Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

“There’s a reason you separate military and the police.  One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people.  When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.” – Battlestar Galactica (2005)

I hate to make fun of India.  I heard they lost power at their largest mall, and hundreds of people were stuck on the escalator for hours.

I was originally going to write about another topic, but then I saw this article (LINK) about how the Army® was testing a fighting force using a system that combines soldiers, flying drones, and land drone vehicles and I couldn’t resist.  The short explanation of the system is that flying drones are used for real time reconnaissance, and followed up with both living troops and land drones to attack an enemy.  Those are followed up by McDonalds® and Starbucks™.

Based on the simulations that they have run so far, a group of soldiers augmented with the drones was able to attack a defending group of 120 soldiers and win.  This isn’t unusual – defending soldiers lose all the time, just ask the Trojans.  But in this case, the attackers were a platoon-sized group of only 40 soldiers.  They also claimed nearly zero casualties in the simulation, although one participant ran out of GoGurt©.

This version tested well, except in certain areas of Asia.

This is opposite of all of general wisdom about conventional warfare.  General wisdom (based on hundreds of years of us killing each other) says that a competent defending force has roughly a three to one advantage – that is, 120 defenders is equal to 360 attackers.  In practice, if troops were available you’d probably nearly double the number of attackers to 600-700 troops to overwhelm the defenders and minimize attacker losses.  Yet, the Army exercises showed they’d be able to defeat those 120 defenders easily with only 40 soldiers if they remembered to pay Comcast® for Internet.

The reason that this works for the attackers is fairly simple – the flying drones give nearly super-human information about where the adversary is.  For soldiers, this is nearly a super power – to be able to see and know where the enemy is without them knowing where you are.  It provides a significant advantage so attacks can be precisely planned and ambushes detected.  The Army has recently ordered 9,000 Black Hornet® drones from FLIR™ and they’re going into service – at a price tag of $15,000 each.

Every single picture of this drone I found was someone looking lovingly at it as it floated above their hand. 

The other type of drone mentioned were land drone systems.  When they first ran the simulations, the Army commander would get information from the flying drones and then bring up the troops and land drones, but that allowed the adversary to know that the attack was coming, so in later simulations the attacking commander tried to bring up the air and land drone forces for a simultaneous attack.  So what did the land drones look like?

My bet is that they will something like the picture below, a combination of weapons and sensors so that the drone can attack without exposing humans.  Sort of a combat Roomba®.

Want an A.I. uprising?  Because this is how you get an A.I. uprising.

In the article, the author casually noted that the augmented drone/soldier combination wouldn’t be all that effective against Russia.  Honestly, I think he’s being optimistic.  When attacking any state-sponsored military, the countermeasures required to detect and stop the drones are generally far cheaper than the drones themselves.  The only way to completely stop the countermeasures is to increase the autonomy of the drone systems to the point where they’re making a lot of decisions by themselves, or by air dropping lots of vodka for the Russian troops.

Again, defense costs less than building an attacking force.  A great list of ways knock out drones is here (LIST), H/T to the Docent over at Practical Eschatology (LINK) for the link.  He always has pretty interesting links and commentary, so consider dropping by on a regular basis.  History has shown that advances in military technology are generally short-lived.

In many ways, it is nearly certain that the Russians could easily field sufficient electronic deterrents to knock our small drones out of the air, and also potentially use them against us by using our radio communication signals to pinpoint attacks.  The Russians routinely jam our GPS® signals, and it’s likely they’re the reason that my Wi-Fi goes out at 3:00AM, just when I’m trying to upload a post.  Fighting Russia, the advantage probably goes away.  In some senses, increased technological complexity can work against soldiers in a big way – that complexity must be supported by logistics – the average soldier carries twenty pounds of batteries into combat.  If there aren’t spares?  What then?

Similarly, China would likely be immune to such attempts at force multiplication, since they’re making most of our electronics anyway and have probably inserted code that turns our electronic hardware into Pokémon® games if we ever declare war on them.  Though anecdotal evidence indicates that the quality of the individual Chinese troops would be stunningly deficient when compared with the average soldier of the United States, I believe that they have no intention of ever fighting a stand-up war against the United States.  Any attacks China makes will be surprising and asymmetrical and probably focused against Western economic systems.

So who is the Army thinking about using this technology against?

It probably won’t change the outcome in Afghanistan, where the Afghans are fighting a guerilla war using 100 year old rifles and improvised bombs.  They don’t depend on holding ground to win – they just have to tire the United States out.  Drone technology already is saving their lives, but it won’t win the war.  And if it won’t (probably) work as effectively against Russia or China, who are we preparing for?

The Cubans?  Venezuela?  The Great Heathen Penguin Army of Antarctica?

I’m pretty sure that Barney wore it better . . .

My fear is that the answer is that the technology might be used here in the United States, not by our soldiers, but by our police.  Whereas there are plentiful and relatively inexpensive ways to detect and/or defeat drones by a State actor, the idea of using them to control and defeat a semi-organized and relatively low tech group of citizens seems more likely.

The police are already becoming a military force.  In 1980, there were 3,000 SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) raids a year.  In 2016 there were 50,000-80,000 such raids yearly.  Over $5 billion worth of military equipment has been transferred.

In fairness, he also took a Tour of Italy at the Olive Garden®.

I wonder how much of that technology is in Virginia?  But I’m sure that if citizens give up their guns, the police will turn all that stuff back in.  Right?

What, the cops have no intention of turning it back in?  Maybe the Great Heathen Penguin Army has the right idea . . . .

“A man’s got to know his limitations.” – Magnum Force

I assure you, playing Risk® with Clint Eastwood is difficult.  He brings real artillery.

Ma Wilder was into pot.

Pots, really, ones made out of clay.  Which led to the next step:  Ma Wilder wanted a pottery wheel.  Why?  She was making pots, and the closest public pottery wheel was 45 miles away.  Heck, Ma Wilder and some bored doctor’s wife were probably the only people who had a pottery wheel in the whole county.

Being that Pa and Ma Wilder had enough money to pay for Wilder Redoubt, feed me, and to pay for the pottery wheel, Pa bought a pottery wheel for Ma.  Since this was before Amazon® Prime™, Ma Wilder ordered it out of some magazine, probably Bored Doctor’s Wife’s Hobbies Quarterly, and a group of burly UPS® drivers drove an hour out of their way to deliver the wheel.

What arrived wasn’t a fully assembled pottery wheel – it was the parts.  This particular contraption was heavy – it had a large concrete wheel several feet in diameter, and about four inches thick.  The idea behind a pottery wheel is that you get the whole contraption spinning, and the inertia of the heavy wheel would keep it going while you turned a $3.00 piece of clay into a lopsided $1.50 pot that only a kindergartner’s mother could love.

It was Ma Wilder’s goal that they name a radioactive turtle after her in 300 years.

Pa Wilder spread the pottery wheel parts out on the shag carpeting in my bedroom.  My bedroom had a door to the greenhouse where Ma Wilder wanted to set up her pottery studio, so it was nearly a logical place to put the pottery wheel together.  Pa Wilder had many things that put him in a good mood – but assembling pottery wheels was not one of them, and I could tell that this particular Saturday morning he was not amused.  Grumpy, I believe is the term, but grumpy doesn’t convey the sense of hate that I felt emanating from him onto the parts arrayed on the floor like the internal organs of a Muppet® after an autopsy.

This particular Muppet® kermitted suicide.

I sat quietly watching, as it was my bedroom, after all.  I think I was in fourth or fifth grade.  Even then, I liked to build models – model planes, model spaceships, model tanks, model ships, and model cars.  I loved the feel of the parts fitting together, the minor polishing and trimming to make them fit perfectly, and look perfectly.  Modelling to me was intuitive, as was assembling most mechanical things.  It also was a great protector of my virginity.

While Pa Wilder made many wonderful things in his woodshop, they were things he designed, things that he built in his mind before he ever let his saw cut into the wood.  I still have a bookcase he built when he was in high school – a beautifully crafted piece of furniture that was assembled without a single nail.  But when it came to building things that other people had designed, especially mechanical things?

Yikes.

So, as I sat and silently watched him cuss the pottery wheel together – mostly various forms of “damn thing” and, certainly no f-bombs – I tried to psychically will him to put the right Tab A into the correct Slot B.   Eventually he did.  The pottery wheel was built well – all the pieces were well manufactured, and fit perfectly when they were assembled correctly.

I was pleased to find a picture of the exact same model.  Not included:  Pa Wilder.

Pa Wilder, at times, looked like he was attempting to build a trap for some sort large aquatic animal, say, a beaver.  It was difficult watching him put uprights in upside down.  He stared at the end caps that covered the tubing like a Neolithic caveman attempting to understand quantum mechanics written in a language entirely derived from rap lyrics, yo.  But, he finally got most of the parts together.

Then it came to the final step – assembling the motor.  This particular pottery wheel had an attachment, a motor that you could install so you could skip kicking the concrete disk and use electricity to power up the wheel to optimum clay-wasting speed.  Pa was attempting to install it.  I watched him, frustrated, try to put it in exactly backwards.  I finally burst.

“NO!  It doesn’t go that way.  You have to turn it.”

He looked down at the instructions, grimaced, and looked back at me.  He held out the motor assembly.

I took it.  I fitted it to the upright.  “It fits this way – you have to adjust it so when you push your foot on to this pedal,” I pointed, “That it pushes this switch down.  That turns on the motor.”

This is the pottery wheel equivalent of vaping.

He pulled out the wrench and tightened down the bolts holding it in place.  He smiled.  Rather than being mad at his odd son, he was pleased.  And as he looked on the completed pottery wheel, he was happy.

For about a minute.

“Dad,” I pointed at the door to Ma’s new pottery shed, “I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to fit through the door.”  To his credit, he still didn’t drop the f-bomb.

It went together more quickly the second time.

Different people have different aptitudes.  And while Pa Wilder was wonderful at many things, like running a business and not killing his son for waiting to tell him about door widths, there were things he wasn’t good at.  He wasn’t mechanically minded at all, and seemed to have a “deer avoidance radar” during hunting season.

That pottery wheel frustrated Pa Wilder to no end.

There was a time when I thought I could do anything.  I felt, flush with the hubris of youth, that I was invincible, bullet-proof, and a dozen feet tall, and that was before I discovered tequila.  But after a while, I realized that there were jobs that, while I might be able to do them intellectually, I would never be able to do them for a living.  Well, I might be able to do them, if they took all of the sharp things out of the room, and maybe covered all that tough drywall with padding so I didn’t hurt my head when I slammed it into it.

Accountants have a heck of a time getting to sleep – if they’re counting sheep and miss just one . . . .

Let me give you one example:  accounting.  I would suck at that.  I saw an accountant chase $1.37 for a day.  Why?  Because the books had to balance.  It didn’t matter that the $1.37 was out of about $700,000.  Nope.  Still had to find it.  So, accountant is out.   I could name a dozen more jobs I would hate doing.  But for me, knowing what I’m unsuited to do is victory enough, especially since I can do other things, like polish Johnny Depp’s philtrum and uvula after he’s had a hard night with the “ladies”.  I don’t spend time trying to fix my accounting weakness, rather, I spend time trying to learn and get better at things I’m good at, which people might also pay for.

A large part of avoiding frustration in life is understanding what you are good at.  More importantly, understanding what you are good at that will make money for you.  As good as I might be at making models (and I’m not anymore, but 14 year-old me was), there’s certainly no demand for people who make models.  Unless they’re Cindy Crawford’s parents.

Cindy spent an hour staring at an orange juice can – it said “concentrate.”

Yes, you have to be who you are.  Doing things that are fundamentally unsuited to you, your skills, and your personality will kill you.  And, no, getting up at 6:30AM or even 5:30AM every day is not fundamentally unsuited to you.  And no, working hard and sweating is not a skill you don’t have – we all have that skill.  Your personality?  Yeah, it can include giving everything you have each day.

None of this is an excuse for anyone to not meet their obligations or wait in Mom’s basement until they get the invitation to interview as CEO of a video game company.  In fact it’s the opposite.  Most people would suck as the CEO of a video game company, and very, very few would be any good at it.

Speaking of being not good at something . . .  .

After Ma Wilder got her pottery studio going, she decided to do the natural, maternal thing.  No, not drink wine until 11PM while listening to Tom Jones®.  She decided to show me how to use her pottery wheel.  My attempt at making a pot was similar to Pa Wilder’s attempt to put the pottery wheel together – except Ma looked dimly upon me cussing.

After my one, very sad and utterly talentless pot, Ma Wilder relented and let me go trout not-catching.  It would be called trout fishing if I ever caught one, but it was a great way to spend the day down by the river.  Fish?  Never caught one there.  But there were lots and lots of rocks.

At least I can skip a stone.  Does that pay very well?

For Fran: