(no subject)

[dr_tectonic]

So, Happy Birthday to the mid-terming monkey! (As of Tuesday, but since he's study-study-study man all week, it's a good thing we did all the celebrating last weekend.) G&C on Saturday for Jerry and Thomas's birthdays. Dinner with Mel on Sunday.

It snowed today. It was 70 yesterday. It's supposed to be 50 tomorrow.

Lots of not getting to bed early enough for me, but I also got a bunch of work done on the R project this week, so I'm feeling satisfied. This month will mostly about writing a grant proposal, UGH BLEAH GLEARGH.

Saw a couple of interesting talks yesterday, the upshot of which is basically: having the military deal with natural disasters is a horrible idea. And sensationalism in news reporting has evil, evil effects, so if you watch CNN or Fox News, or hell, any kind of TV news reporting, please stop. I'm serious. It literally kills people. And if you're watching, you're contributing to the problem.

Feeling kind of scattershot. Buh?

Why aren't I in bed?

Comments

Change?

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

See, looking at the actions the military has to carry out, it seems that most of our most likely threats are not folks who will face us on the battlefield for very long, but folks who will hide among civilian populations. Wouldn't it make sense to shift/add to the army's focus so that civilian management is at least a branch of the military if not a skill generally held by all infantry troops to one degree or another?

I'm not saying this so they can help with disaster relief (although if that's a side benefit, great) but so they can actually do what we've recently been asking them to do.

Re: Change?

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Probably you are right. I'd be interested to know how much folks in the U.S. military are already thinking about that issue, and whether they're likely to be able to make that shift effecively.

Re: Change?

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

The Special Operations Command is already performing missions of that kind. It might be counterintuitive to think people known for being able to parachute down into enemy territory wearing a tutu and carring a piano wire, killing the bad guy and fighting their way home, being sent on civilian liason missions, but what makes those guys "special" is their ability to improvise and act without pre-rehearsing 222 times, and that doesn't just apply to combat.

Hmm. I wonder if the Navy SEALS have an improv troupe.

Re: Change?

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

But aren't they colossally expensive?

Couldn't one train a rapid response team that wasn't military (and so didn't need to know how to be snipers, say) for cheaper?

Re: Change?

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

The idea is for the specops dudes to write up how it can be done, after they've done it. You don't know whether you need snipers along until you've gone in such places and found out. But specops isn't that expensive. The trouble is that people mentally capable of that kind of work are just plain rare.

Re: Change?

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

But this assumes that people who can handle crises are also good ones to learn lessons from one crisis that apply to how other people should handle subsequent ones. Why would that necessarily be true?

And shouldn't people with these skills who are trained in military goals be finding Osama bin Laden or something like that? [I'm only partly being flip. This just feels way too Stand on Zanzibar or The Sheep Look Up for me.]

Re: Change?

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

There's an unwritten law somewhere requiring 2 hours of cheetos and first-person shootemups before lifelong civilians like you and me get to engage in second guessing special forces officers. So I'll try to be brief. There are mundane crises, which people handle because they've either handled them before or because they've drilled and drilled and drilled beforehand. Then there are crises where drilling is futile. That's when special forces get involved. If their afteraction reports prove useful to conventional units, they'll move to other things.

As for ObL, them Spec Ops troops have been operating along the Durand Line for what, 5 years? By now they've probably all been photographed from a distance, and are thus best not sent on get-in,get-on-with-it,get-it-over-with-and-get-out missions to Waziristan.