The Human Element In Warfare

[No1'sShowMonkey]

A link from Arts & Letters Daily - Who Decides: Man or Machine - by MAJ. DANIEL L. DAVIS .

The above article is linked from Arts & Letters Daily (a wonderful RSS for those of you interested in arts... and uh... letters) to the Armed Forces Journal. The premise of the piece is to review implications of developing robotic technology and its impact on the modern battlefield and ultimately possibly replacing the soldier.

A wonderful piece:

"One of the uniquely positive attributes of the combat soldier is his humanity in a particularly inhumane environ¬ment. There are times when the circumstances of battle require pitiless brutality and the application of maximum vio¬lence. But there are other times, even while being shot at, when the best course of action is to hold fire." Emphasis mine.

and

If we become overly reliant on technology to do our fighting, we could lose our old-fashioned, human fighting skills. What has typically happened throughout history is when a belligerent initially developed a new weapon or technology, its intro¬duction on the battlefield often resulted in a significant advantage for that nation. But other nations immediately began to study the technology and discovered ways to mini¬mize the weapon’s effectiveness, followed closely by production of their own versions. The result was the loss of that ini¬tial advantage and a return of warfare to its historic roots: man vs. man.

also

This is a moral imperative that we ignore at great peril to our humanity. We would be morally bereft if we abrogate our responsibility to make the life-and-death decisions required on a battlefield as leaders and sol¬diers with human compassion and understanding.

Found it both interesting and oddly applicable to the types that trawl these forums.

- Chris McGaw

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~Ernest Hemingway

[glad2bhere]

Nice work, Chris:

We Americans are particularly disposed to pawning-off unpleasant tasks on machines. Since making moral decisions is one of the more unpleasant tasks a person can face in this life, I am surprised we have not fallen to using machines along these lines long before this. For instance, a random-number generator could easily take responsibility for "pulling the plug" on life-support machines when family members are reluctant to make such a decision. Perhaps we should have machines determine our leaders based on a comparison along thousands of themes such as genetics, past behavior, paradigms of desireable leadership and identified traits of successful leaders, yes? Perhaps, instead of identifying GAWD and espousing a possible practice that might align us more closely with Him, we might esconce a computer on a throne and make simple random acts of kindness the new sacrament, yes?

I know of no other animal alive in the World today which is simultaneously overwhelmed by its own narcissism and fear of its own mortality. FWIW.

Best Wishes,

Bruce

[Phil Hobson]

Bruce wrote:
"I know of no other animal alive in the World today which is simultaneously overwhelmed by its own narcissism and fear of its own mortality."

I think these are fundamentally rooted in the same thing. Many spiritual, religious or psychological systems seem to seek to solve one (either narcissism or fear of death) by dealing with the other, or seeking a way to solve them mutually.

As we look at the human cost of warfare and violence, it is good to be reminded of the tempering of warfare by our humanity as well.

Thanks for the article, Chris.

[Trevor Johnson]

In the end, it's still man-vs-man, just at one remove, using the robots as weapons. Besides, it's still very difficult for a machine to operate in a complex environment, so robots are still going to be remotely controlled for a long time...