“Beyond the Jury-Rigged Bomb: Improvised War”, fighting high-tech super-powers with no-tech weapons

[jody]

Beyond the Jury-Rigged Bomb: Improvised War

The improvised bomb has become the weapon of choice in Afghanistan and Iraq. But a trio of defense analysts believe the explosives are only the beginning of a whole new method of jury-rigged war. Clever adversaries are already repurposing gear to equip their forces effectively – at little or no cost, warns David Smith, Allen Steinhardt, and Art Fritzson, with the Booz Allen Hamilton consultancy. The U.S. military and intelligence communities would be well advised to embrace that DIY impulse, too, they note in a presentation to defense and spook groups, "Improvised Everything."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

And this isn't just a replay of the traditional high- versus low-tech way to look at war. "It's more about suboptimal tech – using technology in ways outside its original purpose," Fritzson says. Commercial shipping containers become a cheap way for terror groups do to logistics. Hobby planes can be turned into flying spies – especially since Western air defenses are optimized to look for bigger threats. "Small is the poor man's stealth," says David Smith.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Smith & Co.'s "Improvised Everything" analogy sometimes reaches sometimes stretches things a bit. Is a flash mob, coordinated by text message, really an "improvised army?" Is the X-Prize truly going to lead to an "improvised space" force any time soon?

But their larger point – that the spirit of flexibility, of improvisation has to be adopted – is a good one. Some corners of the Defense Department have made it a priority to work with commercial systems, instead of military-only gear. That has to increase. And "in the future, threats will not always be clearly identifiable," they write. So defense planners need to be able to repurpose, developing broad capabilities, instead of books that spell out where every last nut and screw will be.

It’s possible that a text message and improvised army is not so farfetched when one considers the implication of Swarm intelligence (SI), artificial intelligence based on the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems.

[Webster Green]

1. I think the correct term is "jerry-rigged"..

Jury rigged might describe one of the chimp's kangaroo court trials for evildoers, except for the fact that those shams would never have a jury in the first place. :P

[jody]

2. Good point, ROFL. n/t

[bananas]

3. Apparently not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_rig
Jury rigging refers to makeshift repairs or temporary contrivances, made with only the tools and materials that happen to be on hand. Originally a nautical term, on sailing ships a jury rig is a replacement mast and yards improvised in case of damage or loss of the original mast.
<snip>
The term "jerry-rigged" is a relatively recent derivation of the orginal term jury rig. It came into usage in the mid 1970's in the south and is a misspelling of the intended word "Jheri rig". This is a very derogatory term referring to the popular African-American hair style of the time, Jheri curl. This was to imply shoddy workmanship with inferior materials and was used as a racial slur.<8>
<snip>

[Webster Green]

4. Well then..

I stand corrected. :*

[bananas]

5. I'm not sure I believe wikipedia on the origin of "jerry rig"

I never heard that before, it sounds suspicious.
"The Word Detective" says it comes from a much older term, "jerrybuilt":

http://www.word-detective.com/back-g2.html#juryrig

Caught in the rigging.

Dear Word Detective: I'm curious about the word "jerryrig," as in to make do with materials on hand. I recently saw it spelled "juryrig," but the context seemed to be the same. Is the correct spelling "jerry" or "jury" and what is the origin of the word? What, if anything, does it have to do with a rigged jury? -- Jill Fitzpatrick, via the Internet.

Not much, if anything. Then again, some of the juries running around out there these days could probably do with a little jury-rigging, perhaps a little money under the table for paying attention to the simple facts of the case. Between turning certain people loose in the face of mountains of evidence and fining other folks millions of dollars for lying on their job applications, juries are rather rapidly reaching a level of credibility formerly attained only by UFOlogists and mail-order psychics.

In any case, the "jury-rig" (it is usually hyphenated) you're asking about has nothing whatever to do with juries in the judicial sense. "Jury" was originally a naval term for any makeshift contrivance substituting for the real thing in an emergency, most commonly found in the term "jury-mast," a temporary mast constructed in place of one that had been broken. There's some debate about where the word "jury" in this sense came from, with the leading (but unverified) theory being that it was short for "injury."

To say that something is "jerryrigged" is to mix idioms a bit, because the proper term is "jerrybuilt." A "jerrybuilder," a term dating to 19th-century England, was originally a house builder who constructed flimsy homes from inferior materials. The "jerry" in the term may have been a real person known for the practice, or may be a mangled form of "jury," as in "jury-rigged." I tend to think that "jerrybuilt" arose separately from "jury-rig" simply because their senses are slightly different. Something that is "jury-rigged" is concocted on the spur of the moment to meet an emergency, but something "jerrybuilt" is deliberately constructed of inferior materials to turn a quick buck.

[bananas]

6. Another article on "jerry-rig"

I think that wikipedia entry is messed up.

http://www.wordcourt.com/archives.php?show=2004-03-10

<snip>

Joseph Deck, of Somerville, Mass., writes, “I find ‘jury-rigged’ appearing where ‘jerry-rigged’ seems to be meant. I’ve always understood ‘jury-rigged’ to have a literal meaning and closely related metaphorical ones—that is, tampering with a jury or other some legitimate process so that the result is preordained, corrupt, and usually nefarious. ‘Jerry-rigged’ describes something urgently cobbled together. It incorporates a World War II cultural slur, ‘Jerry’ for German, and so, I assume, originated as a sneering British and American reference to German engineering inadequacy.”


The story you tell makes a lot more sense than the truth—but here’s the truth about these words, or as much of it as is known:

Although the “jury” in “jury-rig” is spelled the same way as the “jury” that deliberates, it has a completely different history. This “jury” began, at least 500 years ago, as a nautical term meaning “temporary.” If a ship’s mast broke, the crew put up a “jury-mast” and “jury-rigged” it. A “jury fore-mast” is mentioned in “Robinson Crusoe,” Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel of shipwreck and adventure.

As for “jerry,” British soldiers began calling Germans “Jerries” in World War I, not World War II. But the “jerry” in “jerry-built” dates back to the mid-1800s. It may be old British slang for a chamber pot, or it may be a reference to the walls of Jericho, which came tumbling down—but word historians don’t believe it has anything to do with Germans.

“Jerry-rig” is a blend of “jerry-built” and “jury-rig,” but only recently have these two terms begun to mingle. The earliest date for “jerry-rig” given in any major dictionary is 1959, and some dictionaries don’t include it at all, for they still consider it a mistaken form—a garble.

Today “jury-rigged” and “jerry-built” mean nearly the same thing: “assembled hastily or sloppily.” “Jury-rigged” is seen only rarely, probably because the “temporary” meaning of “jury” has been all but forgotten, so “jury-rigged” does call to mind tampering with a jury in a courthouse. “Jerry-built” comes up somewhat more often—but “makeshift” is a lot more common than either of those words, and no one misunderstands it. Why not use “makeshift” instead of the jury-rigged, jerry-built form “jerry-rigged”?

[bananas]

7. "Hot For Words" has an entry on it: "Jury-Rigged Jerry-Built & My Birthmark :-)"

I don't know if she's right, but she's fun to watch...
http://www.hotforwords.com/2008/02/18/jury-rigged-jerry-built/

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. Hmmmm

"jerry rigging" dates to WWII, and refers to the way the Germans improvised fixes for their vehicles on the fly because they were short of mechanical supplies.

"jury rigging" means to pay off a jury in a trial.

The phrase that emerged in the south AFTER WWII was, of course, "nigger rigging," which had the same connotation as jerry rigging and for the same reason: poor blacks had limited access to mechanical parts and supplies, so racist whites thought they "improvised" mechanical solutions.