robots &machines for the Empire :: essays research papers

ROBOTS & MACHINES FOR THE EMPIRETHE GEORGE LUCAS NIGHTMAREComing very soon to a theater of war near you, your family and your home, will be the machines and robots which will greatly magnify and make more mobile the States baleful make for deployment against its eternal enemy the people.Goernment Executive Magazine, traditionally pro- national government, includes an name in its April 15th issue entitled " future(a) Combat Zone." cater correspondent George Cahlink begins his article, "Six years ago, the array decided to stake its prox on an untested approach to acquiring futuristic weapons in run of a grand supposition about the nature of 21st coke warfare. The resulting program, known as Future Combat Systems, has turned out to be the most expensive and complex program procurement effort in legions history. According to current estimates, the service will spend wholesome in excess of $100 billion by 2014 to develop the arrangement of systems, which includ es manned and unmanned air and ground vehicles and sensors tied together by a wireless network." Emphasis mine."Untested approach?" "Futuristic?" "Grand theory?" It doesnt sound very supportive of our nation states latest high-tech investments consistently touted as absolutely necessary for our abnegation in an increasingly technologically hostile world.The Armys Future Combat Systems program was recently examined against the backdrop of totally uncontrolled federal spending, which long ago has left the States fiscal open up pad roaring skywards both in defiance of somberness and any modicum of budgetary restraints. Tim Weiner in his NY Times article of March twenty-eighth offers, "The Armys plan to transform itself into a futuristic high-technology force has become so expensive that some of the militarys strongest supporters in Congress are questioning the programs costs and complexity."The article, "An Army Program to Build a High-Tech Fo rce Hits Cost Snags," goes on, "Army officials saidthat the first phase of the programcould run to $145 billion. capital of Minnesota Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the technological bridge to the future would equip 15 brigades of roughly 3,000 soldiers, or about one-third of the force the Army plans to field, over a 20-year span."The "grand theory" Cahlink explains, is "the Armys bid for unique speed and killing power requireing double the amount of computer write in code than is contained in the Joint Strike Fighters systems, relying on 53 new technologies and requireing more than 100 network interfaces." The "wireless network" Cahlink mentions is expound by Weiner as the "Joint Tactical Radio Systems," known as JTRS pronounced jitters.