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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
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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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.


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George William Herbert  UCB Naval Architecture Dpt. (my god, even on schedule!)
maniac@garnet.berkeley.edu  gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu
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