Weighting lives during peacetime and wartime

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It's been a while since I intervened in a discussion between two colleagues. One of them couldn't understand why Germany had no law permitting that the air force shoots a hijacked airliner down before it crashes into a city or even nuclear power plant.

I explained the reasoning approx. like this: We don't do this. We don't weight one life for another and choose to kill someone innocent to save others.

We could, but it is a slippery slope. You wouldn't want to be killed in order to allow the society to harvest your organs to save several ill people's lives, would you?

Well that is the same thing. Kill innocents to save innocents. We don't do this, period.

Besides, the whole political discussion about it was a farce anyway. We still have several nuclear powerplants only a few minutes of flight away from international airports. The air force has fighters on air policing readiness, but they could take half an hour before they would arrive on the scene. Even a 5-minute readiness (the highest standard maintained in peacetime anywhere in NATO as far as I know) would be too slow. An airliner could crash into a nuclear powerplant before flight control could even understand what's going on.

(I had a post on this years ago, but the graphic was lost in the meantime.)

There is a normative ethics theory called Utilitarianism, and at least some of its versions tell you that if in doubt, you should strive to maximise the net utility of two persons. This sounds all fine, but it is still widely rejected, and for fine reasons:

Let's say person A would benefit by ten points and person B would suffer by one point, should we execute this action?

It depends. Person A could be a psychopath who gets his benefit from enjoying to kill person B, while person B might suffer only from the bad taste of some sedative drink.

This can be complicated by the addition of opportunity costs for person B, but the point remains: We do not maximise the aggregate net benefit, period. It's official by ruling of the constitutional court.

This means we don't kill innocents to save innocents. In fact, we don't even torture suspect in order to attempt to save an innocent. A decade ago two policemen threatened a suspect in order to attempt to save an innocent person and are now convicted felons for it. We don't even do this.

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So we reject such actions and still survive quite well and are actually very safe. Western civilisation at work.

This is a security policy-focused blog, though. Let's think about ho such a standard holds up in the event of war.

Civilisation's achievements, human rights et cetera are worth nothing if they get thrown overboard in the event of war or any other event, after all.

Specifically, how do we value life in wartime?

Assuming there is a legal war by Charter of the United Nations Article 2 standards, hostile combatants would obviously be fair game for almost all sorts of violence unless they're already wounded, surrendering or captives.

What about the civilians, though?

How many foreign civilians should be allowed to die in order to save a single one of our soldiers?

The troops themselves are emotionally compromised and can be forgiven to have extreme views on this. It's more irritating what certain civilians not the least from other Western (supposedly civilised) countries say and write about this question. Some pretend to or actually believe that a hundred dead civilians in order to save a single soldier would be fine. Or a thousand. Nobody seems to pinpoint a specific number, but it's clear that to many people the life of a non-allied foreigner has almost no value at least during wartime.

I would never subscribe to this, but the other end of the spectrum is very irritating as well:

Said foreign civilians would enjoy the same protection against sacrifices in Germany as would Germans. How could our ethics allow us to sacrifice but a single foreign civilian in order to save a thousand of our troops once said foreigner is abroad? We don't sacrifice innocents to save innocents, after all!

Could there be way out of this extremely impractical dilemma?

(a) Are they innocent? Maybe we should not consider foreign nationals as innocent if their nation is waging war against us?

Then again, how could we not? Save for those known to have supported a war of aggression politically, they are practically all innocent. Even those who supported the war of aggression would hardly have been found guilty by a court already, so who and how could decide that they are no innocents?

(b) Maybe the difference is all about hospitality?

How could this be? Don't we claim that human rights are universal, or don't at least the rights granted by our constitution do so? Those are no citizen rights; the rights are meant for everybody unless stated otherwise. Privileged guest or not - we couldn't sacrifice their lives to save others in a peacetime setting.

I may very well simply have missed bookshelves full of brilliant philosophical works solving the entire problem. You never know what you don't know. I just happen to guess there are no such bookshelves.
Additionally, it would be a great idea to make such results more public if they exist, for I am really an above-average suspect for learning about such results and still don't know such theories.

I suppose our peacetime society has progressed its ethics so far that ethics conflict and cognitive dissonance during times of war is all but unavoidable.

Let's keep this in mind as yet another reason to avoid unnecessary warfare. And let's consider this to be another nail in the coffin of the idea that warfare could be ethical or just.

S O

By the way; I've recently read some jingoistic bullshit by common people in reaction to the crimes committed by some Chechens in Boston, MA that gave me the rare desire to beat and kick some assholes into hospital. I am really a peaceful person almost all of the time, but some degrees of dangerous idiocy are just out of bounds. Let's hope those assholes represent the 5-10% idiots every country has, not a more widespread sentiment.

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"Armed forces create doctrine (...) to justify their role"

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Some readers of this blog may remember that I occasionally call an army, navy or air force or the whole bunch a "military bureaucracy" or "armed bureaucracy". Nic Stuart unknowingly made sure at the ASPI'S The Strategist blog that I am not alone: 

 

Armed forces create doctrine (or operational ‘concepts’) to justify their role—any genuine analysis of the actual tactical conditions is inevitably forced into second place by equally real, perhaps even more immediate, institutional pressures. The primary driver is justification of organisational structures.

I am actually not sure if he's correct - he may exaggerate to make his point.

His quote is probably true in regard to naval affairs, but probably not so much in regard to ground forces affairs. Naval doctrines - as much as they get published at all - appear to be (even) much more blather than ground forces doctrines, albeit those can be intellectually frustrating as well.
Some modern times ground forces-borne doctrinal developments were not driven by bureaucratic self-justification. The (already dropped) Distributed Operations idea in its early shapes was such an example of a quite honest attempt to move forward. I can't really see any budget, structures or numbers justification motive in the Freie Operationen doctrine pushed in Germany of the mid-90's either.

Germany saw a couple embarrassing giant prestige projects - a railway station, an opera house and the new capital airport - go much over budget and time. The pattern was the same: The cost efficiency was doubtful, the people in power downplayed the costs, a large corporation gets the contract, the project is subjected to requirements creep, a much bigger budget is needed and granted, project not finished when due, even more money needed...

This sounds awfully similar to many military procurement projects.
My personal aversion against the ignoramuses which fall for the sunk costs fallacy (or being outright irresponsible) is also provoked: Some budget increases were bigger than the originally stated expected benefits.

It is refreshing to see someone (else) in the MilBlogosphere pushing for awareness that military forces are clearly subject to the principal-agent problem and behave as do bureaucracies.
Whatever you discuss about military affairs policies (that is, security policies concerning the build-up and maintenance of the own military power): You should keep in mind that military forces are heavily armed bureaucracies: First bureaucracy, "warrior" stuff distant second.
 

S O
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Maher: 'America Needs to Start Defining Peace as Strength'

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2:55 min of assorted jokes,

the more serious stuff follows.

Early warning: More "War and Peace"-labelled stuff upcoming on Defence and Freedom.

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Pocket aircraft carrier

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I saw a lot of stuff, but this article still surprised me. I believed the British had begun to prefer normal carrier planes over seaplanes / amphibians long before 1936.

hat tip to Modern Mechanix

So unless you have missed the entire "sea control ship" idea of the 70's and the ever-recurring proposals for smallish carriers, you should recognise this as a very old published proposal from the very same lineage. It's one of the technical ideas which refuse to die, kind of like death rays, rail guns, maglev, hypersonic planes or moon colonies.

S O

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Low signature propellants

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(Remark: The following blog post is not satisfactorily researched. I still want to put it on-line because I'm not going to complete this research any time soon and it appears that the topic has much less attention and awareness level than it deserves. Maybe someone else will pick up the topic and share a more satisfactory piece.)

The common story is that ground combat changed radically with the advent of machine guns and that the French mis-used their mitrailleuses wrongly in 1870. That's mistaking a symptom for a cause in my opinion.

The real change was rather the move away from black powder towards smokeless powders. It was this invention that made practical very rapid fire with lots of repeating rifles or with a machine gun.

Maxim's machine gun used with black powder as propellant in the cartridges produced so much smoke that the gunner was blinded within seconds (unless there were strong winds).

The new smokeless (or rather 'less smoke') powders / propellants were developed during the 1880's and introduced mostly during the 1890's. They changed rapid fire into rapid, aimable fire and this was the great leap forward in ground combat technology (well, this and the fact that the higher muzzle velocities and new explosives gave artillery a completely new meaning).

The historical example tells us that smokeless or generally lesser signature propellants can have profound effects, likely to be called "revolutionary" by many people sooner or later.

Such a change may be about to happen again.

Much propellant and explosives research has been directed at some exotic propellants for Mach 5 missiles, at insensitive munitions for less secondary explosion hazards and for less environmentally troublesome propellants (many soldiers remember that normal rifle cartridge propellant gasses can be quite troublesome for breathing beings under certain conditions. I had my personal experience with this, too).

There's a relatively low attention development as well, though: Rocket propellants that produce less flame and no smoke. Some progress had already been made a while ago (especially for the 1990's anti-tank missiles, and light anti-tank weapons tend to have a reduced signature as well), but some really powerful, insensitive smokeless rocket propellants appear to be underway. Composites with CL-20 included, ADL (ammonium dinitramide) and some others.

I don't want to needlessly infringe copyright, so I ask you to follow this link and look at slide 22 instead. Seriously, do it. It's the essential spice of this blog text.

Low signature solid fuel propellants can change many influential assessments.
Recoilless weapons might finally shed their signature issues and become truly practical (the amount of flash and smoke of recoilless guns was inviting too much counter-fire) and leave their niches to become more mainstream weapons.
Aircraft anti-missile systems would also be affected, as they tend to look out for IR signatures (large darting flame) and/or UV signatures (smoke trail) to spot and track incoming missiles and possibly launchers, too. This might not work so well against low signature propellant-driven missiles. Such sensors, sensors as the previously mentioned DAS and wartime experiences against truly dangerous opponents might become powerful drivers for lower signature propellants.

We might even live to see new tanks in the 2020's which dispense with heavy single fire cannons because of this development. A stub gun such as as once the M81E1 could fire both powerful single shots against soft targets and hypersonic anti-tank missiles (kinetic energy penetration) with minimal signatures. Another possibility would be the combination of such missiles in missile launchers couple with rapid fire main guns.
Such a shift would exploit the great power of hypervelocity missiles without the fixed costs of a big cannon and without the signature issues experienced with the known HVMs.

Some common wisdom is dependant on a context hat may change with technological progress change. The limitation of recoilless weapons and some limits to rockets and missiles as well as certain sensor technologies may be influenced greatly by low signature propellants, as such could make old conventional wisdom obsolete and change the armament structure and tactics of ground forces (and air forces) a lot. It is a bit strange how little attention this admittedly chemo-wonkish issue enjoys in comparison to the prominence of electronics wizardry or the 'tungsten versus uranium' ammo debates.

S O
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[Fun] The 'Somali pirates' who are not what they seem

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The 'Somali pirates' who are not what they seem 

channel4.com

"Why would a pirate act in a film when they have money? Pirates have money. Why would they do this? They don’t have time to tell their stories to white guys for money."
Adan has no regrets and feels no remorse. "You know, western guys they think the Africans are fools. But we have discovered we are not fools. We are much cleverer than the western people. We are fooling them, but they think they are fooling us."

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"Disruptive"

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There is a new buzzword, and I use it as an indicator for intellectual laziness: "disruptive".

The new buzzword is really fashionable and experienced a meteoric rise for the last year or so. The earliest uses during this rise were still quite true to the original meaning, indicating change, substitution and so on.

The word is now popular both in regard to military or wannabe toys and in regard to pseudo-academic discussions and articles.

When "disruptive" was still a real word: Disruptive Pattern Material;
a fine UK camo pattern from the 80's

Let's not fool yourself:

"Disruptive" is merely the buzzword de jour that describes quite the same stuff that would have been" transformational" just a few years ago. Previously, the buzzword was "revolutionary". Before that, "innovative", and at granddaddy's times it was "modern".

Old German books of the 1950's feature a similar buzzword, which was apparently in use before "modern" became fashionable in Germany: "neuzeitlich" (new-age, modern).

You may stumble on some article where "disruptive" is still being used in the sensible, original meaning (meaning something new which requires and/or causes creative destruction). I have no doubt that this example will be drowned in the flood of not-so-sensible buzzword uses during the next few years.

I wonder what they will cook up to replace "disruptive", since "change" has already been politicised in the U.S.. 

Maybe "re-inventive"?

In the end, it's old wine in new bottles.

S O

P.S.: It took about six years for the word to take off. The roots of this fashion are likely in the re-naming of the ARDA into Disruptive technology Office in 2006.

I began writing this because I felt a lack of such a blog post calling out the fashion. It turned out that there already was one, albeit not in the defence environment: 

svconceptalley.blogspot.de/2012/12/disruptive-buzzword-is-disruptive.html

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Nano UAV

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TD: Black Hornet Nano UAV
 

I told you: Shotguns will have a huge revival in armies!

Shotguns (especially automatic ones) also seem most promising to me as a counter-weapon to the micro air vehicles that are under development; bird-sized flying reconnaissance/surveillance drones. You don't want to shoot an erratically-moving 10 cm diameter target at 50m distance with an assault rifle - it would take several magazines on average to hit once. A shotgun would kill such a target just as if it's being used for bird hunting.

2009/04: Combat shotguns and the Bundeswehr

also 2009-06: Will the 5th be the last manned fighter generation?

S O

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Disappointments in war

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Some recent wars which grabbed wide-spread attention in the West had in common that political goals and even more so expectations were not met until after they became much, much more humble.

A common explanation for this until as far as I can tell a few years ago was that the Western military didn't take off the gloves, did not use full and if needed indiscriminate firepower. The theory was that restraint reduced Western military might to a degree that allowed the enemy to survive.

This thesis was apparently replaced by a greater understanding that violence sows more violence. Smarter warfare was widely thus considered to be necessary, exemplified by the COIN fashion.

That did fade away over time as well, though. More and more voices acknowledged that political goals aiming at changing alien countries to more preferred patterns were bound to fail because of stubborn regional traditions, customs and culture. This view basically asserts that you cannot convert a tribal society into a Western-style civilisation democracy in a few years. It's still dominating the perceptions as far as I can tell.

Some people even go so far as to expect a "long" (open-ended) "war" of killing enemies without clear gain.

The people are missing the elephant in the room.

Disappointment in war is not a speciality of such wars, it is not dependent on unrealistic or overambitious goals.

Disappointment in war is the rule,
not the exception!

Warfare is about (at least) two parties warring, and it is NOT producing more than it destroys. At most one side can "win" a war unless there's a really unrealistic set of preferences at work (and then negotiations would clearly be preferable).

It is thus guaranteed that at the very least 50% of the parties in war will lose.

Now look at history.

History books are full of wars which ended unsatisfactorily not for one, but both (all) parties. A country going to war against another respectable country voluntarily and getting what it wanted is a rare occurrence.

This isn't only about mission creep; this is about a systematic overestimation of the probability of success and a systematic underestimation of the costs of warfare.

The people who lament about the trickiness of wars against elusive, "irregular" or "hybrid" or *enter fashionable word for poorly equipped yet tenacious opposition here* have a problem. Their problem is that they don't understand that they are not looking at exceptions. Maybe they are too clueless about history, having learnt only a caricature of history or only ridiculous details about their own nation's epochal wars (preferably victorious ones).

The reason doesn't matter much, for I am sure they won't detect their misunderstanding. They will cheer for the next stupid war, especially if they can talk themselves into believing that it will be different this time.

The military-industrial complex will happily provide fancy an fashionable theories and toys to cater to this apparent need of fooling oneself into believing that the next war may be successful.

I propose an alternative. Maybe it can provide you the desired peace of mind and satisfaction that the war-lover crowd never seems to have for long: 

Let's not look at whether we're able to force distant foreigners into submission and dictate changes to their country. Let's instead look at whether we are safe from military aggressions in the classic sense. Can any foreign power fool itself into believing it could "win" by attacking us?

Think about it, then feel free to relax. You might get a great peace of mind and satisfaction this way, very much unlike the people who are being fooled by fearmongering, bogeymen propaganda and warmongering.

S O

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Sicherheitspolitik-Blog.de

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In years past, I repeatedly compiled lists of germanophone MilBloggers and security policy bloggers. These lists weren't perfect and some of the mentioned blogs either disappeared or became inactive, but I can tell you I did put some effort into compiling these lists.

No, there's no recent version.

Maybe you understand my surprise as I read in a national German newspaper about an academic security policy blogger with a track record of three years and 3,000 page views a month.

My surprise was similar to the much earlier surprise of seeing an invitation list of German Milbloggers compiled by a trans-atlantic society or something for the purpose of a bilateral blogger conference or something. I didn't know the majority of the bloggers on that list and honestly, several of them did look more like stopgaps mobilised by that society itself than like actual bloggers. (There are few German Milbloggers and security policy bloggers, and they probably didn't search that much.)

Anyway, there's an academic security policy blog out there which gets some attention and it did slip past my radar for years. How could this have happened?

I made a quick check, using all bookmarks of germanophone Milblogs known to me. None of them features the unknown blog in its blog roll. Its own blogroll features few if any (depends on your definition) German security bloggers, but it does mention a few famous anglophone milblogs.

There was apparently a total disconnect, even between academic security policy bloggers.

There are some good news for the previously unknown guy; his 3,000 page views per month have indeed potential for improvement, not only because he was mentioned in a national newspaper, but also because he might get some (or more?) links from fellow German bloggers for a change.

By the way; I was not much excited by his previously unknown blog. It covers my interests only peripherally. A recent series about armed drones says it all. I'm not much interested in such fashions.

S O
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