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http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...w-tech-soldier/2011/05/29/AGPaKPEH_story.html
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I guess that I agree with Gen Dempsey's approach. When I was at Newport- the thinking at the time was focused on a theory called "Netcentric warfare" which basically emphasized us using our hi tech capabilities to focus on and decapitate the enemies critical nodes to their infrastructure rendering them incapable of resistance. What it didn't take into account IMO was that our critical nodes were not aligned with the enemies that we were likely to fight, and that our focus on the technology left us vulnerable at the lower end of the spectrum. Nobody flies aircraft against us and they typically don't communicate thru the airwaves where we can intercept and disrupt them. The history of technologists it seems to me is that they always overestimate the affect that their disruptions cause, they mistake their control of the medium for actual control of the situation and always underestimate the resilience of the enemy to work around those disruptions. (They also seem to always underestimate the cost of the technology- more and more the cost of the capabilities that they are searching for explode in cost to the point that we can afford nothing while we search for the equivalent of the hi tech Holy Grail...In choosing Dempsey for the military’s top job, Obama has selected an officer who in many ways is the polar opposite of Gen. James E. Cartwright, a favorite of the president who was long presumed to be the front-runner for the position. Obama decided on Dempsey only in the past two weeks.
Cartwright, a Marine fighter pilot, is known inside the Pentagon as a tech-savvy introvert who has spent much of the last decade working to ensure that the military is prepared for the next big war. He’s made himself into an expert in cyber and nuclear warfare.
Dempsey has spent much of the last decade leading troops in a messy, low-tech war in Iraq and is deeply skeptical of technology’s ability to alter the basic nature of combat.
“We operate where our enemies, indigenous populations, culture, politics, and religion intersect and where the fog and friction of war persists,” he wrote recently in the introduction to the Army’s main operating concept....