Infantry: September 30, 2002

Archives

The marines have been spending a lot of time lately trying to figure out how to fight in built up areas without taking a lot of casualties. Urban areas favor the defender because there are so many bullet proof places to hide. But the marines have noted one new angle on this bloody business. If you have more drones (like Predator) and ground based cams, and send all the videos to marines who can quickly make sense of what is seen, and then alert friendly troops, the attackers suddenly are not at as great a disadvantage. The technology to provide the kind of coverage needed to make a major difference isn't available yet, but it's close. And knowing that lower casualties is one of the benefits of a battlefield system of videocams provides an excellent incentive to move more quickly in that direction. While videocams have been proliferating in civilian life, what the military needs is the kind of video recognition software that can alert the commanders to something important happening. Otherwise all you have is a lot of bombed out battlefield video.