Postmodern Wars Imaginary and Real: World War III - Chris Hables ...

[ 166 ] The Past
The story of the smart bombs and remote-controlled drones is no better,
although the latter performed over 2,500 sorties (Canan, 1975, p. 310). So
many drones were tried out over North Vietnam that U.S. pilots called it the
"Tonkin Gulf Test Range." During the planning for the Son Tay rescue
mission, called Operation Polar Circle (the name was chosen by a computer),
all seven Buffalo Hunter reconnaissance drones sent failed to discover the
camp was empty, and six were shot down (Gabriel, 1985, p. 58).
Smart bombs also had their share of failures. The Falcon, produced at a
cost of $2 billion, was effective about 7 percent of the time instead of the 99
percent predicted by tests. Most pilots refused to carry it (Fallows, 1982, p.
55). The Maverick was also a failure, in part due to it being color blind
(Coates and Kilian, 1984, p. 155). Ironically, even the one big success of
smart bombs, the use of a Hobo bomb to take out the Thanh Hoa Bridge
after a number of regular bomb runs failed, was a military failure since the
use of a ford nearby meant the North Vietnamese lost little, if any, supply
capability.
As the war was running down it became public that these weapons and
sensors had been developed without any congressional approval in what was
one of the largest and most secret U.S. military research programs ever (P.
Dickson, 1976). In scale it was quite comparable to the Manhattan Project
and to the gigantic Black Budget research projects of the late 1980s and early
1990s.
Despite the manifest failures and the funding scandal, the research
continued and led directly to the present plans for further computerization.
On July 13, 1970, General Westmoreland made this prediction to Congress:
On the battlefield of the future, enemy forces will be located, tracked, and
targeted almost instantaneously through the use of data links, computer
assisted intelligence evaluation, and automated fire control. ... I am
confident that the American people expect this country to take full
advantage of this technology—to welcome and applaud the developments
that will replace wherever possible the man with the machine. (Westmoreland,
1969, p. 222)
Or, left unsaid by Westmoreland, the option to make of the man a machine.
One of the little-known aspects of the Vietnam War was the wide use of
stimulants and other drugs to help elite soldiers perform. Research on a wide
variety of compounds for everything from controlling fear to improving night
vision was supported by the Pentagon (Manzione, 1986, pp. 36-38).
In his history, Command in War, Martin Van Creveld (1985) concludes
that the automated and electronic battlefield will be as confusing and chaotic
as Vietnam was. On Vietnam he adds "We have seen the future and it does
not work" (quoted in Bond, 1987, p. 129). Daniel Ellsberg is a little more