The Offensive Warfare Problem

If life has shown itself to be particularly proficient at anything, it is fighting. There is hardly a creature alive today that does not employ physical violence in some form to get what it wants (or defend what it has) and, despite a vast array of moral arguments to the contrary of that being a good idea (I must do a post on the prisoner’s dilemma some time…), humankind is, of course, no exception. Unfortunately, our innate inventiveness and imagination as a race means that we have been able to let our brains take our fighting to the next level, with consequences that have got ever-more destructive as  time has gone  by. With the construction of the first atomic bombs, humankind had finally got to where it had threatened to for so long- the ability to literally wipe out planet earth.

This insane level of offensive firepower is not just restricted to large-scale big-guns (the kind that have been used fir political genital comparison since Napoleon revolutionised the use of artillery in warfare)- perhaps the most interesting and terrifying advancement in modern warfare and conflict has been the increased prevalence and distribution of powerful small arms, giving ‘the common man’ of the battlefield a level of destructive power that would be considered hideously overwrought in any other situation (or, indeed, the battlefield of 100 years ago). The epitomy of this effect is, of course, the Kalashnikov AK-47, whose cheapness and insane durability has rendered it invaluable to rebel groups or other hastily thrown together armies, giving them an ability to kill stuff that makes them very, very dangerous to the population of wherever they’re fighting.

And this distribution of such awesomely dangerous firepower has began to change warfare, and to explain how I need to go on a rather dramatic detour. The goal of warfare has always, basically, centred around the control of land and/or population, and as James Herbert makes so eminently clear in Dune, whoever has the power to destroy something controls it, at least in a military context. In his book Ender’s Shadow (I feel I should apologise for all these sci-fi references), Orson Scott Card makes the entirely separate point that defensive warfare in the context of space warfare makes no practical sense. For a ship & its weapons to work in space warfare, he rather convincingly argues, the level of destruction it must be able to deliver would have to be so large that, were it to ever get within striking distance of earth it would be able to wipe out literally billions- and, given the distance over which any space war must be conducted, mutually assured destruction simply wouldn’t work as a defensive strategy as it would take far too long for any counterstrike attempt to happen. Therefore, any attempt to base one’s warfare effort around defence, in a space warfare context, is simply too risky, since one ship (or even a couple of stray missiles) slipping through in any of the infinite possible approach directions to a planet would be able to cause uncountable levels of damage, leaving the enemy with a demonstrable ability to destroy one’s home planet and, thus, control over it and the tactical initiative. Thus, it doesn’t make sense to focus on a strategy of defensive warfare and any long-distance space war becomes a question of getting there first (plus a bit of luck).

This is all rather theoretical and, since we’re talking about a bunch of spaceships firing missiles at one another, not especially relevant when considering the realities of modern warfare- but it does illustrate a point, namely that as offensive capabilities increase the stakes rise of the prospect of defensive systems failing. This was spectacularly, and horrifyingly, demonstrated during 9/11, during which a handful of fanatics armed with AK’s were able to kill 5,000 people, destroy the world trade centre and irrevocably change the face of the world economy and world in general. And that came from only one mode of attack, and despite all the advances in airport security that have been made since then there is still ample opportunity for an attack of similar magnitude to happen- a terrorist organisation, we must remember, only needs to get lucky once. This means that ‘normal’ defensive methods, especially since they would have to be enforced into all of our everyday lives (given the format that terrorist attacks typically take), cannot be applied to this problem, and we must rely almost solely on intelligence efforts to try and defend ourselves.

This business of defence and offence being in imbalance in some form or another is not a phenomenon solely confined to the modern age. Once, wars were fought solely with clubs and shields, creating a somewhat balanced case of attack and defence;  attack with the club, defend with the shield. If you were good enough at defending, you could survive; simple as that. However, some bright spark then came up with the idea of the bow, and suddenly the world was in imbalance- even if an arrow couldn’t pierce an animal skin stretched over some sticks (which, most of the time, it could), it was fast enough to appear from nowhere before you had a chance to defend yourself. Thus, our defensive capabilities could not match our offensive ones. Fast forward a millennia or two, and we come to a similar situation; now we defended ourselves against arrows and such by hiding in castles behind giant stone walls  and other fortifications that were near-impossible to break down, until some smart alec realised the use of this weird black powder invented in China. The cannons that were subsequently invented could bring down castle walls in a matter of hours or less, and once again they could not be matched from the defensive standpoint- our only option now lay in hiding somewhere the artillery couldn’t get us, or running out of the way of these lumbering beasts. As artillery technology advanced throughout the ensuing centuries, this latter option became less and less feasible as the sheer numbers of high-explosive weaponry trained on opposition armies made them next-to impossible to fight in the field; but they were still difficult to aim accurately at well dug-in soldiers, and from these starting conditions we ended up with the First World War.

However, this is not a direct parallel of the situation we face now; today we deal with the simple and very real truth that a western power attempting to defend its borders (the situation is somewhat different when they are occupying somewhere like Afghanistan, but that can wait until another time) cannot rely on simple defensive methods alone- even if every citizen was an army trained veteran armed with a full complement of sub-machine guns (which they quite obviously aren’t), it wouldn’t be beyond the wit of a terrorist group to sneak a bomb in somewhere destructive. Right now, these methods may only be capable of killing or maiming hundreds or thousands at a time; tragic, but perhaps not capable of restructuring a society- but as our weapon systems get ever more advanced, and our more effective systems get ever cheaper and easier for fanatics to get hold of, the destructive power of lone murderers may increase dramatically, and with deadly consequences.

I’m not sure that counts as a coherent conclusion, or even if this counts as a coherent post, but it’s what y’got.

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The Hairy Ones

My last post on the subject of music history covered the relatively short timespan between around 1950 and 1965, leaving off at about the time The Beatles began leading the ‘British Invasion’ of American music culture. This invasion was a confluence of a whole host of factors; a fresh generation of youths wishing to identify with something new as ‘theirs’ and different to their parents, a British music scene that had been influenced by the American one without being so ingratiated into it as to snub their ability to innovate and make a good sound, and the fact that said generation of youngsters were the first to grow up around guitar music and thus the first to learn to play them and other genre-defining instruments en masse. Plus, some seriously good musicians in there. However, the British invasion was only the first of a multi-part wave of insane musical experimentation and innovation, flooding the market with new ideas and spawning, in the space of less than a decade, almost every genre to exist today. And for the cause of much of part two, we must backtrack a little to 1955.

Y’see, after the Second World War Japan, the dominant East Asian power, had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies and there was no dominant force in the region. This created something of a power vacuum in the area, with a host of new governments trying to rise from the post-war chaos and establish themselves as such a power. Many of these new nations, including those of China, Cambodia, North Korea and North Vietnam, were Communist states, and therefore were a serious concern to the western world. The US in particular, as a fiercely capitalist power, were deeply worried by the prospect of the whole of South East Asia, according to communist theory, just amalgamating into another great communist superpower and landing them with next to zero chance of triumphing in their ‘battle against communism’ against the already hugely powerful Soviet Union. As such, they were hell-bent on preserving every ounce of capitalist democracy they could in the area, and were prepared to defend such governments with as much force as necessary. In 1950 they had already started a war in Korea to prevent the communist north’s invasion of the democratic south, with the practical upshot (after China joined in) of re establishing the border pretty much exactly where it had been to start with and creating a state of war that, officially, has yet to end. In 1955, a similar situation was developing in Vietnam, and President Dwight D Eisenhower once again sent in the army.

Cut to ten years later, and the war was still going on. Once a crusade against the onward-marching forces of communism, the war had just dragged on and on with its only tangible result being a steady stream of dead and injured servicemen fighting a war many, especially the young who had not grown up with the degree of Commie-hating their parents had, now considered futile and stupid. Also related to ‘the Red Scare’ was the government’s allowing of capitalist corporations to run haywire, vamping up their marketing and the consumer-saturation of America. This might have lead to a 15 year long economic boom, but again many of the younger generation were getting sick of it all. All of this, combined with a natural teenage predisposition to do exactly what their parents don’t want them to, lead to a new, reactionary counter-culture that provided an impetus for a whole wave of musical experimentation; hippies.

The hippie movement (the word is, strangely, derived from ‘hipster’) was centred around pacifism, freedom of love and sex (hence ‘make love not war’), an appreciation of the home made and the natural rather than the plastic and capitalist, and drug use. The movement exists to this day, but it was most prevalent in the late 60s when a craze took the American youth by storm. They protested on a huge variety of issues, ranging from booing returning soldiers and more general anti-war stuff (hippies were also dubbed ‘flower children’ for their practice of giving flowers to police officers at such demonstrations) to demonstrations on the banning of LSD or ‘acid’, one of their more commonly used drugs. This movement of wired, eco-centric vegetarians didn’t connect well with the relatively fresh, clean tones of rock & roll and The Beatles, and inspired new music based around their psychedelic and their ‘appreciation’ of drug use. It was in this vein that The Beatles recorded Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and why Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin rose to fame in a new genre known as ‘acid rock’ (named after the drug from which most of the lyrics were ‘inspired’). Characterised by long, confusing and hideously difficult solos (I’m looking at you Hendrix), this was the prominent genre on show at the infamous Woodstock festival of 1969, featuring Hendrix, Joplin, The Who, The Grateful Dead & Carlos Santana among other things. Woodstock was the high point of the hippie movement, with over half a million fans attending to smoke, listen to the music, skinny dip and make love in and around the lake and generally by as hippie as possible.

Hippie culture went downhill post-Woodstock; public outcry following the Altamont Free Concert close to San Francisco (where Hell’s Angels provided security and shot a concert-goer during The Rolling Stones’ set for brandishing a gun) coincided with ‘the hippie generation’ mostly growing up. The movement still exists today, and it legacy in terms of public attitudes to sexual freedom, pacifism and general tolerance (hippies were big on civil rights and respect for the LGBT community) is certainly considerable. But their contribution to the musical world is almost as massive; acid rock was a key driving force behind the development of the genres of folk rock (think Noah and the Whale) and heavy metal (who borrowed from Hendrix’s style of heavy guitar playing). Most importantly, music being as big a part as it was of hippie culture definitively established that the practice of everyone, even the lowliest, ‘commonest’ people, buying, listening to, sharing and most importantly making music themselves was here to stay.

The story of hippies covers just one of the music families spawned out of the late 60s. The wave of kids growing up with guitars and the idea that they can make their own music, can be the next big thing, with no preconceived ideas, resulted in a myriad of different styles and genres that form the roots of every style of modern rock music. This period was known as ‘the golden age of rock’ for a reason; before pop was big, before hip-hop, before rap, decades before dubstep, before even punk rock (born in the early seventies and disliked by many serious music nerds for being unimaginative and stupid), rock music ruled and rock music blossomed.

You could argue that this, then, marks the story of rock, and that the rest of the tale is just one long spiral downwards- that once the golden age ended, everything is just a nice depressing story. Well, I certainly don’t like to think of that as true (if only because I would rather not have a mindset to make me stop listening to music),  but even if it was, there is a hell of a lot of stuff left in this story. Over? Not for another post or two…

The almost slightly actually not quite triumphant return

Hello to all who may be listening- I have returned to my little corner of the blogoverse! My time off has given me, among other things, a lot of time to muse upon potential topics for me to cover in the coming weeks (in part due to the fact that I have been watching way too much TV), but to begin I thought I might wander away from my normal format. Rather than an essay, here’s a story idea I’ve been toying with for a while- for a laugh more than anything else. Brownie points to whoever can guess the setting before the end.

…

Jake sprinted forward as the shockwave from the explosion hit him.

He had known the chopper was coming down- it always did- but an untimely bit of suppressing fire had kept in him his spot for a moment too long. The chest-high wall behind which he had been crouched mere seconds before was now smothered in a heap of burning, twisted metal and, somewhere amidst the wreckage, the corpse of some poor pilot. Jake would have felt sympathy for him, had all his thought not currently been occupied with the ball of flame and shrapnel currently flying towards him. One slug of metal caught him hard in the back, pitching him forward with a sharp cry of agonising pain. He lay there, face buried in the dust, his eyes swimming. Everything was blurred, out of focus- droplets of sweat and blood clouding his vision. His ears seemed to slowly switch off, the once crystal-clear noises of the battlefield now seeming dull and quiet, like listening through cotton wool. He was very aware of his breathing, taking short, sharp, gasping breaths, as if determined to savour each if it were to prove his last. The world seemed distant now, his world consumed by the pain of his back. The edges of his sight were closing in, as if he were staring down a tunnel, his peripheral vision reduced to near blackness. He was close to unconsciousness.

Suddenly, a harsh rattling sound yanked his senses back into reality. The noise and chaos of the battle returned into sharp focus, and Jake wished they hadn’t- the sudden assault on his ears sent almost sent his brain into shock after the momentary lull. He was lucky to be alive, and knew it. Had he been a nanosecond slower, then the sound of the explosion might have been the last he heard. Jake’s instincts as a soldier quickly returned to the fore; he flicked his head round to his right, ignoring the crick in his neck, and was faced with a wall of concrete. Good- another wall. That was why he wasn’t a colander of bullet holes right now.

Jake gave himself a few seconds to recover. Despite the ferocity of the explosion and his proximity to it, he seemed to have fared remarkably well- a testament, no doubt, to the human body’s almost superhuman resilience and ability to recover in times of crisis. In a but a few short moments, it had recovered almost completely, and Jake was able to pull himself up into a crouch without too much difficulty. Almost instinctively, he pulled his weapon up to his shoulder. ACR, standard army issue. Not the best, but it was resilient and a damn sight better than the AK’s the terrorists used.

As if reading his thoughts, the sound of sub-machine gun fire split the air near his head once again. Jake dipped his head, and cautiously peered around the edge of his wall. Two obviously Middle Eastern men, heads draped in simple red turbans, were crouched behind another wall a few metres in front of him, both holding weapons perched over the wall. Jake would have giggled at the blatant stereotype had one of the men not immediately spotted him, jumped out from behind his cover, and sprinted towards him. Big mistake. In one fluid movement, Jake turned his body to face his attacker and brought his gun up to his eye. For the briefest of moments, a red dot sat square on his target’s head. A long burst of fire later, and he was down, dead before he hit the floor. Boom, headshot.

The other man, perhaps slightly in fear after what had happened to his comrade, seemed more cautious. After a short while, Jake realised that he would be quite happy sitting behind his wall and firing bursts at regular intervals, meaning Jake would have to go on the offensive in order to reach his objective. However, he did not favour a frontal assault- risky at the best of times, employing one against an armed, aware opponent across a 15-metre stretch of open ground with no  support was verging on suicidal. But, there was more than one way to skin a cat…

Jake’s vision changed. Somehow, he seemed to visualise himself in his field of view, as if suddenly in the third person. Himself, pressed against the wall, his aggressor, ducked below his barricade in between bursts. Slowly, Jake poked the nose of his weapon around the edge of the barricade, waiting. His opponent popped up, and began another burst, but Jake was ready. His gun aligned itself with his target almost of its own accord, as if guided by some benevolent computer rather than Jake’s hand. One deadly burst of fire later, and the other man was slumped over the barrier.

Shaking himself, Jake’s vision restored itself and he cast a quick glance around to check his position. To his left rear lay the still-smouldering remains of the helicopter, forming just another part of the landscape of destruction. Around half a mile back lay the drop zone, where Jake’s team had arrived a short while ago. The battle was meant to be just over a small suspected weapons facility stuck in the middle of an otherwise empty desert, but it was clear from the number of people defending it that it was a far more important target than the top brass had envisaged. Artillery fire had forced Jake to find cover in a crashed, but still surprisingly intact, aircraft, and he had become separated from the rest of his team, hemmed into a single alleyway of death by walls of debris, wreckage and barbed wire. If it hadn’t been for the concrete walls providing cover, Jake very much doubted he’d be alive. Still, he was close now- the compound lay ahead.

After a final check that there were no hidden gunmen waiting for a pot-shot, Jake tucked his weapon into his belly and sprinted towards the recently-vacated barrier. As he passed the body of the man who’d run at him, something caught Jake’s eye. Not the corpse itself, but the weapon lying next to it. Stubby-nosed, with a short barrel and big stock, the weapon was obviously a shotgun, and Jake had been in enough firefights to attest to the power of the version the terrorists used. Unfortunately, he only had space to carry two weapons… but what the hell, HQ could cover the cost of one missing weapon.

As he swept by the body, Jake’s free left hand reached down to the holster on his leg and flicked out a standard-issue army handgun. Whilst manoeuvrable and quick to aim, they were no match for the shotgun for clearing out a room, and Jake’s was dropped by the corpse. He then used the same hand to grab the shotgun and, still running, slipped it into the now-vacated holster. The holster itself was a masterpiece of design- intuitive to use and allowing for quick storing & readying of weapons, Jake had seen it take weapons ranging from pistols to RPGs, and had never seen one lose its grip on a weapon, even when hanging from a rock face. Not that the design mattered excessively- it made staying alive easier, and that was all he cared about.

As he skidded in behind the barrier, and tried desperately to ignore the smell of the corpse draped over it next to him, Jake surveyed the scene ahead of him. Around 20 metres away, a doorway lay open, leading into the main compound. Judging by the view through both it and the window next to it, the room appeared to be deserted. But Jake knew better- that room would always have someone in it to guard against overly cocky intruders. Quickly switching weapons, the shotgun’s power more use than the assault rifle’s accuracy in this situation, Jake charged towards the door, weapon at the ready. As expected, another terrorist was seated at a table within the small room, but before he could reach for his weapon Jake had emptied two shells into his chest. Satisfied that he was out of the picture, Jake readied himself, and moved to the next doorway, before stealing a glance down it.

The corridor ahead appeared deserted. Plain, ugly concrete walls decorated with wires and seemingly pointless control panels were all that greeted him. He stepped through and proceeded cautiously, keeping his weapon at the ready. Reaching the first door, Jake bodily booted it down and was inside in an instant. Nothing- just an empty desk and a few papers. Nothing important- at least, nothing related to the mission in any case.

The next door yielded a similar result, but the third, at the end of the corridor, was far more interesting. It was what looked like a large canteen area, tables and chairs scattered about the place and several on their sides. However, more of a pressing concern was the four terrorists currently occupying the space.

Jake leapt forward, just about avoiding the streams of bullets erupting from the terrorist’s assault rifles as he skidded behind an upturned table. He turned quickly, and saw another man, previously been hidden behind the door. Jake reacted first, and unloaded another shot into him- the terrorist collapsed, limp and lifeless. Jake swung back around to see a retreating back as another enemy made for the safety of a dividing wall- another shot, and he too was down.

Jake quickly surveyed the scene in front of him- of the two remaining men, one had taken refuge behind another table and one was currently shooting from a window onto another man down below. He had to move fast- if he delayed then whoever was on the ground could be killed, which would free up another gun to train on him. Jake ran out from behind his cover and immediately launched another shot at the terrorist’s hiding place. It was as much for a distraction as anything else, but he was surprised that the wooden table held so well. Running an angled line off to his left, Jake dodged around the side of the table and, before his adversary could so much as squeeze a trigger, unloaded a slug into him that sent his body collapsing into the floor. As he leapt over the corpse, a small part of Jake idly wondered why he hadn’t moved the table.

It didn’t matter though- he was on the last man. He was trying to bring his rifle round to face Jake, but he stood no chance of getting there in time- Jake’s shotgun already had him in its sights. He squeezed the trigger.

*Click*. Out of ammo.

“Oh f-“

Suddenly, vision went to third person again as Jake’s limp corpse was flung backwards by the force of a clip of bullets  slamming into his chest. He fell back onto the floor, arms loose like a rag doll. Everything faded to black.

“DAMMIT”, screamed Jake in frustration as the kill cam replayed his failure. For a moment, he considered throwing his controller at the wall- he’d been playing for a couple of hours already now, and the weather looked pretty nice outside. Well, for a moment, before the obsession returned and he settled down for another crack at this b*stard of a mission.

-Yeah, sorry, I don’t play FPS’s, so I may be a bit out with the specifics here. Hope you enjoyed it anyway, even considering that this is twice as long as the average post.