Word: civilian
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...Virginia is of "information warfare"--now the hottest concept in the halls of the Pentagon. Info warriors hope to transform the way soldiers fight. Their goal: to exploit the technological wonders of the late 20th century to launch rapid, stealthy, widespread and devastating attacks on the military and civilian infrastructure of an enemy. In interviews with scores of military, intelligence and Administration officials, TIME discovered that the Pentagon has wide-ranging plans to revolutionize the battlefield with information technology much as tanks did in World War I and the atom bomb in World War II. Says Admiral William Owens, vice...
...manned bombers may become obsolete in future conflicts. Just as computers have flattened the organizational charts of corporations, the military may have to restructure its ranks with fewer layers of staff officers needed to process orders between a general and his shooters on the ground. The distinction between civilian and soldier may blur with more private contractors needed to operate complex equipment on the battlefield. There will, no doubt, be bureaucratic and even cultural opposition within the military to this new form of fighting. "It's a lot easier to pick up girls...
...than any nation on earth," says NSA director Vice Admiral John McConnell. A wired adversary could take down these computers "without ever entering the country," an outside panel studying future Pentagon missions warned in a report last May. The results of such attacks could cause "widespread fear throughout the civilian population," according to another Pentagon report released last December...
Indeed, in some respects, infowar may only refine the way modern warfare has shifted toward civilian targets, from the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo during World War II to the "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia. Taking down a country's air-traffic control or phone systems might be done cleanly with computers-but it still represents an attack on civilians. Economic warfare can be as dire as other forms of war, as embargoes have shown. With its fancy technology, infowar may be able to avoid some of the battlefield's lethal, bloody and dirty traditions. But the words of William Tecumseh...
...once the leader in deep-sea research, the future looks bleak. The U.S. government is giving less and less money to civilian scientists, while the military considers mines in shallow waters a much greater threat than Russian submarines. Laments Trieste veteran Walsh: "If I had seen a Russian footprint instead of a fish on the bottom, the program might have gotten more support...