Hi D. Long; Re: "The same could be said about the horse. The same arguments were made by the horse soldiers in the 20th century."
Cavalry put on armor and replaced horseflesh with horsepower. Armored cavalry is a major arm of the military of every advanced nation. It still has the same duty as the original cavalry, but with the added duty of mobile artillery. But in any case, simply because an argument has been used badly is not an indication that the argument itself is bad. You have to look at the detailed facts of the situation, which will require more than just a sentence or two.
The rest of your note is re the "revolution in military affairs." The Crusader was sold by the military as a part of that very revolution. For example, it's listed under the category of "Combat Overmatch" in the mid-term years from 2004 to 2010:
dtic.mil
The whole idea about staying "a generation or three" ahead of everyone else is stuff like what Crusader promises: Crusader Technology Program - 250% improvement over current rate of fire, 66% increase in range, 59% increase in accuracy - Leap ahead technology carrier for FCS in Command and Control, logistics, integrated mission planning, aids, imbedded training
defenselink.mil
My contention is that the Crusader is being cancelled because the military is concentrating on preparing us (badly) for anti terrorist warfare. Against terrorists, the Crusader is useless (as it would be used nowadays, anyway), but so is most of the rest of the military, as is well illustrated by the Israeli Defense Force's ongoing inability to suppress terror. We were lucky that Osama bin Laden was operating out of Afghanistan with the permission of the local authorities. He could have run the same operation from Los Angeles.
I've previously noted that our revolution in military affairs is decreasing our ability to influence civilian populations to cry uncle. Like the Israelis, we can quickly eliminate military opposition to us, but our efficiency decreases our ability to influence the irregular or guerilla opposition. History suggests that getting civilians to knuckle under to force requires killing about 10% of them or so.
When we march into a city and take it over with no real casualties on the other side (because of the pin-point accuracy of our military) we're left with an unbeaten civilian population that's still boiling for a "fair" fight and will snipe at us forever. Getting the enemy's military to surrender has been easy, it's the civilians that are the sons of bitches. To bring them to heel we will probably have to do the same thing that has historically always been required in this sort of thing, kill around 10% of them before entering the city, or in the process of taking it. The Israelis are slowly figuring this out. Used judiciously, artillery is a wonderful way to convince civilians to surrender. A sniping incident? Flatten a couple city blocks. Only artillery provides you the ability to do this any time at a moment's notice, over city-sized distances, and at very little cost to yourself.
We've grown accustomed to fighting countries that are weaklings compared to us. This is having the pernicious effect of convincing us that future wars will be quick and that a war of quick maneuver will dominate the future. For this, we don't need big artillery.
This mistaken estimation of the military situation has been already made many times in the past. It reminds me of the recent stock market bubble. "This time it's different." No. This time we haven't had to fight anyone with a GDP even 1/10th our own for 50 years.
It's very difficult to predict where military weapons systems will go. Right now the Crusader looks useless largely because we are so dominant in the air. But Boeing is working damn hard on robot airplanes. What will AI (robotic) miniature aircraft do to our control over the air? No one knows the long term answer to this question. At first, since we'll be the only ones with the technology, it will be to our advantage. But it was the automatic weapon (in the hands of guerillas) that freed the 3rd world out from under the 1st world. This is an example of an advance in technology that (in the long term) worked to the disadvantage of the very same advanced countries that were first able to take advantage of it.
-- Carl
P.S. For further references to the Crusader replacing Paladin as part of the "Revolution in Military Affairs" on the DoD web sites click through these links:
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