"...This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.
The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a "soda straw" area the size of a building or two.
With the new tool, analysts will no longer have to guess where to point the camera, said Maj. Gen. James O. Poss, the Air Force's assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. 'Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see everything.'..."
Kaplan College Press.
Gorgon? Really? Why not just call the damned system the "Sauron Voldemort Moriarty Machine"?
On top of a profoundly reassuring (for me, at least) lack of introspection and self-awareness which, if they had it, would allow them to avoid inept nods to the primacy of Lady Irony's mastery of human affairs, the Air Force brass...nah, never mind...
The irony alone makes this day worth living.
On the Tevye hand, I see plenty of room for full deployment in the Homeland. And welcome it. When the corporate state insists on having too many eyes, in too many places, a smart opposition will learn to use this hubris, and the technology of its application, to its advantage...
Crow's Eye: Maintaining a commitment to Pointless Acrimony™ and Hate Filled Invective™! Also available in corvid mischief and traditional sly dog's mistrust.
Chair Force brass don't do nuance, Jack.
ReplyDeleteShock and Awe, turning entire towns into stone, and such as.
~
So I'm learning. But, you'd think that an organization which took the wrong lessons from Guernica would...
ReplyDelete...ah. I see your point.
Still. Gorgon? C'mon now. The Afghans know their Greek antecedents. They're still pissed at Alexander, last I heard...
Reapers, predators, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe military also creepily names stuff after people we have already basically destroyed. I.e. Apache, black hawk, etc.
I wonder if the Germans have a tank named after the Jews or the British after Indians or Kenyans?
No doubt, Justin. The execrable Robert Kaplan celebrated that fact, in "Imperial Grunts."
ReplyDeleteOf course, broken clock, twice a day, et cetera: the Army is still fighting the Indian Wars. Kaplan got that right.
Dammit, I saw the title in the pimp line over on my blog and thought the post was all about me.
ReplyDeleteDammit, I already used my Harry Hamlin quip somewhere else.
ReplyDelete"Sauron Voldemort Moriarty Machine"
ReplyDeleteAwesome. A great insight. And here I kept thinking they were just pretending to be afraid. They're SERIOUS...and crazy. Boy, are WE in trouble. And now you've put all these hilarious images in my head. (Thanks. I needed that.)
Just wait until they develop the petrification beam technology.
ReplyDeleteHeh, to the three wisecrackers.
ReplyDeleteChangeseeker, glad to be of some use.
A beam that turns you into Rob Petrie? As long as Laura's there, sign me up!
ReplyDelete