Simulations?

This is coolbert:

With regard to the remote control weapons systems [RCWS], here is a cartoon from "Doonesbury" that says a lot:



[you may have to click on the cartoon to enlarge and read the text. The frame on the far right is what "says a lot"]

[it seems that the CIA intern has accidentally and remotely fired a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone and wiped out an Al Qaeda hideout!!]

It IS the gaming. Primarily the video gaming that all kids nowadays have grown up with. They become very proficient at the various games available, many of them violent and having a WAR theme.

Look at the joystick and video monitor for the CLAWS system.

Heck, the gunner might as well be at home fighting the bad guys with a computer or a MS X-Box.

Indeed, one expert from the Army said that the Columbine killers, Harris and Klebold, who were known to have frequented arcades and "loved to death" to play violent and very realistic video games, must have killed thousands at "play" before they did the thing for real at the high school. They had achieved A HIGH DEGREE OF PROFICIENCY BEFORE HAVING ACTUALLY EVER DONE THE THING [killing people] FOR REAL!!



Some of the same actual video arcade games used by Harris and Klebold WERE and maybe STILL ARE used by American Special Operations troopers to train.

And with broadband access, it is possible for TEAMS of video warriors to engage other TEAMS in video combat competitions, with unit commanders issuing real-time instructions, players forming buddy teams as would be found in actual real-life combat and the degree of realism being startling!! I am thinking here about the Tom Clancy "GhostRecon" series of games.

[I am sure that Du Puy would have some comments here. Of course, video arcade game players do not have someone shooting back at them, trying to kill THEM! The element of FEAR is missing!!]

[so important did the Soviets consider simulators to be for their anti-tank-guided-missile [ATGM] crews of the Sagger variety, that during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, at the advice of the Soviets, the Egyptians were seen to back trucks with simulator vans up to the front during lulls in the fighting, so as to allow Egyptian ATGM gunners to practice their gunnery!!]

coolbert.