The Taliban Have Seized U.S. Military Biometrics Devices(theintercept.com) |
The Taliban Have Seized U.S. Military Biometrics Devices(theintercept.com) |
That should be obvious to everyone, but in 2001 it was unpatriotic and politically incorrect to ask whether the US was capable of winning the war.
They might be able to use all that gear per the manual and best practices, but they'll make use of it however they can. Humans do that.
I hope history will look back at that and see it as a "plowshares" dump, where native ingenuity took tons of scrap iron and reformed into the infrastructure of a better society. I figure it's about as likely as being canrally pleasured by a pink unicorn, but its a pleasant fantasy.
Who cares ?! /s
Edit: I am not talking about US-American companies only.
> Thanks to you, you fucker! What are you doing? Last week Kuwaitis had nothing but rocks!
> They’re arming the fucking world man.
-- Bill Hicks
They would have become abandonware.
Perhaps getting the advertisers hands on the military will solve all global conflicts?
The west is more of a useful propaganda tool to achieve the real goal of establishing the islamic caliphate (like from ottoman days).
I'm actually surprised at the response to my comment. I think I'm not expressing myself clearly. My thoughts keep wandering to what could have been done and the costs of the Taliban possessing advanced technology. Sorry for the Pollyanna mindset here.
If this is the case can't we destroy the equipment so that it can't be repaired or ever used again? My hope is their is a solution that doesn't involve allowing our technology to fall into the wrong hands.
A very dire predicament. Being identified, and killed, or having to live the rest of your life without sight.
Julian Assange, 2011: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war"
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1427929346262642688
US veteran who oversaw training of Afghan forces, 2021: "I would sit in on staff meetings, because part of my position there was with a Joint Command that was building the Afghan military and police force — the division that I worked with was about training and policy for the Afghan police. And that also included arming and funding them.
I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment."
https://mtracey.substack.com/p/a-big-money-funneling-operati...
> we should be able to brick everything with a firmware update
I am curious how permenantly-bricked a tank would be without the electronics. Sure replacing the electronics would be a pain in the ass, but I would imagine it’s still orders of magnitude easier than building a whole tank from scratch?
It is theoretically possible to lock down the system to only authorized users, much like what we see with TPMs and modern smartphone security. This is supposed to be part of the reason the F35 program was so expensive - every component is cryptographically signed and verified.
- Gear has to be extremely clean in order to send it back. It has to have every bit of sand removed from it, and I mean every. This order comes from customs.
- Once the above requirement is at-play there becomes a cost benefit analysis to what gear is worth taking and what's not. The remaining gear is usually destroyed somehow and possibly buried. This includes gun parts and attachments.
- the effort to snag gear from small bases like observation posts is difficult. Some of these places are in military advantageous places, which also make them difficult places to get vehicles to. If you can't get a logtrain there, then you've got to fly a helicopter. The Taliban are no stranger to setting off the rocket detection systems on helicopters.
- retrograde is literally spare troops sitting around hand scrubbing gear on a very long and boring deployment. I felt terrible for these people. Morale is always low in these units.
The last way I can think of is the most infuriating. I don't know how to speak to this scenario without telling a story, so here goes:
I was in a region called Musa Qalah. My truck was ordered to help bolster operational capabilities while a base was handed over to the Afghan National Army. The base was called Habib. On our way there we encountered a truck loaded down openly with munitions and jovial men that was weaving in and out of our convoy. When we requested permission to engage with what was obviously a hostile truck we were reminded that the Rules of Engagement as set by the administration were, "You're not to fire until you have been fired upon." The truck eventually detoured from us and we arrived at the base. It was a small place, maybe 8-10 posts in total. Marines had been using it to patrol the nearby town and keep the area peaceful (generally the Taliban will attack the base instead of infesting the town, which is a bit of a pseudo-win while schools and infrastructure get in queue to be opened up). It was a pretty average base from what I saw. Lots of concertina wire, the posts were sandbagged but not the most built up. Decent fighting positions though. The units doing stage one of the retrograde (collect all the gear) were doing their thing. I did see the ANA at some point. We tend to leave them with gear like minesweepers, radios, (I could see bioscanners being part of this). Basically anything the average infantry unit would need. The thing I noted is that there were only 8 ANA including the commander. On the last day I was watching the mountains outside of the base and I saw a series of figures on top of the mountains. Initially dismissed as goat herders, I started watching them through my rifle scope. They were holding guns and there were munitions crates stacked all along the horizon. They were waiting. No more ANA showed up. 8 people to staff 10 posts. We were told the mission was to turn over the base to the ANA and that staying behind to help them defend would be counter to that mission. We left. Habib went dark on radio over the next two days.
It's possible the ANA took their gear and left, they made a deal with the Taliban, or that they were slaughtered. You can imagine where the gear goes when troops aren't prepared for how to destroy it properly or don't have the tools necessary.
because it was part of the deal? It's the same playbook used to equip ISIS back when toppling asad was the objective. It's not like none of these could be dismantled or outright destroyed. That and Taliban was created by none other than US with the help of Pakistan. It's not like US and Taliban are strangers, and surprise surprise, taliban isn't even in the designated terrorist list apparently. You also have UK military head doing PR for Taliban. Taliban takeover was with the approval of US, and weapon transfer was part of the deal.
Unfortunately, it was a bad plan.
They can probably figure out how to fix the ground vehicles and keep them running, but aircraft without a proper maintenance schedule will break down very quickly.
It is factually true that the Taliban and ISIS wanted to achieve cultural domination. Al Queda I'm not so sure about, but hell, they're religious extremists who sometimes masquerade as a violent and totalitarian political party.
It is also true that back in the 80's the US funded, specifically, Al Queda and the Taliban for various things. It doesn't mean they were our allies, just an underhanded way of doing policy. You saw this on repeat in Syria where we were giving weapons and funding to people that we'd, in any larger context, consider terrorists.
That just agrees with what's already been said. If you want me to disagree with anything it's your use of "naive". Ironically, if you can't perceive both as true (since they're both factually true), who is the naive one? My guess is on the person telling themselves a half baked truth.
Or do you think it's ok to supply North Korea?
Considering that the Taliban is/was a hostile party to an active US military operation, starting economic activities with them without explicit government approval is probably not a good idea.
I think right to repair is about ensuring that the customer can make reasonable repairs to the product, and the manufacturer not infringing on their rights when designing the product.
It follows then that unless right to repair passes/exists, obtaining replacement parts for any devices is exceptionally difficult. There is therefore a stark contrast between 1960s cars and their very limited electronics and current tech that relies on often hundreds of chips and software to operate.
[1] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/3/18761691/right-to-rep...
> Manufacturers can prevent the Department of Defense from repairing certain equipment, which puts members of the military at risk.
In this case, the "customer" is a sovereign state that has the ability to set its own laws.
Why does anyone think that "right to repair" applies in this case?
> Ah, I see you don't know that companies can "prohibit" chip manufacturers from selling specific chips to third parties [1,2]. Moreover, schematics, repair guidelines, and all sorts of other tools are not available to independent repair shops, which render repairs very difficult, Louis Rossmann has had frequent rants about this on his channel on Youtube [2], and is one of the most prominent advocates of the right to repair.
> It follows then that unless right to repair passes/exists, obtaining replacement parts for any devices is exceptionally difficult. There is therefore a stark contrast between 1960s cars and their very limited electronics and current tech that relies on often hundreds of chips and software to operate.
> [1] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/3/18761691/right-to-rep...
> [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFP9P7lIvI
It is not that the right to repair applies in this case, but rather because the right to repair does not exist/has not passed, the procurement of chips and other electronics necessary to repair the hardware may be difficult or outright impossible.
The cars that we compare to (1960) are orders of magnitude simpler than modern day electronics and not reliant on megacorps allowing others to obtain schematics and microchips.