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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 30 2016 10:08 xDaunt wrote:
Well, the one good thing that can be said about a lot of the US's expenditure upon expensive weapon systems is that new technologies -- particularly drone technology -- complement the expensive weapon systems very well and will function as force multipliers for the more limited expensive systems. As such, I'd expect the US military to be more cost effective in ten years than it is now.
So I actually took a few hours to dig into the info on drone warfare and the like. The sources are remarkably sparse on concrete data and visibly agenda-driven so I won't be linking them, and I'll just summarize what I got out of them.
First of all, a fair few countries use drones, and mostly for surveillance. The US and UK use a few for combat too. They're not exactly cheap, but they are cheaper than something like the stealth bombers for sure. But also less potent, obviously. They still cost upwards of $10 million a pop.
I mentioned manpads as a counter. Most planes are at least partially vulnerable to them of course; what really generally makes the difference in anti-aircraft is operator skill. Technology absolutely matters but generally speaking, the relative skills of the pilots and the AA operators do a lot to determine their success. Drones aren't exactly known for their piloting prowess.
More notable, though, is that they're vulnerable to electronic warfare and hax. Not even the expensive stuff, but just $30 equipment in the hands of a decent hacker. You can hack into its video feed with really cheap equipment, for example, and that makes it a lot less effective for a multitude of reasons. And of course more advanced stuff can do more to a remote controlled toy airplane.
Countries like Russia and China have allegedly swatted a whole bunch of toy airplanes in their own territories. What isn't alleged but quite confirmed is that Iran captured one of these drones, a pretty secretive model that's a stealth surveillance drone. So they seem fairly vulnerable if they're not in third world countries.
Surveillance drones more or less do their job and that's why people use them. The combat toys are somewhat more questionable in their effectiveness. They actually do a decent job of shooting on target, but they're a pretty small program and the net effect of their use on the battlefield is disputed. What isn't disputed, though, is that they generate a whole lot of controversy. Israel especially gets a lot of shit for its toy airplane usage.
A lot of the positions defending them talk about how they don't put American soldiers in danger so they're worth using. I guess this sort of ties into your issue of half-assing involvement in foreign conflicts, where air strikes plus "moderate rebels" are used as an apparent replacement for actual ground troops and real involvement. While air strikes and the like play an important role in modern conflict it's pretty clear that you can't fight a war with only airstrikes. Frankly I think the losses of the US military are best measured in money spent than in materiel or personnel lost. Often, forcing the US to spend too much money is what makes its participation in a conflict unviable rather than actual deaths or destroyed equipment. Bin Laden realized this and it's a damn good observation.
My conclusion? Drones have their purposes, especially for surveillance, but they are cut from the same cloth as the rest of the bloated and misguided approach of the US to many of its foreign conflicts. The lower price is not a testament to efficiency but rather to scale, because the countermeasures are a damn sight cheaper as well.
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Did you do any looking into the impact of drones in terms of effectiveness regarding psychological impact they impose on the victims (and subsequently how that impacts future conflicts)? That seems to be the real cost of using drones, at least for the way they're currently being used. Drones seems to be very expensive in that their use is a very effective recruiting tactic by the people being targeted.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On December 01 2016 04:31 Logo wrote:
Did you do any looking into the impact of drones in terms of effectiveness regarding psychological impact they impose on the victims (and subsequently how that impacts future conflicts)? That seems to be the real cost of using drones, at least for the way they're currently being used. Drones seems to be very expensive in that their use is a very effective recruiting tactic by the people being targeted.
That's the part that's quite disputed. Whether killing the terrorists causes the movements to splinter and make people afraid of being targeted, or piss them off and create support for terrorists.
The data is quite sparse and the people most interested are lobbyists for more drone production. Makes it hard to get a good, objective conclusion on that matter.
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On December 01 2016 04:36 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2016 04:31 Logo wrote:
Did you do any looking into the impact of drones in terms of effectiveness regarding psychological impact they impose on the victims (and subsequently how that impacts future conflicts)? That seems to be the real cost of using drones, at least for the way they're currently being used. Drones seems to be very expensive in that their use is a very effective recruiting tactic by the people being targeted. That's the part that's quite disputed. Whether killing the terrorists causes the movements to splinter and make people afraid of being targeted, or piss them off and create support for terrorists. The data is quite sparse and the people most interested are lobbyists for more drone production. Makes it hard to get a good, objective conclusion on that matter.
I feel like at the end of the day, the objective information simply isn't available regarding that. Even ignoring bias, that is some seriously hard data to collect.
Edit: Please for the love of god do not let Guiliani be SoS. I feel like extreme loyalty is the only reason Guiliani is even being considered, relative to Romney.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On December 01 2016 04:46 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2016 04:36 LegalLord wrote:On December 01 2016 04:31 Logo wrote:
Did you do any looking into the impact of drones in terms of effectiveness regarding psychological impact they impose on the victims (and subsequently how that impacts future conflicts)? That seems to be the real cost of using drones, at least for the way they're currently being used. Drones seems to be very expensive in that their use is a very effective recruiting tactic by the people being targeted. That's the part that's quite disputed. Whether killing the terrorists causes the movements to splinter and make people afraid of being targeted, or piss them off and create support for terrorists. The data is quite sparse and the people most interested are lobbyists for more drone production. Makes it hard to get a good, objective conclusion on that matter. I feel like at the end of the day, the objective information simply isn't available regarding that. Even ignoring bias, that is some seriously hard data to collect. Edit: Please for the love of god do not let Guiliani be SoS. I feel like extreme loyalty is the only reason Guiliani is even being considered, relative to Romney.
Yup. And ignoring bias isn't something you should do because it's a disincentive to be objective about the data. Nevertheless, I can't say I think they're any appreciable cost savings; more so they're just a smaller scale of warfare with the same degree of cost overruns.
Neither Guiliani nor Romney seem super viable. One is incompetent, the other is hard to have the base support. He needs a different option.
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I'd place my bets on it being a net gain in terms of fighting terrorism. Killing their leaders is something that has happened a lot, and I do think that has a significant impact. And it interferes with their operations, forces them to be less organized and they can't have training camps out in the open. It's when the terrorists form a large organization that it's a problem (the lone wolves will never go away), and you just have to be on the offensive against it.
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On December 01 2016 04:09 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2016 04:01 oBlade wrote:
"Drain the swamp" and "the best people" continue to be at odds such that you can manipulate them to have a way to heckle any appointment he ever makes without caring about the specific individual or finding examples of alternatives he should be hiring. But that's a bit lazy. If you think he ran on an inconsistent platform, then it makes more sense to criticize him at that level. Or by looking at all his appointments as a whole. So if Trump makes competing claims that can't possibly both be true it's his critics that are at fault and not Trump for blatantly misleading people?
No, why are you doing this? In this case, if someone were to think "drain the swamp" and "the best people" are irreconcilable, it suggests that we're forced to live with the hold that lobbying/corruption/special interests have in order to have an effective government (granting for argument that it's effective). That's not really true - it would be alarming if so, that you can't fix one problem unless at the expense of the other, that a more effective government would have to be more corrupt and a less corrupt one would be less effective. Now, why would people not want to recognize the middle ground where you can improve both fronts? Because it serves as a convenient out for people. You always have a reason to justify your disapproval because Trump is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Actually, certain people just don't like anything the "other side" does, which I can completely understand, it's a fair enough - but you don't need to always fish for reasons to rationalize that.
A way to see how he measures up to his promises might be to look at his appointments overall, the tons of people who work for the executive branch. Not to zero in on a single person and say, look at this, wasn't Trump going to drain the swamp, then how come this one guy used to have a job - gotcha!
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On December 01 2016 04:57 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2016 04:09 Logo wrote:On December 01 2016 04:01 oBlade wrote:
"Drain the swamp" and "the best people" continue to be at odds such that you can manipulate them to have a way to heckle any appointment he ever makes without caring about the specific individual or finding examples of alternatives he should be hiring. But that's a bit lazy. If you think he ran on an inconsistent platform, then it makes more sense to criticize him at that level. Or by looking at all his appointments as a whole. So if Trump makes competing claims that can't possibly both be true it's his critics that are at fault and not Trump for blatantly misleading people? No, why are you doing this? In this case, if someone were to think "drain the swamp" and "the best people" are irreconcilable, it suggests that we're forced to live with the hold that lobbying/corruption/special interests have in order to have an effective government (granting for argument that it's effective). That's not really true - it would be alarming if so, that you can't fix one problem unless at the expense of the other, that a more effective government would have to be more corrupt and a less corrupt one would be less effective. Now, why would people not want to recognize the middle ground where you can improve both fronts? Because it serves as a convenient out for people. You always have a reason to justify your disapproval because Trump is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Actually, certain people just don't like anything the "other side" does, which I can completely understand, it's a fair enough - but you don't need to always fish for reasons to rationalize that. A way to see how he measures up to his promises might be to look at his appointments overall, the tons of people who work for the executive branch. Not to zero in on a single person and say, look at this, wasn't Trump going to drain the swamp, then how come this one guy used to have a job - gotcha!
But he's dammed if he does and dammed if he doesn't because of his very own words. He took a hard stance against the political establishment and is now nominating very establishment like candidates so of course people are going to point that out.
I'm also unclear how people are zeroing in on a single person? People have been pointing out every Trump nominee as it comes through, Treasury is just the latest one people have been talking about.
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The #DrainTheSwamp portion of the cabinet is mostly incompetents. But I guess it's fitting that the first incompetent on a presidential ticket would join the second.
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hey at least palin isnt establishment!
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On December 01 2016 02:03 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2016 01:31 Mohdoo wrote:On December 01 2016 01:27 Incognoto wrote:
Yeah I meant development process.
Mohdoo with your definition you could get rid of the baby as long as it's unborn. ;/ I will just assume you know more about neuroscience than I do and assume that you know what you're talking about. If it is indeed true that no consciousness is formed while in the womb, I don't technically see any problem with it. I won't deny I get a creepy "that just seems messed up" feeling, but if it is technically true, it is just me having a meaningless emotional response. At the end of the day, when applying policy to millions of people, detachment from knee-jerk emotional responses is necessary. It is impossible to accommodate the emotional knee-jerk reactions of everyone, so we need to just defer to reason and accuracy. If no consciousness is present, there is no real difference between killing a human and an animal. The flesh and bones happen to form a shape familiar to us which we are instinctively heavily sympathetic towards. But that doesn't make it human. It makes it something that we naturally feel sympathetic towards. But those are two very different things. Consciousness is not a black and white thing. It's not so that a fetus has no consciousness, it is born, and poof, it has consciousness. That's not how consciousness works. Modern science sees consciousness more in terms of degrees. An adult human is up until now the most conscious being we know of, and it is hard for us to imagine something with more consciousness than us or what that would mean (an intelligent hive mind perhaps?) However, it is quite easy to see that a dog has greater consciousness than a mosquito. Similarly, consciousness is something that develops in humans. A zygote has no consciousness, and a newborn baby has limited consciousness (for instance, a newborn baby is completely overwhelmed by sensory input, and it takes a couple of months for it to start making sense of both its own body and the world around it). I don't think anybody is okay with "aborting" newborns (aka murdering babies), despite the fact that you could make the argument that pigs are "more conscious" than newborns and we slaughter them by the millions.
well you'd be wrong. plenty of people think aborting babies is basically like killing a dog
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On December 01 2016 03:44 farvacola wrote:
I'm merely hinting at the fact that states wield a massive amount of control over how Common Core is implemented. Accordingly, all this "I'M FOR/AGAINST COMMON CORE!" rhetoric coming from a place of federal government criticism is rather misguided.
An actual policy discussion would be fine, though I think it'd be relatively easy to estimate where the interested parties fall.
yeah you can draw the line (amongst those who even care enough to have a position) between those who feel dumb because they can't do their kids' homework and those who are puzzled at what all the hullabaloo is about
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On December 01 2016 05:46 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2016 04:57 oBlade wrote:On December 01 2016 04:09 Logo wrote:On December 01 2016 04:01 oBlade wrote:
"Drain the swamp" and "the best people" continue to be at odds such that you can manipulate them to have a way to heckle any appointment he ever makes without caring about the specific individual or finding examples of alternatives he should be hiring. But that's a bit lazy. If you think he ran on an inconsistent platform, then it makes more sense to criticize him at that level. Or by looking at all his appointments as a whole. So if Trump makes competing claims that can't possibly both be true it's his critics that are at fault and not Trump for blatantly misleading people? No, why are you doing this? In this case, if someone were to think "drain the swamp" and "the best people" are irreconcilable, it suggests that we're forced to live with the hold that lobbying/corruption/special interests have in order to have an effective government (granting for argument that it's effective). That's not really true - it would be alarming if so, that you can't fix one problem unless at the expense of the other, that a more effective government would have to be more corrupt and a less corrupt one would be less effective. Now, why would people not want to recognize the middle ground where you can improve both fronts? Because it serves as a convenient out for people. You always have a reason to justify your disapproval because Trump is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Actually, certain people just don't like anything the "other side" does, which I can completely understand, it's a fair enough - but you don't need to always fish for reasons to rationalize that. A way to see how he measures up to his promises might be to look at his appointments overall, the tons of people who work for the executive branch. Not to zero in on a single person and say, look at this, wasn't Trump going to drain the swamp, then how come this one guy used to have a job - gotcha! But he's dammed if he does and dammed if he doesn't because of his very own words. He took a hard stance against the political establishment and is now nominating very establishment like candidates so of course people are going to point that out. I'm also unclear how people are zeroing in on a single person? People have been pointing out every Trump nominee as it comes through, Treasury is just the latest one people have been talking about.
Exactly, everyone who is considered for every post is either 1) not the best people or 2) the swamp, where anyone who's held any job or political office is considered the swamp because that helps the case. In this way, you can pit two three-word slogans against each other to dismiss every decision he'll ever come up with.
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On December 01 2016 06:33 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2016 05:46 Logo wrote:On December 01 2016 04:57 oBlade wrote:On December 01 2016 04:09 Logo wrote:On December 01 2016 04:01 oBlade wrote:
"Drain the swamp" and "the best people" continue to be at odds such that you can manipulate them to have a way to heckle any appointment he ever makes without caring about the specific individual or finding examples of alternatives he should be hiring. But that's a bit lazy. If you think he ran on an inconsistent platform, then it makes more sense to criticize him at that level. Or by looking at all his appointments as a whole. So if Trump makes competing claims that can't possibly both be true it's his critics that are at fault and not Trump for blatantly misleading people? No, why are you doing this? In this case, if someone were to think "drain the swamp" and "the best people" are irreconcilable, it suggests that we're forced to live with the hold that lobbying/corruption/special interests have in order to have an effective government (granting for argument that it's effective). That's not really true - it would be alarming if so, that you can't fix one problem unless at the expense of the other, that a more effective government would have to be more corrupt and a less corrupt one would be less effective. Now, why would people not want to recognize the middle ground where you can improve both fronts? Because it serves as a convenient out for people. You always have a reason to justify your disapproval because Trump is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Actually, certain people just don't like anything the "other side" does, which I can completely understand, it's a fair enough - but you don't need to always fish for reasons to rationalize that. A way to see how he measures up to his promises might be to look at his appointments overall, the tons of people who work for the executive branch. Not to zero in on a single person and say, look at this, wasn't Trump going to drain the swamp, then how come this one guy used to have a job - gotcha! But he's dammed if he does and dammed if he doesn't because of his very own words. He took a hard stance against the political establishment and is now nominating very establishment like candidates so of course people are going to point that out. I'm also unclear how people are zeroing in on a single person? People have been pointing out every Trump nominee as it comes through, Treasury is just the latest one people have been talking about. Exactly, everyone who is considered for every post is either 1) not the best people or 2) the swamp, where anyone who's held any job or political office is considered the swamp because that helps the case. In this way, you can pit two three-word slogans against each other to dismiss every decision he'll ever come up with.
Given the words he's used and the anti establishment platform he ran on yes. We can either dismiss his choices as bad because they are clueless or proven bad anti establishment people, or call him out on his bullshit of draining the swamp when he chooses establishment politicians. Do you see how when someone changes their mind every few hours and has different positions more than twice a day they can't do anything without breaking a promis?
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I'm pretty sure the reason Romney is being considered for SoS is that he's the best person to fill the rest of the state department up.
There's hundreds of related appointments to be made, and Romney's already given this some thought, as opposed to the other names floating around who have no idea who to put where.
I imagine those faces from that picture are approximately what they looked like when Romney realized he would have to apologize then he could get the SoS job. Romney is thinking whether it's worth his dignity to get SoS and have an outside shot of challenging Trump in 2020 should his administration fall apart.
What I think would be quite interesting is how various people choose to separate the actions of the SoS from the President with new players in the slots.
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On December 01 2016 06:41 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2016 06:33 oBlade wrote:On December 01 2016 05:46 Logo wrote:On December 01 2016 04:57 oBlade wrote:On December 01 2016 04:09 Logo wrote:On December 01 2016 04:01 oBlade wrote:
"Drain the swamp" and "the best people" continue to be at odds such that you can manipulate them to have a way to heckle any appointment he ever makes without caring about the specific individual or finding examples of alternatives he should be hiring. But that's a bit lazy. If you think he ran on an inconsistent platform, then it makes more sense to criticize him at that level. Or by looking at all his appointments as a whole. So if Trump makes competing claims that can't possibly both be true it's his critics that are at fault and not Trump for blatantly misleading people? No, why are you doing this? In this case, if someone were to think "drain the swamp" and "the best people" are irreconcilable, it suggests that we're forced to live with the hold that lobbying/corruption/special interests have in order to have an effective government (granting for argument that it's effective). That's not really true - it would be alarming if so, that you can't fix one problem unless at the expense of the other, that a more effective government would have to be more corrupt and a less corrupt one would be less effective. Now, why would people not want to recognize the middle ground where you can improve both fronts? Because it serves as a convenient out for people. You always have a reason to justify your disapproval because Trump is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Actually, certain people just don't like anything the "other side" does, which I can completely understand, it's a fair enough - but you don't need to always fish for reasons to rationalize that. A way to see how he measures up to his promises might be to look at his appointments overall, the tons of people who work for the executive branch. Not to zero in on a single person and say, look at this, wasn't Trump going to drain the swamp, then how come this one guy used to have a job - gotcha! But he's dammed if he does and dammed if he doesn't because of his very own words. He took a hard stance against the political establishment and is now nominating very establishment like candidates so of course people are going to point that out. I'm also unclear how people are zeroing in on a single person? People have been pointing out every Trump nominee as it comes through, Treasury is just the latest one people have been talking about. Exactly, everyone who is considered for every post is either 1) not the best people or 2) the swamp, where anyone who's held any job or political office is considered the swamp because that helps the case. In this way, you can pit two three-word slogans against each other to dismiss every decision he'll ever come up with. Given the words he's used and the anti establishment platform he ran on yes. We can either dismiss his choices as bad because they are clueless or proven bad anti establishment people, or call him out on his bullshit of draining the swamp when he chooses establishment politicians. Do you see how when someone changes their mind every few hours and has different positions more than twice a day they can't do anything without breaking a promis?
Goldman Sachs in particular is notable given that Trump spent the campaign hammering Clinton on giving speeches to Goldman Sachs and even included the CEO's image in the closing ad of his campaign:
For Blankfein: "It's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the [start Blankein] pockets of a handful of large corporations [stop Blankfein] and political entities."
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On December 01 2016 06:41 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2016 06:33 oBlade wrote:On December 01 2016 05:46 Logo wrote:On December 01 2016 04:57 oBlade wrote:On December 01 2016 04:09 Logo wrote:On December 01 2016 04:01 oBlade wrote:
"Drain the swamp" and "the best people" continue to be at odds such that you can manipulate them to have a way to heckle any appointment he ever makes without caring about the specific individual or finding examples of alternatives he should be hiring. But that's a bit lazy. If you think he ran on an inconsistent platform, then it makes more sense to criticize him at that level. Or by looking at all his appointments as a whole. So if Trump makes competing claims that can't possibly both be true it's his critics that are at fault and not Trump for blatantly misleading people? No, why are you doing this? In this case, if someone were to think "drain the swamp" and "the best people" are irreconcilable, it suggests that we're forced to live with the hold that lobbying/corruption/special interests have in order to have an effective government (granting for argument that it's effective). That's not really true - it would be alarming if so, that you can't fix one problem unless at the expense of the other, that a more effective government would have to be more corrupt and a less corrupt one would be less effective. Now, why would people not want to recognize the middle ground where you can improve both fronts? Because it serves as a convenient out for people. You always have a reason to justify your disapproval because Trump is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Actually, certain people just don't like anything the "other side" does, which I can completely understand, it's a fair enough - but you don't need to always fish for reasons to rationalize that. A way to see how he measures up to his promises might be to look at his appointments overall, the tons of people who work for the executive branch. Not to zero in on a single person and say, look at this, wasn't Trump going to drain the swamp, then how come this one guy used to have a job - gotcha! But he's dammed if he does and dammed if he doesn't because of his very own words. He took a hard stance against the political establishment and is now nominating very establishment like candidates so of course people are going to point that out. I'm also unclear how people are zeroing in on a single person? People have been pointing out every Trump nominee as it comes through, Treasury is just the latest one people have been talking about. Exactly, everyone who is considered for every post is either 1) not the best people or 2) the swamp, where anyone who's held any job or political office is considered the swamp because that helps the case. In this way, you can pit two three-word slogans against each other to dismiss every decision he'll ever come up with. Given the words he's used and the anti establishment platform he ran on yes. We can either dismiss his choices as bad because they are clueless or proven bad anti establishment people, or call him out on his bullshit of draining the swamp when he chooses establishment politicians. Do you see how when someone changes their mind every few hours and has different positions more than twice a day they can't do anything without breaking a promis?
This is what "drain the swamp" means:
Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:
* FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;
* SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);
* THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;
* FOURTH, a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;
* FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;
* SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.
It doesn't mean never hire someone with any experience, it doesn't mean to turn the whole government into Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. It's so often people who would have never, ever voted for him that have these cartoon interpretations. That's not a coincidence, alright? It's people who already don't like him, or probably any Republican at all (which is a fair enough position), reverse engineering reasons to fit. People who didn't vote for him specifically because of what he said, now criticizing him for not doing what he said, usually what they didn't want him to do (for example, following through on prosecuting HRC). You used the term "establishment politician" - is that any different than "politician" for you, I wonder.
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That is only what you've decided "drain the swamp" means. In reality it's just a vague slogan, but you might think that with the prominence of the slogan, positions as important as the cabinet would be free of swamp monsters.
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EPT
