In Military Applications Computers have given the modern military a degree of efficiency and effectiveness that has completely changed the way the military operates at sea, in the air, and on the ground. The fast computational abilities and the accuracy of digital computing enable the military to perform more quickly with less risk to themselves and with less cost to their government. Wars fought prior to the advent of digital computing could take years to complete and resulted In tremendous loss of property on both sides.
Weapons of mass destruction used to be the fastest way to achieve the objective.A discussion with Dan Carroll, Vietnam war veteran and current contract engineer for major aerospace companies revealed that in World War II and in Vietnam, American forces employed a technique known as carpet bombing to wipe out enemy troops and resources. Many large bombers would overtly an area and drop thousands of bombs In an effort to destroy the enemy. This proved to be very costly for both sides In terms of property and human life. The attacking force had to expend many bombs and put many aircraft and their crews at risk by exposing them to enemy anti-aircraft artillery and round to air missiles.But this technique was far worse for the people on the ground.
Entire cities were leveled in one pass and their populations decimated under a constant stream of falling bombs. During World War II, the allied forces launched one such attack on Dressed, Germany. The attack was so farce that the entire city was set ablaze In one gigantic fireball. The heat was so intense that metal objects were melted and the rolling thermal created by the fire created tremendous wind storms.
Anyone in the city not burned to death was suffocated as the inferno consumed all of the nearby oxygen.An even earlier example of the brutality of primitive warfare is the American Civil War. Without computers and aircraft at their disposal, other methods of mass destruction were used. According to Charlotte Hood, a Civil War historian studying at Wellesley College, General Sherman, during his famous march to the sea, burned everything in his path.
Destroying towns, homes, shops, and added further to the destruction of the infrastructure and the economy of the south. Nuclear weapons threatened to destroy the American continent, Russia, and other parts of the world for nearly three decades.Like carpet bombing, a nuclear blast can completely level a city. Such weapons are completely Indiscriminate In what or who they destroy.
Not only are the intended military targets destroyed, but countless civilians as well as the city's industry and infrastructure. Not only is this a tremendous waste of human life, it makes the city completely worthless to whoever happens to end up winning the war. Another recent problem due to the development of nuclear weapons is the proliferation of nuclear materials.As America and the fissile material from reactors are slowly finding their way to unstable third world entries. The balance of weaponry between the superpowers was the only thing that prevented a major nuclear conflict. Once a small country with nothing more than conventional guns and troops gets a hold of a working nuclear weapon, the results could be most unfortunate.
Assuming that war is inevitable and that enemies must sometimes be destroyed, small, powerful computers are useful. Weapons can now be made intelligent enough to know precisely where and what the target is.It is now possible to launch a projectile from hundreds of miles away and destroy one particular building in an enemy installation. This sort of precision warfare is much less expensive in the long run and makes much more efficient use of resources.
When human beings must be killed, we have the ability to spare the vast majority of people in a city who are innocent bystanders and target only those directly involved in the war effort. These smart weapons are made possible by the advanced optical systems, lasers, and the computers needed to process all of the information, make autonomous decisions, and take action.Knowing precisely where a ship, aircraft, soldier, or projectile is located has always en very important. The Global Positioning System (GAPS) system is used extensively by the United States military for Just that purpose. A group of satellites orbit the earth broadcasting signals which tell the receivers precisely where they are.
It's practically impossible to launch a satellite without the aid of computers. Computers are also required to generate the signals sent to the receiver. It is because of GAPS that missiles know exactly where they are.A Tomahawk cruise missile can be launched from the deck of a destroyer off the coast of an unfriendly country and pilot itself at low altitude and supersonic speeds (to avoid being shot down) under computer control using the GAPS system for navigation for many miles resulting in a precision impact with the target. Another use of computers combined with satellite technology is in the area of reconnaissance.
Computers allow the satellites to obtain spectacular images of enemy territory for transmission to the ground where the images will be processed by another computer and analyzed by intelligence personnel.Thanks to reconnaissance satellites like the KHZ-I, the US was always able to know what the enemy was capable of, which aided in planning and in maintaining the delicate balance of the arms race. Modern fighter aircraft depend heavily on computers for their operation. There are more variables than could possibly be controlled by a human pilot. Some aircraft are even inherently unstable, requiring hundreds of minute course corrections each second Just to keep the aircraft under control.
This allows the aircraft more invulnerability, longer range, and faster speed.All of these things are big advantages which make the aircraft more likely to successfully accomplish it's Secure and efficient communication is essential to the success of any military campaign. Powerful computers allow for strong encryption techniques to be used to keep valuable information from falling into the wrong hands. Older encryption techniques that did not use computers were always relatively easy to figure out. During World War II the Germans constructed a device called the Enigma Machine.
Allied forces quickly figured out how to decrypt the information. But today, fast computers can use large keys to encrypt data using sophisticated algorithms. Many odder encryption techniques are yet to be broken by anyone after years of existence. The military does a lot of research and development itself or funds it through outside contractors.
Computers are playing a bigger role than ever in this field. Computers are used to study everything from simulating the effects of a nuclear blast to controlling a flight simulator to produce better pilots.One day, advances in remotely piloted vehicles and artificial intelligence may make human pilots a redundant component, eventually to be phased out entirely. Automated tanks may one day attack other automated tanks.
NASA and other agencies are already developing rovers to explore Mars which may one day become the predecessors of automatons which seek out and destroy enemy equipment. This would further the trend in which fewer and fewer people were directly involved in the act of war and less property is damaged. However, the added complication of computers means there are more ways in which things can go wrong.One of the big fears is that computers are taking over the decision making processes once controlled by human minds.
While humans can deal with nearly any situation and use conscience and reasoning, computers cannot. Computers rely on a fixed set of rules which guide their action and decision making process. Any deviation from the expected can often result in and unpredictable result. This makes computers Just fine for laboratory and mathematical use, because if an error occurs, the wrong answer is given or the machine stops operating and the user Just resets it.
But a computer which is mobile and armed may take that wrong number and turn it into an action with potentially disastrous consequences. In many systems, especially those which are automated, there is no human override. Once a Tomahawked missile is launched, it is completely on it's own. There is no self destruct command like that which exists on payload carrying rockets that are launched into space. If something goes wrong with the rocket, controllers on the ground will usually cause it to self destruct before it crashes in a populated area.But the enemy could figure out how to cause our missiles to self destruct and render our cruise missiles useless if such a command existed.
Due to a computer glitch, that same missile could become confused and attack the wrong target or even turn against those who launched it. Even defensive systems have been known to fail occasionally. Anti-aircraft missiles and radar systems must be intelligent enough to incidents where friendly aircraft were shot down. One civilian example is the Iranian passenger Jet that was mistaken for an enemy fighter and destroyed.Computerized systems have also accounted for friendly-fire fatalities in the military, but these incidents are usually kept quiet.
The Patriot anti-missile system used to protect Saudi Arabia and Israel against Scud missiles even had a few problems. While the Patriot did not really malfunction, it intercepted it's target directly over a marine arrack's, raining explosive debris down on the building causing many to be killed. While preventing this sort of thing is probably beyond our current computational abilities, a little more intelligence on the part of the Patriot missile may have prevented this.Another major concern is the fact that the enemy could use our computers against us. It is believed by some that national governments are engaged in research programs to develop computer viruses which can be unleashed on an unsuspecting enemy. If the virus went undetected for long enough and could spread far enough, he virus could disable a large number of computers which we have come to rely on.
This could potentially make us easier to overtake in a war. Especially if we become even more dependent on computers which are so vulnerable to this sort of attack.Hand held GAPS satellite navigation receivers are getting less and less expensive every day. Many police, taxi cabs, aircraft, ships, and mountain hikers use GAPS to know where they are and where they are going. Some have theorized that it could be possible for an enemy to transmit their own GAPS signals and mislead vehicles.
If this ere possible, the results could be devastating. Airplanes would most certainly crash, ships would be run aground, and with the enemy controlling the GAPS signal, our missiles could be guided right back at us.It may be possible to simply Jam the signal. In which case many of our modern weapons are useless due to the fact that they have no idea where they are. Fortunately, ships and aircraft still have older instruments as backup as.
But a pilot may not be able to tell he is being mislead and to use his backup instruments until it is too late. The government seems to think that he GAPS signal is very hard for others to duplicate due to the fact that the way it works is secret. But many would prefer not to rely on secrecy for protection.If specifics of the GAPS signal were to get out, the results could be disastrous.
Public key encryption of the digital GAPS signal might be a good way to prevent this. It could also provide authentic action to the receiving device that the sender was really an official satellite and not a terrorist group trying to bring down an airliner. Computers have made the military much better at doing it's Job while actually saving lives. As strange as it may seem, it is true. The usual objective of a military is to take control of a piece of land.The days of one thousand soldiers charging a hill only to be mowed down by the machine gun nests at the top are gone.
A single smart bomb can now take the hill. While there some risks involved in automating so many of our weapons, they seem to be paying off. The safety record for computer controlled weaponry has been quite good. Of course, once our enemies become more weapons systems (such as those that rely on GAPS). But hopefully, we will have developed sound testing procedures for systems as critical and as dangerous as these.
