Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: amdcad!gwh%sandstorm.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Future of the Military Message-ID: <9881@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 3 Oct 89 13:07:40 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 35 Approved: military@att.att.com From: amdcad!gwh%sandstorm.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert) In article <27499@amdcad.AMD.COM> bralick@cs.psu.edu (Will Bralick) writes: >Posit: The US declares victory (OK, call it peace) in Europe and >the voters unambiguously tell their representatives that they want >the US to become a continent-sized Switzerland. I.e. diplomatic >and trade relations with (just about) everyone, but no "foreign >entanglements" for the US military. > >Question: What force structure would best defend the US, its >territories, and possessions? Sounds like an interesting idea. One concept I've been playing with is a variant of the Swiss system which is heavily enough modified that it really needs a new name. I call it the Technomilitia. The basic concept is that you can't invade a modern technological nation with an extensive militia. Given that one fifth of the population will be able to bear arms, and assuming a restructuring towards more handheld antivehicle and antiaricraft weapons, with static heavy defenses where required, there is no way to effectively fight this. Nobody on earth has a large enough standing army to successfully accomplish an invasion, nor could they get one. Of course, the problem assumed that we have to protect our posessions too, and so we'll still need conventional military. **************************************** George William Herbert UCB Naval Architecture Dpt. (my god, even on schedule!) maniac@garnet.berkeley.edu gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu ----------------------------------------