Video War Games
by Paul McGoldrick
I've never been into computer-type video games; they have never held any real attraction as such, probably because of the subject matter, and I know from previous addictive behavior with Solitaire that it would probably be my ruin if I actually found games that I was attracted to. Whether I would be any good at them anyway is also very questionable: During a very poorly-attended trade show in Honolulu some years ago one of my fellow exhibitors was using a Sun workstation with his company's video manipulation software running on it. But for the boring times he also had a flight simulator application…
Over a period of three days I managed to crash just about every aircraft type that was in the program, including types that I have actually previously been rated on! There is in the software nothing like the same feelings as actually being in the real aircraft or a real flight simulator for the type. And that makes me wonder.
I'm sure that the experts on the game side of the aisle would deny that the products they push lead to a behavior or attitude on the part of the player which is similar to the nature of the content. But surely the violence in many of them has to lead to a dimming of the senses? Is that why so many of our young men and women are attracted to the military as an occupation? Do they get so keyed up with the games that they think the real world is similar, that superior technology and the fastest mouse control will keep them from any danger?
Do you remember the opening scenes from the Bond movie Goldeneye? Bond is doing his thing in a nasty "East Europeanish" type place, being the only good guy around, and still managing to save his own bacon with a spirited air departure. Back in MI-6 headquarters on the River Thames, M is watching every move with some US cronies wondering aloud, "What is he doing?" "His job," M says in the dry tones that only Judi Dench can deliver. But the technology, the large screens, the satellite close-ups, are they real?
Of course they are. And during the recent invasion of Iraq the big brass were in their command chairs in Qatar taking in the whole scene and issuing their battle instructions. They were in no danger -- as the brass never is in modern combat -- but they were in a position to monitor the complete battlefront and issue orders with immediate effect. Messengers are no longer needed with today's technology.
So what I was wondering is: If the computer flight simulator is so different from the real thing what makes the military think that the command chair in Qatar is any different? Sure they probably have only the biggest and best plasma displays but what they see is not really WYSIWYG. They have no sense of the commotion, the smells, the noise, the blood…
But they knew that already. One of the reasons for building the 28 shelters (plus 20 climate-controlled warehouses with enough equipment for a US Army Brigade) that house the command center at As Sayliyah was that in the previous excursions to Afghanistan there were major disconnects with the command in Tampa. This time the command center was assembled in Tampa and then flown to Qatar to the 15,000 ft runway at al-Udeid (where 4000 US personnel were already working on building over 80 hardened aircraft shelters) in December 2002 under the claim it was for an exercise named "Internal Look," exactly the same name Schwarzkopf used in the build-up to the Gulf War in 1990.
So, did moving so close -- and on the same time zone -- to the target
make any difference to the number of disconnects between command and troops?
Logic says that of course it did not; you're still not there. But if you've
been brought up on gruesome video games this had to have been the great-granddaddy
of the lot.