Robots &Machines For The Empire

ROBOTS & MACHINES FOR THE EMPIRE

THE GEORGE LUCAS NIGHTMARE!

By: peter

Coming very soon to a theater of war near you, your family and your home, will be the machines and robots which will greatly magnify and make more mobile the State's deadly force for deployment against its eternal enemy: the people.

Government Executive Magazine, traditionally pro-federal government, includes an article in its April 15th issue entitled "Future Combat Zone." Staff correspondent George Cahlink begins his article, "Six years ago, the Army decided to stake its future on an untested approach to acquiring futuristic weapons in support of a grand theory about the nature of 21st century warfare. The resulting program, known as Future Combat Systems, has turned out to be the most expensive and complex program procurement effort in Army history. According to current estimates, the service will spend well in excess of $100 billion by 2014 to develop the 'system of systems,' which includes manned and unmanned air and ground vehicles and sensors tied together by a wireless network." [Emphasis mine.]

"Untested approach?" "Futuristic?" "Grand theory?" It doesn't sound very supportive of our nation state's latest high-tech investments consistently touted as absolutely necessary for our defense in an increasingly technologically hostile world.

The Army's Future Combat Systems program was recently examined against the backdrop of totally uncontrolled federal spending, which long ago has left the State's fiscal launching pad roaring skywards both in defiance of gravity and any modicum of budgetary restraints. Tim Weiner in his NY Times article of March 28th offers, "The Army's plan to transform itself into a futuristic high-technology force has become so expensive that some of the military's strongest supporters in Congress are questioning the program's costs and complexity."

The article, "An Army Program to Build a High-Tech Force Hits Cost Snags," goes on, "Army officials said...that the first phase of the program...could run to $145 billion. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the 'technological bridge to the future' would equip 15 brigades of roughly 3,000 soldiers, or about one-third of the force the Army plans to field, over a 20-year span."

The "grand theory" Cahlink explains, is "[t]he Army's bid for unprecedented speed and killing power require[ing] double the amount of computer code than is contained in the Joint Strike Fighter's systems, rely[ing] on 53 new technologies and require[ing] more than 100 network interfaces." The "wireless network" Cahlink mentions is described by Weiner as the "Joint Tactical Radio Systems," known as JTRS [pronounced 'jitters']."

The points made during the Congressional inquiry as well as the heavy criticism leveled at the Army representatives were well documented in Weiner's NY Times' report and carried on the truthout website. It focused on the "untested approach" and the expensive and complex procurements. And some commentary on the Internet did indeed point out the military spending outrage in terms of its disadvantage to our economy as well as the increasing proclivity by our warmongering rulers to use such force at the slightest hint of imagined provocation. Remember Madam Dr. Albright's comment suggesting that having a powerful military force translates to using it.

But what was missed in both reporting and commentary at the time, or at best was lightly glossed over, was the motivation in creating such a force in the first place, as well as its real intended mission. Cahlink points this out clearly: "Still, the Army believes that the focus should be less on the controversies surrounding how the next-generation weapon will be built and more on the overwhelming advantage it will offer. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, captured the thoughts of many in the service about the program's high-risk strategy at a February House Armed Services Committee hearing. 'We are committed to the Future Combat System,' he said, 'but this is a journey. It is not a destination.'"

Informed Internet readers will of course recall that it was also part of General Schoomaker's Army journey to violate the American Military Code of Honor as every graduate of West Point knows, and to compromise the military by violating the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which disallows the military from being used for civilian law enforcement purposes. It was either Schoomaker, or his boss, Gen. Wesley Clark, that engineered the military operation against innocent American civilians known as the "Waco Massacre."

Can you imagine just how much fun these jackbooted fascists will have when they get their new toys to kill people more efficiently? The next Waco will be an even greater and more spectacular event, with yet more babies, toddlers and children screaming and crying as the heroes of the United States Federal Police roast them alive into blackened crisps. [Caution - very sickening graphic autopsy photo - please do not click if excitable or squeamish.]

Cahlink explains Gen. Schoomaker's latest journey into improved mass killing efficiency in order to spread our form of democracy all over God's creation: "The Future Combat Systems journey began on a bare-bones airfield in Albania in the spring of 1999, when the United States agreed to provide 24 Apache helicopters to participate in a NATO-led effort to oust Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic's forces from Kosovo. The Army believed it could move the aircraft from their installation in Germany to a military base in Macedonia in eight to 14 days."

Cahlink goes on: "But the effort became far more complicated when a lack of space at the Macedonian base forced the Army farther south to a rarely used installation in Albania. The base had little infrastructure, so the 465 Army soldiers needed to operate and support the 24 Apaches quickly grew to a force of more than 5,000."

Now that's a logical explanation, no? Of course, since NATO originated as a Western alliance against the former Soviet Union, the latter no longer even in existence, and since Milosevic and Serbia were never any threat to our security, why was this "journey"