For so long it was "how many tanks, bombers, and battleships can we build", seeing as were not fighting tank warfare on big sprawling fields of grass in Europe anymore, what changes has the Army branch of the U.S. Army in particular made to face the asymetric threat? examples, IED's, guerilla warfare, terrorism?

Think robot and it will give you the short-term answer.

Harry gave you a good answer on the line of thought back here. Too bad we'd have to build a few hundred million of the darn things to do much good.

Also have to consider the terrain, especially in Afganistan. We have been taking a good hard look at what happened the last time a major force tried to occupy that place and what eventually happened to them. That was a pretty humbling defeat for the once vaunted Soviet military. Don't think they ever fully recovered.

Mountain warfare is the real kicker over there. Either seal them in thier caves, or go in and root them out with boots on the ground.

Romeo:

its pretty easy to see the trend with the US Military.. its techie stuff all the way.. Drone planes, remote controlled IED detectors, all sorts of discreet surveillance stuff.. not to mention the turning of the troops into 'Borg..

smart helmets with webcams and streaming video , GPS uplinks and Sat tel downlinks and all sorts of sensors built into the helmets and vests, comlinks to all sorts of intel and directed manouvers from remote stations...etc..little robots fro slithering down caves and ratholes with ' self' destruct ' attachments to inflict 'collateral damage' to occupants. high reliance on electronics and smart tech...still needs good solid judgement on the button pushing end, though, as there have been too many 'oopsies' where ordinary folk have been 'targeted' as terrorist/insurgents only to find they'd wiped out a wedding or kids picnic..[ hearts and minds thingy - that's not to say the baddies aren't using street smarts to 'set up' such scenarios deliberately ]..


Still we Canuckians have 'big gun' envy over the toys the boys from down south get to play with..see that PM Harper has decided we need remote drone planes, too. and has ordered a batch off the shelf from Israel[ sorry Gunny, but US prices and our buck being what they are.. we got to buy in bulk at a discount, ' offshore' as it were ]..

There is a riot control weapon developed by Isreal(speaking of them), that makes anyone in it's range, vomit and defacate themselves, we should try that in Afghanistan.

Too bad it doesn't penetrate entire mountain ranges.

Yes, Gunny, boots on the ground is almost always the best answer.

We did it in Iwo, reckon thats what it'll take in the Stan.

Some of you guys have been watching TED TALKS a bit too long. All of these RADIO SHACK robo dreams consist of just more complexity and ENERGY. No mater how high tech things get, somebody just walks on by and buys 19 plane tickets. And we get to watch them on film checking in...after the fact.