FastCargo 412 Posted October 2, 2010 If you sometimes wonder whether the military looks at the BIG picture... Check this out from 15 years ago: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/csat/2025/ Though there is some dry material in there, it makes for fascinating reading. (And no Lexx, no posting about the financial system in this thread...though there is stuff in there you might find interesting about that...) FC Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Lexx_Luthor 57 Posted October 3, 2010 (edited) lol FC okay. Naturally, like flame to a moth, I was first drawn straight into Volume 3 Chapter 4 - A Contrarian View of Strategic Aerospace Warfare. I got mothballed by the hi falutin' wording. It seems to have some neat ideas, but seeing the author retreat to the stock "Sun Tzu" and "OODO LOOP," using 24 times the word "contextual," and NEVER using the word "lemay," forced me to give up. Curious times three, I've not yet seen the word "lemay" anywhere there. I'll keep looking. Is LeMay being rubbed out, even 15 years back? Then it got better. Volume 3 Chapter 15 - Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025. I only took a peek yet, but its seems very fascinating indeed; cloud seeding, microwave transmitters, creating drought or floods, etc... One thing jumped off the page... In 2025, uninhabited aerospace vehicles (UAV) are... Uninhabited. That's smooth. I'm almost through with Volume 4 Chapter 1 - Paths to Extinction: The US Air Force in 2025, but near the end it gets chatty and I'm getting stuck. Overall this is a decent read, and I got questions. Hold on to your headset. Back in the 50s, RAND rolled out an idea to clear weather locally: high yield nuc evaporates cloud layers near the blast. It's NOT as silly as I just made it sound. The idea was part of research into automated recon of post-strike ICBM targets, the recon camera re-entering about a minute behind the nuc warhead, photo-opping the target through the cloud hole, and transmatting the screenshots back home. That could make sense for immediate post blast target observation, no matter the pre-blast weather clear or soupy. I can stomach the style of the early RAND papers. Yea they were kinda nuts but from what I've seen, they sound less PC than our post-modern stuff. Thanks!! The Space 2020 page looks intriquing as well ~> http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/csat/2020/index.htm Edited October 3, 2010 by Lexx_Luthor Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JediMaster 451 Posted October 4, 2010 Uninhabited replaced the term unmanned some time back in official documentation to be PC...after all, the pilot may not be a man! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Lexx_Luthor 57 Posted October 5, 2010 Yea, and that was 15 years ago. I'm waiting to see "...unpersoned aerial vehicle (UAV)..." Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Lexx_Luthor 57 Posted October 7, 2010 Indeed, this guy is on to something, and 15 years ago. I can't see this threatening a specific armed forces branch directly, but the larger national security angle is there. In Volume 4 Chapter 1 - Paths to Extinction: The US Air Force in 2025... Page 9:: Economic and Budgetary Constraints: : : Our trade and financial systems are also at risk. Corruption—the human kind; for example, of those who run the financial institutions and stock markets—or the electronic kind; for example, computer viruses that infect databases—could bring international trade and financial dealings to a standstill.... : : ....They represent wild cards to US security, that is, they are beyond the military’s control. It seems everybody's air force has been downsizing since the Cold War, some more than others, often depending on economic conditions -- Russia, Argentina maybe?? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
