XPost: talk.politics.eu, alt.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
c186282 wrote:
On 2/21/25 10:54 PM, Keith Palmer wrote:
If the government says so, it must be true.
Well, never go THAT far :-)
BUT, Hegseth at least SEEMS to be on the logical track.
MIGHT go off it eventually - but we'll have to just wait
and see.
Superiority -- Arthur C Clarke
(Inspired by German wonder weapons that cost it the war.)
IN MAKING THIS STATEMENT—which I do of my own free will—I wish
first to make it perfectly clear that I am not in any way trying
to gain sympathy, nor do I expect any mitigation of whatever
sentence the Court may pronounce. I am writing this in an attempt
to refute some of the lying reports broadcast over the prison
radio and published in the papers I have been allowed to see.
These have given an entirely false picture of the true cause of
our defeat, and as the leader of my race's armed forces at the
cessation of hostilities I feel it my duty to protest against such
libels upon those who served under me.
I also hope that this statement may explain the reasons for the
application I have twice made to the Court, and will now induce it
to grant a favor for which I can see no possible grounds of refusal.
The ultimate cause of our failure was a simple one: despite all
statements to the contrary, it was not due to lack of bravery on
the part of our men, or to any fault of the Fleet's. We were
defeated by one thing only—by the inferior science of our enemies.
I repeat—by the inferior science of our enemies.
When the war opened we had no doubt of our ultimate victory. The
combined fleets of our allies greatly exceeded in number and
armament those which the enemy could muster against us, and in
almost all branches of military science we were their superiors.
We were sure that we could maintain this superiority. Our belief
proved, alas, to be only too well founded.
At the opening of the war our main weapons were the long-range
homing torpedo, dirigible ball-lightning and the various
modifications of the Klydon beam. Every unit of the Fleet was
equipped with these and though the enemy possessed similar weapons
their installations were generally of lesser power. Moreover, we
had behind us a far greater military Research Organization, and
with this initial advantage we could not possibly lose.
The campaign proceeded according to plan until the Battle of the
Five Suns. We won this, of course, but the opposition proved
stronger than we had expected. It was realized that victory might
be more difficult, and more delayed, than had first been imagined.
A conference of supreme commanders was therefore called to discuss
our future strategy.
Present for the first time at one of our war conferences was
Professor-General Norden, the new Chief of the Research Staff, who
had just been appointed to fill the gap left by the death of
Malvar, our greatest scientist. Malvar's leadership had been
responsible, more than any other single factor, for the efficiency
and power of our weapons. His loss was a very serious blow, but no
one doubted the brilliance of his successor—though many of us
disputed the wisdom of appointing a theoretical scientist to fill
a post of such vital importance. But we had been overruled.
I can well remember the impression Norden made at that conference.
The military advisers were worried, and as usual turned to the
scientists for help. Would it be possible to improve our existing
weapons, they asked, so that our present advantage could be
increased still further?
Norden's reply was quite unexpected. Malvar had often been asked
such a question—and he had always done what we requested.
"Frankly, gentlemen," said Norden, "I doubt it. Our existing
weapons have practically reached finality. I don't wish to
criticize my predecessor, or the excellent work done by the
Research Staff in the last few generations, but do you realize
that there has been no basic change in armaments for over a
century? It is, I am afraid, the result of a tradition that has
become conservative. For too long, the Research Staff has devoted
itself to perfecting old weapons instead of developing new ones.
It is fortunate for us that our opponents have been no wiser: we
cannot assume that this will always be so."
Norden's words left an uncomfortable impression, as he had no
doubt intended. He quickly pressed home the attack.
"What we want are new weapons—weapons totally different from any
that have been employed before. Such weapons can be made: it will
take time, of course, but since assuming charge I have replaced
some of the older scientists with young men and have directed
research into several unexplored fields which show great promise.
I believe, in fact, that a revolution in warfare may soon be upon us."
We were skeptical. There was a bombastic tone in Norden's voice
that made us suspicious of his claims. We did not know, then, that
he never promised anything that he had not already almost
perfected in the laboratory. In the laboratory—that was the
operative phrase.
Norden proved his case less than a month later, when he
demonstrated the Sphere of Annihilation, which produced complete
disintegration of matter over a radius of several hundred meters.
We were intoxicated by the power of the new weapon, and were quite
prepared to overlook one fundamental defect—the fact that it was a
sphere and hence destroyed its rather complicated generating
equipment at the instant of formation. This meant, of course, that
it could not be used on warships but only on guided missiles, and
a great program was started to convert all homing torpedoes to
carry the new weapon. For the time being all further offensives
were suspended.
We realize now that this was our first mistake. I still think that
it was a natural one, for it seemed to us then that all our
existing weapons had become obsolete overnight, and we already
regarded them as almost primitive survivals. What we did not
appreciate was the magnitude of the task we were attempting, and
the length of time it would take to get the revolutionary
super-weapon into battle. Nothing like this had happened for a
hundred years and we had no previous experience to guide us.
The conversion problem proved far more difficult than anticipated.
A new class of torpedo had to be designed, as the standard model
was too small. This meant in turn that only the larger ships could
launch the weapon, but we were prepared to accept this penalty.
After six months, the heavy units of the Fleet were being equipped
with the Sphere. Training maneuvers and tests had shown that it
was operating satisfactorily and we were ready to take it into
action. Norden was already being hailed as the architect of
victory, and had half promised even more spectacular weapons.
Then two things happened. One of our battleships disappeared
completely on a training flight, and an investigation showed that
under certain conditions the ship's long-range radar could trigger
the Sphere immediately after it had been launched. The
modification needed to overcome this defect was trivial, but it
caused a delay of another month and was the source of much bad
feeling between the naval staff and the scientists. We were ready
for action again—when Norden announced that the radius of
effectiveness of the Sphere had now been increased by ten, thus
multiplying by a thousand the chances of destroying an enemy ship.
So the modifications started all over again, but everyone agreed
that the delay would be worth it. Meanwhile, however, the enemy
had been emboldened by the absence of further attacks and had made
an unexpected onslaught. Our ships were short of torpedoes, since
none had been coming from the factories, and were forced to
retire. So we lost the systems of Kyrane and Floranus, and the
planetary fortress of Rhamsandron.
It was an annoying but not a serious blow, for the recaptured
systems had been unfriendly, and difficult to administer. We had
no doubt that we could restore the position in the near future, as
soon as the new weapon became operational.
These hopes were only partially fulfilled. When we renewed our
offensive, we had to do so with fewer of the Spheres of
Annihilation than had been planned, and this was one reason for
our limited success. The other reason was more serious.
While we had been equipping as many of our ships as we could with
the irresistible weapon, the enemy had been building feverishly.
His ships were of the old pattern with the old weapons—but they
now out-numbered ours. When we went into action, we found that the
numbers ranged against us were often 100 percent greater than
expected, causing target confusion among the automatic weapons and
resulting in higher losses than anticipated. The enemy losses were
higher still, for once a Sphere had reached its objective,
destruction was certain, but the balance had not swung as far in
our favor as we had hoped.
Moreover, while the main fleets had been engaged, the enemy had
launched a daring attack on the lightly held systems of Eriston,
Duranus, Carmanidora and Pharanidon—recapturing them all. We were
thus faced with a threat only fifty light-years from our home planets.
There was much recrimination at the next meeting of the supreme
commanders. Most of the complaints were addressed to Norden-Grand
Admiral Taxaris in particular maintaining that thanks to our
admittedly irresistible weapon we were now considerably worse off
than before. We should, he claimed, have continued to build
conventional ships, thus preventing the loss of our numerical
superiority.
Norden was equally angry and called the naval staff ungrateful
bunglers. But I could tell that he was worried—as indeed we all
were—by the unexpected turn of events. He hinted that there might
be a speedy way of remedying the situation.
We now know that Research had been working on the Battle Analyzer
for many years, but at the time it came as a revelation to us and
perhaps we were too easily swept off our feet. Norden's argument,
also, was seductively convincing. What did it matter, he said, if
the enemy had twice as many ships as we—if the efficiency of ours
could be doubled or even trebled? For decades the limiting factor
in warfare had been not mechanical but biological—it had become
more and more difficult for any single mind, or group of minds, to
cope with the rapidly changing complexities of battle in
three-dimensional space. Norden's mathematicians had analyzed some
of the classic engagements of the past, and had shown that even
when we had been victorious we had often operated our units at
much less than half of their theoretical efficiency.
The Battle Analyzer would change all this by replacing the
operations staff with electronic calculators. The idea was not
new, in theory, but until now it had been no more than a Utopian
dream. Many of us found it difficult to believe that it was still
anything but a dream: after we had run through several very
complex dummy battles, however, we were convinced.
It was decided to install the Analyzer in four of our heaviest
ships, so that each of the main fleets could be equipped with one.
At this stage, the trouble began—though we did not know it until
later.
The Analyzer contained just short of a million vacuum tubes and
needed a team of five hundred technicians to maintain and operate
it. It was quite impossible to accommodate the extra staff aboard
a battleship, so each of the four units had to be accompanied by a
converted liner to carry the technicians not on duty. Installation
was also a very slow and tedious business, but by gigantic efforts
it was completed in six months.
Then, to our dismay, we were confronted by another crisis. Nearly
five thousand highly skilled men had been selected to serve the
Analyzers and had been given an intensive course at the Technical
Training Schools. At the end of seven months, 10 percent of them
had had nervous breakdowns and only 40 per cent had qualified.
Once again, everyone started to blame everyone else. Norden, of
course, said that the Research Staff could not be held
responsible, and so incurred the enmity of the Personnel and
Training Commands. It was finally decided that the only thing to
do was to use two instead of four Analyzers and to bring the
others into action as soon as men could be trained. There was
little time to lose, for the enemy was still on the offensive and
his morale was rising.
The first Analyzer fleet was ordered to recapture the system of
Eriston. On the way, by one of the hazards of war, the liner
carrying the technicians was struck by a roving mine. A warship
would have survived, but the liner with its irreplaceable cargo
was totally destroyed. So the operation had to be abandoned.
The other expedition was, at first, more successful. There was no
doubt at all that the Analyzer fulfilled its designers' claims,
and the enemy was heavily defeated in the first engagements. He
withdrew, leaving us in possession of Saphran, Leucon and
Hexanerax. But his Intelligence Staff must have noted the change
in our tactics and the inexplicable presence of a liner in the
heart of our battlefleet. It must have noted, also, that our first
fleet had been accompanied by a similar ship—and had withdrawn
when it had been destroyed.
In the next engagement, the enemy used his superior numbers to
launch an overwhelming attack on the Analyzer ship and its unarmed
consort. The attack was made without regard to losses—both ships
were, of course, very heavily protected—and it succeeded. The
result was the virtual decapitation of the Fleet, since an
effectual transfer to the old operational methods proved
impossible. We disengaged under heavy fire, and so lost all our
gains and also the systems of Lormyia, Ismarnus, Beronis,
Alphanidon and Sideneus.
At this stage, Grand Admiral Taxaris expressed his disapproval of
Norden by committing suicide, and I assumed supreme command.
The situation was now both serious and infuriating. With stubborn
conservatism and complete lack of imagination, the enemy continued
to advance with his old-fashioned and inefficient but now vastly
more numerous ships. It was galling to realize that if we had only
continued building, without seeking new weapons, we would have
been in a far more advantageous position. There were many
acrimonious conferences at which Norden defended the scientists
while everyone else blamed them for all that had happened. The
difficulty was that Norden had proved every one of his claims: he
had a perfect excuse for all the disasters that had occurred. And
we could not now turn back—the search for an irresistible weapon
must go on. At first it had been a luxury that would shorten the
war. Now it was a necessity if we were to end it victoriously.
We were on the defensive, and so was Norden. He was more than ever
determined to reestablish his prestige and that of the Research
Staff. But we had been twice disappointed, and would not make the
same mistake again. No doubt Norden's twenty thousand scientists
would produce many further weapons: we would remain unimpressed.
We were wrong. The final weapon was something so fantastic that
even now it seems difficult to believe that it ever existed. Its
innocent, noncommittal name—The Exponential Field—gave no hint of
its real potentialities. Some of Norden's mathematicians had
discovered it during a piece of entirely theoretical research into
the properties of space, and to everyone's great surprise their
results were found to be physically realizable.
It seems very difficult to explain the operation of the Field to
the layman. According to the technical description, it "produces
an exponential condition of space, so that a finite distance in
normal, linear space may become infinite in pseudo-space." Norden
gave an analogy which some of us found useful. It was as if one
took a flat disk of rubber—representing a region of normal
space—and then pulled its center out to infinity. The
circumference of the disk would be unaltered—but its "diameter"
would be infinite. That was the sort of thing the generator of the
Field did to the space around it.
As an example, suppose that a ship carrying the generator was
surrounded by a ring of hostile machines. If it switched on the
Field, each of the enemy ships would think that it—and the ships
on the far side of the circle—had suddenly receded into
nothingness. Yet the circumference of the circle would be the same
as before: only the journey to the center would be of infinite
duration, for as one proceeded, distances would appear to become
greater and greater as the "scale" of space altered.
It was a nightmare condition, but a very useful one. Nothing could
reach a ship carrying the Field: it might be englobed by an enemy
fleet yet would be as inaccessible as if it were at the other side
of the Universe. Against this, of course, it could not fight back
without switching off the Field, but this still left it at a very
great advantage, not only in defense but in offense. For a ship
fitted with the Field could approach an enemy fleet undetected and
suddenly appear in its midst.
This time there seemed to be no flaws in the new weapon. Needless
to say, we looked for all the possible objections before we
committed ourselves again. Fortunately the equipment was fairly
simple and did not require a large operating staff. After much
debate, we decided to rush it into production, for we realized
that time was running short and the war was going against us. We
had now lost about the whole of our initial gains and enemy forces
had made several raids into our own solar system.
We managed to hold off the enemy while the Fleet was reequipped
and the new battle techniques were worked out. To use the Field
operationally it was necessary to locate an enemy formation, set a
course that would intercept it, and then switch on the generator
for the calculated period of time. On releasing the Field again—if
the calculations had been accurate—one would be in the enemy's
midst and could do great damage during the resulting confusion,
retreating by the same route when necessary.
The first trial maneuvers proved satisfactory and the equipment
seemed quite reliable. Numerous mock attacks were made and the
crews became accustomed to the new technique. I was on one of the
test flights and can vividly remember my impressions as the Field
was switched on. The ships around us seemed to dwindle as if on
the surface of an expanding bubble: in an instant they had
vanished completely. So had the stars—but presently we could see
that the Galaxy was still visible as a faint band of light around
the ship. The virtual radius of our pseudo-space was not really
infinite, but some hundred thousand light-years, and so the
distance to the farthest stars of our system had not been greatly increased—though the nearest had of course totally disappeared.
These training maneuvers, however, had to be canceled before they
were completed, owing to a whole flock of minor technical troubles
in various pieces of equipment, notably the communications
circuits. These were annoying, but not important, though it was
thought best to return to Base to clear them up.
At that moment the enemy made what was obviously intended to be a
decisive attack against the fortress planet of Iton at the limits
of our Solar System. The Fleet had to go into battle before
repairs could be made.
The enemy must have believed that we had mastered the secret of invisibility—as in a sense we had. Our ships appeared suddenly out
of no-where and inflicted tremendous damage—for a while. And then
something quite baffling and inexplicable happened.
I was in command of the flagship Hircania when the trouble
started. We had been operating as independent units, each against
assigned objectives. Our detectors observed an enemy formation at
medium range and the navigating officers measured its distance
with great accuracy. We set course and switched on the generator.
The Exponential Field was released at the moment when we should
have been passing through the center of the enemy group. To our
consternation, we emerged into normal space at a distance of many
hundred miles—and when we found the enemy, he had already found
us. We retreated, and tried again. This time we were so far away
from the enemy that he located us first.
Obviously, something was seriously wrong. We broke communicator
silence and tried to contact the other ships of the Fleet to see
if they had experienced the same trouble. Once again we failed—and
this time the failure was beyond all reason, for the communication
equipment appeared to be working perfectly. We could only assume,
fantastic though it seemed, that the rest of the Fleet had been
destroyed.
I do not wish to describe the scenes when the scattered units of
the Fleet struggled back to Base. Our casualties had actually been
negligible, but the ships were completely demoralized. Almost all
had lost touch with one another and had found that their ranging
equipment showed inexplicable errors. It was obvious that the
Exponential Field was the cause of the troubles, despite the fact
that they were only apparent when it was switched off.
The explanation came too late to do us any good, and Norden's
final discomfiture was small consolation for the virtual loss of
the war. As I have explained, the Field generators produced a
radial distortion of space, distances appearing greater and
greater as one approached the center of the artificial
pseudo-space. When the Field was switched off, conditions returned
to normal.
But not quite. It was never possible to restore the initial state
exactly. Switching the Field on and off was equivalent to an
elongation and contraction of the ship carrying the generator, but
there was a hysteretic effect, as it were, and the initial
condition was never quite reproducible, owing to all the thousands
of electrical changes and movements of mass aboard the ship while
the Field was on. These asymmetries and distortions were
cumulative, and though they seldom amounted to more than a
fraction of one per cent, that was quite enough. It meant that the
precision ranging equipment and the tuned circuits in the
communication apparatus were thrown completely out of adjustment.
Any single ship could never detect the change—only when it
compared its equipment with that of another vessel, or tried to
communicate with it, could it tell what had happened.
It is impossible to describe the resultant chaos. Not a single
component of one ship could be expected with certainty to work
aboard another. The very nuts and bolts were no longer
interchangeable, and the supply position became quite impossible.
Given time, we might even have overcome these difficulties, but
the enemy ships were already attacking in thousands with weapons
which now seemed centuries behind those that we had invented. Our
magnificent Fleet, crippled by our own science, fought on as best
it could until it was overwhelmed and forced to surrender. The
ships fitted with the Field were still invulnerable, but as
fighting units they were almost helpless. Every time they switched
on their generators to escape from enemy attack, the permanent
distortion of their equipment increased. In a month, it was all over.
THIS IS THE true story of our defeat, which I give without
prejudice to my defense before this Court. I make it, as I have
said, to counteract the libels that have been circulating against
the men who fought under me, and to show where the true blame for
our misfortunes lay.
Finally, my request, which as the Court will now realize I make in
no frivolous manner and which I hope will therefore be granted.
The Court will be aware that the conditions under which we are
housed and the constant surveillance to which we are subjected
night and day are somewhat distressing. Yet I am not complaining
of this: nor do I complain of the fact that shortage of
accommodation has made it necessary to house us in pairs.
But I cannot be held responsible for my future actions if I am
compelled any longer to share my cell with Professor Norden, late
Chief of the Research Staff of my armed forces.
--
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'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' /|\
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of Discordian Mysteries. This post insults Islam. Mohamed
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