Technology or the man behind the gun

last SG · 2007-01-04T22:55:28+00:00

so... ask malaysia dont buy helicopter... disband your air force... and stick to RPG...

storywolf SG

No not on the $27 dollar part !!! can please let us know how you get your $25 rpg price ?

So what , must remember the situation the helicopter is being brought down also what ....... cannot judge by black hawk down type of situation which the helicopter was sitting duck.

with a helicopter flying in 6km in head on shooting at you. you with 1 rpg you think who will win ?

moca SG

Yes, sir, clear as fog...

The Vietminh (Vietcong's grandfather) pushed field guns up a mountain and completely confound and defeated the techonologically superior French at Dien Bien Phu.

Where got Chinook?

Is there a limit for human when there is a will?

But like someone said, no right or wrong to the question. As all wars, outcome always depend on so many factors.

But if I were to put my money, I would put it on the man. The best weapon is useless if your soldier got no balls, no morale, no motivation. On the other hand, a lot of highly motivated peasants continue to hold up or even wear out regular modern armies.

Gedanken SG

None of that changes the fact that a piece of high-tech equipment was defeated by a copy of a WW2 weapon. To address Darkness_hacker99's point, the Black Hawk had Black Hole IR suppression for its exhaust and a heap of electronic defences, but ultimately it was brought down by a primitive unguided weapon that was fired by someone who knew how to use it.

Tripwire's point was that we've got all of these wonderful toys that can do amazing things. Sure it can, but the historical facts bear out that what happens on the business end of all of any weapon, be it a high-tech doohickie or a Boer War rifle, is still determined by the user at the other end. Technology, useful as it is, still does not eliminate the need for competence in the human part of the equation.

Tripwire says that satellites can see all the way to the North Pole. Well and good. Did satellites find Saddam, or was humint the key? Have satellites been able to locate Osama?

Alex makes a good point of highlighting Vietnam and Iraq. The fact is that the American military structure is geared for a Gulf War 1 style fight. When it becomes asymmetrical warfare, which is pretty much all we've been seeing lately, it is, and I quote the Chinese colonel who commented on 9/11, "trying to hit a mosquito with a hammer".

Why did the Americans lose Vietnam and why has Bush admitted that they are struggling in Iraq? The American definition of a win requires that front lines be crossed for victory to be achieved. By definition, guerrilla warfare exists without front lines, so there can never be a win for the Yanks. You can use Apaches to wipe out the enemy's tank divisions, but what can you do if there is no tank division to destroy, and instead you have a dispersed and hidden enemy on your hands? You're just punching water.

The bottom line is that it's not a matter of how whiz-bang your toys are, but how well suited they are to the job. If it was just a matter of technology, Iraq would have been done and dusted ages ago and the US population would be 3000 members richer.

lionnoisy SG

you need 3 M:
MEN Sad Includes women also)Tranined,committed,loyal,least corruptions,..

MACHINES:Reasonable standard,well maintained,intergrated syatems,

MONEY:To pay the men and to buy and maintain machines.

2.SAF has not been tested in large scale.
But SIA has been tested day and night for so many years.
SIA is just like SAF,if not more complicated .

If SG can run SIA so good,i think SG can run SAF well.

Gedanken SG

What does how Singapore runs the SAF, much less SIA, have to do with the topic at hand? Confused

glock SG

If we start thinking that fighting a war is like running a corporation , no need to fight - we might as well surrender.

If we start thinking & fighting like a streetwise gangster, then we are ahead in the game.

Fairyland SG

Luckily they didn't win and the IDF responded to the kidnap the way they did. But they were pretty much on the right track and given more time and money to build up would have been much more effective. I think it was a timing issue.

The relative superiority of IDF tech (probably the wall too)has made them softer. IMHO they rather nearly lost it even from the media angle they didn't do quite a good job.

My 2 cents.

M551Sheridian SG

don agree wif ur t34 wiping out the panzers .. they cld easily own the russian t34 wif thier superior armour n weaps its jus tat thier tanks were unrealaiable n they cld reload as fast as compared to the amount of enemies up ahead

moca SG

The T-34 is actually one of the best tanks of WW2 - in the same way the AK-47 is the perfect assault rifle.

Item by item, the T-34 may lose out to the best German tank - the Panther - for example. But the T-34 is cheaper to build, and easier to maintain, and as a result there are a LOT of them.

(It's a bit like comparing the excellent FN FAL against the crude AK-47. The FAL is accurate and powerful and works reliably, except in the desert. But the recoil is hard, full auto is uncontrollable, ammo is big and heavy, it is expecnsive to manufacture and too big and heavy for smaller troops to carry. The AK-47 solved all those problems with the trade-off being accuracy.)

Even though Germans are superior in every way, they simply couldn't win if you pit 5,000 superb Panthers and crews against 10,000 good T-34.

The Americans and British had excellent modern tanks towards the end of the WW2 which were equal to the German Panther and Russian T-34.

But the tank they said won the war was the less than perfect M4 Sherman simply because there were so many of them and it was also an easy platform to upgrade - much like the M-16.

So, again, the best equipment does not guarantee victory.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

I think its a moot argument in the end if you look at it, it is still human ingenuity and will that comes up with all the technology that wages war. The danger is when technologically advantaged forces use this advantage to replace ingenuity on the ground, as opposed to using this technology to enhance what their creativity.

I do not think what happened in Somalia or is happening now in Iraq is an example of technology failing to win a fight. If anything the reason it has probably ended up saving many lives and winning many fights that would not have been possible if they didnt have them. The Yanks would have all been dead in Mog if they werent able to continue fighting at night and having Little Bird support gun runs. In Iraq their losses would certainly be a ton higher if it wasnt for body armour, proper communications, and adapting new technologies to fight asymmetric warfare. For every IED that goes off a lot more insurgents are often killed trying to plant IEDs (courtesy of the UAV eye in the sky) or having them jammed or discovered. Its the ones that they miss that make the news.

At the end of the day you use what tool you have. The insurgents are not fighting the yanks with their bare hands and rocks and sticks, they are still very much using technology to get the job done- abet things that are very much less advanced but if you look at it, still rather modern technologies. Its not as if they were fighting this war with swords, gunpowder or muskets or stuff like that.

I think its foolish to disregard the role of technology as a force multiplier in war, but at the end of the day you realize that you just have to do what you need to do to win. Theres no need to be dogmatic or passionate about this or that style. If using technology is a better way to inflict damage, think faster and fight better Im all for it. If it makes me stupider in battle, less creative and more complacent obviously its something we have to avoid.

But all this junk about Blackhawks being useless simply because they can be brought down by an RPG is just that- junk talk. Blackhawks were never meant to take RPGs and there are plenty of ways to bring it down. In the end its still very useful and vital in the big picture of things. I think its rather silly for one, to abandon all helicopters simply because they cant take antitank weapon. That is some rather wacky thinking. A stick can never run out of ammo, why dont we use that instead of rifles?

Will starts everything, but at the end of the day if you can have a better tool why not use it? Note that the insurgents and Viet Cong were not deliberately discarding technology in their fight they were making the best use of whatever they had at hand.

Gedanken SG

Well reasoned post, ST.

Lest I be misunderstood, the aim of my bringing up the Blackhawk incident was to point out that high-tech is not as infallible as Tripwire portrays it. To interpret it the Blackhawk example as stating that high-tech is useless is extrapolating the point too far.

As I stated earlier, the key issue here is how well suited the tool is to the job, not how high-tech it is. We need to be mindful of the weapons' limitations as well as their strengths, and in so doing select the right tool for the job. You can have satellites and a carrier full of technology, but first you're going to have to find the target, and ultimately the ideal tool for that first task may still be the Eyeball Mark I.

moca SG

In a nutshell, the American plan for the BHD ops was to ride humvees and fly BH with guns blazing into the heart of a hornet's nest, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, grab some POWs and then waltz out...

In this case the man/men who planned the operation were the determining factor in the failure of the operation.

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