On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 21:23:50 -0800, pervect
wrote:

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 17:46:51 GMT, (Derek
Lyons) wrote:



You and Phil, and to a lesser extent George, who should know better,
don't seem to realize that killing the enemy C&C is how the US fights
wars today. The days of grinding towards the Capital worrying only
about the front line and hoping a golden bullet takes out the Leader
are dead and gone. This is 2003 not 1943.

I think there are technologies that our fictitious nation of Elbonia
can use that will make disrupting their C&C structure a lot more
difficult. I would even go so far as to say that investing in a
modern C&C infrastructure would probably be the best first investment
Elbonia could make. Probably the best approach would be to grow their
own experts (rather than to rely on commercial systems of others and
think that they can just buy one).



So all Elbonia has to do is create a modern middle class, capable
of supporting an educated technical infrastructure...and by the way,
keep said middile class from chucking the leadership out. Not only
isn't that easy, but that';s not a 10 year project, its a 30 year
project.


I also think there will be an increase in the use of nuclear weapons,
and that the wave of current US military actions will, as a side
effect, encourage nuclear proliferation. I don't think that this will
be widely announced, though - I think that everyone will claim not to
have weapons of mass destruction, and when intelligence turns up
irrefutable evidence of nuclear weapons, they will merely blink and
calmly state that said weapons are purely defensive for use against
military targets only and are in no way classifiable as being WMD.

Why would the U.S. wish to increase using nuclear weapons? I think
the decision to start creating new nuke designs is stupid, but in any
case, the U.S. doesn't *need* nukes in most concievable engagements,
and in fact using them would degrade our own effectiveness.