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Utilitarianism in war : what are some under-explored tools of war that are effective but dismissed out of hand due to bad optics ?
This isn't so much a top level post as a seed to begin a conversation. I've always found it rather barbaric that the only acceptable way for a superior power to engage in war is straight violence & bloodshed. This is especially true with a truly imbalanced siege. In almost every occasion, the 'honorable' way of doing a siege costs more money, causes more deaths and eventually leads to the same outcome.
Chemical warfare is horrible. But are there way to engage in chemical warfare that neutralizes the enemy without any long-term consequences to the heath of those attacked ? Why limit yourself to flashbangs and smoke grenades ? Why not use FPV drones with mass-pepper spray ? You can buy a 1000 pepper-spray FPV drones for a $1 million. Train a few people to operate them as a swarm (like a school of tuna) and they will be very hard to take out. A single deployment of the iron dome costs Israel more.
Sound based violence has been used before, but can it be taken further ? Gaza is just across the border.
Why not identify 1 of the tunnels on high ground and flood them ? Maybe flood them with sewage just so it is extra disgusting.
It's war. You're willing to kill by the thousands. Less than honorable means are absolutely acceptable (with long term effects accounted for) if that means a lower body count.
What are some other avenues of war that could be tried to minimize body count but increase effectiveness ? Is there some long term pandoras box reason to keep these tools of war off the table ?
Using AI controlled infrared lasers to blind people. The AI looks for people's eyes and when it detects them, it aims the laser and gives the eyes enough of a blast to roast them. Being infrared makes it difficult to know where it's coming from, it turns a combatant into a permanent liability, and the threat of one of these sitting around would be psychologically damaging. It's fairly cheap, non-lethal, and could be deployed in all kinds of ways (mount it on a drone, a small stationary platform collaborators could put in their windows, whatever).
That's already banned.
Just set it to not intentionally roast the eyes worse than 20/200. Some accidents may happen, but that's war. If they've got binoculars or sunglasses, they're probably fair game for a full on blast by my reading of the 'rules.'
Is it possible to modulate the resulting vision of the target by modulating the laser in some way? I would think that the exact level of vision is primarily determined by the shape of the lens, whereas whether or not you have vision is primarily determined by the status of your retina, and a blinding laser weapon would be good at damaging the retina and perhaps the lens, but not so good at precisely choosing what shape the lens will take on. They're not strapping these folks into chairs like a LASIK procedure, after all.
Well, LASIK exists.. But I think it's a much harder problem in the middle of a battle if you're not just content to burn eyes out for good.
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