Could lasers solve the military’s friendly-fire problem?
http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/09/could-lasers-solve-the-militarys-friendly-fire-problem/?hpt=hp_bn5
There is a similar sort of thing for aircraft and allow for identification of friend/foe (well, you be a foe if you don’t identify as friend). My biggest concern is that it might reveal your location if you get lit up. Yes, it requires a specific code, but how ‘visible’ is the signal? It doesn’t have to be visible to human eye to be easily detectable and the last thing you might need is some sort of radiation coming from your position as you are sneaking up on someone.
One big issue I have with a lot of these new gizmos is that they seem to put a larger and larger reliance on technology. Technology is well known to fail and most forms of technology often have vulnerabilities that can be exploited at critical junctures. By increasing the level of technology you are potentially decreasing the level of training necessary to provide an effective war fighter, but that means when the technology fails you have an ineffective war fighter.
Still, something that can help with the fog of war is valuable. When I was in the Virginia National Guard I was in an infantry unit and one summer we did an exercise where we were an invading army. Quite a sobering experience, _LOTS_ of friendly fire! To make the experience ‘realistic’ we had lasers mounted on our rifles that would fire when we shot off blanks (some people figured out that if you taped the rifle butt just the right way the laser would fire, but without making any noise). We wore a harness that had laser receivers which would set off an alarm that could only be silenced by removing a key from the laser on the rifle which would disable the laser. We also had sensors on our helmets so you could get taken out by snipers if you stuck your head up. It was realistic in that people couldn’t claim that they hadn’t been hit, at least. Tanks, trucks, helicopters, etc. all had the receivers so they could be shot at, though I suspect there was some information in the laser that told it what size round was being simulated so tanks, for instance, could ignore rifle fire.
My unit was designated as scouts and our job was to look for enemy units and have our trailing company detour around them. It turns out that the enemy (regular army guys who all they did was practice making chumps like us look like idiots) knows that also and would quietly let us pass, then massacre the company as it came behind us. Thus, we, as a scout unit, were never targeted by the bad guys. None-the-less, we were targeted: we had a friendly artillery attack called on our position (it seems they were targeting anything that moved), something we were able to escape because to mark the impact of the simulated round a guy on a very noisy 4 wheeler (and wearing a bright orange helmet) would drive to the coordinates, set off a noise maker, then hit everyone he could see with a laser. Naturally when we heard him drive up we boogied on out of there, how realistic is that?
One evening we hooked up with our massacred mortar unit (we were hoping to get food at this point; because our company had been blown to bits we weren’t able to resupply) and found some old fox holes to hide in (they were partying it up (or as much as possible with little food) around camp fires because they were ‘dead’). That evening we were watching a simulated air strike against the next hill, something that was actually a bit beautiful. What makes it so horrifying is a) it was supposed to be against our hill and b) it was our aircraft. Which is worse? That they hit the wrong hill or that they were friendlies?
I believe it was the next day when we were trying to find our reconstituted company (we were getting really hungry at this point) when we were ‘attacked’ by a helicopter. We were able to bring it down by shooting up from inside some bushes (lasers are effectively blocked by lasers, doanchano), which, naturally, is not very likely something that would work in the real world. Shockingly, we discovered that it was one of ours. For those of you counting, this is three attacks and three out of three were friendly fire.
Later we were finally able to hook up with our company and get the food we desperately needed, but made the fatal mistake of not immediately leaving. I believe there were 60 or 70 of us on this hill top and a group of 14 bad guys (OPFOR or Opposing Force) fired a few shots into our group. We did all the rest, we reacted just like a nest of bees being whacked by a stick and went all ape shit. Guys started to sweep out looking for the bad guys (who just faded into the bushes), then would swing to the left or right putting themselves in the line of fire from the rest of the company. I don’t know if that lead to any friendly casualties, but I recall _very_ clearly that one of our machine gun teams had got turned around and were setting up pointing back at the company, and most importantly, _directly_ at me. So, given the racket and that we were all dressed the same, I viewed my choice as dying by friendly fire or killing with friendly fire. I lit them up in self defense.
The bad guys, btw, called in an artillery strike on the hill top once they had pulled away and once again the company was massacred. This wound up being a couple day break for us, though, as the convoy they sent out to pick up our ‘bodies’ (in order to be resurrected they had to bring you back to the base for processing) got taken out and they had to send wreckers to get the vehicles before they could finally get us.
Final tally, by my count, was 5 attacks, 4 friendly fire events, or 80% ‘blue on blue’.
As I recall, everyone in our unit ‘died’ several times, so we probably had over 200% casualties in just two weeks. Easy to brush that off when it is all lasers, not so easy when you figure what it would be like in reality.
