21 September 2004Tom Engelhardt
The other day I happened to notice a little piece from the Washington Times headlined, Pentagon seeks ideas to fight 'urban' wars. Journalist Jennifer Harper had come across a "solicitation" from the Pentagon's futuristic research arm, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), calling on researchers to develop, among other things, "on-demand, infantry-operated, ultra-precision, beyond line-of-sight lethal and non-lethal weaponry that has high maneuverability for use in the congested, three-dimensional urban environment." (Ah, that good old congested three-dimensional urban environment.) DARPA also wants to develop ways to see through "external and internal" building walls (think X-ray vision minus the kryptonite) and, of course, "systems that discriminate combatants from non-combatants" in what its solicitat! ion charmingly terms "crowded urban settings." Essentially, Harper tells us, DARPA is looking for "what it calls 'force multipliers' in 11 separate disciplines, seeking ways to bolster the smaller numbers of U.S. forces commonly on patrol in the likes of Fallujah or Kabul." In the agency's solicitation, however, no real-time place names can be found.
In fact, that solicitation is typical of DARPA's sci-fi approach to the world. If, after all, you plan to dominate our disturbed and recalcitrant planet until the first aliens arrive or the Rapture sets in, then you probably should be thinking futuristically -- and consider all the fun your researchers can have along the way, playing Blade Runner in their labs.
After all, somebody has to consider the future and plan for it. Let's keep in mind that the only part of the Bush administration to openly explore the problems associated with our coming globally warmed planet, to give but an obvious example, has been the Pentagon which issued a reasonably hair-raising report last year on the phenomenon's potential effects -- on national security, of course. ("Learning how to manage those populations [of desperate illegal immigrants], border tensions that arise and the resulting refugees will be critical. New forms of security agreements dealing specifically with energy, food and water will also be needed… Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life. ")
But be as futuristic as you want, or DARPA desires; create those "urban canyon flying vehicles" out of Star Wars, or those "perching machines" fit for Minority Report, or for that matter ray guns out of Flash Gordon. It doesn't matter. All ideas about the future really come from and reflect present problems, concerns, realities, and projections thereof.
It always comes back to the present -- which is unsurprising, since it's the only place we ever actually are. From the Pentagon's point of view, of course, the problems of the present very distinctly involve overstretched American troops, often Reserves or National Guards, in body armor and kevlar helmets, sweating hard in sweltering heat as they walk or ride through Iraq's "three-dimensional urban environments," many of them undoubtedly wishing like the dickens that there were a few "force multipliers" available to multiply them homewards.
