[tegansnyder]

For those interested, they did something very similar in the 1990s with the goat population and killed something like 250,000 goats: https://allthatsinteresting.com/project-isabela

"A Judas goat was a female who would be captured from the wild, tagged with a GPS tracking device, and then released to find other goats, especially lovelorn males.

The sharpshooters would take to the air again, track the Judas goat, find her hidden companions and gun them down, always leaving the Judas goat alive so that the whole process would begin again. Track, slaughter, repeat. The team eventually used 900 Judas goats over the course of a couple of years."

[breischl]

Probably gave those poor females a serious complex. Can you imagine how messed up you'd be if every time you approached someone of the opposite sex, they got shot from a helicopter?

[sizzzzlerz]

I guess that's why I'm still single.

[slovette]

I know these types of comments are frowned upon on HN, but this made me LOL. Nicely done.

[sametmax]

And this is why I don't believe in uprisings and revolutions in modern societies anymore. As an individual, even if you can buy guns, you are not that far away from the goat compared to what tech and training current militaries have.

[some_random]

In the specific, an unarmored helicopter hovering or moving predictably close enough for a marksman to shoot at a target (goat or otherwise) would be easy prey for a handful of people with small arms.

In the more general case, I don't think you quite appreciate how difficult counterinsurgency operations are, or how little tech affects them. Jets can drop some pretty nasty ordinance, but require targeting (the counterinsurgents _really_ don't want to damage infrastructure if they can avoid it) which they have trouble doing. Attack Helicopters are lean mean killing machines, but aren't great in urban environments and also need to PID their targets if the brass gives any fucks about civilian casualties. Tanks are great pretty much everything when it comes to conventional warfare, but _MUST BE SCREENED BY INFANTRY_. Looking at you, giraffe-man.

All this probably makes you think of drones (I'm going to only talk about large UAVs here), which are in fact a pretty useful asset to security forces. They can carry out assassinations, recon, target designation, gather intelligence, and all without risking pilots. However, in a large scale insurgency, they really aren't that useful in a tactical sense.

This is because of the simple truth that the only thing that can hold territory (especially cities) is infantry. A drone can't disperse a mob. A jet can't set up a checkpoint. An attack helicopter can't search a neighborhood for contraband. A tank can't rescue an informant in the middle of the night. Only infantry can do this.

And in spite of any training or technical advantages to date, an insurgent with a rifle can still kill infantry.

[sametmax]

Makes sense, thanks.

[chongli]

A human can carry a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft weapon and destroy the helicopter, while hiding amongst the rubble of a chaotic urban environment.

Asymmetric warfare is very difficult. The US military struggled for many years and spent huge amounts of money fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are small countries compared to the US. Trying to fight an insurgency on home soil, without the support of a tax-paying public? Forget about it!

[gumby]

FWIW insurgent asymmetric warfare was how the US primarily fought its own revolution (there were a few set piece battles as well, e.g. Yorktown, hardly insignificant).

In the end I believe quite a bit of cash spread around Whitehall is what made the difference, though not everyone will agree.

In the US civil war there was much less of this for reasons unclear to me.

[jessaustin]

One theory would be that CSA's draconian conscription operation (watch or read Cold Mountain, for example) emptied the countryside of its natural defenders. The conscription level may have been necessary given the idiotic location of the CSA capital, but quite a bit about CSA was idiotic.

In Missouri, which didn't secede but had a lot of Southern sympathizers, this conscription wasn't really a thing, and there was lots of asymmetric warfare. It actually started in the 1850s in what would become Kansas. (There are good movies about this too: The Outlaw Josey Wales and Ride with the Devil.)

[sametmax]

> The US military struggled for many years and spent huge amounts of money fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan

They kill 100 fighters for one death on their side, and have control over the natural resources they want. I don't see the bright side for the opposite party.

> Trying to fight an insurgency on home soil, without the support of a tax-paying public? Forget about it!

That's a better argument. But that would assume the revolution would last. The local population would not have money or food either, but wouldn't have the supply chain or the reserve the military have.

[pfisch]

The us lost these engagements though. Truly defeating insurgencies like these is currently beyond the reach of the most technologically advanced and well funded armies in the world.

[ALittleLight]

Except...

A. You don't have to be alone.

B. You can be armed.

C. You have more intelligence than a goat.

I think that, until we get to automated police forces, rebellion will still be possible.

[nyolfen]

which is why lightly armed irregulars have such a shoddy record against superpower militaries

[behringer]

But humans aren't goats, even if they aren't in the military.

[trhway]

From the POV of an alien civilization observing how humans have been screwing Earth ecosystem we as well may be just like those goats.

[AWildC182]

Let's revisit this comment once the US leaves the middle east.

[sametmax]

Does it look like any local fighting in the middle east is winning ?

Also, I've you looked at the body count on each sides ?

And in the end, don't the USA have the control of the local natural resources exactly as they wanted to ?

[AWildC182]

Doesn't look like anyone is winning really. If the military leaves right now, we'll probably just have ISIS 2.0 in a few years.

Urban combat is really painful for all involved. If it was like shooting goats from a helicopter wouldn't the conflict be over already?

[sametmax]

Counter terrorism is not the real reason there is a war here. Several countries in Europe fight terrorism, and they don't need to go to war.

The american are still here because they benefit from it.

[pfisch]

Winning a war and body counts are not the same thing.

Even in vietnam the US had a good ratio in terms of killing Vietnamese vs allied deaths. That doesn’t mean the US was winning.

[sametmax]

The local fighters are slaughtered in mass for very little effect toward their objectives of liberation while the US still maintain control of the natural resources the way they want.

Winning is not always necessary.

[cwp]

I think they must have been doing this on a smaller scale in the 80s as well. When I was a kid my dad was doing some work with the Ecuadorian park service, and I went on a goat hunt on Isabela. The park rangers killed a lot of goats, and we barbecued one of them on the beach.