A few days ago President Obama gave his annual "State of the Union" message. It was well received by the public and by me. This is on top of his excellent speech after the Assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords in Tuscon. And, as I have indicated elsewhere (http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2010/12/negotiation-101.html), President Obama is on something of a roll. This is all good news. But it is too soon to tell whether the President and his team have learned the right lessons. I am still skeptical.
The President laid out a very modest agenda in his State of the Union speech. All things being equal I would have preferred a lot more. But all things are not equal so I am happy with the modest proposals he laid out. But I have been here before. President Obama is noted for his speaking ability. He has given many notable and some great speeches. The problem has been the follow through.
The narrative line from the DC pundits is that he concentrated too much on getting things done and not enough on communication. There is a lot of truth to this. Of course, the Republicans are past masters at throwing up noise ("Death Panels", "He is a Socialist who was born in another country", "you lie") to drown out the narrative. There is good evidence in these early days of the post-election period that the Obama administration has learned the "don't lose track of the narrative line" lesson. And in his speech he did an effective job at connecting "jobs, jobs, jobs" to his economic ideas of more R&D and education, something he had been less than successful at before. So on the messaging front there is reason for hope.
But on the "negotiation" front, we'll just have to wait and see if he has made the proper course correction. It shouldn't take too long. The "repeal Obamacare" front is a distraction. The GOP is currently putting a lot of energy into it but polling suggests that the public as a whole wants to move on. So I expect that this front will consume way more energy than it deserves but that doesn't stop it from being a side show. The main front is on the economy in general and the budget in particular.
Here I don't think the Republicans have figured out just how little time they have. There are three major items. In order of when they must be addressed they are: (1) The budget for the remainder of this fiscal year (April to September). (2) Raising the debt ceiling. (3) The budget for the next fiscal year (fiscal 2012: October 2011 - September 2012). Taking them in this sequence:
FY11: The Federal government is currently operating on a "continuing resolution", funding everything at FY10 levels. This is a real mess. Some old programs that have ended are funded whereas new programs that didn't exist in FY10 are unfunded. Then there are some funding level tweaks up or down for continuing activities that should be made but can't due to the rules of how "continuing resolution" funding works. This situation is entirely the result of GOP obstructionism in the Senate. Never the less, the Republicans have about a month to get a real budget for the second half of FY11 in place.
In this time the GOP controlled House needs to create and pass a bill. Then the "Split but with the Dems still having a slight majority" Senate must approve it too. Then, if there is any difference between the two bills (the most likely scenario), it must go to a joint House - Senate "reconciliation" committee and both houses need to pass the reconciled version. Then the President needs to sign it. And hopefully this is all done by March 1 so that the governmental departments get a few weeks to figure out how to implement it. It is unlikely in the extreme that the GOP will be able to meet this schedule. And I note in passing that these kinds of last minute budgeting shenanigans result in a lot of "waste, fraud, and inefficiency" the GOP pretends it is opposed to. We could probably increase the efficiency of and reduce the waste and fraud in the Federal budget by 2-5%, hundreds of Billions of Dollars, just by approving a budget in a timely manner.
On paper the GOP has taken a good first step. They have made Rep. Ryan the House "budget Czar" (hypocrisy alert - there's just no other way to describe the situation accurately). Theoretically Ryan can whip something out quickly and, on paper, he can run roughshod over the mandarins that control the various committees that usually deal with each part of the budget. We will see how this works out in practise.
The GOP has been very careful to promise dramatic budget reduction without being specific. Theoretically there are specifics, some of them from the esteemed Mr. Ryan. But these specifics have been glossed over for the most part. Mr. Ryan, for instance, did not trot out any of these specifics in his official GOP rebuttal to Obama's State of the Union. He very carefully stuck to "principles" and other generalities. But, wait! It's even worse. Little noted in the press was the fact that many Republicans accused Democrats of "cutting Medicare" during the last election campaign. This was based on the extremely modest cost saving provisions in Obamacare. It worked. The GOP did very well with seniors who thought these Republicans were the defenders of Medicare and Democrats were not. So these GOP politicians are now on record in the minds of these seniors as protectors of Medicare. The GOP is NOT the protector of Medicare and one of Mr. Ryan's proposals is to gut Medicare. And so it goes.
By being fiscally irresponsible while saying the opposite Republicans have put themselves in a bind. They have gotten away with this contradiction for years. They ran up huge deficits, most recently under Bush during the 6 years when they had complete control - they controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House. They have gotten away with this by adroitly deploying their brilliant PR machine. The media was asleep at the switch as were most voters. So no one noticed. And the Democrats were inept at both doing anything about it (understandable given their powerlessness) nor with getting the message out effectively (kudos to the GOP PR machine and the feckless press).
By now it should be obvious what the Obama administration and the Democrats need to do. Number one on the agenda is to start working together. I blame most of the past problem on the Obama administration. They spent all their time and energy on the GOP and a few Blue Dogs and ignored mainstream Democrats, especially House Democrats. The White House needs to work with and support a coordinated program. Given their choices, congressional Democrats will support the White House. But it would be tremendously helpful to their moralle and to their effectiveness if they knew the White House had their backs. The White House can then stay above the fray while Democrats in congress do the heavy lifting. The White House must be particularly careful to let the GOP go first on the budget for the remainder of FY11.
The Constitution, so near and dear to Tea Partiers, is on their side. Money bills must, by constitutional fiat, originate in the House. Beyond that, the White House can claim justifiably that they already laid out their plans in the budget they submitted almost a year ago. And they worked with the House and Senate on compromise legislation both in September and December. The GOP rejected all of this so it's time for the GOP to lay out in public the specifics of what they propose. I would further propose that, given how hard it is to get anything through the Senate, the White House refuse to comment on what the House GOP comes up with until they have passed a complete bill suitable for Senate action. And, while the White House is being conspicuously silent, House Democrats would be unleashed to lay into whatever the GOP in the House comes up with.
There are two general approaches the GOP representatives can go with. They can not try to cut spending in which case House Democrats lay into them for not cutting the budget as promised. Or they can cut drastically and House Democrats can lay into them for reneging on their promises (if they are foolish enough to cut into Medicare) or they can channel the anger of the supporters of whatever parts of the budget the GOP chooses to cut. And, if the GOP chooses to hew to some middle ground then Dems go at them from both directions. Critical to making this work is forcing the GOP to go first. Will the White House figure this out and actually do it? That's the question.
Debt Ceiling: The Debt Ceiling will have to be raised in the next few months. This can probably be put off until the FY11 budget is passed, assuming the GOP manages to stick to the schedule I have outlined above. There are a number of Tea Party types that are willing to shut the government down by not raising the limit. And, again this is a "fiscal" matter so legislation needs to originate in the House. That puts House GOP members in the hot seat, if Obama and the Democrats play their cards right. I am pessimistic they will. But I know what I would start doing if I was the Obama administration.
I would start publicly planning for a government shutdown. I would start quiet but make sure the story leaks. Then I would point to various statements by various Republicans and say "we are only trying to be prudent here". Then the next thing I would do is have House Dems start talking about not voting for any Debt Ceiling increase unless it has broad GOP support. "They are in charge. It's their responsibility to govern." would be the message. The message should also include documentation of the several times GOP members have voted en mass against raising the debt ceiling recently. Once this is done it should be just a matter of time before the GOP's business allies tell their lap dogs to get in line and make a debt ceiling increase happen.
Finally, there is the FY12 budget. The budget the Obama administration sends up in a few weeks should reflect what Obama said in the State of the Union. It should have increased funding for education and R&D. It should have cuts in the military. It should meet his promise of keeping discretionary spending flat, something that will be hard to do. (And "flat" means at the same level as his original FY11 budget proposal). He should not do the work of the Republicans by cutting except where I have indicated above. Of course, he could cut programs that are near and dear to Republicans but that is too much to expect. Let the Republicans take the heat from constituencies for cutting some one's pet spending. The key to the strategy is to get Republicans on record for unpopular cuts. And, if they are unwilling to step up and support unpopular cuts then to take them to task for that. Now a lot of the "bad cop" work can be done by congressional Democrats while the White House stays above the fray. But for this to work congressional Democrats need to know that the White House has their back. For the past two years it has been obvious to everyone that the White House did NOT have their back. That must change.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Truthiness - Even Older than I thought
In http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2010/10/dumbth-truthiness-and-steve-allen.html I argued that Truthiness is really the same thing as Steve Allen's word "dumbth". I thought I was doing pretty good to trace the idea that far back until I read "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins. It's a great book and you should read it. But what I am specifically referring to is information I found in his "from the war of nature, from famine and death" section in chapter 13. The revelation is on page 402 of my copy.
Dawkins refers to a logical fallacy called "Argumentum ad Consequentiam", "Appeal to Consequences" in English. The concept of a logical fallacy (unreliable argument) dates all the way back to the ancient Greeks. But according to a paper by Douglas Walton called "Historical Origins of Argumentum ad Consequentiam" published in 1999 in the magazine Argumentation (13 (3) 251-264) this logical fallacy is of more recent vintage. The phrase was first used in print by James McCosh in 1879. McCosh was President of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) at the time. But this still makes the idea over 200 years old.
An "Argumentum ad Consequentiam" argument goes like this:
Dawkins refers to a logical fallacy called "Argumentum ad Consequentiam", "Appeal to Consequences" in English. The concept of a logical fallacy (unreliable argument) dates all the way back to the ancient Greeks. But according to a paper by Douglas Walton called "Historical Origins of Argumentum ad Consequentiam" published in 1999 in the magazine Argumentation (13 (3) 251-264) this logical fallacy is of more recent vintage. The phrase was first used in print by James McCosh in 1879. McCosh was President of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) at the time. But this still makes the idea over 200 years old.
An "Argumentum ad Consequentiam" argument goes like this:
- If A is true then something good will happen.
- Therefore, A is true.
- If A is true then something bad will happen.
- Therefore, A is false.
- I think it would be a good thing if A were true.
- Therefore, A is true.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Robot Jet Fighters
I have posted on the subject of taking the man out of the can in the space program (see http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2010/11/space-shuttle-rip.html and http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2010/12/space-final-frontier.html). This post is about taking the man out of the can when it comes to combat aircraft.
I think a lot of people would think that one of the last places where a person could be replaced by a computer would be with respect to airplane pilots. But we have been moving in that direction for a long time. The story goes that when Boeing was developing the B-17 bomber before World War II there was a crash. The crash was attributed to pilot error. Now the pilots in this case were Boeing's most experienced and skilled test pilots. So how did they go wrong? Boeing engineers decided that the plane was just two complicated to fly if you had to remember everything. So the engineers developed a series of checklists. There was a preflight checklist, a takeoff checklist, and several others. With the memory aid of the checklists pilots stopped skipping critical steps and the B-17 eventually became one of the most successful airplanes of the WW II era. And this experience quickly spread throughout the airplane industry. It is now standard for pilots to use checklists as an aide to most aspects of flying.
We now move forward to the middle of WW II. The Germans developed two "terror" weapons during the war: the V-1 and the V-2. I have talked about the V-2 rocket elsewhere and its critical place in the history of modern rocketry. Here I want to focus on the V-1. The V-1 was a robotic jet plane. V-1's were launched from northern Europe and used to attack England. They flew in a predetermined direction until they ran out of fuel. Then they crashed and exploded. That was as sophisticated as the technology of the day permitted. And I doubt anyone would like to be aboard as a passenger. But, in fact, the V-1 was the first robot plane, and a jet plane to boot.
After the V-1s the whole notion of a robot plane was abandoned for many years. It looked like a robot plane was just not capable enough to compete with a human controlled one. But time and computer technology marched on. And while handing complete control over to a robot seemed like a bad idea, handing partial control looked like a better and better idea as time passed. The robot was usually referred to as an autopilot. Originally, autopilots were just capable of maintaining speed, direction, and altitude. This was good enough to make them useful. Long flights involve substantial periods of just flying in the same direction at the same speed and altitude. So the autopilot allowed pilots to (on large commercial planes) stretch their legs and get something to eat. Even in cramped military planes the pilot could disconnect and relax for a while.
But while no one was looking autopilots kept getting more sophisticated. After a while you could plug in a flight plan and the autopilot would change course, speed, and altitude automatically as it flew various legs of the flight plan. And aeronautical engineers continued to study what was involved in more complicated evolutions like take off and landing. For instance, there are a number of airports that have serious weather problems that result in terrible visibility problems. Various systems were evolved where the plane was controlled from the ground. The ground based people had access to radar which allowed them to know where the plane was at all times so eventually they could guide the plane to a safe landing even in "0 visibility" conditions. It turns out that takeoff and landing are more complicated than straight level flight but they can be understood enough so that the process could be reduced to computer code.
While this was going on another trend was taking place, particularly with high performance military jets. They were getting more powerful. "G" is a measure of acceleration. 1 G is that amount of acceleration we experience standing still on earth at sea level. 2 Gs represent twice that acceleration, and so on. It turns out that the human body can operate reasonably effectively while being subjected to several Gs. But there is a limit. Depending on the situation, how long the high G forces last, for instance, this limit varies. But it is somewhere between 5 and 10. As the capabilities of high performance military aircraft have improved, they have become more and more capable of inflicting high G forces on the pilots. This is particularly easy to do in tight turns. If the G force tolerance of the pilot is exceeded the pilot "blacks out" or looses consciousness. An unconscious pilot is an ineffective pilot. Modern high performance aircraft designs spend a lot of effort dealing with this issue. Tremendous effort is put into doing everything that can be done to increase the pilot's G tolerance. This has become a limiting factor on the top performance of the aircraft. The plane can be built to dish out and take more G punishment than the pilot can.
Remember that one of the ways we can subject pilots to too much G is in tight turns. This is critical in dogfight situations. This problem goes all the way back to WW I. The most famous fighter pilot of WW I was The Red Barron. He flew a Fokker Triplane. Why is this important? Because the "tri" in the name indicates that his plane had three main wings stacked one on top of the other. The benefit of doing this was that the plane had short wings. The benefit of this was that he could turn more sharply than a pilot in a plane with one or two longer main wings. That meant he could "cut the chord" (turn more sharply and get inside of the other pilot). This allowed him to get into position so that he could shoot his opponent down without exposing himself, which he did. Turning radius is critical in a dogfight.
This G issue is only one issue where the fact that you have to keep the pilot alive and functional limits the performance of a plane. Jet planes are very fast and very powerful. The Red Barron when flying his plane was primarily concerned with what was happening right now. His plane was highly maneuverable but slow. He spent little of his time worrying about what was going to be happening 20, 30, 40 seconds in the future. That would mostly depend on what he did then and not much on what he was doing now. Jets changed all that. A Jet pilot has to be thinking about the future because what he does now will have a strong influence on what the plane will be doing 20, 30, 40 seconds from now. You have to imagine what the plane will be doing in the future in order to take the right course of action now. This is very confusing and hard to do. Flying a high performance airplane at the limit of its capability is very hard to do.
In the last 10 years we have seen a tremendous increase in the use of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) by the military. Their mission, like that of airplanes in the early days of WW I, was initially focused on gathering intelligence. But, again like WW I, their role quickly transitioned to offensive warfare. We now regularly see stories in the news about "Predator Drone Strikes", events where a UAV was used to blow something up, not just take pictures of it. But, for the most part these UAVs were not robot piloted. They were remote piloted. A skillful person would be at the controls. It's just that he was not in the vehicle. He was connected to it by radio and was piloting it remotely.
But there has also been an evolution in the role of the remote pilot. Initially he had detailed control of the vehicle, a pilot in all but physical location. But this is hard to do. There are delays. Your vision is very limited. Since you are not in the vehicle there is no "seat of the pants" feedback. This made these vehicles very hard to operate. At the same time the power of the computers involved grew by leaps and bounds. And various "autopilot" and "ground control assist" projects had increased the level of detail and sophistication of what could be done to "assist" a pilot in flying. The industry became more and more confident they knew how to get a computer to fly an airplane.
And it is important to remember that these airplanes have no people on board. So if the computer makes a mistake and the plane crashes no lives are lost. This made it possible to push the envelope. Now more and more of the detailed flying of these UAVs is being done by a computer. The operator, no longer engaged in the detailed piloting of the UAV, concentrates on where the vehicle should go, what it should focus its camera on, etc. This means that the level of skill and the amount of concentration required of the remote operator is much reduced. This is very important because, according to the story, the U.S. now has more than 7,000 UAVs in its inventory. And many of these UAVs are specifically designed to be operated by front line troops who do not have a high level of training and skill in piloting and who may be being distracted by bad guys shooting at them.
The story was about three new UAVs. One of them was called a "Global Observer". Its top speed is 120 MPH. But it can fly as high as 65,000 feet and stay in the air for 5-7 days. This puts it in line with current UAVs. Its capabilities are greater but they generally fall into the "more of the same" category. It is the other two UAVs that are the interesting ones.
The X-47B and the Phantom Ray look like fighters. The X-47B is capable of a top speed of over 500MPH and the Phantom Ray can go more than 600MPH. These are "fighter plane" specs. They are also fighter sized and both look a lot like F-117 stealth fighters. Their specs (ceiling, range, payload weight) are also similar to the F-117. They are definitely NOT designed to be "loiter leisurely on target for long periods of time to do reconnaissance" planes. They look like first generation robot jet fighters to me.
And there is no practical reason not to go in this direction. Most dogfight maneuvers were developed during WW I so the "art" is well understood. A lot of dogfight tactics depend on geometrical considerations, who is above who, who is going faster, who is going in what direction, the relative positions of the craft, that sort of thing. Computers are good at figuring out this sort of thing and keeping it straight. The other thing fighters are used for is "stand off - fire and forget" tactics. It is even easier to reduce this kind of situation to a set of rules that a computer can understand. And, if you throw in a random number generator, computers can behave in an unpredictable manner.
Computers are now capable of making billions of computations per second. And they are small enough and cheap enough that you can easily put several of them on board, if one is not enough. They can easily be made rugged enough to remove the performance limits now imposed to keep the on board pilot alive and functioning. It may even be possible to reduce the size of the plane and increase either the performance or the payload of the UAV compared to a manned fighter. This is done by eliminating the pilot and all the support infrastructure necessary to keep him alive and functioning. All other things being equal, the higher performance plane has a big advantage.
There are two issues that can slow things down. The more minor issues is communications. Current UAVs are in something like continuous communication with ground support. It is possible that the bad guys could disrupt this communication or it might be important for the plane to go "emissions dark". This means that the plane is on its own with no "flexible" pilot on board. And in some circumstances this may be a problem. But it is also sometimes a problem that the human pilot loses focus, gets distracted, forgets something, or otherwise screws up and blows the mission. So this is a trade off that will eventually, if it doesn't currently, tilt toward the UAV.
The bigger problem is that a lot of this is run out of the Air Force. The Air Force is run by pilots and ex-pilots. These people have every interest in keeping the man in the can. They will deploy their substantial, perhaps overwhelming, political clout to make sure that the man is never taken out of the can. We can already see this in effect. In spite of the fact that both of these planes look like robot controlled fighters to me, the official list of their missions does not include active combat. Instead they will be used for "surveillance", "reconnaissance" and perhaps "electronic attack" (e.g. supporting the real warriors in the manned vehicles). Although, those sneaky Phantom Ray guys did sneak "ground strike" in. But that's probably just looking after those ground pounder infantry pukes, something the Air Force has always avoided as much as possible.
I think a lot of people would think that one of the last places where a person could be replaced by a computer would be with respect to airplane pilots. But we have been moving in that direction for a long time. The story goes that when Boeing was developing the B-17 bomber before World War II there was a crash. The crash was attributed to pilot error. Now the pilots in this case were Boeing's most experienced and skilled test pilots. So how did they go wrong? Boeing engineers decided that the plane was just two complicated to fly if you had to remember everything. So the engineers developed a series of checklists. There was a preflight checklist, a takeoff checklist, and several others. With the memory aid of the checklists pilots stopped skipping critical steps and the B-17 eventually became one of the most successful airplanes of the WW II era. And this experience quickly spread throughout the airplane industry. It is now standard for pilots to use checklists as an aide to most aspects of flying.
We now move forward to the middle of WW II. The Germans developed two "terror" weapons during the war: the V-1 and the V-2. I have talked about the V-2 rocket elsewhere and its critical place in the history of modern rocketry. Here I want to focus on the V-1. The V-1 was a robotic jet plane. V-1's were launched from northern Europe and used to attack England. They flew in a predetermined direction until they ran out of fuel. Then they crashed and exploded. That was as sophisticated as the technology of the day permitted. And I doubt anyone would like to be aboard as a passenger. But, in fact, the V-1 was the first robot plane, and a jet plane to boot.
After the V-1s the whole notion of a robot plane was abandoned for many years. It looked like a robot plane was just not capable enough to compete with a human controlled one. But time and computer technology marched on. And while handing complete control over to a robot seemed like a bad idea, handing partial control looked like a better and better idea as time passed. The robot was usually referred to as an autopilot. Originally, autopilots were just capable of maintaining speed, direction, and altitude. This was good enough to make them useful. Long flights involve substantial periods of just flying in the same direction at the same speed and altitude. So the autopilot allowed pilots to (on large commercial planes) stretch their legs and get something to eat. Even in cramped military planes the pilot could disconnect and relax for a while.
But while no one was looking autopilots kept getting more sophisticated. After a while you could plug in a flight plan and the autopilot would change course, speed, and altitude automatically as it flew various legs of the flight plan. And aeronautical engineers continued to study what was involved in more complicated evolutions like take off and landing. For instance, there are a number of airports that have serious weather problems that result in terrible visibility problems. Various systems were evolved where the plane was controlled from the ground. The ground based people had access to radar which allowed them to know where the plane was at all times so eventually they could guide the plane to a safe landing even in "0 visibility" conditions. It turns out that takeoff and landing are more complicated than straight level flight but they can be understood enough so that the process could be reduced to computer code.
While this was going on another trend was taking place, particularly with high performance military jets. They were getting more powerful. "G" is a measure of acceleration. 1 G is that amount of acceleration we experience standing still on earth at sea level. 2 Gs represent twice that acceleration, and so on. It turns out that the human body can operate reasonably effectively while being subjected to several Gs. But there is a limit. Depending on the situation, how long the high G forces last, for instance, this limit varies. But it is somewhere between 5 and 10. As the capabilities of high performance military aircraft have improved, they have become more and more capable of inflicting high G forces on the pilots. This is particularly easy to do in tight turns. If the G force tolerance of the pilot is exceeded the pilot "blacks out" or looses consciousness. An unconscious pilot is an ineffective pilot. Modern high performance aircraft designs spend a lot of effort dealing with this issue. Tremendous effort is put into doing everything that can be done to increase the pilot's G tolerance. This has become a limiting factor on the top performance of the aircraft. The plane can be built to dish out and take more G punishment than the pilot can.
Remember that one of the ways we can subject pilots to too much G is in tight turns. This is critical in dogfight situations. This problem goes all the way back to WW I. The most famous fighter pilot of WW I was The Red Barron. He flew a Fokker Triplane. Why is this important? Because the "tri" in the name indicates that his plane had three main wings stacked one on top of the other. The benefit of doing this was that the plane had short wings. The benefit of this was that he could turn more sharply than a pilot in a plane with one or two longer main wings. That meant he could "cut the chord" (turn more sharply and get inside of the other pilot). This allowed him to get into position so that he could shoot his opponent down without exposing himself, which he did. Turning radius is critical in a dogfight.
This G issue is only one issue where the fact that you have to keep the pilot alive and functional limits the performance of a plane. Jet planes are very fast and very powerful. The Red Barron when flying his plane was primarily concerned with what was happening right now. His plane was highly maneuverable but slow. He spent little of his time worrying about what was going to be happening 20, 30, 40 seconds in the future. That would mostly depend on what he did then and not much on what he was doing now. Jets changed all that. A Jet pilot has to be thinking about the future because what he does now will have a strong influence on what the plane will be doing 20, 30, 40 seconds from now. You have to imagine what the plane will be doing in the future in order to take the right course of action now. This is very confusing and hard to do. Flying a high performance airplane at the limit of its capability is very hard to do.
In the last 10 years we have seen a tremendous increase in the use of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) by the military. Their mission, like that of airplanes in the early days of WW I, was initially focused on gathering intelligence. But, again like WW I, their role quickly transitioned to offensive warfare. We now regularly see stories in the news about "Predator Drone Strikes", events where a UAV was used to blow something up, not just take pictures of it. But, for the most part these UAVs were not robot piloted. They were remote piloted. A skillful person would be at the controls. It's just that he was not in the vehicle. He was connected to it by radio and was piloting it remotely.
But there has also been an evolution in the role of the remote pilot. Initially he had detailed control of the vehicle, a pilot in all but physical location. But this is hard to do. There are delays. Your vision is very limited. Since you are not in the vehicle there is no "seat of the pants" feedback. This made these vehicles very hard to operate. At the same time the power of the computers involved grew by leaps and bounds. And various "autopilot" and "ground control assist" projects had increased the level of detail and sophistication of what could be done to "assist" a pilot in flying. The industry became more and more confident they knew how to get a computer to fly an airplane.
And it is important to remember that these airplanes have no people on board. So if the computer makes a mistake and the plane crashes no lives are lost. This made it possible to push the envelope. Now more and more of the detailed flying of these UAVs is being done by a computer. The operator, no longer engaged in the detailed piloting of the UAV, concentrates on where the vehicle should go, what it should focus its camera on, etc. This means that the level of skill and the amount of concentration required of the remote operator is much reduced. This is very important because, according to the story, the U.S. now has more than 7,000 UAVs in its inventory. And many of these UAVs are specifically designed to be operated by front line troops who do not have a high level of training and skill in piloting and who may be being distracted by bad guys shooting at them.
The story was about three new UAVs. One of them was called a "Global Observer". Its top speed is 120 MPH. But it can fly as high as 65,000 feet and stay in the air for 5-7 days. This puts it in line with current UAVs. Its capabilities are greater but they generally fall into the "more of the same" category. It is the other two UAVs that are the interesting ones.
The X-47B and the Phantom Ray look like fighters. The X-47B is capable of a top speed of over 500MPH and the Phantom Ray can go more than 600MPH. These are "fighter plane" specs. They are also fighter sized and both look a lot like F-117 stealth fighters. Their specs (ceiling, range, payload weight) are also similar to the F-117. They are definitely NOT designed to be "loiter leisurely on target for long periods of time to do reconnaissance" planes. They look like first generation robot jet fighters to me.
And there is no practical reason not to go in this direction. Most dogfight maneuvers were developed during WW I so the "art" is well understood. A lot of dogfight tactics depend on geometrical considerations, who is above who, who is going faster, who is going in what direction, the relative positions of the craft, that sort of thing. Computers are good at figuring out this sort of thing and keeping it straight. The other thing fighters are used for is "stand off - fire and forget" tactics. It is even easier to reduce this kind of situation to a set of rules that a computer can understand. And, if you throw in a random number generator, computers can behave in an unpredictable manner.
Computers are now capable of making billions of computations per second. And they are small enough and cheap enough that you can easily put several of them on board, if one is not enough. They can easily be made rugged enough to remove the performance limits now imposed to keep the on board pilot alive and functioning. It may even be possible to reduce the size of the plane and increase either the performance or the payload of the UAV compared to a manned fighter. This is done by eliminating the pilot and all the support infrastructure necessary to keep him alive and functioning. All other things being equal, the higher performance plane has a big advantage.
There are two issues that can slow things down. The more minor issues is communications. Current UAVs are in something like continuous communication with ground support. It is possible that the bad guys could disrupt this communication or it might be important for the plane to go "emissions dark". This means that the plane is on its own with no "flexible" pilot on board. And in some circumstances this may be a problem. But it is also sometimes a problem that the human pilot loses focus, gets distracted, forgets something, or otherwise screws up and blows the mission. So this is a trade off that will eventually, if it doesn't currently, tilt toward the UAV.
The bigger problem is that a lot of this is run out of the Air Force. The Air Force is run by pilots and ex-pilots. These people have every interest in keeping the man in the can. They will deploy their substantial, perhaps overwhelming, political clout to make sure that the man is never taken out of the can. We can already see this in effect. In spite of the fact that both of these planes look like robot controlled fighters to me, the official list of their missions does not include active combat. Instead they will be used for "surveillance", "reconnaissance" and perhaps "electronic attack" (e.g. supporting the real warriors in the manned vehicles). Although, those sneaky Phantom Ray guys did sneak "ground strike" in. But that's probably just looking after those ground pounder infantry pukes, something the Air Force has always avoided as much as possible.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Israel - a Three State Solution
The Israel/Palestine conflict has been around since the state of Israel was created, about as long as I have been alive. In fact, some would say that the conflict has been around for 3,000 years. I am going to ignore that 3,000 year history. In fact, I am going to ignore most of the history that has taken place while I have been alive and concentrate on more recent events.
For a long time Israel put its hopes behind a "one state" solution, namely it's all Israel. The Palestinians also put their hopes behind a "one state" solution. Only in their case the "one state" was all Palestine as the Jews had been driven into the sea. So it was considered some kind of breakthrough when Israel instead got behind a "two state" solution. Some but not all Palestinians have also gotten behind this "two state" solution.
The idea behind the "two state" solution is that the area would be partitioned into an Israeli state and a Palestinian state. Certainly this left the issue of where the boundaries would be drawn. And there were many other issues to be settled but the "two state" solution was generally seen as a step forward and progress toward a complete resolution of all the issues. But the "two state" solution has been under serious consideration since the 1990's and not much progress has been made in that time. I would like to replace the "two state" solution with a "three state" solution. Here's what I mean.
The actual current situation is that the region is now partitioned into three areas. They are Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Historically all three areas have been under the control of Israel. But in 2005 Israel pulled out of Gaza. The third area is generally referred to as the West Bank and is mostly populated by Palestinians. The boundary of Gaza is clear and not in dispute. But the boundary of the Palestinian West Bank, the area that the Palestinians do or should control, is under dispute. Israel is what's left after Gaza and the Palestinean West Bank have been carved out. Setting the boundaries of the Palestinian West Bank is the most serious issue among the many serious issues that divide the Israelis and the Palestinians. All non-"one state" solutions require a solution to this issue. There has been no significant progress on this boundary issue in decades. But there has been a recent (2007) development that has affected the chances of making progress.
Historically the Palestinians have spoken with one voice. For a long time it was called the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). The PLO is now often referred to as Fatah. In 2007 elections were held in Gaza and Hamas, a different Palestinian faction, won. Since then Hamas has consolidated its political hold on Gaza. Meanwhile Fatah has consolidated its hold on the West Bank. Now Fatah is generally seen as the "moderate" wing that wants to move ahead with a "two state" solution and come to an accommodation with Israel. Hamas, on the other hand, officially holds a "one state" position and wants to drive Israel into the sea. There are many factions on the Israeli side and they have held up peace talks many times. But one of the biggest impediments to making progress at this time is the Hamas/Fatah feud within the ranks of the Palestinians. And the chances of healing this feud in the short term look poor to everyone. What to do?
My proposal is to start with a realistic view of the current facts on the ground and build from there. So my "three state" solution envisages not one but two Palestinian states. Gaza would be treated as one state controlled by Hamas and the West Bank would be treated as a separate state and control would rest with Fatah. So we would end up with Israel, the Jewish state, Gaza, the Hamas controlled Palestinian state, and Palestine, the name that would be given to the West Bank area, whatever its eventual boundaries, controlled by Fatah. Let's examine this proposal in more detail.
First, there is no dispute about the boundaries of Gaza so that issue in not even on the table. Second, there is no "resettlement" issue with respect to Gaza. All the Israelis pulled out in 2005 so everyone currently resident in Gaza is Palestinian. So again with respect just to Gaza there is no issue here. There is a big issue with respect to Gaza and that's it's relationship to Israel. I would suggest that the initial relationship would be a state of war in which there is currently a cease fire. All the issues between Israel and Gaza are of the "war and peace" variety. The Hamas position of "driving the Israelis into the sea" sounds like a "war and peace" issue to me. Shelling of Israel from Gaza sounds "war and peace" to me. Control of Gaza's borders, now split between Israel and Egypt, also sounds like the kind of issue that is typically ironed out in a postwar peace conference. For the moment we assume negations between the two parties are currently in abeyance and leave the current status quo in place. Instead we focus on the dispute between Israel and Palestine (now just the West Bank area).
The Israel/ (redefined) Palestine dispute now involves two parties that actually seem interested in coming to an amicable resolution. The fire breathers on the Palestinian side (Hamas) have for the most part been shunted aside. They are no longer a central part of the process. There are many issues to be resolved on this front but both sides have at times shown a sincere interest in resolving them. With just these two parties involved there is a real chance that progress can be made. And there is another issue the "three state solution" approach automatically solves. That is the little discussed issue of connectivity. Palestinians would like the two parts of their state connected by some kind of corridor. But a corridor connecting the two Palestinian parts would break Israel in two, something that is unacceptable to the Israelis. But if there are two Palestinian states then there is no Palestinian corridor requirement. Once Israel and Fatah come to an agreement most of the most intractable issues between Israel and the Palestinians will have been solved. Then Israel can focus on Israel/Hamas issues. If Hamas doesn't want to come to an agreement then the status quo can be maintained. The North/South Korea dispute has been stuck at stalemate for over 50 years.
Is the partition of the Palestinian that the "three state solution" envisions necessarily a permanent one? No! The partition of the Palestinian territories into two states would become an internal Palestinian issue. Whether the two territories would eventually unite would be strictly up to the Palestinians. It does not need to involve the Israelis at all. The example of the East/West Germany reunification demonstrates that a happy (and peaceful) ending is possible even if the partition has lasted for decades. Personally, I think the actual result would turn out to be like Pakistan/Bangladesh. When India was partitioned two predominantly Muslim areas were carved off. One became Pakistan. The other was initially affiliated with Pakistan but eventually became the independent country of Bangladesh. But fortunately my opinion does not matter. Only the opinions of Palestinians matter.
A similar approach should be taken with the "right of return" issue. Israel would not accept Palestinians. But immigration policy for the two independent Palestinian states would be completely up to the Palestinian governments. They are certainly free to decide to accept Palestinians if they wish without having to consult with anyone else.
A "three state solution" approach resolves several issues and creates an environment where the conflict has a real chance of moving to resolution. I would like to make one final suggestion. Imagine a table with an Israeli on one side and a Palestinian on the other. Each would build up a pile to represent the injuries done by the other side to their side. Small injuries would be represented by grains of sand. There would be a lot of them on each side. Larger injuries would be represented by stones, larger stones for larger injuries. Each side would build a pile consisting of the sand and stones representing all the injuries done to their side. Each side would be able to determine how many stones or grains of sand should be put in their pile. Each side would be able to select the size of stone they thought most appropriate to represent the severity of each injury. In the end we would have a pile in front of each person.
Now each side would observe that the other pile was indeed large. And each side would observe that the other pile contained some large stones. What either side would not be permitted to do was to try to determine which pile was larger. Nor would they by permitted to challenge the size of stone the other side selected for a particular injury nor whether there was an underlying injury. There has been a lot of bad behavior on both sides. This business of arguing about who has suffered the greatest injury or who has been injured the most is not productive. What is productive is for each side to acknowledge that their side has done a lot of injury to the other side and that some of these injuries were very serious. But once this has been done, that's the appropriate point to stop the blame game.
For a long time Israel put its hopes behind a "one state" solution, namely it's all Israel. The Palestinians also put their hopes behind a "one state" solution. Only in their case the "one state" was all Palestine as the Jews had been driven into the sea. So it was considered some kind of breakthrough when Israel instead got behind a "two state" solution. Some but not all Palestinians have also gotten behind this "two state" solution.
The idea behind the "two state" solution is that the area would be partitioned into an Israeli state and a Palestinian state. Certainly this left the issue of where the boundaries would be drawn. And there were many other issues to be settled but the "two state" solution was generally seen as a step forward and progress toward a complete resolution of all the issues. But the "two state" solution has been under serious consideration since the 1990's and not much progress has been made in that time. I would like to replace the "two state" solution with a "three state" solution. Here's what I mean.
The actual current situation is that the region is now partitioned into three areas. They are Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Historically all three areas have been under the control of Israel. But in 2005 Israel pulled out of Gaza. The third area is generally referred to as the West Bank and is mostly populated by Palestinians. The boundary of Gaza is clear and not in dispute. But the boundary of the Palestinian West Bank, the area that the Palestinians do or should control, is under dispute. Israel is what's left after Gaza and the Palestinean West Bank have been carved out. Setting the boundaries of the Palestinian West Bank is the most serious issue among the many serious issues that divide the Israelis and the Palestinians. All non-"one state" solutions require a solution to this issue. There has been no significant progress on this boundary issue in decades. But there has been a recent (2007) development that has affected the chances of making progress.
Historically the Palestinians have spoken with one voice. For a long time it was called the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). The PLO is now often referred to as Fatah. In 2007 elections were held in Gaza and Hamas, a different Palestinian faction, won. Since then Hamas has consolidated its political hold on Gaza. Meanwhile Fatah has consolidated its hold on the West Bank. Now Fatah is generally seen as the "moderate" wing that wants to move ahead with a "two state" solution and come to an accommodation with Israel. Hamas, on the other hand, officially holds a "one state" position and wants to drive Israel into the sea. There are many factions on the Israeli side and they have held up peace talks many times. But one of the biggest impediments to making progress at this time is the Hamas/Fatah feud within the ranks of the Palestinians. And the chances of healing this feud in the short term look poor to everyone. What to do?
My proposal is to start with a realistic view of the current facts on the ground and build from there. So my "three state" solution envisages not one but two Palestinian states. Gaza would be treated as one state controlled by Hamas and the West Bank would be treated as a separate state and control would rest with Fatah. So we would end up with Israel, the Jewish state, Gaza, the Hamas controlled Palestinian state, and Palestine, the name that would be given to the West Bank area, whatever its eventual boundaries, controlled by Fatah. Let's examine this proposal in more detail.
First, there is no dispute about the boundaries of Gaza so that issue in not even on the table. Second, there is no "resettlement" issue with respect to Gaza. All the Israelis pulled out in 2005 so everyone currently resident in Gaza is Palestinian. So again with respect just to Gaza there is no issue here. There is a big issue with respect to Gaza and that's it's relationship to Israel. I would suggest that the initial relationship would be a state of war in which there is currently a cease fire. All the issues between Israel and Gaza are of the "war and peace" variety. The Hamas position of "driving the Israelis into the sea" sounds like a "war and peace" issue to me. Shelling of Israel from Gaza sounds "war and peace" to me. Control of Gaza's borders, now split between Israel and Egypt, also sounds like the kind of issue that is typically ironed out in a postwar peace conference. For the moment we assume negations between the two parties are currently in abeyance and leave the current status quo in place. Instead we focus on the dispute between Israel and Palestine (now just the West Bank area).
The Israel/ (redefined) Palestine dispute now involves two parties that actually seem interested in coming to an amicable resolution. The fire breathers on the Palestinian side (Hamas) have for the most part been shunted aside. They are no longer a central part of the process. There are many issues to be resolved on this front but both sides have at times shown a sincere interest in resolving them. With just these two parties involved there is a real chance that progress can be made. And there is another issue the "three state solution" approach automatically solves. That is the little discussed issue of connectivity. Palestinians would like the two parts of their state connected by some kind of corridor. But a corridor connecting the two Palestinian parts would break Israel in two, something that is unacceptable to the Israelis. But if there are two Palestinian states then there is no Palestinian corridor requirement. Once Israel and Fatah come to an agreement most of the most intractable issues between Israel and the Palestinians will have been solved. Then Israel can focus on Israel/Hamas issues. If Hamas doesn't want to come to an agreement then the status quo can be maintained. The North/South Korea dispute has been stuck at stalemate for over 50 years.
Is the partition of the Palestinian that the "three state solution" envisions necessarily a permanent one? No! The partition of the Palestinian territories into two states would become an internal Palestinian issue. Whether the two territories would eventually unite would be strictly up to the Palestinians. It does not need to involve the Israelis at all. The example of the East/West Germany reunification demonstrates that a happy (and peaceful) ending is possible even if the partition has lasted for decades. Personally, I think the actual result would turn out to be like Pakistan/Bangladesh. When India was partitioned two predominantly Muslim areas were carved off. One became Pakistan. The other was initially affiliated with Pakistan but eventually became the independent country of Bangladesh. But fortunately my opinion does not matter. Only the opinions of Palestinians matter.
A similar approach should be taken with the "right of return" issue. Israel would not accept Palestinians. But immigration policy for the two independent Palestinian states would be completely up to the Palestinian governments. They are certainly free to decide to accept Palestinians if they wish without having to consult with anyone else.
A "three state solution" approach resolves several issues and creates an environment where the conflict has a real chance of moving to resolution. I would like to make one final suggestion. Imagine a table with an Israeli on one side and a Palestinian on the other. Each would build up a pile to represent the injuries done by the other side to their side. Small injuries would be represented by grains of sand. There would be a lot of them on each side. Larger injuries would be represented by stones, larger stones for larger injuries. Each side would build a pile consisting of the sand and stones representing all the injuries done to their side. Each side would be able to determine how many stones or grains of sand should be put in their pile. Each side would be able to select the size of stone they thought most appropriate to represent the severity of each injury. In the end we would have a pile in front of each person.
Now each side would observe that the other pile was indeed large. And each side would observe that the other pile contained some large stones. What either side would not be permitted to do was to try to determine which pile was larger. Nor would they by permitted to challenge the size of stone the other side selected for a particular injury nor whether there was an underlying injury. There has been a lot of bad behavior on both sides. This business of arguing about who has suffered the greatest injury or who has been injured the most is not productive. What is productive is for each side to acknowledge that their side has done a lot of injury to the other side and that some of these injuries were very serious. But once this has been done, that's the appropriate point to stop the blame game.
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