Army's Future Combat Systems Program example essay topic

ROBOTS & MACHINES FOR THE EMPIRE THE GEORGE LUCAS NIGHTMARE! By: peter Coming very soon to a theater of war near you, your family and your home, will be the machines and robots which will greatly magnify and make more mobile the State's deadly force for deployment against its eternal enemy: the people. Government Executive Magazine, traditionally pro-federal government, includes an article in its April 15th issue entitled 'Future Combat Zone. ' Staff correspondent George Cahlink begins his article, 'Six years ago, the Army decided to stake its future on an untested approach to acquiring futuristic weapons in support of a grand theory about the nature of 21st century warfare.

The resulting program, known as Future Combat Systems, has turned out to be the most expensive and complex program procurement effort in Army history. According to current estimates, the service will spend well in excess of $100 billion by 2014 to develop the 'system of systems,' which includes manned and unmanned air and ground vehicles and sensors tied together by a wireless network. ' [Emphasis mine. ]'Untested approach?' 'Futuristic?' 'Grand theory?' It doesn't sound very supportive of our nation state's latest high-tech investments consistently touted as absolutely necessary for our defense in an increasingly technologically hostile world. The Army's Future Combat Systems program was recently examined against the backdrop of totally uncontrolled federal spending, which long ago has left the State's fiscal launching pad roaring skywards both in defiance of gravity and any modicum of budgetary restraints. Tim Weiner in his NY Times article of March 28th offers, 'The Army's plan to transform itself into a futuristic high-technology force has become so expensive that some of the military's strongest supporters in Congress are questioning the program's costs and complexity.

' The article, 'An Army Program to Build a High-Tech Force Hits Cost Snags,' goes on, 'Army officials said... that the first phase of the program... could run to $145 billion. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the 'technological bridge to the future' would equip 15 brigades of roughly 3,000 soldiers, or about one-third of the force the Army plans to field, over a 20-year span. ' The 'grand theory' Cahlink explains, is ' [t] he Army's bid for unprecedented speed and killing power require [ing] double the amount of computer code than is contained in the Joint Strike Fighter's systems, rely [ing] on 53 new technologies and require [ing] more than 100 network interfaces. ' The 'wireless network' Cahlink mentions is described by Weiner as the 'Joint Tactical Radio Systems,' known as JARS [pronounced 'jitters']. ' The points made during the Congressional inquiry as well as the heavy criticism leveled at the Army representatives were well documented in Weiner's NY Times' report and carried on the truth out website. It focused on the 'untested approach' and the expensive and complex procurements.

And some commentary on the Internet did indeed point out the military spending outrage in terms of its disadvantage to our economy as well as the increasing proclivity by our warmongering rulers to use such force at the slightest hint of imagined provocation. Remember Madam Dr. Albright's comment suggesting that having a powerful military force translates to using it. But what was missed in both reporting and commentary at the time, or at best was lightly glossed over, was the motivation in creating such a force in the first place, as well as its real intended mission. Cahlink points this out clearly: 'Still, the Army believes that the focus should be less on the controversies surrounding how the next-generation weapon will be built and more on the overwhelming advantage it will offer. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, captured the thoughts of many in the service about the program's high-risk strategy at a February House Armed Services Committee hearing.

'We are committed to the Future Combat System,' he said, 'but this is a journey. It is not a destination. ' 'Informed Internet readers will of course recall that it was also part of General Schoomaker's Army journey to violate the American Military Code of Honor as every graduate of West Point knows, and to compromise the military by violating the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which disallows the military from being used for civilian law enforcement purposes. It was either Schoomaker, or his boss, Gen. Wesley Clark, that engineered the military operation against innocent American civilians known as the 'Waco Massacre.

' Can you imagine just how much fun these jackbooted fascists will have when they get their new toys to kill people more efficiently? The next Waco will be an even greater and more spectacular event, with yet more babies, toddlers and children screaming and crying as the heroes of the United States Federal Police roast them alive into blackened crisps. [Caution - very sickening graphic autopsy photo - please do not click if excitable or squeamish.] Cahlink explains Gen. Schoomaker's latest journey into improved mass killing efficiency in order to spread our form of democracy all over God's creation: 'The Future Combat Systems journey began on a bare-bones airfield in Albania in the spring of 1999, when the United States agreed to provide 24 Apache helicopters to participate in a NATO-led effort to oust Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic's forces from Kosovo. The Army believed it could move the aircraft from their installation in Germany to a military base in Macedonia in eight to 14 days.

' Cahlink goes on: 'But the effort became far more complicated when a lack of space at the Macedonian base forced the Army farther south to a rarely used installation in Albania. The base had little infrastructure, so the 465 Army soldiers needed to operate and support the 24 Apaches quickly grew to a force of more than 5,000. ' Now that's a logical explanation, no? Of course, since NATO originated as a Western alliance against the former Soviet Union, the latter no longer even in existence, and since Milosevic and Serbia were never any threat to our security, why was this 'journey' undertaken in the first place? And of course, the logic for initiating this Evil Empire military mechanized nightmare could also have pointed out that M 1 A 1 Abrams Tanks were unable to negotiate the narrow dirt roads and quaint, rickety wooden bridges in Kosovo. Cahlink offers, 'Ultimately, it took the Army nearly four weeks to deploy the Apaches to Albania at a cost of roughly $250 million - and they were never used against Milosevic.

Pictures of soldiers and tanks and other armored vehicles stuck in muddy roads surrounding the base underscored concerns that the Army was too heavy for post-Cold War missions that required smaller forces and lighter vehicles. 'You had an Army that could kick the living hell out of anyone, but it couldn't get there,' says retired Lt. Gen. John Riggs, who was the Army's 'objective force director' from 2001 to 2004. ' What precisely are 'post-Cold War missions?' Why do we have to design 'Star Wars' weaponry adaptable to medieval roads, and bridges and airports? Of course, we already know the answer; we always have! It's in the next-to-last paragraph in Weiner's NY Times article: 'The challenge for the Army and Boeing [as lead systems integrator, meaning primary contractor] is to build 'an entirely new Army, reconfigured to perform the global policing mission,' said Gordon Adams, a former director for national security spending at the Office of Management and Budget, 'and that is enormously expensive. ' ' [Emphasis added.] Huh?

'Enormously expensive?' This is the best explanation one of The State's highest budget and financial gurus can come up with? It is 'enormously expensive' to tailor ['reconfigure'] our Army, which should exist only as a last resort for the purposes of self-defense, and this is the best explanation this high-level tax squanderer can come up with? Where is our global policing responsibility established in the seven Articles of the Constitution? Is this guy even aware that we have a Constitution? Why must we engage in this horrific spending and astonishing waste of our economic resources, and why isn't this budget guy worrying about these critical fiscal matters instead of creating the expensive role for US as international 'Robocop?' The Government Executive article displays a side panel that lists the new 'Robocop' toys and their functions: Eight types of manned ground vehicles, including the Army's tank replacement, known as the Mounted Combat System. It will weigh about 20 tons [so it can be airlifted], have a hybrid electrical engine, take out targets up to eight kilometers [4.97 miles] away and reach speeds of 90 kilometers per hour [56 mph].

Four kinds of unmanned ground vehicles, including a five to six-ton Armed Robotic Vehicle, which can carry up to 2,000 pounds, and a small unmanned ground vehicle weighing only 30 pounds. Four types of unmanned aerial vehicles, ranging from a 15-pound version with a one-hour flight time that soldiers can carry, to a large unmanned rotor craft called Fire Scout that will fly for up to 24 hours and coordinate with manned aircraft. A collection of ground sensors, among them a container of 15 precision missiles, known as the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System, which can operate independently or be remotely controlled by soldiers. The system-of-systems Common Operating Environment, which will allow all the FCS systems to communicate with each other and joint forces. Echoing the 'global policing policy' blurted out by OMB's Adams, the U.S. Department of Defense in its March 18th 'News Release' offered its corroboration more subtly. Referring to its National Defense Strategy [NDS] and National Military Strategy [NMS], DoD offers in its newsletter: ' [That] they seek to create conditions conducive to respect for the sovereignty of nations and a secure international order favorable to freedom, democracy, and economic opportunity.

The strategies promote close cooperation with others around the world who are committed to these and address mature and emerging threats. ' [Emphasis added.] The DoD article continues, 'The NDS defines DoD's strategic objectives: securing the U.S. from direct attack; securing strategic access and retaining freedom of action; strengthening alliances and partnerships; and establishing security conditions conducive to a favorable international order. [Emphasis added.] To even attempt to point out the total wrong-headedness of this profoundly idiotic and Hitlerian / Stalinist oversimplification of our new role as international cop when compared to the original and intended stated role of our government would be sophomorically futile. This political lunacy on the part of our internationally-despised, arrogant, statist rulers is unsubtly articulated in the saber-rattling announcement by these dangerous self-appointed world police terror mongers and buffoons in our government that: We are in charge! And we get to tell everyone in the world what to do, how and when to do it, how to behave, and to just follow our orders.

And if you " re not with US, then will carpet bomb your cities, kill your people, and barbecue your kids just like we barbecued our own! So, either you " re with US, or against US! Now, pass the 'freedom fries!'.