Comments on: A View to a Kill

By: taxi1

taxi1 — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:14:39 +0000

…the latest management fad.

Unmanned aviation WORKS in combat. It has been proven, and the drive for more of it comes from its success in the field of battle. If the latest management fad is to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

By: taxi1

taxi1 — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:10:39 +0000

The overemphasis on unmanned aviation is a function of the undoubted utility of UAVs, a low threat environment, marketing, and the American fondness for gadgets. It is disturbingly reminiscent of the missile-mania of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Big difference between this and missile-mania. The UAV revolution is based on hard results of success in combat, the ultimate arbiter of what works and what doesn’t. Missile emphasis came out of Ops Researchers crunching numbers, and did not survive combat intact.

The desire for UAVs primarily comes from the guys on the ground. They love the ISR, and really love it when they can control it.

By: Mike M.

Mike M. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:10:42 +0000

Yup. It’s why I’m such an advocate of teaching programmatic histories. You can learn an awful lot about how not to do things.

And, once in a while, how things ought to be done.

By: virgil xenophon

virgil xenophon — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:37:12 +0000

Mike M/

You’re not far wrong, careers have been made based on fads–and others broken.
Back in the 50s the Army couldn’t get Congress to appropriate a dime for a damn thing–not bullets, bombs, boots, blankets, barracks, guns, tanks, tents, you name it–unless it had teh word “ATOMIC” attached to it. Which is why you saw idiotic things like the nuclear bazooka-like (really more “Javalin”-like) “Davy Crockett” that could be shoulder fired by Corporals–and flavor-of-the month organizational structures like the “Pentomic” Division floated about.

Never underestimate the power of bad ideas or the tendency to twist even good ideas inside out to ultimately illogical conclusions,

By: Mike M.

Mike M. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:07:06 +0000

Right now? Not quite…but there are senior leaders who are buying the UAV Kool-Aid by the 55 gallon barrel. History is no longer studied – I guess everybody is busy with the latest management fad.

By: JoeC

JoeC — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 01:37:31 +0000

We in the U.S. have a sterilized view of all tragedy. I don’t know where our over emphasized aversion to blood and gore came from, but whatever the tragedy, all the action has been edited away. I think that is why shock and horror films do so well, the visuals are just not that familiar. In my partial world travels, I can say that other nation’s newsrags edit less of the visual side of the story than does the U.S. That sanitizing the picture in censorship leaves all without critical information, leaves us with less sensitivity to the reality (after all, people don’t bleed on T.V. like that. It can’t be real!)

A sudden thought. I wonder if it (this sanitizing of information) is another symptom of the closed professional society? Oh, you’re not a member of (insert profession here) so obviously you have no ‘need to know’ that bit of data. You’re not a member of the undertakers society so you have no need to watch that film on embalming. You’re not a CSI, so you have no need to see the investigation. You’re not a surgeon so you have no need to see that training video. Since you are obviously not a paid up member or member in training, there is absolutely no need for you to see what happens when a suicide vest goes off. Move along. Move along. There is nothing for you here.