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This study cites expert predictions from the 1990s and then polls another set of experts today about whether the predictions came true. I'd argue that that's a

This study cites expert predictions from the 1990s and then polls another set of experts today about whether the predictions came true. I'd argue that that's a uniquely bogus experimental design, because: a.) you've cherrypicked a 25-year period of peace b.) with relatively minor geopolitical changes c.) where military technology is driven by a set of oligopolistic contractors who basically deliver what they want to deliver d.) which is whatever the long-term technology plans said they would deliver. I'd argue that if you look at history, his argument decisively does not hold, which you can see from the rushed construction of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia in 1862, all the battleships canceled after Pearl Harbor in 1942, the rapid development of the atomic bomb only 7 years after nuclear fission was discovered, or the cancellation of SDI and ABM defense when the Cold War ended. Basically, everything goes according to plan until war happens, at which point all plans are useless. I'd further argue that the exponential curve he shows cherrypicks examples. The kinetic energy of a subsonic bullet fired from a silencer is orders of magnitude lower than that of an ICBM, yet the former is significantly more useful in today's conflicts.

TMWNN 7y ago
>c.) where military technology is driven by a set of oligopolistic contractors who basically deliver what they want to deliver Is the Digital Century Series an attempt to change this?
marvin 7y ago
Are subsonic, silenced weapons significantly used in wars today? Out of curiosity.
- pheme1 7y ago
  Probably what he means are weapons used in black ops and special ops. For example the assault on the Osama hideout in 2011. But I think the more significant version are subsonic weapon fueling for proxy wars in Middle East.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    Yeah, but these are demonstrably not very important actions to the overall war: the Afghan forever war for example has currently continued for 8 years past that "decapitation" strike. I'm uncertain if it even gave Obama any political capital to use beyond the week he announced it.
    - Symmetry 7y ago
      The most important consequence might have been setting back our efforts to fight polio.
      - sitkack 7y ago
        https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ngo-head-cia-shares-blame-murdered-health-workers/story?id=18124580 https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ngo-head-cia-shares-blame-mur... > Two days after gunmen killed seven of his employees, the head of a Pakistani aid organization blamed their deaths not only on the militants who pulled the trigger, but also on America's Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is directly responsible for hundreds of aid worker deaths, the very people working in the field to eradicate polio.
- jandrewrogers 7y ago
  No, they are only used in very specialized cases. They have many durability and practicality issues for general military usage.
  - greedo 7y ago
    Both the Army and the USMC are planning on all future rifles having silencer like capabilities. Not the Hollywood phony silent type, but noise suppression/reduction. This is driven both by tactical reasons as well as health reasons.
    - jandrewrogers 7y ago
      Yes, but those are not subsonic, which was a qualifier in the original post.
flohofwoe 7y ago
> you've cherrypicked a 25-year period of peace As far as I remember, there hasn't been a single year without a significant war going on since the Cold War ended? (not saying that it's worse then during the Cold War, but it also didn't get any better, depending in which part of the world you're living of course). Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine... and I probably forgot quite a few. No atom-bomb-raining World Wars of course, but then I think what we're currently seeing is the future of war.
- marvin 7y ago
  > but then I think what we're currently seeing is the future of war We can only hope. AFAIK, none of the wars since WWII were total wars between powers with strong industrial/technological capability. If that should happen, heaven forbid, it will be mayhem with crazy weaponized computer security exploits and rushed autonomous weapon platforms deployed within weeks or months. I think that's what GP is alluding to. We have seen plenty of conflict, but not the kind that drives the most significant innovation in weapons technology. Here's to hoping that things stay on this level, and the superpowers continue to realize that trade is more profitable than war. (And that disagreements are settled, at the most, with economic warfare rather than shooting wars).
  - wbl 7y ago
    Second Congo proves you don't need much industrialization to have massive casualties and war crimes.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    I don't think wars drive any revolutionary development: the time constrains are too pressing. They rather drive revolutions in deployment. The big wars are so destructive precisely because they use weapons at qualitative different scales than previously experienced, not because weapons with completely new qualities have been invented. The celebrated revolution of the atomic weapon is a good example: during the war it did not add any new capability; the US had already completely obliterated many Japanese cities with similar numbers of (civilian and military) causalities, indeed special provisions for sparing some from destruction to use the new weapon on had to be made. (And the war almost ended before they managed to drop it: the Soviets entering the conflict in August 1945 is just as plausible as the primary reason the Japanese capitulated) It is only with the introduction of intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles, that allows belligerents to hold entire cities at risk with little recourse for the defender to prevent it that an entirely new capability is created. This development happened after the war, when supposedly no "revolution" happens. Also, we've had autonomous weapons for ages, they're called mines, and have been widely deployed in past conflicts. They do tend to kill a lot of people long past the conflict actually ended, so that's something the new autonomous weapons might actually avoid.
SiempreViernes 7y ago
Uh, I'd like to hear your reasoning for counting an ICBM as a direct fire weapon. Further, are you so familiar with the authors work that you feel it can be dismissed with little more than a wave of the hand? A wave that by the way states that the period of time containing both all the geopolitical effects of the end of the cold war (those certainly appeared after 1990) and the two longest running wars in US history is "peaceful" with only "minor geopolitical changes". I at least feel the author deserves more credit for actually trying to do some quantitative work, instead of just making a snarky comment of little substance.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Well the mini nuke fired from a recoilless rifle on a jeep (Davy Crocket) is sort of direct fire
jvanderbot 7y ago
kinetic energy per unit time per unit mass, was the plotted relationship. Your counter example is not fully counter without those divisors. Further, warheads were not factored. e.g. the nuke part.
jvanderbot 7y ago
ICBMs are hardly more useful in modern conflicts, given they are never deployed. A 9mm is quite often deployed, but lets get quantitative over coffee. Option 1: - ICBM: 3e2 kg warhead [1] to 1.1e6m at cost of 3.3e4 kg launch vehicle mass [2] - KE > 3e2 * 1.1e6 * g - T ~ 1800 s per shot - R1 > (3e2 * 1.1e6 * g) / (3.3e4 * 1800 ) - R1 > 5.556 g ~ 54.48 Option 2: - 9mm: 300 J, ~1kg launch vehicle mass [3] - KE = 300J - T ~ .5s per shot - R2 ~ (300) / (.5 * 1 ) - R2 ~ 600 Comparing, the 9mm outperforms the ICBM by this measure according to my under-caffeinated math and googling (please check). But they are suprisingly close. ICBMs are optimized for the longest tail of reach, rather than a nice tradeoff of fire rate, carry weight, throw weight, etc, so this roughly makes sense. Also we should consider the roughly 40 years difference in design and deployment of the two systems, which may remove the order of magnitude advantage of the 9mm. Not also, we've ignored the lateral velocity of the ICBM. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W87 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W87 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-25C_Titan_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-25C_Titan_II 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%C3%9719mm_Parabellum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%C3%9719mm_Parabellum EDIT formatting.

TMWNN 7y ago

>c.) where military technology is driven by a set of oligopolistic contractors who basically deliver what they want to deliver Is the Digital Century Series an attempt to change this?

marvin 7y ago

Are subsonic, silenced weapons significantly used in wars today? Out of curiosity.

pheme1 7y ago
Probably what he means are weapons used in black ops and special ops. For example the assault on the Osama hideout in 2011. But I think the more significant version are subsonic weapon fueling for proxy wars in Middle East.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  Yeah, but these are demonstrably not very important actions to the overall war: the Afghan forever war for example has currently continued for 8 years past that "decapitation" strike. I'm uncertain if it even gave Obama any political capital to use beyond the week he announced it.
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    The most important consequence might have been setting back our efforts to fight polio.
    - sitkack 7y ago
      https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ngo-head-cia-shares-blame-murdered-health-workers/story?id=18124580 https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ngo-head-cia-shares-blame-mur... > Two days after gunmen killed seven of his employees, the head of a Pakistani aid organization blamed their deaths not only on the militants who pulled the trigger, but also on America's Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is directly responsible for hundreds of aid worker deaths, the very people working in the field to eradicate polio.
jandrewrogers 7y ago
No, they are only used in very specialized cases. They have many durability and practicality issues for general military usage.
- greedo 7y ago
  Both the Army and the USMC are planning on all future rifles having silencer like capabilities. Not the Hollywood phony silent type, but noise suppression/reduction. This is driven both by tactical reasons as well as health reasons.
  - jandrewrogers 7y ago
    Yes, but those are not subsonic, which was a qualifier in the original post.

flohofwoe 7y ago

> you've cherrypicked a 25-year period of peace As far as I remember, there hasn't been a single year without a significant war going on since the Cold War ended? (not saying that it's worse then during the Cold War, but it also didn't get any better, depending in which part of the world you're living of course). Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine... and I probably forgot quite a few. No atom-bomb-raining World Wars of course, but then I think what we're currently seeing is the future of war.

marvin 7y ago
> but then I think what we're currently seeing is the future of war We can only hope. AFAIK, none of the wars since WWII were total wars between powers with strong industrial/technological capability. If that should happen, heaven forbid, it will be mayhem with crazy weaponized computer security exploits and rushed autonomous weapon platforms deployed within weeks or months. I think that's what GP is alluding to. We have seen plenty of conflict, but not the kind that drives the most significant innovation in weapons technology. Here's to hoping that things stay on this level, and the superpowers continue to realize that trade is more profitable than war. (And that disagreements are settled, at the most, with economic warfare rather than shooting wars).
- wbl 7y ago
  Second Congo proves you don't need much industrialization to have massive casualties and war crimes.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  I don't think wars drive any revolutionary development: the time constrains are too pressing. They rather drive revolutions in deployment. The big wars are so destructive precisely because they use weapons at qualitative different scales than previously experienced, not because weapons with completely new qualities have been invented. The celebrated revolution of the atomic weapon is a good example: during the war it did not add any new capability; the US had already completely obliterated many Japanese cities with similar numbers of (civilian and military) causalities, indeed special provisions for sparing some from destruction to use the new weapon on had to be made. (And the war almost ended before they managed to drop it: the Soviets entering the conflict in August 1945 is just as plausible as the primary reason the Japanese capitulated) It is only with the introduction of intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles, that allows belligerents to hold entire cities at risk with little recourse for the defender to prevent it that an entirely new capability is created. This development happened after the war, when supposedly no "revolution" happens. Also, we've had autonomous weapons for ages, they're called mines, and have been widely deployed in past conflicts. They do tend to kill a lot of people long past the conflict actually ended, so that's something the new autonomous weapons might actually avoid.

SiempreViernes 7y ago

Uh, I'd like to hear your reasoning for counting an ICBM as a direct fire weapon. Further, are you so familiar with the authors work that you feel it can be dismissed with little more than a wave of the hand? A wave that by the way states that the period of time containing both all the geopolitical effects of the end of the cold war (those certainly appeared after 1990) and the two longest running wars in US history is "peaceful" with only "minor geopolitical changes". I at least feel the author deserves more credit for actually trying to do some quantitative work, instead of just making a snarky comment of little substance.

C1sc0cat 7y ago
Well the mini nuke fired from a recoilless rifle on a jeep (Davy Crocket) is sort of direct fire

jvanderbot 7y ago

kinetic energy per unit time per unit mass, was the plotted relationship. Your counter example is not fully counter without those divisors. Further, warheads were not factored. e.g. the nuke part.

jvanderbot 7y ago

ICBMs are hardly more useful in modern conflicts, given they are never deployed. A 9mm is quite often deployed, but lets get quantitative over coffee. Option 1: - ICBM: 3e2 kg warhead [1] to 1.1e6m at cost of 3.3e4 kg launch vehicle mass [2] - KE > 3e2 * 1.1e6 * g - T ~ 1800 s per shot - R1 > (3e2 * 1.1e6 * g) / (3.3e4 * 1800 ) - R1 > 5.556 g ~ 54.48 Option 2: - 9mm: 300 J, ~1kg launch vehicle mass [3] - KE = 300J - T ~ .5s per shot - R2 ~ (300) / (.5 * 1 ) - R2 ~ 600 Comparing, the 9mm outperforms the ICBM by this measure according to my under-caffeinated math and googling (please check). But they are suprisingly close. ICBMs are optimized for the longest tail of reach, rather than a nice tradeoff of fire rate, carry weight, throw weight, etc, so this roughly makes sense. Also we should consider the roughly 40 years difference in design and deployment of the two systems, which may remove the order of magnitude advantage of the 9mm. Not also, we've ignored the lateral velocity of the ICBM. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W87 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W87 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-25C_Titan_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-25C_Titan_II 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%C3%9719mm_Parabellum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%C3%9719mm_Parabellum EDIT formatting.