Re: Limits of technology

From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>

> John Atkinson wrote:

> > >The Australian armed forces have been doing a LOT of
> > >work on GPS jammers, GPS-anti-jammers etc.
> > >Exactly what... I don't know and couldn't tell you if
> > >I did. But we sell a lot of this stuff to the US.
> >
> >Somehow I don't see a US-Australian war in my lifetime.
>
> Do you seriously believe that Australia is the only country which has
this
> type of artillery-delivered jamming capability? If so, think again.
There
> are several other countries who have it too... including some which I
could
> see the US fight in our lifetime, and some which would sell this
technology
> to countries the US appearently plan to fight in near-time.

(cough)France(cough). Though the German ones are better (at least going
by
what
the sales brochures say). Of the Swedish ones, Oerjan will know better
than
myself,
it's been some years since I had to evaluate them. Yes, they've been
around
for over half a decade, even if the US hasn't quite adjusted to the
concept
yet.

One problem that the USA suffers is the NIH syndrome: if the USA doesn't
have
it / hasn't thought of it / can't build it then it doesn't exist. I
might
add that
this problem is not confined to the USA. When I was doing some work at
Hollandse
Signaal, I was repeatedly told certain technical tasks couldn't be done
using
the hardware of the time. When we'd been doing it with far less
computational
resources for years, and the US for almost as long or in a few cases
longer.
That was in the mid-80's, and I have no reason to believe things have
changed.

John A. will naturally be aware of this: compare, say, ACE with some of
the
European combat engineer equipment. Even the ex-Soviet stuff. A lot of
the
US's technical superiority is based upon having the money to buy and
deploy
vast quantities of 2nd-rate gear, and thereby test it so the bugs are
out.
(Or in the case of ACE, ignore the bugs as it's made in the USA).
A lot of European gear is, frankly, vastly superior - but exists in such
small quantities that its effect is negligible, or there aren't enough
training rounds bought to both debug it and generate a good tactical
doctrine
for it.

The comparison is not therefore between ACE and, say Grizzly. It's
between 3
ACEs and an M-728 here and now vs a single Grizzly available sometime
nextweek
maybe.