20 January 2011

The future of the invisible warfare

This article boggled my imagination for a few minutes: Invisible Tanks, Planes and Armor Could Hit Battlefields in 5 Years. So much so that I have even developed an outline of a SF novel:

  1. The military industries of all leading high-tech countries and, later, all other countries, begin to churn out invisible arms and ammo. It is relatively cheap, it works and soon displaces the old stuff.
  2. Corrupt procurement folks in several places realize that, since the products they purchase from the military industries are invisible, they could order less for more money, without being caught. Of course, if they split the profit with the manufacturers.
  3. Trade-unions realize too that this idea is a gold mine: after all they get paid for producing nothing at all. For a share of the profits they join the manufacturers and procurement.
  4. Soldiers don't stay away from the conspiracy: for them, being invisible means that a soldier may as well stay home with his family or girlfriend.
  5. The idea is simple and spreads all over the world. The percentage of non-produced weaponry grows. Non-production is good for the environment, so Greens jump on the bandwagon too...
  6. In a generation, when the initially produced invisible weapons stop working, there remain no armies on the planet.
  7. Only politicians and generals remain unaware of the real situation and continue with (totally invisible) exercises and parades of their invisible armies, declare invisible wars etc.
  8. De facto peace descends on Earth.
  9. This blissful state of affairs continues until a gang from one of the New York boroughs decides to raid an army armory to get themselves some of these famous invisible weapons. Armed only by clubs, the gang members discover...
  10. North America becomes a kingdom. Other continents choose other forms of governance. The further story is not interesting, being a drab repeat of past history...
The yarn, however, is built on a flimsy premise: possibility of staying invisible by projecting videos of the surrounding countryside. If the inventors don't find a way to project in all frequencies - both visible to the naked eye and invisible - they haven't licked the problem. A soldier, armed by an infrared (or sensitive to other frequency) device will easily take care of that "invisible" tank...

So there...

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