EU Referendum

Showing posts with label collateral damage. Show all posts

ADS_Desert_300[i-ADS_Desert_300]Brought to us by the BBC television news last night, courtesy of Matt Frei, was a sneering review of the latest piece of technology to be brought out by the Americans in their continuing attempt to develop non-lethal weapons.

Officially, this is the "Active Denial System", a £30 million programme to produce a Humvee-mounted weapon which projects a high-intensity microwave beam, with a range in excess of 500 yards, causing burning sensations in the target humans. So uncomfortable is the sensation that the recipient is forced to move from the area, when immediate relief is afforded.

It has been tested on more than 10,000 people over twelve years and, in the last five years of advanced development, no one has required medical attention (which suggests that some might have needed it in the early days). Crucially, it is equally safe at its minimum range of 50ft as it is at its maximum.

AP+hires+S[i-AP+hires+S]Hilariously, at the first public demonstration of the equipment at Moody Air Force base in Georgia, journalists – including Elliot Minor, of the Associated Press (pictured) - were targeted by the enthusiastic crew. We are told that this was voluntary but, nevertheless, they must have enjoyed even this fleeting revenge.

However, apart from the commendable use on the fourth estate, this is a tangible fruit of the US recognition that, in asymmetric wars – where the battle is as much for hearts and minds as it is territory – collateral damage has to be avoided, as accidental deaths can be exploited by the enemy to very great effect.

But, if this technology is sufficiently novel to attract media attention, it is still experimental and at least three years away from field use. But also demonstrated at Moody Air force Bases, but ignored by all and sundry, was another development which will allow soldiers in the field identify enemy the locations of enemy gunmen, by tracking where shots are coming from.

shotspotter[i-shotspotter]This is achieved by using a lightweight, man-portable version of an acoustic sensor system called the ShotSpotter (pictured) which can pick up immediately the report of a shot (or multiple shots) fired, calculate the location and pass on the details to friendly forces.

But the true genius of the system is that is has been linked to Scan Eagle, a small tactical UAV with a 10ft wingspan and 4ft length.

AIR+-+ScanEagle+001[i-AIR+-+ScanEagle+001]The UAV is launched by a catapult and has an endurance of about 20 hours. On receipt of location details from a ShotSpotter system, it can home in on the shooter and send real-time video pictures to ground forces (or airborne assets), facilitating a precision response.

Under the generic name of "Ground Situational Awareness Toolkit" this reduces the need for troops to lay down high volumes of covering fire when targeted by hidden gunman, again reducing the danger of collateral damage.

Interestingly, neither Scan Eagle nor ShotSpotter are new to the military. Scan Eagle has logged more than 20,000 hours, supporting Navy and Marine missions in Iraq, and ShotSpotter is used by both law enforcement and military agencies. But the combination of the two technologies makes a formidable addition to the counter-insurgency armoury and a good demonstration of the commitment of the US to the battle.

COMMENT THREAD

On the road to Al-Zubair - a Snatch convoy ambushed[i-On the road to Al-Zubair - a Snatch convoy ambushed]Famously, in the days when we had a nationalised railway network and the system was routinely brought to a grinding halt with the even moderate winter snows, a hapless executive was hauled before the cameras to explain why, on one particular occasion, a particularly light fall of snow had brought trains to a complete halt.

It was, he explained to the incredulous media, "the wrong kind of snow". This he later expanded upon, telling us that it has been a very fine snow which, while not heavy enough to block the lines, had invaded the engines, blocking filters and shorting out electrics. This was plausible enough but too late. Forever in the vocabulary now rests that sneering commentary on the inadequacies of nationalised industries, "…the wrong kind of snow".

Reviewing now the recent performance of the Israelis in the Lebanon campaign – something which I promised in a post a week ago, I suppose the best that can be said of it is that the IDF was fighting "the wrong kind of war".

link[i-link]What brought this to mind was a photograph in today's edition of The Sunday Telegraph which we published on this blog nearly a month ago (so much for blogs being "derivative"), which illustrates a different facet of precisely the problem which the Israelis currently face (above left).

In the instance illustrated by the photograph and the accompanying story we have an issue rehearsed at length (and in depth) by this blog, where we argue that British troops attempting to police southern Iraq are dangerously ill-equipped.

More specifically, we have an army in theatre relying on equipment such as the Challenger Main Battle Tank (MBT) (pictured above, on patrol in Al Amarah, southern Iraq) and the Warrior Mechanised Infantry Combat Vehicle (MICV) which were devised as the core weapons of armoured divisions intended to combat a massed Warsaw Pact armoured thrust in northern Europe. In short, they were never intended for counter-insurgency operations (especially in the high temperatures of the Iraqi theatre) and are wholly unsuited to it.

Snatch Land Rovers on the dock in Belfast[i-Snatch Land Rovers on the dock in Belfast]Partly recognising this, in late 2003, the British Ministry of Defence drafted in a consignment of mothballed armoured Land Rovers (the nearest equivalent to the up-armoured Humvee), themselves designed for dealing with street violence in Belfast and other Northern Ireland locations, during the height of the "troubles".

wirq20b.jpeg[i-wirq20b.jpeg]Known universally as "Snatch" Land Rovers, these might have been adequate for dealing with the provisional IRA and general street violence but against an enemy which had access to any number of munitions and increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs – such as the explosively formed projectile (EFP) roadside mine – they proved easy prey. Thus it was that, by early this year, soldiers patrolling in "Snatch" Land Rovers had accounted for more than a quarter of our combat deaths in Iraq.

This was a problem which has also faced the US forces, which have suffered a higher proportion of casualties and larger absolute numbers from what are generically known as Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs.

The RG-31, operated by Combat Engineers in the USMC[i-The RG-31, operated by Combat Engineers in the USMC]In response to that – after a series of false starts, which included a programme of adding armour to the standard utility vehicle, the Humvee – the US, led by the US Marine Corps, started a re-equipment programme using vehicles based on Rhodesian and South African experience, specifically designed to deal with the IED threat. These include the RG-31, the Cougar and the Buffalo.

Less obviously but just as significant, the US forces are undergoing a fundamental restructuring. In the war against the hit and run bomber, who will fight in civilian clothes and merge with the civilian population, there is no front line. Casualty rates amongst non-combatants (known from Vietnam days as REMFs) have matched those in combat units.

The USMC 'JERRV' Cougar vehicle used by ordnance disposal teams[i-The USMC 'JERRV' Cougar vehicle used by ordnance disposal teams]Thus, in this type of war, the spearhead troops are no longer the infantry and the tankers but the combat engineers. Numbers of these troops in the US order of battle have been increased substantially and, using their new RG-31s and other equipment, they have been active in hunting out IEDs. As a result, they are most often at the sharp end in the vicious fire-fights that develop when insurgents ambush the bomb hunters.

In Lebanon, the problem confronting the IDF was much the same – the hit-and-run fighter in civilian clothes – but the weapons employed by the enemy differed. In Iraqi desert conditions, where there is often little cover and most of the roads are metalled, the roadside bomb is the weapon of choice. In Afghanistan, where cover is also sparse in some areas, but many more of the roads are unmetalled, the mine is commonly used. But in south Lebanon, where the topography is in places more similar to the rolling, verdant hills of Gloucestershire and Somerset (not for nothing is the area known as "Little England"), the man-portable anti-tank weapon comes into its own.

A Sagger missile - demonstrated by Hezbolla in yet another photo-opportunity[i-A Sagger missile - demonstrated by Hezbolla in yet another photo-opportunity]With thick cover, or the protection and disguise of civilian villages, small teams using RPG-7s, or the fearsome RPG-29, anti-tank teams can wreak havoc with armoured formations in what is nightmare country for tankers. Hezbolla have even been pressing into service Russian-made "Sagger" wire-guided missiles – which caused such great slaughter of Israeli tanks during the Yom Kippur war – and even captured (or purchased) US TOW missiles.

Combined with roadside bombs – some disguised as boulders, copying techniques pioneered by Iraqis, who have been known to cast their bombs into kerbstones) – these make a thing of the past, rapid armoured thrusts of the type that so thrilled us during the 1967 Six Day War, and the inspired counter-thrust over the Canal during Yom Kippur.

Instead, like the Americans have learnt to do, and the British are now following with a batch of Cougars on order, the Israelis have had to "up-armour" their engineers, on whom they rely for route clearing before what are now considered "conventional" armoured forces can be deployed. Thus did we see the widespread use of the Puma in the first, cautious phases of the ground campaign.

One of the most-photographed vehicle types[i-One of the most-photographed vehicle types]These vehicles, deployed by combat engineers, are little more than turretless Centurion Main Battle Tanks, known as the Poretz Mokshim Handasati (minefield breakthrough vehicle). Although better than nothing, they are far from ideal, not least because they lack the essential attribute of an armoured personnel carrier – a rear exit door. Egressing troops are forced to clamber over the hull, exposing themselves to fire.

An Abrahms tank destroyed by an IED[i-An Abrahms tank destroyed by an IED]Furthermore, as US forces have found – and as will the British – up-armouring invites a version of the arms race, where the terrorists use heavier and more sophisticated weapons, to the extent that not even the US 65-ton Abrams Main Battle Tank is immune from attack. As well as passive armour, therefore, a way of bringing the battle to the enemy must be found.

It was here, as we observed on this blog, that the Americans found a way, in the battle of Falluja which, when they comes to be drafted – will re-write the tactical manuals.

Contrary to perceived wisdom which has declared that tanks in urban warfare are death traps, the US used their Abrams as "point" to flush out the otherwise invisible enemies by presenting them with a highly attractive target. Dangerous it might have been for the tank crews but, generally, even if an Abrams is disabled, the crews tend to survive an RPG attack.

The US Predator UCAV[i-The US Predator UCAV]One the attackers had revealed themselves, above them were circling reconnaissance drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs) which would relay their co-ordinates to the artillery. Borrowing from a technique pioneered in Viet Nam, these were located in fire-bases away from the action and, within minutes, could bring down highly accurate, targeted fire on the insurgents, bringing instant death.

Additional assets, which could perform the same function as the artillery, were armed UAVs (known as UCAVs) or fighter-bombers stacked in the sky awaiting targets.

IDF%20damage[i-IDF%20damage]This, in the early stages, is what I though the IDF was doing, but it does not seem as if they had got the phasing and the tactics right. Casualties in tanks and crews, therefore, seem to have been relatively high, without corresponding gains in terrorists killed.

And, if this is the ground battle, there is the other element – the Katyusha strikes. In Iraq, the US forces are also prone to such attacks but their greater danger is the "White Van" mortar team. Merging with civilian traffic, these vans can park momentarily and discharge a mortar team to lob a few bombs, which then re-mount and drive off into the traffic, indistinguishable from the hundreds of other vans on the streets.

To counter this, the US has used counter-artillery radars which can locate the firing points of mortars within seconds and, with orbiting UCAVs, fighter bombers or even helicopter patrols, they can return accurate but lethal fire within minutes – or, if preferred, guide ground forces to intercept. Such would have been the expected response from the Israelis so, far from being impressed by their videos showing Katyusha launches, followed by IAF strikes a day or so later, this demonstrated that the capability was lacking.

The propaganda war

Alongside the shooting war, however, there has also been the propaganda war and it is here that the Israelis have proved dismally flat-footed. They are fighting an enemy which, as we have seen with the Qana incident – and many more – is willing to parade the bodies of its dead and, while hiding behind civilians (and even keeping them in harms way) exploits a sympathetic media and an "international community" which is locked into the paradigm that war is the greatest of all evils and any other solution is preferable.

lebanon%20raids.0[i-lebanon%20raids.0]Hezbolla in particular are aided by the notoriously poor local building standards and their fragile, reinforced concrete-framed buildings which give rise to such spectacular pictures of collapsed buildings after relatively modest impacts. But, in using ordnance such as 500-1000lb bombs, with every attack, the Israelis have been creating propaganda opportunities for their enemies and detractors rather than achieving tactical battlefield gains.

And, while propaganda in war has always been important, it is more so in current campaigns. In the past, when Israel could conduct "lightning wars", by the time the international community had mobilised to enforce a cease-fire, the IDF had usually achieved its tactical and strategic goals.

But the nature of war has changed. No longer is territorial gain the objective and neither are the opposing armies conveniently lined up in uniform, fighting an open war. The objectives in this new type of war are to bring the enemy to battle and to kill people, to disrupt the hierarchy, the command and communication systems and to destroy materiel.

That process, against the weapons the enemy is prepared to deploy and tactics it uses, takes time. But, even at the glacial speed at which the international community operates, no sooner have the opening phases of combat been rolled out and the pressure is on to bring overt hostilities to a halt. To enable the battlefield objectives to be achieved, therefore, the armed forces also have to win the propaganda war, to give them enough time to complete their tasks.

Collateral damage

In this war, the currency is collateral damage – dead babies and destroyed buildings, images of which have had more effect on the battle than the tanks and guns deployed by the IDF (for a more detailed discussion, see here).

Therein, like the British Army in Iraq, the IDF is using the wrong weapons and tactics. For it too, it is the "wrong kind of war".

Much has been said and written as a result about the limits of military power – much of it nonsense. Of course, final solutions require diplomatic initiatives and societal changes but, when you have any enemy with weapons who is attempting to kill you, there is only one response – to kill them. That means military action and, therefore, war – by whatever name you call it.

An IAF F-16[i-An IAF F-16]But it is how that war is conducted that makes the difference, and the difference is a matter of technology. The IDF currently is equipped for its previous wars, with superb armoured formations and a fleet of high performance fighter bombers that are capable of executing great slaughter of conventional forces. But they are the wrong weapons for this type of war.

On the one hand, in the style of the Fallujah-type operation, they need heavy but highly mobile armour to protect their troops as they provide targets for the enemy, in order to flush them out. And, coming into service is a new generation of artillery with rates of fire that are simply stunning. Capable of firing 40 or more shells a minute, these guns can also lay up to seven shells on a target to arrive simultaneously. Combined with unprecedented accuracy from GPS guidance built into the shells, these can intervene immediately with deadly but highly localised force on any terrorist foolhardy enough to attack.

Viper%20strike[i-Viper%20strike]For the Katyusha problem, what is needed is not fast jets with limited endurance and, therefore, loiter capability, dropping big bombs. The weapons needed are long-endurance UCAVs and platforms like the AC130 Spectre, with high-precision, small-warhead weapons. One such, in the process of development, is the Viper Strike which, with a 7lb warhead, can kill the occupants of a car without scratching the paintwork of the next car in line, or take out the occupants of a room in a building, without disturbing the neighbours.

AC130[i-AC130]Suitable platforms, guided by sensor arrays in satellites, UAVs and electronic warfare aircraft, can loiter the battlefield and, when a fleeting target appears, can launch instant but again highly localised death, making terrorist attacks near certain suicide.

Will we learn?

Since Israel is fighting for its very survival, the odds are that it will learn its lessons from the Lebanon campaign, and apply them. There is some confidence that the US forces will do likewise – they, after all, are developing the technology.

One casualty will almost certainly be the multi-billion dollar project called the Future Combat System (FCS). The plan here is to equip forces not with heavier armour, but lightweight, air-portable vehicles, relying for their protection on sophisticated sensors, the rapid exchange of intelligence and stand-off weapons to take out the enemy before he is within range and can do damage. But, when faced with an enemy that has the capability to deliver lethal blows and reveals himself only in the act of firing his weapon (or not at all in the case of an IED or mine), this system is fatally flawed.

Many knowledgeable commentators believe the US will scrap this system but, as a letter in the Sunday Telegraph reminds us, the British Army is still committed to a similar system, a £14 billion fantasy known as the Future Rapid Effects System (FRES), all geared to providing the European Rapid Reaction Force with its "teeth".

Should this go ahead, we will find that not only are the British forces currently equipped for the wrong kind of war, they will perpetuate the error, at enormous cost in money and – eventually – lives. For once, we should look further afield and watch very closely what the Israelis do.

COMMENT THREAD

UPDATES BELOW

See also Fox News which has an IDF video on its site (advert first).

The aftermath of the Israeli air strike at Qana[i-The aftermath of the Israeli air strike at Qana]The BBC has gone into overdrive this morning over the news that an Israeli air strike killed at least 51 Lebanese civilians, including 23 children, in the southern village of Qana.

A more comprehensive and balanced online account comes from the Sydney Morning Herald which pulls in multiple agency reports and news from other sources.

The attack, the paper has said, has prompted the Lebanese government to cancel a planned visit to Beirut by Condoleezza Rice, with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora saying he would hold no negotiations before a ceasefire. Officials have said they had told Rice to stay away from Beirut until the fighting stopped. Siniora has denounced "Israeli war criminals" and is demanded an immediate, unconditional ceasefire and an international investigation into "Israeli massacres".

But what makes the Morning Herald's account more balanced is that it conveys details of the Israeli response, retailing the IAF stating that the air force was unaware that civilians were sheltering in a building. "We did not know of the whereabouts of civilians in the village," IAF spokesman, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz was quoted as saying by the NRG Maariv website after meeting President Moshe Katsav.

A senior air force commander said a precision-guided bomb was dropped on a home in Qana on the assumption that it was sheltering Hezbollah crews that had fired several volleys of missiles into northern Israel. "Had we known there were that many civilians inside, especially women and children, we certainly would not have attacked it," the commander told Reuters.

Asked how Israel's intelligence services could know about missile launches from Qana but not about the presence of dozens of civilians, the commander said: "We are capable of detecting missile launches because they are very dynamic."

By contrast, he said the civilians appeared to have been holed up in the building for days, and were therefore almost impossible for aerial surveillance systems to discern. According to this spokesman, Hezbollah had launched scores of missiles from Qana into Israel, including one that hit a hospital. He said several of the launched took place within a few dozens metres of the house that was bombed.

Hezbollah deploying heavy weapons in a built-up residential area[i-Hezbollah deploying heavy weapons in a built-up residential area]What we don't get from the BBC and its other left wing fellow-travellers is any sense of this. Only from the blogs and other sources (not least, last week’s superb editorial in The Business and more recently documented by the Australian Herald Sun, which supplied the photograph shown right) do we get any understanding of what is going on.

Only through these sources do we learn that Hezbollah gunmen (in civilian clothes) have been preventing civilians from evacuating, have been deliberately using civilians as "human shields" and have been employing strategies for maximising Israeli "collateral damage" in order to provide a potent propaganda weapon, a ploy which the western media so easily fall for.

But the fact is that Hizbollah have turned southern Lebanon into a war zone. They have been deliberately provoking a response from the Israelis, who must protect their own population. The civilians in the region are being used as pawns in a wicked game, the results of which we see Qana.

A thousand French civilians killed by British bombers in July 1944[i-A thousand French civilians killed by British bombers in July 1944]In the greater scheme of things, it is also fascinating in a macabre way, to see how values change. In July 1944, for instance, the RAF’s Bomber Command launched a ferocious attack on a narrow area of northern Caen in an attempt to break the German resistance, despite considerable doubts having been expressed over the utility of such an attack.

In all, 467 British Lancaster and Halifax heavy bombers dropped 2,276 tons of bombs, yet not one single dead German or any enemy equipment was found in the area that had been bombed. The French, however, were not so fortunate. Despite massive evacuations, many French civilians perished, estimated at between 3-400 to as many as 1,000. In all, French civilians killed in the Battle of Normandy are put at between 20,000 and 67,000.

A 'Red Cross' worker obligingly holding up the body of a child for photographers to record[i-A 'Red Cross' worker obligingly holding up the body of a child for photographers to record]Civilian casualties in war are always regrettable and the death toll in the Second World War is still subject to much debate. But, what is different now is that such casualties are being used actively as a weapon of war, where propaganda is as potent as bullets in achieving strategic aims. The media have been given free access to photograph the bodies of victims, many of which, conveniently, have been wrapped in transparent polythene sheeting.

Typically, the European Union has fallen for the propaganda. According to the AFX agency, the Finnish presidency of the EU has said it was shocked and dismayed by Israeli raids on the Lebanese village of Qana. "There is no justification for attacks causing casualties among innocent civilians, most of them women and children," the presidency said in a statement.

Before the outrage directed at Israel spreads too far, therefore, commentators might do well to remember the past. In this, perhaps, it is interesting to note that, on the back of Qana, the calls for a ceasefire have intensified. I wonder whose interest that serves?

* * * *

Update here, which indicates that the building sheltering the refugees was not targeted. Our own forum reports that Fox News has been showing footage of Hezbollah missiles being fired from Qana.

Also, the Security Council is meeting today, with Kofi asking it to condemn the attack.

Update at 7 pm: Olmert has issued a statement claiming that Qana has been used as a base for launching missiles against Israel, backed up by IDF video footage showing missiles being launched (broadcast on BBC News 24 on the 7pm bulletin). Blair, speaking from California, says, "these atrocities must not be allowed to continue".

Update at 8.10 pm: According to Israel National News, Senior IDF officers say there is a contradiction in the timing of the bombing of Qana and reports of the explosion. Air Force Commander Amir Eshel left open the possibility that Hizbullah terrorists blew up the building or that an unknown cause set off explosives which were stored in the structure.

He explained that recorded information shows that Israeli Air Force planes bombed the building between midnight and 1 am and that the next attack at 7:30 am was up to 500 yards away. He said reports of the killing of civilians came around 8 am. "It is not clear what happened" between 1 am and 8 am, he said.

ABC News reports that the "missiles" (their word) struck just after 1 am, while Reuters reports that police said Qana was bombed at 1:30 am (2230 GMT on Saturday).

COMMENT THREAD

Mugabe[i-Mugabe]Bush-haters and opponents of the Iraqi war will undoubtedly be delighted to learn that they share common cause with that great democrat Robert Mugabe who, in a diversion from his scripted speech at yesterday's World Food Day event organised by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, called Tony Blair and George W Bush "the unholy alliance of the millennium".

According to the Telegraph report today, he then went on to compare the two world leaders to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and accused them of interfering in the domestic affairs of countries such as his own. To applause from the delegates, he then blamed Britain and the United States for his country's economic collapse.

It is perhaps entirely predictable that Mugabe should use such a public opportunity to attack Bush and Blair in such a despicable fashion, but it is still slightly shocking that he should receive a round of applause for so doing.

Thank goodness, therefore, that we have the inestimable Mark Steyn in the Telegraph today to provide an antidote.

smurf08[i-smurf08]In his column, headed: "Sometimes it is worth going to war", he provides a commentary on the rightness of the Iraqi war and, intriguingly picks up on the recent advert produced by Unicef for Belgian TV, featuring an air-strike on the village of the cartoon Smuf figures. In the final scene, only Baby Smurf is left, weeping alone surrounded by wall-to-wall Smurf corpses. "It's the first Smurf snurf movie," writes Steyn.

What Steyn then goes on to write is quite illuminating and, when I first saw the reports of the advert, I hadn't thought of it – which is why, no doubt, Steyn has a highly-paid job and we languish in the obscurity of EU Referendum. In real conflict, he writes, like in Rwanda, Sudan and a big chunk of west Africa, air strikes are few and far between. Instead, millions get hacked to death by machetes. Even on the very borders of Eutopia, hundreds of thousands died in the Balkans in mostly low-tech, non-state-of-the-art ways.

Why, he then asks, would Unicef show such an implausible form of Smurficide ? Well, whether intentionally or not, they are evoking the war that most of their audience - in Belgium and beyond - is opposed to: the Iraq war, where the invader had an air force. That's how the average Western "progressive" still conceives of warfare, as something the big bullying Pentagon does to weak victims.

By coincidence, in today’s paper we have a report about a strike by American fighter jets and combat helicopters in Ramadi yesterday, in which about 70 people are reported killed.

The report comes with ritual claims that women and children, and "innocent civilians" have been killed, very much reinforcing the perception that those stupid, "trigger-happy Yanks" have blundered again. However, writes the Telegraph in a grudging attempt to be even-handed, American officials like to emphasise the precision of their strikes and talk of the training troops take to control aggression in order to target only those threatening them and not nearby civilians.

It goes on to state that "the reality is often very different." In the confusion of a firefight soldiers often shoot wildly at a number of targets, while the difficulty of gathering intelligence of what is happening on the ground means mistakes are made in interpretation.

Nevertheless, the paper does concede that anti-American groups invent or exaggerate civilian deaths to reinforce the belief among many Iraqis - particularly Sunnis who dominate Anbar province of which Ramadi is the capital - that Americans do not care who they kill and regularly slaughter civilians.

The black propaganda art of faking news scenes is well known to the readers of this Blog and the Telegraph does not even begin to do justice to the American determination to avoid civilian casualties . Nor indeed does Steyn, although this is not precisely the focus of his piece.

What has not percolated the media is that, again, there is another technological revolution going on. Far from seeking bigger and more destructive ordnance, US technology is focusing on smaller, more accurate weapons, increasing precision and targeting systems which reduce the possibility of error, all to avoid what is known in the jargon as "collateral damage".

Already, ground controllers calling up air strikes routinely take digital photographs of designated targets and e-mail the pictures to attack aircraft, so that pilots can make visual confirmation of target identities before launching their weapons.

Viper%20strike[i-Viper%20strike]The latest generation of cruise missiles is even more sophisticated. The missiles have optical recognition computers and software, linked to video cameras. Before a target is attacked, video pictures of it will be taken by a drone or manned aircraft, downlinked for command authorisation and then uplinked to the missile. It will then video its designated target and compare the images with the information it has received and abort if they do not match.

Fruits of this technology are emerging in the form of the "Viper Strike" missile. Based on an anti-tank missile, it is now being developed to carry a 7lb explosive warhead, with an attack profile that makes it ideal for urban warfare.

Recently, to demonstrate its precision-attack capability in an urban environment, a stationary pickup truck was parked between construction trailers simulating buildings. The missile’s TV camera acquired the target, and the laser rangefinder designated the truck. The Viper Strike destroyed the truck with minimal damage to the trailers.

AC130[i-AC130]Interestingly, the missile can be launched from unmanned drones and it may be used to equip the fearsome AC-130 Spectre, the "gunship" version of the Hercules transport aircraft. This mounts a range of formidable weapons, including a 105mm howitzer, linked to precision targeting systems. Discussing the latest version with one of its pilots, he told me that they use old cars on the range for target practice and, so accurate had the system become that they no longer designated just the car they would hit, but could tell you the window through which they would put the round.

Elsewhere, enormous expense is being devoted to what is known as the "small diameter bomb" project, with $20 million already expended on research, for a 250lb bomb which will deliver with extreme precision a warhead of a mere 50lb, all in order to avoid the collateral damage often experienced with larger bombs.

All this is a far cry from Unicef's "Smurficide" film, which shows a cluster of large bombs raining down on the village. In so far as it is possible for war to be "humane", the United States is doing everything it can to make it so, expending huge amounts of treasure in pursuit of that objective. That is all the more reason why Mugabe's slur is so utterly despicable and why this snide anti-American carping is so malign.

COMMENT THREAD