[iwar] [fc:Adding.Laptops.To.Arsenal]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-08-24 08:06:01


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Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2002 08:06:01 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Adding.Laptops.To.Arsenal]
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Baltimore Sun
August 22, 2002
Adding Laptops To Arsenal
Weapon: In the Mojave Desert, troops test computers, unmanned drones and
other equipment that could transform warfare.
By Tom Bowman
FORT IRWIN, Calif. -- It was not long ago that Army Col. Abe Turner would
look to a rumpled paper map and a hand-held FM radio to get a fix on an
enemy's location. 
Now he looks to his laptop computer, where the enemy glides across the
screen, red icons on a glowing green relief map, updated every few minutes. 
"The system we have now is so much better at painting a picture of what is
out there," said Turner, an assistant operations commander with the 82nd
Airborne Division, as he sat outside his field tent. "You don't have to
waste time guessing anymore. 'Is the enemy over the hill?'" 
Turner, a 26-year Army veteran, jumped into Panama for the 1989 invasion and
two years later was among the first U.S. soldiers deployed for the Persian
Gulf war. But on this blazing August afternoon he is taking part in a
sweeping multiservice training mission in the Mojave Desert and elsewhere
called Millennium Challenge. 
During the three-week mission, Turner and the other troops here at the
Army's National Training Center are testing a vast array of computers,
unmanned drones and lightweight armored vehicles that can quickly maneuver
around a battlefield. 
Some of the vehicles even sniff the air for chemical and biological weapons.
It's all part of an effort to gain an upper hand over a future enemy and
defeat him quickly. 
"We need to be smarter and quicker, use our guile and leverage information
technology to get inside the enemy decision process and affect the
operation," Gen. William F. Kernan, commander of the U.S. Joint Forces
Command in Norfolk, Va., told reporters. 
Kernan, whose command has mounted the training maneuvers, said that it's
possible that information technology could soon transform warfare, much as
the crossbow, the tank and the airplane did in earlier times. "The computer
may well be the next revolution in military affairs," he said. 
When Turner and hundreds of other 82nd Airborne troops parachuted into a
desert airfield and captured it from defending forces as part of this
exercise, they had nearly a dozen durable laptop computers. The screen
showed the enemy in red icons and friendly forces in blue icons. He was able
to pinpoint enemy locations and call in artillery and warplanes to suppress
those forces. 
And other military officers could also see the same bird's-eye view of the
battlefield on their computer screens back in Norfolk, Va., or in warships
off San Diego. As a result, commanders can watch the pace of the battle,
plan for additional forces or determine how a particular fight will affect
an overall operation. 
Turner said another benefit of a computer pinpointing the location of
friendly forces is that it will cut down on the incidents of "friendly
fire," the accidental killing of soldiers by their comrades. In the gulf
war, one-quarter of the 148 U.S. combat deaths were the result of friendly
fire, according to Pentagon statistics. 
With the battlefield computers, such deaths "would probably be nonexistent,"
predicted Turner. 
Although the desert war game is set in the year 2007 and involves an
unidentified country armed with chemical and biological weapons, as well as
missiles and armored vehicles, the talk here often turns to a specific
nation, Iraq, and the likelihood of a future invasion. 
After one Army major demonstrated the computer, called a Maneuver Control
System, he remarked, "It could be useful in Iraq." 
Besides providing the location of friendly and enemy forces, the MCS is the
hub for myriad other computer systems providing details on everything from
the location of enemy missiles sites and aircraft to weather conditions and
available supplies. 
The computers are also able to operate with the information systems of
Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada. 
Besides laptops, soldiers at the Mojave range were also testing the new
Stryker, an eight-wheeled 20-ton armored vehicle, chosen by the Army as a
lighter and more maneuverable alternative to the Abrams tank and the Bradley
fighting vehicle. Two Strykers can fit on a small cargo plane that can land
on a primitive airfield. 
At the captured airfield, 14 Strykers roll down the ramps of C-130 transport
planes. Aided with similar battlefield computers, they are off to attack a
chemical weapons facility and a ballistic missile site. 
There are no live rounds fired in the exercises. Sensors on soldiers and
equipment are used to keep score of hits and misses. 
Maj. Jim Lechner, the Stryker battalion's executive officer from Fort Lewis,
Wash., said the superior information they received and the vehicle's easy
maneuvering help them capture the two enemy sites, after letting air power
and artillery soften up the targets. 
"We were able to learn where the enemy was and avoid them," he said. 
But even with better information, there are hazards. 
Coming in close contact with an enemy armored vehicle, Staff Sgt. Charles
Nunley drove in circles around the desert to avoid being hit by enemy fire.
"I was going around doing curls and doughnuts. I was a sitting duck," Nunley
said shortly after the operation, his face still smeared with camouflage
paint. 
Soon, the enemy vehicle was destroyed, not from the air but from a fellow
Stryker, which let lose with a Javelin anti-tank missile about 2,000 feet
away. 
Whether Strykers take part in any attack on Iraq is uncertain. They will not
be certified combat-ready until May. Some scenarios call for action against
Iraq in late winter. Still, some officers here wonder if Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld might waive that certification and allow some Strykers to
take part in any attempt at "regime change." 
Asked recently whether the training in the Mojave Desert could be used in a
fight against Iraq, Rumsfeld was circumspect. 
"I wouldn't want to talk about a possibility of a conflict in Iraq,"
Rumsfeld told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "But with
respect to Millennium Challenge ... there's no question but that the
exercises ... will have applicability to all things that we do in any area
of responsibility across the globe." 
Throughout history, military conflicts have been used as proving grounds for
new equipment, sometimes rushed to the front while still a prototype. 
In the gulf war, the Joint STARS surveillance plane was used for the first
time to spy on fast-moving targets. In Kosovo, the precision-guided Joint
Direct Attack Munition was a new weapon targeted at Serb forces. And in
Afghanistan, a high-flying drone made its debut snapping pictures of Taliban
units from about 65,000 feet. 
And in this dusty and scorching stretch of desert, most officers and
soldiers are convinced that should they enter Iraq, some of them will have a
laptop computer in their rucksacks.

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