Warren Ellis » Theoretical Hyperwar 2009

Someone should tell Bungie that the US millitary is ripping off ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING from their Spartans. And dressing them like The Stig for some reason. Are they planning on invading Antartica or something?

THINK!- May 20th, 2009 at 9:37 pm

Vaporware.

JimtheFool- May 20th, 2009 at 9:49 pm

anyone else out there actually SCARED by what they read?

Eric- May 20th, 2009 at 10:51 pm

Shoulder Pads aren’t big enough.

MisterFoo- May 20th, 2009 at 11:03 pm

Dudes’ll be fucked when Ocelot shows up.

Daniel- May 20th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

@Seej 500
I was thinking the same thing, all he’s missing is the green paint job.

Stefan Jones- May 20th, 2009 at 11:33 pm

@JimtheFool: Well, yeah. Because they’ll probably find a way to suppress the soldiers’ ability to feel shock and horror, so they won’t be traumatized by, like sight of decapitated toddler heads rolling down road out from the car they accidentally shot up.

Ian Aleksander Adams- May 21st, 2009 at 12:53 am

I bet those guys couldn’t hit the broad side of a wookie

huh- May 21st, 2009 at 1:55 am

Fun fact: Iron Man was published 45 years ago, and they still haven’t been able to make anything like it.

Supernaut- May 21st, 2009 at 2:15 am

The thought of these guys make me feel all warm and fuzzy. It’s the robots you have to worry about. How many movies about AI turning on it’s masters since Ellison wrote I Have NO Mouth and I Must Scream? and they still don’t learn. Plus with super capacitors and the bio-conversion units they are working on you can take a small helicopter or VTOL arm it with the Dazlr Green sodium laser blinding system (not quite illegal under the 1985 convention against blinding weapons) put maybe a small mini gun on it and just mass produce. Why worry about soldiers families bitching.

future war stuff « Ghostfooting- May 21st, 2009 at 2:34 am

[…] war stuff Warren Ellis has the NS version, here’s mine @ h+, and PW Singer has an h+ interview and a great TED […]

Daniel Gorringe- May 21st, 2009 at 5:08 am

Every future war concept I’ve seen in the last fifteen years has conspicuously stolen a moto-cross helmet.
And basically talked up the same crap, assuming all future war will be the spanking of rag-tag militias by exquisitely overfunded professional soldiers more or less immune to attrition.
What I’m not seeing is any kind of revision of the role of the infantryman, or technologies aimed to genuinely transforming his tactical capabilities; nor thinking on the economics of war; which thinking is still late nineteenth century.
It’s much like futurewar concepts of the 1870’s, in which infantrymen are given flight-packs; and FLY in lines, delivering volleys at one another with their percussion-cap muskets.

dan mcenroe- May 21st, 2009 at 3:33 pm

I can’t believe they’re still flogging this shit. I worked on a video ten, maybe tweleve frikkin’ years ago for a company pitching this stuff to the DoD. Their suit did all of this, PLUS shot tear gas out of shoulder jets and had taser “brass knuckles” for hand-to-hand combat. The best bit? An active camouflage system that allowed the soldier to become nearly invisible - which, to my mind, just makes you more likely to get capped by one of your own guys.

When I asked the company rep who hired me to produce the video how they were going to get the suit to actually do all that, he told me, point blank, “Oh, we have no idea. We’re just selling the concept so we can get the development money.”

At least they paid me on time.

Seej 500- May 21st, 2009 at 9:40 pm

@Daniel Gorringe: Y’know that’s a really good point that even contemporary warfare struggles with, let alone future warefare. It seems to me like we (developed nations) still approach warfare as one big army smacking another big army like in WWI. The Viet Cong, the Taliban, and the rest have all shown guerilla war is a pretty damn good way for a small number of barely-trained amatures to take on the biggest and most advanced army on the planet. We should be stealing this idea.

@dan mcenroe: I read somewhere the big problem with active camouflage is that the amount of needed power to make something fairly invisible to human eyes leaves it glowing like a bonfire to anyone with infra-red sensors (such as, for example, the CCD you have in your camera phone).

Jeremy Henderson- May 22nd, 2009 at 1:11 am

I hope in the rush to pump our soldiers full of all this new technology they don’t forget them how to hold a rifle. He’s holding that thing like he just noticed a shitstain on the trigger.

Mike Black- May 22nd, 2009 at 1:36 am

So, yeah, looks suspiciously like the EU troops from Battlefield 2142. Some of the functions seem relatively close to the game as well. Seems like someone’s a DICE fan.

http://battlefield.ea.com/battlefield/bf2142/images/screenshots/BF2142pcSCRN_EU_Assault_combat.jpg

Nick- May 25th, 2009 at 12:25 am

I just see stormtroopers marching when I see this pic, along with the Imperial March playing in my head…

Lauren- May 26th, 2009 at 11:38 am

LOL! This is going to be the kind of thing we look back on in 10 years and think, “My GOD! People in the 00’s must have been retarded to think the soldiers of the future would look that gay.”

I’m hoping for something more along the lines of Universal Soldier or Terminator… or a technology implosion and throw back to trench warfare.

Or, how about this, no war!!

thetragicclown- May 26th, 2009 at 4:41 pm

Lack of groin-armour seems a pretty hefty design flaw to me.

JOURNAL: How to Break and Open Source Insurgency

Short Answer: divide it.

It's long been my contention that Iraq was stabilized at an acceptable level of controlled chaos due to a happy accident by al Qaeda (in an attempt to expand/lead the loose insurgency in a new direction). What did they do? They blew up the Golden Mosque in Samara in 2006. This act of symbolic terrorism did indeed disrupt social networks as anticipated, however the consequences were ultimately disastrous for the Iraqi open source insurgency.

The reason for this is it broke the dynamics of the open source insurgency in ways the US and Iraqi government's COIN efforts could not. First, it created a permanent split between Sunni and Shiite insurgent groups/militias. Coopetition ended. Second, it motivated large Shiite militias to start an ethnic cleansing of Sunni areas. This put acute pressure on Sunni guerrilla groups who were too small (by design to avoid US counter-pressure) to defend themselves against large militias operating in the open. The result was an opening, very close to the one I described in my 2005 NYTimes OpEd, that allowed the US to convert Sunni guerrilla groups into militias that were not loyal to the central government (in direct contradiction to its COIN manual).

It's a nice example of the dynamics of many to many conflict, social network disruption, and the development open source counterinsurgency.

See this excellent description at the blog, "Musings on Iraq" for more detail on the ethnic cleansing operations. It also includes this money quote: "the majority of the Sunni insurgency gave up and switched sides to align with the Americans rather than face annihilation at the hands of the Shiite militias, Al Qaeda in Iraq, or the United States."

NOTE: it's pretty clear from the above that social network disruption (either through attacks on symbolic targets or blood and guts terrorism) is like playing horseshoes with live hand grenades. It's ultimately a losing strategy for advancing an open source insurgency. Social network disruption is very likely to break standing order 6: don't fork the insurgency.

Twitter Updates for 2009-11-20

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LINKS: 20 NOV 09

Some random items of interest:

Vigilante militias in Rio are displacing the drug gangs -- favelas under the control of militias has grown from 108 in 2005 to 400 in 2008 (out of 965). Why? They have a better (albeit parasitic) conflict/business model than the drug gangs since they act as a substitute for missing public goods/services normally supplied by the government. First, they provide a minimal level of security and conflict adjudication. Second, they make more money than the drug gangs by "taxing" everything from propane to cable TV to the gray market.
US gray economy estimated at $1 Trillion (not including criminal, outside of the evasion of taxes and regulation, activities) and growing faster than the "legal" economy.
Proposal and wiki for an open source fabrication lab.
Somali pirates are expanding operations into the Indian ocean. The combination of positive feedback loops (maritime insurance + rapid payoffs by crisis negotiators) and legal ambiguity (the biggest fear of a western navy and governments is that they might arrest a pirate -- prompting a massive/expensive legal tussle with few certain penalties and the forced extension of a visa to the former pirate once he is released from his short incarceration). Is a franchise model for other locales possible?

A business group in Ciudad Juarez asks for UN peacekeepers. Hilarious. "Ciudad Juarez, population 1.5 million, has an average of seven homicides a day, with the total at 1,986 for this year through mid-October."
Seccession.net. County based secession effort.

Theoretical Hyperwar 2009

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JOURNAL: How to Break and Open Source Insurgency

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LINKS: 20 NOV 09

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