Can technology win the war in Iraq?

The US military believes robots will "Never" take the job of a basic infantry man, but will only work together with them.

The problem in Iraq is lack of realistic objectives, I don't think even cutting edge technology is going to make up for that.

Also the local forces the U.S. is trying to set up as a counter to the insurgency and sectarian fighting are so compromised that there's little hope of ending the fighting under the current political structure.

Originally posted by Sparten Frankly if I was a US policy maker I would simply redefine the Iraqi mission as "control of oil" and withraw to the oilfields and surrouding regions. That is a achiveable objective, and one which ties in with US startegic interests.

+1

Thats the mission the US Army planned for and had forces for. Not the grand "remake Iraq" strategy that caused things to go wrong.

Ah yes you can. The US in Iraq is trying to hold the whole country rather then specific areas.

When I was reading the Afghanistan War topic, it reminded me of one technology that has helped tremendously and has put the odds of winning every fire fight over the top favoring the US. Thats Night Vision. They also use flares that radiat Infer-Red and makes the area light up like day with Nightvison on. They said they basicly just pop one off at a time til they give up because they have no idea where they're getting shot from.

I think whats been done so far says the total opposite.

Originally posted by SearchAndDestroy I think whats been done so far says the total opposite.

Thing is you should read David Hackworth, probably the most successful commander in Vietnam. As he points out at the end of the day it was a man with a rifle vs another man with a rifle. All he high tech did not mean anything at all.

Sparten I slightly disagree with you on that as it seems to me me that the US troops in Iraq are not in a men-with-guns-v-men-with-guns situation as most US troops are killed by IEDs, snipers and other stuff that they just can't see coming.

Similarly they say it requires six times more IEDs now to do the job of one IED before (i.e. if in 2004 one soldier was killed every three bombs it now requires 18 bombs to kill that soldier). Knowhow may have a role here but technology too (do you imagine the US would still be in Iraq if the losses in 2006 had been six times higher?).

Then when you see how and when US soldiers are killed you realize that logically it mostly is when they are on the move or when that are static and away from cover and reinforcement. In that sense an unmanned road block that could be safely managed from a bunker a few yards away sounds like a good idea. If unmanned material allows to reduce the number of moves the soldiers have to do out of their base, even better as it offers less targets to the enemy and allows the military to concentrate their resources on the few remaining (the day each patrol will be babysitted by a Predator attacking US troops may become a very unpleasant job.

Obviously the American public cares less about the money than about the losses, reduce significantly these losses and you'll win the war on the long run, keep them at 100+ a month and you gonna have to move out soon. I (a great armchair general) don't think technology can win the war but it can help it greatly