Silly String Goes to War Against IEDs 460
Luban Doyle writes "In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it's the simplest ideas that can save lives. Which is why a New Jersey mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq.
American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq."
This was on The Daily Show 2 days ago (Score:2, Interesting)
Useful in the US, too? (Score:2, Interesting)
Me too. (Score:3, Interesting)
Who'd've thunk I'd pick up a tactical tip from Slashdot?
DG
Re:Government should pay (Score:5, Interesting)
Because this isn't about military procurement - the story is only partly about evolving military tactics (if there is a real need for these items, any self-respecting logistician would do whatever it takes to get them into the hands of their unit).
Mostly it's about people on the home front trying to feel like they are contributing. In that sense it has more in common with the campaign to knit socks [historylink.org] in WWI or recycling [about.com] in WWII.
Re:Government should pay (Score:5, Interesting)
To give you an example the USMC wanted to buy the software my company produces.
It had tried several and like ours the best. So they wrote a spec that our software fit and put it out for bids.
The request for bid came in a BOX that weighed 50lbs! Mind you this was off the self software that thousands of other people where using everyday.
Fine we did the paperwork and summited a bid at a low price. A competing company then submitted their software for the bid and lied that it would meet the specs. We lost the bid by $50. Of course our yearly support contract was $500 a year less for that number of seats than the winner.
Fine three years latter the other company was out of the business because frankly their software sucked and it started all over again.
We won it this time but the government wasted well over $100,000 on software that was now useless.
There are so many rules and regulations in place to stop abuse that it extremely painful to get anything done.
Back in the late 90s a lot of pilots bought their own GPS and laptops because the Air-Force hadn't installed the integrated mil-spec units yet.
In the 80s they bought radar detectors for the same reason.
This isn't really anything new. Soldiers have been buying supplemental equipment since David spent his allowance and a state of the art sling and extra hard stones.
Re:Government should pay (Score:5, Interesting)
Initially, GIs tried to dynamite the hedgerows so they could attack from a more concealed position. Though this met with some success, it took up too much dynamite. Other GIs tried to drive tanks through the hedgerows, but those got stuck and wouldn't reliably penetrate the hedgerows. Eventually, the soldiers welded on a long metal rod onto tanks. The tip of the rod contained a barrel of explosives that was detonated once the tank shoved the rod into the hedgerow. The "Rhino" saved many American lives by creating a fast and safer way to secure hedgerows in France.
The current administration should be faulted for many things. However, not being able to anticipate Silly String as a precious wartime commodity should not be one of them. I mean, no one would have thought that this would have saved American lives -- and in fact, it was only the innovation of the American soldier that created such a need for a child's toy.
Re:Government should pay (Score:5, Interesting)
My nephew brought one home from Desert Storm. the special ops have had this stuff for at least 10 years. It's just that silly string bran is far cheaper.
Re:New in the war on terror (Score:3, Interesting)
First thing that went through my mind... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder, could we make something akin to "Silly String" that could fire huge globs of a gooey, rubbery, net-like substance that could be used to immobilize people?
I figure, if anybody out there knows, or has tried this, they're probably on Slashdot...
Re:Government should pay (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in the U.S. Marines, we used a low-tech, low-cost solution that was used in Vietnam...
We would tie a string to the end of our M16 or a long, thin stick, and have it hang to the ground. You move forward slowly and watch the string. If it stops hanging straight down, you need to stop moving forward and find out what is blocking the string.
The advantage is that it forces you to move more deliberately that just shooting silly string. The downside is you are right next to the tripwire when you find it.
Re:New in the war on terror (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying I wouldn't be willing to volunteer to join the military under the right circumstances. If I was around during WW II, I probably would have enlisted because the war was a just cause and the leadership (at least most of the leadership) wanted to really win the war. That isn't what is happening in Iraq. The US doesn't have a strategy to win the war and the smartest people around aren't sure how to even go about winning the war.
So, unfortunately, our soldiers are just there to be targets for the insurgents. I don't see how that benefits anyone. The only question is, like in vietnam, how long are we going to stay there until we finally admit that we can't win and we leave and let whatever happens happen.
Re:I'm pretty impressed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, that's the first countermeasure I thought of too - but we're talking about such a small change in weight/pressure that the wire would probably be tripped by a breeze or strong vibration.
I can't really think of any other good ways to make the tripwire undetectable, but it'd be pretty trivial to exploit the silly string IED detection method by producing false positives. Just string up fishing line in dark rooms all over the city, and US bomb squads will be stretched to their limit (like they aren't already) with false alarms. After all, silly string can't really detect IEDs, only wires - and if wires are a common thing, detecting them really isn't that useful.
Re:Government should pay (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Damned if you do... (Score:3, Interesting)
The reality is that they're all just massive bureacracies that waste money like mad - because everything takes too many review steps, too many approval steps and effective requirements gathering doesn't work this way.
> throwing out our perfectly good 2 year old body armor that we spent billions on.
well, there ya go - if you just spent billions on 2 year old, perfectly good body armor and find yourself having to throw it out - somebody made a mistake, huh?
I've been in the military, have seen a lot of money wasted - primarily due to process problems. For example, a small box of monitor 'wipes' was ordered (this was 20+ years ago). What appeared was a 700+ lb massive crate of thousands of individually-wrapped wipes. Total cost was something like $25k. These were just used as paper towels since it would have been too difficult to send it back.
Re:Government should pay (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been in both positions.
The Silly String is shot into hallways and rooms. Great for dimly lit areas. And, most of the "bad guys" right now don't come at you. They lurk, outside of the blast radius of the IED.
protection of foreign economic interests is valid (Score:3, Interesting)
No. Just because many people and their nations have done so since the dawn of civilization does not make it a valid move (bandwagon [wikipedia.org].)
The "protection" of economic interests fuel and even are the underlying causes for a great many wars and covert acts all over the world (gaining a lock [wikipedia.org] on mutually exclusive [wikipedia.org] resources.)
Allowing nations to perceive it as a VALID means to their ends will allow them to continue excusing it and perpetuating such actions in the world. (Before you say "welcome to the real world," think about the same reasoning on a smaller local scale in a "civilized" community vs an "uncivilized" community.)
Iraq is about Oil Dollars and finally Americans are figuring that out (well, just the oil part.) Its a complete failure because we are not getting the oil and we are losing oil dollars. We are keeping the large war machine employed; however, its at the gamble of destroying the economy. [columbia.edu] Four large military bases in Iraq will probably not secure economic interests either (remember, the same people wrote the plan in the 90s [crisispapers.org]-- the few experts I've met said they knew this underlying stuff [www.gnn.tv] was wrong decades ago. Wrong for long term empire and wrong ethically.)
Re:New in the war on terror (Score:3, Interesting)
It benefits alot of folks. Defense contractors, the banking/investment industry, oil companies, independent civilian contractors (logistics, procurement, transportation, etc..)
Re:Government should pay (Score:3, Interesting)
You're not looking at it properly. The Silly String company probably doesn't care if one in 100,000 cans shoots out string that is 2X as heavy as normal. However, in this use, that could get people killed.
There's good reason military specs are much higher than civilian-purposed goods. The milspecs are most certainly appropriate, although it shouldn't take very long.