I don’t know about you, but I am sick of certain clichés about unmanned systems and combat. It’s just my opinion, but some commonly repeated statements confuse, rather than clarify. Here are a couple of my “favorites.”
“The use of unmanned systems in combat will destroy the warrior ethos.”
I’m sure you’ve heard this. “They’re cowards, these so-called ‘soldiers’ who strike from afar. A real man confronts his enemy face-to-face. These new weapons should be banned.”
Of course, this quote is from a French nobleman talking the English archers and their long bows. The whole argument about the unmanliness of “death from afar” probably started the first time someone threw a rock. This line of reasoning ignores the fact that war isn’t about building soldierly virtues; it’s about winning (or to paraphrase Patton, “Making the other guy die for his country”). Read more
here’s nothing quite like the prospect of a half of a billion dollars to get the blood pumping, the brain scheming, and the pundits pontificating. The President’s ambitious Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP), which includes $70 million for robots, may not revive the American manufacturing sector, but it certainly has provided fodder for the technology media. 
Every once in a while, someone asks me to translate military jargon, or more often summarize a lengthy statement into an “executive summary.” Here are a couple of examples of my attempts to convert a dense forest of words into a simple “take home message.”
community is clear; we must do more with less and do it faster. We need to create the best possible systems for tomorrow’s needs as soon as possible. One niggling little problem: what does tomorrow look like?
emphasis placed on acquisition of Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) products by the Department of Defense (DoD). In the past, COTS constituted a few percent of all items purchased by the DoD. While the overall amount is still low, some weapon systems are composed by as much as 50% of COTS. What are the good, the bad and the ugly about COTS?
griping about product development. Trying to deliver a system that the government wants was impossible, because of the time lag. Who knows what the Department of Defense would want or need 2 or 5 years from now? All participants in the meeting agreed that it was the governments’ fault. The Feds simply weren’t telling us what they wanted. Well, it’s not for the lack of trying. It seems every week there’s a new roadmap, report, vision, or long-term plan. I recently reviewed my personal collection of downloaded documents and came up with: 
importance of “specs.” Go to any biometric solution provider’ workplace, and you will see highly trained professionals closely examining the latest RFP, eagerly analyzing the specifications, as well as the Scope of Work.