How automatic can an automatic weapon get? Recent wars, especially in the ME, contain a very large number of enemies/insurgent personnel that are mobile between dense and unfriendly civilian populations. It is too dangerous to send in sharp shooters, because the unfriendly civilian population is dense and the sharp shooters will get discovered and killed at a higher rate than we can train new ones. From the technological point of view, is there a concept to design something that can easily avoid detection, accurately pinpoint its moving target insurgent personnel, and deliver enough fire power that the insurgent group can be killed even if it is very large and distributed between the civilians?
This may sound nice. But I am afraid without a living-breathing-reacting person on the ground holding the trigger, the number of collateral casualties would rise sharply. We have the capability of armed robots, and have had for some time. However, a real person on the ground is greatly prefered to somebody sitting in front of a computer miles away.
Technically speaking, yeah, we can probably find something to do just that. Practically speaking, making a machine like that is going to create more problems than it's worth. We're not fighting a war of annihilation with anyone at the moment. Until we are, the political part of the fight matters as much or more than the tactical.
Thanks for the feedbacks, this is sooo interesting. I am a maths student, and I would like to design an algorithm for a generic strategy under such battle scenarios. What factors should I consider? Do I guess that the causalties amongst the civilian opponents that host the large, scattered, and mobile insurgent group would have a VERY negative effect on the battle-moral of the US units? This is one of the most interesting strategical optimization problems. If you imagine yourself working on eliminating the insurgents moving across the dense unfriendly civilian sector, what would be your priorities to create a strategy that is the safest for your men but also the deadliest to the insurgents?
No such thing. Every battlefield situation and engagement is different, there can be no such thing as a "generic strategy".
There is no algorithm. Insurgencies are incredibly complex and ultimtely come down to politics and boots on the ground. Winning the war isn't really about killing insurgents, its about providing security so that local security forces/governments can take over. Trying to apply some magical death machine based on mathematics is extremely dangerous. In Vietnam there was a small contingent of civilain "math wizards" who tried to apply numbers to war. Things like body counts and ordinance expenditures were heavily analyzed. It didn't work to say the least.
This is still so interesting. Do you know a place/link by any chance where I can start studying how anti-insurgent assignments were conducted? What the observations of the US units were during the executions of the assignments, and how they were building their adaptive decisions as they were progressing?
Try here. It's a start, but only that. There are literally millions of factors to take into account. Google 'counterinsurgency operations' for more.
Don't tell our little FSB snooper anything . How did you get on in Gubden , Dagestan the other day , KGB? Behave yourself else Bortnikov will send you down there
HAHAHA raymondo, let me invite you to guess how many files are open about you and your in-laws in Moscow. But wait ... haven't I seen you in Siberia before? Let me congratulate you comrade nachalnic raymondo for your excellent supervisory accomplishments in the Magadan reeducation labor camp. HAHAHAHAHA
