[iwar] [fc:Killed.At.Their.Keyboards]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-01-29 06:57:41


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Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 06:57:41 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Killed.At.Their.Keyboards]
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Business 2.0 Magazine
February 2002
Killed At Their Keyboards
The Marines learn that technology can't solve everything on the urban
battlefield.
By David H. Freedman
The enemy landed at night. Crossing the bay by amphibious vehicle and
helicopter, the warriors paused at the edge of a sleeping city to check
their backpacks, sling their rifles over their shoulders -- and boot up
their laptops. It was March 1999, and Oakland, Calif., was under high-tech
attack. 
The attackers were U.S. Marines, 5,000 of them, carrying out one of a series
of exercises designed to see whether computer power could alter the grim
algorithm of urban combat. The mission received a fair amount of news
coverage, but the Marines' surprising conclusion went virtually unreported.
The computer gear, far from shifting the balance in favor of the digitized
troops, would have cost lives in an actual battle. "It wasn't an enabler, it
was a disabler," says Randy Gangle, a retired Marine colonel who is now with
the Marine Corps's Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va. 
Collectively known as "Urban Warrior," the exercises were a cautionary tale
for any organization expecting computer technology to provide a quick fix
for an old problem. Buildings and side streets make easy hiding places for
ambushers and snipers -- even for entire tank battalions, as the Yugoslav
army demonstrated to the U.S. military in Kosovo. Inner-city obstacles can
leave troops cut off from support that might be only a block away. If war is
hell, in short, urban combat is a step deeper into the inferno: Culling data
from urban engagements that date back as far as World War II, military
researchers have found casualty rates that average a hair-raising 30 percent
a day during the first several days of fighting. 
But the casualties drop precipitously when team commanders can pinpoint the
location of both enemy and friendly troops within a range of one block. And
what better way to gather and distribute that vital information than with
laptop computers on a wireless network? 
Almost any other way, it turned out. In the Oakland exercise, network
connections were repeatedly severed by the concrete and steel canyons of the
city, forcing the laptop-wielding Marines to lose precious time logging in
again and again. With laser beams simulating live fire, dozens of troops
were "killed" at their keyboards. The data that they managed to enter,
moreover, was rife with typos and difficult to decipher on the small,
cluttered screens -- which did, however, provide illumination enough to make
their users easy targets in the dark. "After two years and millions of
dollars," Gangle says, "what did we find? A casualty rate that was 15
percent higher than the historical rate." It would probably have been worse
if many of the troops hadn't quickly wised up and stowed their machines. 
In their postmortem brainstorming, Gangle and his colleagues perceived a
major misfit between the laptops and what the Warfighting Lab terms the
"business processes" of urban warfare -- that is, such specialized tactics
and skills as clearing a building of enemy troops and avoiding ambushes near
alleys. Computers undoubtedly have their uses in such situations, the
Marines concluded, but only in the hands of highly trained specialists who
direct the flow of information to and from the team. The laptops were simply
too distracting for leaders who had to come up with plans on the spot, or
for troops trying to scramble for cover. 
The exercises were not a total loss, however. They reaffirmed the value of
old-fashioned speech and the importance of good radio communications.
Appalled by the spotty reception of radios used for voice communications
during one of the Urban Warrior experiments, a Marine officer rushed to a
nearby Radio Shack and snatched up several cheap Motorola walkie-talkies.
They performed so much better than the government-issued models that the
Marines wound up buying enough for the entire corps. 
If higher-tech gadgets have a place in urban warfare, it might be in finding
the enemy. "Up until now," says Carl Bott, a retired Marine lieutenant
colonel, "the way you found the enemy in cities was to walk down the street
until they shot at you." The Warfighting Lab is developing a condor-size
flying drone designed to circle a city block capturing video images and
acting as a communications relay. Plans are also afoot for a tiny
ground-based robot that could be thrown through a window and sent scurrying
around a building under the remote control of the information specialist. In
experiments taking place this winter in Chicago and other cities, the lab
will test prototypes of video sensors that might someday be fired into a
wall or surreptitiously dropped in a city street -- disguised as, say, a
Coke can. But the general-issue laptop will stay in the barracks. The road
warrior's favorite weapon isn't up to a real war.

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