Thinking peer v peer conflict again…

Posted on 8 September 2017 by SJPONeill

cove spike dm.JPG

This post arose from a Doctrine Man comment, referring to the Australian Army’s The Cove, an online public discussion forum for military matters.

The subject at had was a case for the SPIKE Non-Line Of Sight (NLOS) missile system as a key enabler for distributed forces. I’ve uploaded the actual paper as a PDF here as well to maintain context after losing a load of linked material after the US Army binned its Colloquium files and the discussion fora that lived under the COIN Center.

A point on formatting…the staff paper double-spaced format makes for easy marking but less for easy reading. Different audience, different format, especially if you’re trying to sell something. Rather than posting a document as a native Word doc, a PDF is more compatible with a range of devices.

Anyway, academic nitpicking aside…

This paper leaps directly to a solution without really defining the capability requirement or discussing alternative solutions. Distributed combat capability needs remote targeting and engagement, probably with a higher degree of autonomy and data fusion than that defined in this paper. Any system like but not necessarily Spike cannot be discussed in isolation from other offensive and defensive systems, if for no other reason that to define Spike’s place in the bigger scheme of things.

Some things we carefully tap-dance around when discussing high-tech solutions to tactical and operational challenges are the cost of the system, in practical terms, how many are actually sitting on the shelf, how long can we sustain their use, and what happens when they run out, many of these system not have massive rates of production. Also needing to be discussed is countering counter-measures, especially with any system that relies on remote input, and even more so in a peer v peer conflict i.e. when the ‘other guy’ might be as good as or possibly, Lord forbid, better than us. That is a situation that we down under have not seriously faced on a large scale since the Second World War.

Spike is without doubt a good weapon system. Is it the only answer? Unlikely. If we’re going to adapt back in to the harsh world of peer v peer conflict, we need to first (re)define that environment. If there is nothing that we have not learned the hard way since 911, it should be not to underestimate our opponents or those arguments inconvenient to our own.

Just as our transition from ‘thing’-based conflict to people-focused conflict was less than smooth, we need to work to ensure that the reverse path is clear (as much as possible) of myths, assumptions, or biased thought. We have not faced a truly equal opponent in peer v peer conflict since the Second World War, a conflict that began with a harsh three year learning curve.

The Cove resource that the Australian Army established on the public internet is an innovative adaptive tool to promote these discussions with a broader audience. It is open to anyone to not only constructively comment but to also contribute papers on contemporary topics.

Like many others on this side of the ditch, I’ve also migrated ti The Cove with the demise of the NZDF’s equivalent, The Hub. The Hub ran as a twelve month experiment to engage current and former servicepeople – at the end of that period, someone decided to can it. True, the interface was a little clunky and it still existed behind a secure firewall – seriously, what do you have hide? – but it was a significant step in the right direction. Sad to see it go but happy to virtually commute across the Tasman to carry on the discussion…

AS I SEE IT (30 October)

Posted on 2 November 2015 by SJPONeill

By Terry O’Neill.

This year experienced rugby referee Craig Joubert was put through the rugby wringer after he awarded a late penalty which enabled Australia to go through to the Rugby World Cup semi finals. Days afterwards the World Rugby organisation claimed Joubert’s decision was incorrect yet World Rugby high performance official manager Joel Jutge believes, “despite this experience Craig has been and remains a world class referee and an important member of our team”. Meanwhile, World Rugby’s CEO Brett Gosper said Joubert’s sprint off the field after the game was “he was keen to get to the bathroom.”

Referees are often the whipping boys as supporters of both teams either criticise or favour decisions they make. And referees’ performances at all levels are critically judged by their own. SANZAR stood down referees following complaints against their rulings.

Concerns about a specified referee’s ability have been around for over a century. The most obvious incident was of a try denied to the 1905 All Blacks centre three-quarter Robert George Deans with Wales leading 3-0. Deans’ try was disallowed by Welsh referee John Dewar Dallas. Despite the All Blacks protests that Deans had been dragged back into the field of play before the suited referee belatedly arrived on the scene. The ruling became part of All Black rugby history.

Many asked why Joubert did not ask for clarity from the TMO. According to protocol this incident was outside the TMO’s area of concern. Since Joubert’s demotion in the quarter finals, some experienced international referees suggested changes.

International referee Mark Lawrence, actually an optometrist, believes that with all today’s technology captains should be given a chance to query contentious decisions as in tennis and cricket, with some limitation on the number of appeals for reviews.

Should we could revert to the days before “real” referees? Prior to a game the two respective captains would meet and set down rules, and would arbitrate throughout the game. Imagine the lively dehydration post-match sessions. Another notion is to maybe microchip referees, or like another international referee Steve Walsh, have a body tattoo – Walsh’s: “He who controls himself controls the game.”

Locally, the late Eddie Lapsley, a pastrycook during the week and a referee over the weekend, was a dedicated Athletic club supporter all his life. During a break in play another Athies supporter asked him how their team on the paddock was going.

Eddie said, “We’re behind at the moment, but I’m doing my best.”

ENDS

NNNN

Faster than…

Posted on 2 November 2012 by SJPONeill

Just for perspective, the upload and download speeds here are twice those we were getting with satellite broadband; the ping is almost 20 times faster!!

It doesn’t seem so long that we used to get excited at home when the dial-up download speed got anything over a mighty 6kbps…it’s been our curse to never live (for any period of time anyway) anywhere with fixed line broadband…then, one day early in 2010, the nice folk at Telecom rang up and said we were just inside the coverage for the XT network (after they got ALL the bugs out of it, of course).

Contrary to all the bad press that Telecom gets, they were very nice about it and offered to send out an XT modem for a month’s free trial. Couldn’t say no to that and all of a sudden we were in the world of broadband…not without its issues though: we only had 2Gb a month to play with and the only reception was in one room of the house (fortunately the study: working from home could have become interesting if it had been the bogger!!). XT worked really well for us for almost two years but as I reverted to working more and more from home (the great thing about policy analysis and doctrine review is that you can pretty much do it anywhere), we more and more started to exceed our 2G monthly allowance and the cost started to spiral upwards…

We had been aware of Farmside and its satellite broadband options for a while but hadn’t considered them as cost-effective as the XT option – plus they had (and still do) this annoying habit of answering emails with phone calls which is nice if one is at home but of limited use if one is spending a lot of time away from home and thus not able to answer the phone when it rings…By the end of 2011, though, their satellite and home line bundles were starting to look pretty attractive – the all-up costs were about the same as what we were already paying but the big bonus was a much larger monthly cap albeit with 25 of the 30Gb only being available offpeak between midnight and 2PM – that actually wasn’t too bad as I normally start work at 6AM to catch the back end of the US working day.

Once we established comms – after more email/phone tag – the Farmside sign-up process was swift and efficient and the installer turned up the day after Boxing Day. We would have preferred to have the dish placed further up the wall of the house so that the modem and cables would be out of sight/mind in the loft but still able to wifi through the house…but the installer didn’t come with a long enough ladder (even though we had advised that the wall was pretty high) and we think he may have been a little scared of heights…but the job was soon done and, apart from more lights than the flight deck of Concorde where the modem and router had been placed in the spare room, we achieved another plateau in the quest for decent broadband. The only downer with satellite broadband is that it is high latency – about 800 milliseconds, or the better part of a second – which only meant that pages took a little longer to access and load unless one uses a VPN for work as I do in which case it can be quite frustrating and tiring using a real time mouse and keyboard on pages lagging about a second behind.

Just before I went overseas in September, our phone went off for the day – late in the afternoon, someone claiming to be from Telecom rang and apologised for the disruption of service, attributing it to some errors when our local cabinet was cut into the new fibre network. Fibre? Did someone say fibre? You would think that finding out if we could now access fixed line broadband would be a simple thing mais non…both Farmside and Telecom fobbed us off with “We will tell you when these services are available” responses. To their credit, when we nudged Farmside again after a month or so, they came to the party and advised (after more email/phone tag) that it looked like we could now access proper broadband.

Those living in urban areas will be all “hohum” but these are the things that are important in rural areas where connectivity = communication and the ability to do business from home…the ADSL modem arrived this morning – and didn’t work. Five calls with the really helpful customer service staff (thanks, Chris and Jess) later, we had narrowed the problem down to a modem that had not been configured before it had left the store. All that was easily fixed and by lunch time, it was all up and running, and we were able to kill the Concorde lights in the spare room for the last time. By close of play today, I had been enjoying the rapid response of web pages and had indulged in a long ‘test’ Skype with Rowland from Hawkeye UAV. Now that we have decent 24/7 broadband, we plan on using Skype a lot more and possibly reducing our homeline calling plans – more

So all that thinking and fault locating made me a might peckish….I didn’t quite get the angle right in this picture – I should have reduced the angle so that the whole is silhouetted against the white of the plate – so it doesn’t look as nice as it actually did and certainly not as well as it tasted. All it is is some kumara hash brown mix left over from my kumara and salmon stack the other night, and a chunk of fresh-fried lamb I found in the fridge with a squirt of Carmen’s homemade chili sauce…the curry in the hash brown and the chili sauce blended deliciously…so I made another and it was just as good…

Sitting back now, watching Lost in Space (the original, not the sad-as movie with Joey from Friends) after a great dinner of pork sausages with a cheese omelette….

The case for dumbness…

Posted on 26 April 2012 by SJPONeill

Dean links to some sad and rather negative commentary on ‘dumbphones’ this mornng…

I like to think I’m fairly savvy with new technology. For some reason, however, I’ve resisted all attempts to get me to buy a smartphone. No amount of mocking from friends and co-workers has gotten me to budge. I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one.

I support, praise and endorse ‘dumbphoneness’…I too am a hold out, partially because I don’t really have much of a need for a mobile phone and for that the el cheapo one supplied through work does the trick. Perhaps if peeps were LESS net-enabled and had to pause (possibly even think) before twitting/posting/blogging, they might be more contributing to a general increase in the standard of online knowledge and information instead of jamming it up with bland info-custard (or substances of similar consistency). I think that there has only been one occasion in the last couple of years that a more-enabled phone might have been useful for me and that was when I found that the Mitre 10 Mega in Palmerston North (John Cleese’s ‘most boring city ever’) had shifted and I wanted to learn its new location. But instead of Google-mapping or some such, I just called directory service and rang them up…perhaps this will become more of an issue when dial-in directory services die…?

If I need a map, I plan ahead before I leave…never have I needed the flexibility of a tasked B-1B to be retasked and have to prepare a whole new mission package enroute – if I did, then someone would probably provide the tools to do the job. If stuck, the good old Wises map book is still pretty useful and doesn’t rely on coverage or batteries to function – just some sort of ambient light…

I’m rough on equipment and tools…or more accurately, equipment and tools need to be able to survive me…a $50 cellphone is not going to draw too many tears if it gets dropped in cement; on the other hand a $800 i-Thing causes trauma if there is the faintest trace of a scratch on the non-replaceable screen. While the el cheapo is obsolete before it is even bought (apparently), I don’t care but the i-Thing will be equally obsolete a few weeks/months later too…

Angry Birds Schmangry Birds…I still haven’t finished Lego Star Wars on the phone that Carmen bought me for Christmas 2006 (and which she has since repossessed for her own use)…I remember purchasing and loading that up at Waikato Hospital when the twins were born in April the next year…

One of the aforementioned twins – one day old – in 1.3 magapixels – does the trick. Apparently cameras aren’t allowed in the ICU but new nanas have special dispensation…

If I take a picture in all its 1.3 megapixel glory with my phone, I don’t feel a pressing shaft of urgency to share it with the world then and there…many people might want to learn from this before they cross the start line on a big night out…what seems like a good idea when half-cut NEVER looks prettier in the morning and that goes equally as much for those pics you posted in the wee early hours down Courtney Place…And let’s be honest about it, more many purposes a lowly 1.3 megapixel image more than suffices – what the Internet DOESN’T need is more bloated blurry megamegapixel images of the regurgitated kebab you forced down after the bars all closed…

…and the case against…

In an article titled Goodbye Michael, Carl Prine at Line of Departure kicks Michael Yon into touch – finally…I don’t really care whether Carl made this decision all on his very own or whether someone further up his food chain either made the decision or gave him the OK to call it as he saw it…either way, it is a clear sign that everyone has just grown tired of all the Yawntics and would rather see the back of him…

This, of course, led to the inevitable international conspiracy post on Mikey Yawn’s Dispatches site this morning in which everyone from Stanly McChrystal to Santa Claus gets blamed for all the woes in Yawn’s life…Mikey perhaps you need to look a little closer to home for the true culprit…I think that may be the balding Ewok pictured in the Goodbye Michael article has a lot to do with it…As we’ve all been saying (and you just ain’t been listening) you need to go offline and Zen your navel for a while to get some perspective and reinvent yourself as the kinda of photojournalist (emphasis on the ‘photo’ – you could do yourself worse favours than throwing away your keyboard for ever) that the thinking serviceperson (AT ANY LEVEL) might want to have something to do with – trying to be the military version of News of the World clearly hasn’t worked for you…