Word: aircrafting
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...documentary leaves little doubt about that. Image after image sears the soul: Japanese kamikazes crashing their planes into aircraft carriers off Okinawa; American G.I.s blown to bits by 16-in. mortar shells in Tarawa; a Japanese woman throwing her baby and then herself off a cliff in Saipan rather than surrender; the frozen bodies of American G.I.s massacred by German SS in the Ardennes Forest; the beaten carcass of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini hanging by his heels in a square in Milan; and, of course, the emaciated corpses of slaughtered Jews piled up like cords of wood at Dachau...
...scientific advances to increase the destructive powers of their forces. With improved organization and weaponry, 20th century wars killed tens of millions of combatants and civilians. And the march of science and technology continues. World War II forces look pale in comparison to the tanks, armed helicopters, automatic cannon, aircraft and precision-strike capabilities available today, to say nothing of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons...
...into Iraq and Yugoslavia--will no longer have to play hide-and-seek with enemy radar and deadly antiaircraft missiles. Before U.S. troops enter hostile airspace, a fleet of unmanned combat air vehicles will have attacked missile batteries capable of shooting down any troop-carrying aircraft. Sensors aboard each drone will detect targets, which will be attacked--after receipt of a human command--by the aircraft's precision-guided munitions...
...troops will then fly into a foreign hot spot on huge, ungainly tilt-rotor aircraft. The C-130-size "quad tilt-rotor" will be able to carry nearly 100 troops more than 2,000 miles. The rotors, perched at the ends of a pair of big wings, act like a helicopter's for takeoffs and landings, eliminating the need for runways. But once airborne, the rotors tilt forward and pull the plane through the sky at more than 350 m.p.h...
Soldiers pouring from such aircraft will be climbing into wheeled vehicles, not the tracked tanks that have been the backbone of Army armor for more than a half-century. The civilian world's fascination with off-road vehicles has generated improvements the military wants for itself. Twenty years ago, only tracked vehicles could traverse squishy terrain. Today tire pressure can be adjusted from inside the cab--the softer the ground, the softer the tires--meaning heavy, tracked vehicles no longer have a monopoly on mobility. "If technology permits," says Shinseki, in what some of his colleagues see as battlefield blasphemy...