of the crusader artillery system that the army is going to get Real Soon Now.

  • Eh? (Score:1)

    by Nidhogg ( 161640 )
    Attack Microbots.

    This sounds fairly similar to a plan to invade the U.S. related to me by a Canadian friend of mine using an army of gnats.

    Of course this is the same guy that was convinced the killer bees wouldn't make it to Canada because they didn't understand the metric system.

    Just what in the HELL is an Attack Microbot???

  • People who have owned Cisco stock for aover a year are still in the black. This minor downturn doesn't put longterm CSCO stockholders at a loss.

    Also, don't blame the LNUX downturn on the greater NASDAQ tumble - LNUX and CALD were both going down even when the NASDAQ was having good weeks. They were acting independently of the market average, which should have scared people immediately.

    Since these stocks have not acted in concert with the market average, it is prudent to assume that they will not recover when the greater NASDAQ does.

  • "Access to space will be available to any country that can pay for it." Pay whom??? Is the entire universe their personal fiefdom. Maybe the writer of the article is actually Bill Gates and now that he has got bored with MS, his next plan is to take over the USAF and become the master of the universe. So split up the air force before it gets too late.
  • SDI has been a miserable failure at everything except transferring wealth from taxpayer pockets. The amount of money still being spent on SDI-related research is outrageous given the lack of success (at least at its stated goals). There was a great piece on one of the more recent failures at nofuncharlie [nofuncharlie.com] - the story is here: http://nofuncharli e.com/HyperNews/nfc/get/news/bmd.9-Mar-00.html [nofuncharlie.com] and has some great links to further information.

    Commodore Sloat

  • Star Wars was hardly at the height of popularity in 1983

    Wasn't "Return of the Jedi" released in 1983? Not the height of Star Wars' popularity (that would be around 1977), but "Jedi" was the most popular movie released that year, so Star Wars was still a huge name in popular culture.

  • You can no more own or takeover space any more than you can own or control a piece of the earth. What you can do is control it. If a government (or corporation for that matter) has and armed presence in space they can never own it, but they sure can decide who gets to go there. As an individual, I find Space Superiority a little unsettling. As a former ground pounder (not U.S.), knowing that people on my side are controlling the skies above, is rather comforting.

    No, I think the human race has pretty much always been degenrate.

    Information Warfare a stupid concept? Worked awfully well for Goebbels, Stalin, Mcarthy......

  • Uh, they may be referring to the high cost of traveling to space, e.g. training of flight and ground crews, fuel, constructing the flight vehicle and equipment, life insurance, etc.

  • '...when the Star Wars movie was at the height of it's popularity, the president went on national television and proposed "laser beams in space"...'

    Wasn't Star Wars around 1976? So that would have been who, Ford? Carter?

  • "More powerful lasers, kinetic weapons, and particle beams give extended standoff for force application roles."

    I hear that Ford and Chevy are implementing the same deterrants in their SUV's for the 2025 model year!

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