I had an email from Mr. Singer reference my post on his FP article, "Meet the Sims and Shoot Them." He suggested that I had misread the article. He was trying to emphasize the numbing effect of military games on the general public, and therefore on the course of warfare.
"This is not just an issue for the military, but also for a broader public that has less and less to do with actual war."
I see his point now, but I think the article was a little heavy on the military's use of wargames rather than the general public to make the point. I suggested to him that the public's deadened sense of awareness of the Middle East conflicts may be due to the self-centered nature of Gen X and Gen Y than as a result of the wargames. That is to say, they are comfortable with the idea of military games as broader range of entertainment and don't really think about national security/foreign policy issues at all (and some just don't generally think much at all). He didn't disagree, maybe there is something generational about the attitude toward the military and its overseas adventures.
Still a fan of P.W. Singer. Check out his article in Newsweek, "Defending Against Drones."
Today, the lag time between the development of military technology and its widespread dissemination is measured in months, not years. Industrial farmers around the world already use aerial drones to dust their crops with pesticides. And a recent U.S. Air Force study concluded that similar systems are "an ideal platform" for dirty bombs containing radioactive, chemical, or biological weapons—the type of WMDs that terrorists are most likely to obtain. Such technologies have the potential to strengthen the hand not only of Al Qaeda 2.0, but also of homegrown terror cells and disaffected loners like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. As one robotics expert told me, for less than $50,000 "a few amateurs could shut down Manhattan."
The United States has not truly had to think about its air defenses—at home or abroad—since the Cold War. But it's time it did, because our current crop of weapons isn't well suited to dealing with these new systems. Smaller UAVs' cool, battery-powered engines make them difficult to hit with conventional heat-seeking missiles; Patriot missiles can take out UAVs, but at $3 million apiece such protection comes at a very steep price. Even seemingly unsophisticated drones can have a tactical advantage: Hizbullah's primitive planes flew so slowly that Israeli F-16s stalled out trying to decelerate enough to shoot them down.
I'll reserve comment about the CBR-dispersing drones... could they do it? maybe. Unclear how effective it would be, but it's food for thought.
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