Prescient insurgency experts want tactical changes

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/politics/11834604.htm

Nearly 16 years ago, a group of four military officers and a civilian predicted the rise of terrorism and anti-American insurgencies with chilling accuracy.

The group said U.S. military technology was so advanced that foreign forces would be unlikely to challenge it directly, and it forecast that future foes would be non-state insurgents and terrorists whose weapons would be suicide car bombs, not precision-guided weapons.

"Today, the United States is spending $500 million apiece for stealth bombers," the group wrote in a 1989 article that appeared in a professional military journal. "A terrorist stealth bomber is a car with a bomb in the trunk - a car that looks like every other car."

The five men dubbed their theory "Fourth Generation Warfare" and warned that the U.S. military had to adapt. In the years since, the original group of officers, joined by a growing number of officers and scholars within the military, has pressed Pentagon leaders to acknowledge this emerging threat.

[bemildred]

1. Close, but not quite.

The problem is that all arms races eventually lead to
extremes, and extremes are by definition unadaptive.

An all out conventional war with the sort of arms the US
fields would destroy the planet, or take a good crack at
it anyway. Nobody wins. So nobody but a certified loon
would play. Which is what we see.