The Black Vault

July 06, 2009.

WASHINGTON'S traditional means of projecting power abroad was growing "increasingly obsolete" and its billion-dollar military hardware could be as ineffectual against future threats as the heavily fortified Maginot line was in defending France against the Nazis, a senior Pentagon adviser has warned.

In a wake-up call to US military chiefs, Andrew Krepinevich, a leading architect of the counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, argued that the Pentagon was ill-equipped to counter rising powers such as China, hostile states such as Iran, the threat from irregular forces such as Hezbollah, and terrorists such as al-Qa'ida. It was also wasting billions on outdated weaponry.

In an interview in the July issue of Foreign Affairs Mr Krepinevich said the military was in danger of "drinking its own bathwater" and discounting new challenges, including the proliferation of precision-guided weapons and threats from space and cyberspace.

Last week US Defence Secretary Robert Gates rewarded him for his prescience with a seat on the influential Defence policy board at the Pentagon.

Aircraft carriers, navy destroyers, short-range fighter aircraft and forward bases such as Guam and Okinawa were increasingly vulnerable to technology and tactics being developed by the US's rivals, Mr Krepinevich argued.

Even new areas of supremacy, such as US dominance of global positioning satellites that guide smart bombs to their targets, were becoming a "wasting asset" as states such as China developed the space technology to destroy them. China already had the ballistic missiles and laser technology to destroy low-orbit satellites on which the military depended.

Mr Krepinevich claimed the US should devote more resources to cutting-edge nano-satellites to maintain its technological lead and should invest in missile interceptors and laser energy defences that could counter the threat from adversaries deploying their own "smart" weapons.

The Pentagon is preparing its defence review, which is presented to congress every four years. Along with retired lieutenant general Paul Van Riper, Mr Krepinevich has been appointed to a "red team" of defence advisers with responsibility for thinking like the enemy and spotting weaknesses in the quadrennial defence review. In his essay he drew attention to the astonishing success in 2002 of a red team of war-gamers, led by General Van Riper, representing an unnamed Gulf power, in reality, Iran.

A surprise attack was launched on the US fleet by swarms of Iranian suicide vessels and anti-ship cruise missiles. More than half of the US ships were sunk or disabled in "the worst naval disaster since Pearl Harbour".

General Van Riper turned off his anti-radar defences and kept his missile launchers moving, thwarting US attempts to track and destroy them, and rendering US ground forces that landed in Iran vulnerable to attack.

In wars of the future, "smart" rockets and missiles will be readily available to non-state forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, let alone traditional powers such as Russia and China, which already have the technology and the ability to onsell it.

Despite this, the Pentagon is spending billions on short-range strike aircraft that need to operate from forward land bases or aircraft carriers vulnerable to missiles, submarines and drones.

Wars probably will be won or lost in space when it comes right down to it. Knock out a few sattalites that control even none militry things and we are all out of business. Communications of all sorts, cell phones, everything you do at your computer, relays thru sattalites. Banking and credit, phones, televison. Than if you knock out key military things like spy sattalities, Norad, GPS. Thats why we never have been able to fall behind in technology and why star wars technology is so important to continue. If we don;t they will, and as techology grows in leaps and bounds, many other countries are catching up.

greeney2 wrote:Wars probably will be won or lost in space when it comes right down to it. Knock out a few sattalites that control even none militry things and we are all out of business. Communications of all sorts, cell phones, everything you do at your computer, relays thru sattalites. Banking and credit, phones, televison. Than if you knock out key military things like spy sattalities, Norad, GPS. Thats why we never have been able to fall behind in technology and why star wars technology is so important to continue. If we don;t they will, and as techology grows in leaps and bounds, many other countries are catching up.

So true.

& more & more wars will take place without human involvement.

Drones will turn into' fiterjets & tanks without any humans at the controls.

rath wrote:

greeney2 wrote:Wars probably will be won or lost in space when it comes right down to it. Knock out a few sattalites that control even none militry things and we are all out of business. Communications of all sorts, cell phones, everything you do at your computer, relays thru sattalites. Banking and credit, phones, televison. Than if you knock out key military things like spy sattalities, Norad, GPS. Thats why we never have been able to fall behind in technology and why star wars technology is so important to continue. If we don;t they will, and as techology grows in leaps and bounds, many other countries are catching up.

So true.

& more & more wars will take place without human involvement.

Drones will turn into' fiterjets & tanks without any humans at the controls.

And then we build Skynet, right?

Wing-Zero wrote:

rath wrote:

greeney2 wrote:Wars probably will be won or lost in space when it comes right down to it. Knock out a few sattalites that control even none militry things and we are all out of business. Communications of all sorts, cell phones, everything you do at your computer, relays thru sattalites. Banking and credit, phones, televison. Than if you knock out key military things like spy sattalities, Norad, GPS. Thats why we never have been able to fall behind in technology and why star wars technology is so important to continue. If we don;t they will, and as techology grows in leaps and bounds, many other countries are catching up.

So true.

& more & more wars will take place without human involvement.

Drones will turn into' fiterjets & tanks without any humans at the controls.

And then we build Skynet, right?

Skynet .............. try firestorm.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX6YvWxtrxw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8hlj4EbdsE

Metal Storm's 3GL and MAUL systems are being tested at shoulder-firing stage and the remote controlled FireStorm has been test-fired by the US Marines.

Metal Storm is an Australian weapons system developer with a world-first invention.

Metal Storm wins US Army project
July 1, 2009

Defence technology company Metal Storm Ltd has been awarded a development project worth $US514,700 with the US Army to increase the battle effectiveness of certain warheads.

Metal Storm will conduct the project over the next 12 months for the US Army's Joint Munitions and Lethality Contracting Center.

"The objectives of the project are to develop and demonstrate new and innovative technologies that are capable of providing significant improvements in lethality over current inventory warheads by controlling the direction of the fragmentation pattern," Metal Storm said on Wednesday.

The company is currently seeking to raise $2 million under a share purchase plan (SPP), which closes on Friday, July 3.

"The Metal Storm board encourages shareholders who wish to participate in the SPP to complete their application forms and submit them as soon as possible," chief executive Lee Finniear said in a statement.

Metal Storm said in May that without a capital injection, it was in danger of exhausting its resources in about four months.

It is still moving toward commercialising its weapons systems and ammunition.

© 2009 AAP




Transcript
8/7/1999
Australian inventor creates world's deadliest gun

MAXINE MCKEW: It sounds like something out of science fiction -- a revolutionary gun capable of firing more than a million bullets per minute, 100 times the rate of fire of a conventional machine gun.

But there's nothing hypothetical about the weapon called Metal Storm.

The brainchild of a Brisbane inventor, it's being hailed as the ballistic breakthrough of the century.

Already, the Defence Departments of Australia, the US and Britain are keenly observing trials of this electronic gun.

Today, Australian investors took their chance to get a slice of the action as the company made its debut on the stock market.

Just sayin', it's following T2: Judgment Day perfectly.

Good then I can coraporate with a T-1000 later

Wing-Zero wrote:Just sayin', it's following T2: Judgment Day perfectly.

things might well go that way in time.

Dark-Samus wrote:Good then I can coraporate with a T-1000 later

Oh? You'll let him kill you for clothes without a fight?

They do appreciate that.

Wing-Zero wrote:

Dark-Samus wrote:Good then I can coraporate with a T-1000 later

Oh? You'll let him kill you for clothes without a fight?

They do appreciate that.

Oh ....

I thought he was on about some sort of romantic deal.