I don't know how much any of you know about military technology, so let me spell this out, because I KNOW you have an interest in our troops in harm's way in Iraq. UAVs are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, what used to be called "drone" aircraft -- no pilots aboard, and they can be controlled remotely. IED is the military's acronym for Improvised Explosive Devices, the increasingly horrific roadside bombs that tear our children into shreds on a daily basis.
During the Vietnam War, I served in, pardon the term, "Intelligence." I spent a year in Southeast Asia. I don't say this to brag or complain, but rather to aver that my experience there 40 years ago accords me some credibility for the rest of this column. Back then, US forces established something we called "McNamara's Wall." In 1956, Vietnam had been split in two along the 17th parallel. Later, this border area would be called the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ -- a quaint, early use of "spin" by Robert McNamara's Defense Department. The "wall" was to comprise a variety of electronic sensors and observation posts placed throughout the DMZ, to stop the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) from moving soldiers and war material southward. Even after these were put in place, the NVA continued to infiltrate the DMZ, but mostly they moved westward, and hauled everything around the DMZ, down the network of dirt roads in neighboring Laos known collectively as the Ho Chi Minh trail. I used to review aerial photos of missions that dropped these sensors -- Hey! We couldn't just walk in and plant them, you know. It was demilitarized! One sensor was a big greenish thing that looked sort of like a tree, with green plastic "branches." We dropped lots of these. We were told they were made to detect urine, and that - when one did - it either sent a radio signal to a nearby airbase, which might call in an airstrike, or it might be the kind that blew itself up on the spot.
Mostly, I saw these things dropped in areas where our intensive bombing made it look like the surface of the moon. An odd landscape in which to see the occasional, strange-looking tree still standing. I can imagine an NVA soldier walking up to this contrivance, laughing heartily when he realizes it's not a real tree, and then taking a whiz on it to show his contempt. Oops!
I have no information on how well these piss-sniffing trees actually worked, but my point is that, even 40 years ago, we could deploy a sensor that could sniff something.
Fast forward. For many years now, numerous bomb-sniffing devices (and critters, too!) have been explored, tested and developed by and for our military. The Defense Department recently announced that, as they ramp up the use of robotic vehicles in combat zones, they will deploy "more and more" bomb-sniffing robots, too. Why is that important? Because 70% of US combat casualties are caused by IEDs, and maybe sending a robot down the road ahead of a convoy could save lives! Great idea, as far as it goes, but how far would a ground-based robot go, anyway? I know that, if I were Secretary of Defense, and knew that ONE THING was causing 70% of my casualties, I'd damned near do anything to find a way to stop it, or at least minimize it. Wouldn't you? Yet, three years -- and 3,000 combat deaths -- ago, I sent an e-mail to then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld suggesting that using UAVs with bomb-sniffing sensors might be the answer to this problem. Of course, I never got a reply or acknowledgment, but, as far as I can tell, nobody took my idea seriously, either.
In early 2004, a History Channel show, Tactical-to-Practical, discussed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs). An ex-Navy fighter jock showed a range of radio-controlled "drone" aircraft, from the huge Global Hawk, down to the slice-of-bread-sized Black Widow. All of them carry cameras. Some can fly for hours -- or loiter or hover over a target for extended periods. Some employ infrared sensors and cameras for night viewing. Others have a "look-down/shoot down" capability -- they carry weapons for use on ground targets they find. Some can be assembled in the field in a few minutes, and be launched by any GI with a good throwing arm. Many of them are -- in military terms -- dirt cheap. I could buy those today in a hobby store for less than $1,000.
So I suggested (and still do) that we put up a few dozen of these little birds, equipped with bomb-sniffing technology, over every dangerous bridge, intersection or stretch of highway in Iraq. Keep 'em in the air 24/7. When one starts to run out of gas, bring it home and send up another. We'll have eyes-in-the-sky (noses, too!) right where we need them, 'round-the-clock. They could be controlled locally, or -- using satellite uplinks and GPS, even from, say, Langley, Virginia. If you know a convoy's expected route, send a bomb-sniffing UAV flying along the route ahead of it. How the Hell much could this cost? A lot less than the cost of sending one kid home in a bodybag, I suspect. Can we afford it? Tell you what: I'll buy one of the little guys myself, and donate it to the Pentagon, provided it's deployed in Iraq ASAP. I bet some of you readers would gladly match that offer, too. Remote pilots shouldn't be hard to find, either.
Now this idea is so cheap, and so relatively low-tech, that our Big-Bang-for-Big-Bucks military may have a hard time accepting it. Here's another one, even lower-tech. If you've driven in the New York metro area, you may have experienced "driving" along the 11.6-mile pile of concrete-and-steel rubble called the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway -- the BQE. It already looks like it's been a target of terrorist bombings, but -- that said -- I'd love to see a terrorist just try to set up a roadside bomb along its littered length. (I mean I really would. So would anyone who's driven on it). But Bin Laden & Co. would never get away with it. Why? Video cameras. Every 100 yards or so, atop every other street lamp or highway sign, there's another camera. Hundreds of them keep track of traffic along the entire route. And there are hundreds of miles of other highways in the area, all under video camera surveillance, and all operated by a single small company that gives traffic updates on the radio every ten minutes, 'round the clock.
So, if bomb-sniffing drones won't do, let's mount cheapo video cameras along the troublesome bridges and highways in Iraq. It wouldn't be hard -- or prohibitively expensive, to blanket the areas we know are vulnerable. Get a couple of guys in a dark room back in the States with a bank of monitors to oversee the thing, and you're good to go ... "Hey Jimmy, camera 1733 just went dark." "Really, Frank? Gee, maybe that's where they're planting the next IED! Let's send up an armed Predator drone to check it out."
Oh, and we could even tap some Vegas casinos for the sophisticated software they use with their video surveillance systems to "flag" suspicious targets.
So there you have it. Not one but two lowball ways to save American lives in a free-fire-zone. The Department of Defense never responded to me, but now you, loyal reader, have a chance to stop this horror. If you know people at the Pentagon, forward this column to them, and tell them to look into these potentially lifesaving ideas right away. You'll be a hero, and rightly so.