The Rise and Fall of the ‘Kill Box’ in US Military Strategy
defenseone.com
defenseone.com
After some quick reading, [1] a "kill box" is still subject to the standard rules of engagement. Its purpose was to make sure everyone is aiming at the same stuff, and to make resupply/logistics work smoothly, not to lift fire restrictions.
Maybe the tactic was abused to circumvent ROE in practice, but the intent seems clear.
[1]: DoD publication: https://info.publicintelligence.net/MTTP-KillBox.pdf
After some quick reading, [1] a "kill box" is still subject to the standard rules of engagement."
If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you. The US military does not in any meaningful sense follow its own rules of engagement, the rule of law, international law, common moral decency. The examples are legion and extremely well documented.
There is a world of difference between incidents of some soldiers in a military of millions failing in their duties and that failure being a national defense policy. You are indicating the latter and I am personally denying the truth of that accusation.
But that's not the point. The article is alludes to these "kill boxes" being sanctioned areas of indiscriminate killing. I'm merely clarifying that the ROE still applies (whether or not it's illegally violated).
This is the mark of a viewpoint unfettered by exposure to the other side. Assuming malicious intent of someone just because they have an opposing viewpoint is simplistic and naive.
1. Manning leaks: exposure of one war crime and its coverup. Hardly a trend. Furthermore, Wikileaks edited the Collateral Murder video to imply malicious intent and obfuscate the ambiguity in the situation.
2. Snowden leaks: where was the U.S. military implicated in any of them?
3. Hospital bombings: yes, targeting fails happen in wartime. It is tragic and regretful. War zones are dangerous.
4. Senate report on torture: wasn't that the CIA as directed by Attorney General Gonzalez?
5. Obama refusal to exercise the laws against torture: this is the first time I'm hearing of this, please discuss.
6. Gitmo: hardly the U.S. military; this is an artifact of a Congress that refuses to allow any appropriations toward relocating prisoners elsewhere.
7. Kill lists: how would you approach terminating military commanders engaging in continuous operations (that kill noncombatants) against your country, yet they don't belong to a nation-state?
In the last 100 years, the U.S. military is guilty of much wrongdoing. Compared to other nations, and considering the volume of combat in which the U.S. military has been engaged, the U.S. military fares well when compared to other nations. The reality is that warfare inherently involves the killing of people who should not have been killed, simply because their homes were in a combat zone. You could argue that the U.S. shouldn't have entered most of its wars; that might be true. At the time, it was considered to be the right thing by the U.S. electorate in order to prevent much more bloodshed. World War 2 is the textbook example of a war entered too late to prevent massive bloodshed. This informs U.S. decision makers and cannot be discounted.
The electorate is never asked about their opinions on the subject - although propaganda is consistently used to prime it.
2. Clapper lying under oath to Congress, numberous illegal programs under the NSA.
3. Just another isolated example right? Honest mistake, just like the weddings and the explicit double tap strategy that explicitly targets emergency medical responders.
4. Forget about abu ghraib? Just another isolated example... Seeing a pattern here of your refusal to look past the numerous examples, as if you have your head in the sand.
6. Gitmo is the result of our Governments decision to violate the Geneva convention on the handling prisoners of war, the Taliban certainly qualified, but our military industrial complex did the legal contortions of enemy combatants instead. Gitmo existence is a clear war crime.
7. I'd pursue by continuing to respect the rule of law, international law, and our Constitution, apparently trifling concerns to you.
5. Look it up, Obama violated his oath by refusing to execute the law of land against one of the most henious crimes possible.
2. Clapper is/was not a military official.
3. Being a former US Army infantryman, I have no clue what you are referencing with regard to an "explicit double tap strategy." However, you did describe a well-used TTP of insurgents in Afghanistan.
6. A "clear war crime" GITMO is not; it is an artifact of civilian policies in a legal grey area. Personally, I think it does more harm than good and should be shut down, but there are real questions (i.e. where do the prisoners go?) that CIVILIANS in Congress can't answer yet.
7. That sounds lovely, but lacks any real substance.
There is either more to the story (that distinguishes kill boxes from WWII tactics) or less to the story than what is presented.
I can almost see the UI for the "kill design" now: pre-defined patterns + GUI etch-a-sketch (for personalized kill pattern design), a kill pattern library, a website discussing design principles and associated blog, twitter feed ("Killing you softly NOW!"). It will be all the rage.
i think it is just obsolete limitation of the previously available computing and information processing infrastructure. The same way like the boxy shape of the F-117 vs. the next gen of stealth planes. Or election districts of the past vs. modern election districts.
Modern kill box would be a shape in high-dimensional space of parameters adaptively learned and constantly adjusted based on new information coming (through Kafka-esque input pipes) by a distributed neural network with sub-nodes in the brain of the Predators.