Techie Tuesday: The Walrus

Courtesy of DARPA
The US Army contemplates building an aircraft the size of a football field:

The military offers society many innovations –unlimited budgets buy cubic brainpower to dissolve massive problems – this is the good that comes from such intensive endeavours as war. This is the positive to the negative known as collateral damage. Call it collateral betterment … spontaneous transformation of the way we do things. Before September 11, the US military budget was in the vicinity of US$500 billion, and it’s now a LOT more.

And with a few years of very high budget requirements under the American public’s belt, and no end in sight, everybody is looking for a better, more efficient, way of running its own “virtual nation” of soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Lots more money is required and the US Military is seeking the most effective and judicious uses of its budget. One of the biggest, most complex and most costly aspects of the wars in far off countries is logistics. America has 140,000 soldiers on the ground in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan and needs to police around 171,599 square miles, (444,439 square kilometers) of Iraq and 251,825 square miles (652,225 square kilometers) of Afghanistan. Not only did it move that number of troops from American soil to the respective countries, it also needed to take its entire military-strength infrastructure with it.

The American Military is a travelling nation – it needs not just to transport the nation’s citizens (the soldiers), but hundreds of small towns and a few cities – almost exactly the same number as there are towns or cities in Iraq. Including the fabled Baghdad.

It must also supply its own air, water and ground transportation infrastructure, its own Mercedes class of customer service and spare parts network for the transportation, and its own town amenities (water, power, sewerage, food), and housing, security, administration … to a military, mess-it-up-and-people-will-die standard in the most hostile environment possible.

There is much more to this article which should be read in full.

Otherwise, just humm along:

Semolina pilchard, climbing up the eiffel tower.
Elementary penguin singing hari krishna.
Man, you should have seen them kicking edgar allan poe.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob g’goo goo g’joob.
Goo goo g’joob g’goo goo g’joob g’goo.