Human Nature: Science, Technology, and Life.

Women, Combat, and Fort Hood

Fort Hood, Texas, hosts tens of thousands of men who are trained to fight for their country. But none of them stopped Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as he blew away 13 of their colleagues Thursday afternoon. It was a civilian police officer, Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who confronted and shot him in an exchange of gunfire. For her trouble, Munley took bullets in both legs and an arm. Maybe the president will pin a medal on her.

Here's a better way to honor Munley: End the ban on women in combat.

More here.

Hide and Seek

This week, the U.S. Army announced its "Top Ten Greatest Inventions of 2008." It's pretty clear what the Army is most excited about: the ability to see and kill the enemy from where you aren't.

Guerrillas and terrorists already have this ability, in the form of improvised explosive devices. They also have two other advantages: the element of surprise (through indigenous deployment) and fewer compunctions about collateral fatalities. To counteract these advantages, the Army needs the ability to scout and fire from places where soldiers aren't vulnerable to attack. That's what this year's celebrated innovations deliver.

First on the Army's list is the XM153 Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station:

Capable of being mounted on a variety of vehicles, this system provides the capability to remotely aim and fire a suite of crew-served weapons from either a stationary platform or while on the move, using the system power of the host vehicle. The system affords increased Soldier protection since the gunner is not exposed. It enhances target acquisition, identification, and engagement capabilities for non-turreted light armored vehicles; and also situational awareness during both day and night conditions using day and thermal cameras.

As you can see from these photos (PDF), the system turns a nonturreted vehicle into a turreted vehicle, except that the gunner doesn't have to be near the turret. He can "remotely aim and fire" any of its weapons. And he doesn't need night-vision equipment; the gun's thermal camera does that for him.

Next on the list:

The Projectile Detection Cueing 4-Corner System is a low cost acoustic gunfire detection system capable of detecting and locating the origin of incoming gunfire events. The Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station Lightning is a lightweight common remotely operated weapon station capable of supporting small arms weapons. ... The operator can monitor, control, and command both PDCue and CROWS Lightning from a single user interface. The integrated system increases Soldier effectiveness in detecting and locating enemy sniper positions, and provides the Soldier the ability to automatically move remote weapon stations to the detected sniper threat.

This works with the CROWS system above: From wherever you hunker down with the user interface, you can acoustically trace the location (PDF) of anyone firing nearby and send your "remote weapon station" to take him out.

Further down:

The Enhanced Mobile Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment Vehicle system combines multiple intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities onto a single, integrated platform. ... The system gives remote operating units the ability to quickly employ the system's combined capabilities to detect imminent attacks and take the appropriate actions to defeat enemy forces.

An aerostat is a buoyant aircraft. You can get a pretty good idea of the concept from these Raytheon photos (PDF): You float artificial eyes up into the sky, locate the enemy from there, and kill him.

And finally:

The One System Remote Video Terminal A-kit is an innovative modular video and data system that enables Soldiers to remotely receive near-real-time surveillance image and geospatial data directly from tactical unmanned aerial vehicles and manned platforms.

This AAI brochure (PDF) illustrates the basic technology: From wherever you are with your portable screen, you tap into a nearby drone and scout the whole area without poking your head out.

The overall pattern of these innovations is a gradual correction of guerrilla and terrorist advantages. We can't ambush, fire, and bomb as freely as the enemy can. We're much more vulnerable, emotionally and politically, to casualties among our fighters. We need the ability to hunt bombers and snipers patiently and precisely, without killing civilians or exposing our soldiers to easy attack. Step by step, technology is making that fantasy real.

Bombs, Innovation, and Afghanistan

In today's New York Times, James Dao reports that Afghan IEDs

are becoming more common and more sophisticated with each week, American military officers say. This year, bomb attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan have spiked to an all-time high, with 465 in May alone, more than double the number in the same month two years before. At least 46 American troops have been killed by I.E.D.'s this year, putting 2009 on track to set a record in the eight-year war. ... At the current rate, I.E.D. attacks on Afghan forces could reach 6,000 this year, up from 81 in 2003, an American military official said.

At least three of the lessons we drew from Iraq seem to apply in Afghanistan. First, IEDs enable insurgents to strike with a level of precision that would be impossible from a distance. Second, IEDs can be assembled from inexpensive, readily available components, such as fertilizer, artillery shells, and cell phones. Third, instead of risking human lives, you can hunt or disable IEDs with dogs or robots. The bomber isn't risking his life. Why risk yours?

Afghan insurgents are exploiting the same cheap technology that worked in Iraq. According to Dao, "The bombs are often made with fertilizer and diesel fuel, but some use mortar shells or old mines that litter the countryside. Some bombs are set off when vehicles pass over pressure plates. Others require remote control, like a cellphone. Still others detonate with a button or a wire touched to a battery." Likewise, we're using familiar detection methods: dogs, robots, and drones.

So what has changed? One difference is a lower level of technology in Afghanistan. Sometimes this works to the insurgents' advantage:

With few paved roads, Afghanistan is even more fertile territory for I.E.D.'s. than Iraq, where hard pavement often forced insurgents to leave bombs in the open. Not so in Afghanistan, where it is relatively easy to bury a device in a dirt road and cover the tracks.

But it can also make them vulnerable. U.S. officials tell Dao that IED deployment networks connect top layers of "financiers, logistical experts, bomb designers and trainers" with lower layers of "bomb planters, often villagers or nomadic herdsmen paid $10 or less to dig holes and serve as spotters." The weak link is the top layer. In Afghanistan, there may be fewer people with the expertise to run such networks than there were in Iraq.

To get the key players, you have to operate like a crime scene investigator. Dao reports:

Like a police forensic unit and a bomb squad rolled into one, Lieutenant Brown's 25-member team not only disarms I.E.D.'s but also scours sites—more than 50 this year—for telltale signatures of a bomb. Soil samples, electrical parts, fingerprints and photographs are sent for analysis, and detailed reports are compiled in a central database.

This is one of the main questions being tested in Afghanistan: Can forensic investigation and a pooled database unravel IED networks? Can high-tech police work catch the experts and organizers instead of settling for the suckers who plant the bombs? IEDs, like drones, are an evolving story of measures and countermeasures, technologies of destruction and technologies of detection. We don't know how the story will turn out. But we know which weapon will prevail. It won't be a device. It will be a process, a talent, and an attitude: innovation.

The Threat From Below

Will the next attack on the United States come from submarines?

When I asked that question seven years ago, the model I had in mind was the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group infamous for naval suicide strikes. A Tiger supporter had recently been caught building a submersible vessel.

Last month, the Tigers were wiped out by the Sri Lankan military. But the technology they were developing, submersibles, has caught on. "U.S. law enforcement officials say that more than a third of the cocaine smuggled into the United States from Colombia travels in submersibles," the Washington Post reports. "U.S. officials and their Colombian counterparts have detected evidence of more than 115 submersible voyages since 2006," and "U.S. officials expect 70 or more to be launched this year."

Why submersibles? They're hard to detect and easy to sink. The Post explains:

Until recently, submariners caught by authorities could not be charged in the United States or Colombia if the cocaine was scuttled. "The vessels are built to sink. When they open the valves, tons of water come in, and in a minute, or a minute and a half, they sink," [a Colombian admiral] said. "There is no evidence, and what starts as a counterdrug operation becomes a rescue operation." ... "With no drugs found, we couldn't prosecute," said [an] assistant U.S. attorney. At least eight crews have been returned to Colombia after rescue, without being charged.

Is it expensive to sink your own sub? Not if you're a drug lord. Each sub costs about $1 million to produce. The crew gets $500,000 or less. A recent 6.4-ton payload of cocaine was worth more than $100 million. As a percentage of the gross, subs are so cheap that they're routinely scuttled anyway.

That's the genius of submersibility. Several months ago, during the Israeli invasion of Gaza, we explored the terrestrial underworld of the Gaza tunnels. The tunnelers were developing a three-dimensional way of thinking about land: While one side built walls and stationed soldiers above ground, the other side went down 60 feet and dug past those barriers.

The nautical underworld is even better. You don't have to dig. You just glide. Even the semisubmersible crafts built by the drug lords are low enough to evade radar. And underwater, you can do something else that can't be done on land: dump your contraband and let gravity take it beyond your enemy's reach. No evidence, no conviction.

To stop this tactic, Congress recently enacted the Drug Trafficking Vessel Interdiction Act of 2008, which declares that anyone operating "any submersible vessel or semi-submersible vessel that is without nationality ... with the intent to evade detection, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both."

Maybe that law will deter submarine drug commerce. But what about submarine terrorism? Ultimately, "U.S. officials fear that the rogue vessels could be used by terrorists intent on reaching the United States with deadly cargos," the Post reports. In fact, "Colombian officials say some former military personnel might be helping to design, construct and direct the vessels" used by the drug lords. If so, all that's needed is a financial lure from al-Qaida to build a vessel for a different mission.

It might not be a suicide mission, either. Drug submersible builders are "trying to develop a remote-controlled model," according to officials contacted by the Post. Two men were arrested last year, apparently while peddling this technology. No crew necessary. Just pack the radioactive bomb aboard your craft, slip it underwater, and hit any coastal target.

Think about that the next time you take off your shoes at an airport security gate. If we expect the next 9/11 attack to come from the sky, we may be looking the wrong way.

Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.

War of the Worlds

The next battlefield in the evolution of warfare won't be in physical space. It'll be in cyberspace.

Today, President Obama will announce a civilian office to protect the nation's computer networks. Meanwhile, backstage, the U.S. military is preparing its own cyber-defense organization. If you haven't taken cyberwar seriously as a threat, it's time to start thinking about it. This morning's New York Times story is a good place to begin. Here are four points worth gleaning from it.

1. Cyberspace is a new dimension of battlespace. According to the story, U.S. officials now see

cyberspace as comparable to more traditional battlefields. "We are not comfortable discussing the question of offensive cyberoperations, but we consider cyberspace a war-fighting domain," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. "We need to be able to operate within that domain just like on any battlefield, which includes protecting our freedom of movement and preserving our capability to perform in that environment."

Wars used to be two-dimensional, confined to land and sea. Air power added a third dimension. Cyberspace adds a fourth. It has spatial properties, such as freedom of movement, but it isn't necessarily affected by events in physical space. I can invade your cyberspace and cripple your forces without controlling any other dimension of the war.

2. It defies national boundaries. As the Times notes,

the military debate over whether the Pentagon or the [National Security Agency] is best equipped to engage in offensive operations ... hinges on the question of how much control should be given to American spy agencies, since they are prohibited from acting on American soil. "It's the domestic spying problem writ large," one senior intelligence official said recently. "These attacks start in other countries, but they know no borders. So how do you fight them if you can't act both inside and outside the United States?"

Exactly. And this is just one of many puzzles created by the nonoverlap of cyberspace with physical space. How can defense and intelligence forces organized by nationality and territory patrol, hunt, and fight across computer networks that transcend such boundaries? We'll have to rethink the whole notion of domains.

3. It empowers nonstate actors. One major factor in the rise of terrorism over the last decade is the proliferation of physically destructive technology. Cyberspace multiplies that problem by allowing ubiquitous information technology to become destructive in a different way. It lowers the barriers to military entry, enabling mischief by individuals, small groups, and loose networks. According to the Times, our civilian cybersecurity office will be "responsible for coordinating private-sector and government defenses against the thousands of cyberattacks mounted against the United States—largely by hackers but sometimes by foreign governments—every day." Are the hackers less dangerous than the governments? Don't count on it. And they're certainly harder to pin down.

4. It facilitates economic destruction. The civilian office will report "to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council" and will "protect systems that run the stock exchanges, clear global banking transactions and manage the air traffic control system," says the story. Why the focus on commerce and finance? Because that's how you bring a country to its knees in this century. It's one reason why the 9/11 terrorists targeted the World Trade Center.

To hit our financial system in physical space, al-Qaida had to get 19 guys through airport screening. And that was before we beefed up security at our airports and borders. But borders and screeners no longer protect us, because cyberspace dissolves distance.

In the old days, you needed physical reach to cripple your adversary's livelihood. It took an invasion or massive bombing to devastate his manufacturing base. An information economy enjoys no such buffer. It can be hit instantly through the computer networks that sustain it.

Over the last couple of months, we've talked about some of the incremental steps through which the physical and digital worlds are beginning to converge and blur. One is physical hyperlinks, which assign a digital incarnation to each physical object. A second is the integration of physical perception with 3-D digital maps. A third is the convergence of the phone and the Internet device with the universal remote.

Cyberwar is part of this revolution. We'd better wake up to it.

War as a Game

We've talked a lot in this blog about what happens when war, through remote-controlled drones, becomes more like a video game. But what happens when a video game becomes more like war?

Six Days in Fallujah, an interactive product being developed by Atomic Games, raises that question. Jamin Brophy-Warren explained the project in last week's Wall Street Journal:

The company sees it as a new kind of documentary. "For us, games are not just toys. If you look at how music, television and films have made sense of the complex issues of their times, it makes sense to do that with videogames," Mr. Tamte [Atomic's president] says. ... "Six Days," which uses actual events as its backdrop, is billed as having far deeper roots in reality and will be the first major game released about the ongoing war in Iraq. "We replicate a specific and accurate timeline—we mean six days literally," says Mr. Tamte. ... Atomic is working with more than three dozen soldiers who were in Fallujah, consulting thousands of photographs (some of which were mailed on memory cards from Camp Fallujah), and looking at classified satellite imagery to ensure that the game's appearance is faithful to the actual location.

The project's developers call it a "game-amentary." It sounds educational. But then a different kind of reality—commercial interest—intrudes on the documentary spin:

"Six Days" lacks one notable aspect of documentary: commentary. ... [T]hose involved in the new game said they didn't want to push a particular viewpoint and certainly weren't taking a stance on the morality of the invasion. "We're not trying to make social commentary. We're not pro-war. We're not trying to make people feel uncomfortable. We just want to bring a compelling entertainment experience," says Anthony Crouts, vice-president of marketing for Konami, the game's publisher. "At the end of the day, it's just a game."

Unless you think the battle of Fallujah was entertaining in real life, you can't make a video product about it that's both documentary and "just a game." Maybe someday, somebody will produce an interactive replica of the Iraq war. This doesn't sound like it.

Heaven’s Wrath

Big news from Pakistan: The government there is becoming a partner in our remote-controlled assassination campaign. Here's the deal: They'll let us kill our enemies on their soil if we'll use the same drones to kill their enemies, too.

Officially, Pakistan continues to object to the drone strikes. We just hit two more targets yesterday, prompting Pakistan's Foreign Office to declare that "these attacks are counterproductive and we hope that as a result of the policy review in Washington, we would have some positive outcome."

That's a pretty funny protest, since today's Wall Street Journal brings this news:

U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials are drawing up a fresh list of terrorist targets for Predator drone strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, part of a U.S. review of the drone program, according to officials involved. Pakistani officials are seeking to broaden the scope of the program to target extremists who have carried out attacks against Pakistanis, a move they say could win domestic support. ...

Already, the campaign has apparently stepped up attacks on the network of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who is believed to be behind the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was [current President] Zardari's wife. In the fourth of a series of recent attacks targeting Mr. Mehsud's network, a drone attack Wednesday killed at least eight militants along the Pakistan-Afghan border, according to two Pakistani officials. The intensified campaign could help win domestic support for the strikes because it shows that the drone attacks are targeting direct threats to Pakistan, said a Pakistani official.

To put it crudely, we seem to be renting out the drones. Since President Obama took office, the drones have been slaughtering Mehsud's fighters. Apparently, we're doing this to satisfy Zardari's government. And it's not clear whether the satisfaction is political or personal. Do the hits on Mehsud really generate "domestic support" for the drone strikes? Does the average Pakistani conclude that the CIA's killing machines aren't so bad after all? Or does the "domestic support" consist of Zardari? Are we buying his support by sending our drones to avenge his wife's death?

It's almost Shakespearean. But since we're in the 21st century instead of the 16th, we seal our pact with the king by sending machines, not human assassins, to bring heaven's wrath on the warlord who slew his beloved. And this time, the wrath really does come from heaven. Put yourself in Zardari's shoes. You're being offered the chance to destroy your enemy with a power unknown to history's greatest kings and generals: a bloodless, all-seeing airborne hunting party. Would you refuse?

And if you were Obama, would you refuse to wield this power? No way. According to the Journal, Obama has "concluded that the drones have been an effective weapon," and his aides are now "examining ways to reduce the time it takes between identifying a target and when the Predators fire—now less than 45 minutes." And in a curious coincidence, the U.S. also just announced a $5 million reward for "information leading to the arrest or location of Mehsud" and another warlord.

Something tells me there won't be an arrest. Location will be enough.

Drones Are for Sissies

From time to time, Human Nature checks in on the man-vs.-machine war experiment that's going on halfway around the world in Pakistan. It's like a video game, except real people are being killed. Al-Qaida and the Taliban are fielding human fighters. The United States is fielding remote-controlled unmanned aircraft armed with missiles. American generals and defense planners are watching this war to find out how much an unmanned force can accomplish. The less blood we have to risk and shed, particularly against an enemy who thrives on body bags and terror, the safer we'll be at home and abroad.

So, who's winning: the jihadis or the joysticks? Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times brings us a fresh update. Here's an analysis of his report and other stories filed in the last week, explaining the most important developments and why they matter.

1. How many strikes and kills? Since Aug. 31, there have been 38 Predator strikes, killing 9 "senior" al-Qaida leaders and many lower-level fighters. And that's not counting conventional airstrikes based on hot intelligence from the drones.

2. Why the increase? We stopped asking Pakistan for permission before striking. This has three effects: Strikes don't get vetoed, they don't get delayed till the intelligence (e.g., about who's in the compound) is cold, and the targets don't get tipped off by friends in the Pakistani government.

3. Where do the drones fly from? This has been a politically explosive question lately. Miller says the CIA Predators "take off and land at military airstrips in Pakistan."

4. Can they see through walls? Not literally, but in effect, yes. They're "outfitted with additional intelligence gear that has enabled the CIA to confirm the identities of targets even when they are inside buildings and can't be seen through the Predator's lens." If true, this is a huge development. It means the men have nowhere to hide from the machines.

5. Do the joystick pilots understand real combat? I've raised this question before, on the theory that killing real people from a faraway drone console can look too much like a video game. The CIA is mum about its people. But Christopher Drew of the New York Times reports that the Air Force "has begun training officers as drone pilots who have had little or no experience flying conventional planes."

6. Why is Pakistan tolerating the strikes? "Because the CIA has expanded its targeting to include militant groups that threaten the government," Miller reports. To that extent, the machines have become Pakistan's allies. If true, this is another big development. The Pakistan war experiment isn't just technological. It's political. It's a test of whether the drones can inflict military damage without triggering too much anti-Americanism. By buying off the host government with hits on its enemies, we're buying time to keep hitting our own enemies there. Politically, it's hard to imagine a manned U.S. force getting away with what the drones have done.

7. What are the drones' psychological effects? Among other things, the Pakistan experiment is testing how a war waged by machines affects the morale of their human adversaries. U.S. officials tell Miller that the militants, hounded and pounded by the drones, "have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust." One official says that al-Qaida operatives are "wondering who's next," that they're "hunting down people who they think are responsible" for exposing them to the drones, and that "people are showing up dead or disappearing." Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times adds that in northwest Pakistan, "[s]ome locals have given up drinking Lipton tea, out of a growing conviction that the [CIA] is using the tea bags as homing beacons for its pilotless planes."

On the other hand, Mazzetti reports many Pakistanis think that the drones "reveal the fears of Americans to take casualties"—that we're "sending robots to do a man's job." He cites P.W. Singer's book Wired for War, in which Muslim insurgents "said that America's reliance on drone weapons is a sign that the United States is afraid to sacrifice troops in combat."

I'm not buying this. I'm not buying the U.S. spin that the drones are reducing al-Qaida to fratricide. And I'm sure not buying this jihadi propaganda about the glory of sacrifice. Sacrifice is for suckers. Even terrorists know that. That's why, as Drew reports, our ostensibly cowardly drone operators are watching this:

On a recent day, at 1:15 p.m. in Tucson—1:15 the next morning in Afghanistan—a pilot and sensor operator were staring at gray-toned video from the Predator's infrared camera. ... The crew was scanning a road, looking for ... signs of anyone planting improvised explosive devices or lying in wait for a convoy. ... "We spend 70 to 80 percent of our time doing this, just scanning roads," said the pilot. ...

In short, our people are hiding behind lethal gizmos watching your people plant lethal gizmos and hide. Your people don't intend to be there when the bombs go off any more than ours do. So if we're sissies, so are you.

8. Obama's plans? "Because of its success, the Obama administration is set to continue the accelerated campaign," Miller reports. The New York Times' David Singer and Eric Schmitt add that Obama is thinking of extending the strikes deeper into Pakistan:

The extensive missile strikes being carried out by [CIA]-operated drones have until now been limited to the tribal areas. ... But some American officials say the missile strikes in the tribal areas have forced some leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to flee south toward Quetta, making them more vulnerable. In separate reports, groups led by both Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in the region, and Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, a top White House official on Afghanistan, have recommended expanding American operations outside the tribal areas if Pakistan cannot root out the strengthening insurgency.

Broadening the war in Pakistan is hugely dangerous. But if we do it, the safest force to send in isn't the Marines, Green Berets, or stealth fighters. It's the drones.

Iran's Drones

What's more unsettling than U.S. military planes flying over Iraq with nobody inside them?

Iranian military planes doing the same thing.

Last Thursday, Danger Room reported that according to its sources, American planes had shot down an Iranian drone in Iraqi airspace. Yesterday, the United States confirmed it. We and our friends are no longer the only nations flying remote-controlled vehicles over other countries. Instead of looking down on the enemy through the eyes of unmanned aircraft, our military personnel will increasingly find themselves on the wrong end of the camera—and eventually the missile.

The United States claims that the Iranian drone shot down on Feb. 25 spent more than an hour in Iraqi airspace and was "well inside Iraqi territory." Depending on whom you believe, it was 10, 12, 25, or 80 miles inside Iraq. One theory is that the drone was spying on a camp full of Iranian dissidents (or, to put it less nicely, terrorists). Another is that it was looking for routes to smuggle weapons into Iraq. It was unarmed and relatively unsophisticated, with a range of 90 miles (which means it almost certainly didn't go 80 miles into Iraq) and an altitude limit of 14,000 feet.

The incident raises at least three questions. First: How many other drones does Iran have, and what can they do? According to Danger Room:

In 2007, Iran said it built a drone with a range of 420 miles. In February, Iran's deputy defense minister claimed its latest UAV could now fly as far as 600 miles. ... Iran often exaggerates what its weapons can do. But, if this drone really can stay in the air for for that long, the Washington Times notes, "it could soar over every U.S. military installation, diplomatic mission or country of interest in the Middle East."

Today's Los Angeles Times adds:

Iran has been developing unmanned aviation technologies, displaying drone aircraft during military parades and incorporating them into war games along its eastern and western borders in recent years. In December, Iran said it had developed a new generation of "spy drones" that provide real-time surveillance over enemy terrain. And last month an Iranian air force officer told media Iran had created drones with a range of 1,200 miles.

The distance from Iran to Tel Aviv is about 600 miles.

Second: Who else has drones? We know, for example, that Israel, Georgia, and Pakistan have them. Iran's ability to produce them means that Iranian-affiliated miscreants will be deploying them, too. Danger Room notes:

Iran has supplied Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group, with both models [its Ababil and Misrad drones]. Misrad drones flew reconnaissance missions in both November 2004 and April 2005. Then, in 2006, during Hezbollah's war with Israel, the group operated both Misrads and Ababils over Israel's skies. At least one was shot down by Israeli fighter jets.

Third: How will the proliferation of drones affect future wars? The emerging ability of our adversaries to do to us what we've been doing to them—invade, spy, and eventually kill without risking any personnel—is a huge problem. The number of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan since President Obama took office is now up to six, with a casualty count exceeding 100. Imagine somebody doing that to us.

On the other hand, nobody died in the Feb. 25 incident. According to the U.S. military, before firing, our forces confirmed that "no collateral damage would result from a shoot-down." In fact, we knew more than that. We knew we wouldn't be killing any military personnel, either, since the drone's pilot was in Iran. That made it easier to shoot down the drone without triggering a political confrontation and blowing up diplomatic efforts with Iran. It's been three weeks since the incident, and Iran still hasn't mentioned it in public. If tomorrow's spy aircraft can be shot down without spilling blood and starting wars, that's not such a bad thing.

Drones and Spies

How are humans and unmanned vehicles getting along in our experimental robot proxy war in Pakistan? Pretty well. Yesterday's New York Times revealed more about collaborations between U.S. drones and Pakistani ground forces. A few highlights:

1. Pakistanis on the ground are spotting targets for the drones.

"The intelligence sharing has really improved in the past few months," said Talat Masood, a retired army general. ... Intelligence from Pakistani informants has been used to bolster the accuracy of missile strikes from remotely piloted Predator and Reaper aircraft against the militants in the tribal areas, officials from both countries say. More than 30 attacks by the aircraft have been conducted since last August, most of them after President Zardari took office in September. A senior American military official said that 9 of 20 senior Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Pakistan had been killed by those strikes.

2. The drones are tracking targets for Pakistanis on the ground.

The C.I.A. helped [Pakistani] commandos track the Saudi militant linked to Al Qaeda, Zabi al-Taifi, for more than a week before the Pakistani forces surrounded his safe house in the Khyber Agency. The Pakistanis seized him, along with seven Pakistani and Afghan insurgents, in a dawn raid on Jan. 22, with a remotely piloted C.I.A. plane hovering overhead and personnel from the C.I.A. and Pakistan's main spy service closely monitoring the mission, a senior Pakistani officer involved in the operation said.

3. Pakistan is tracking the drones. Its agents know their whereabouts in real time.

In addition, a small team of Pakistani air defense controllers working in the United States Embassy in Islamabad ensures that Pakistani F-16 fighter-bombers conducting missions against militants in the tribal areas do not mistakenly hit remotely piloted American aircraft flying in the same area or a small number of C.I.A. operatives on the ground, a second senior Pakistani officer said.

4. Reliance on drones is protecting American but not Pakistani troops. This is the chief strategic problem exposed by the war. We can hit the enemy from an unmanned aerial vehicle with impunity. But the enemy can retaliate against our ally on the ground, thereby putting pressure on the alliance. According to the Times, "Pakistani Army officers say the American strikes draw retaliation against Pakistani troops in the tribal areas, whose convoys and bases are bombed or attacked with rockets after each United States missile strike."

Human Nature's interest in the Pakistan conflict is all about its experimental lessons in unmanned warfare. Toward that end, two of the key factors to watch are 1) the ability of manned and unmanned forces to work together and 2) the enemy's ability to punish manned forces for damage inflicted by unmanned forces. We'll keep watching both.

Spying With Google Earth

The picture, taken from directly overhead, shows an airfield in Pakistan. It looks like a video frame from one of the American killer drones that have been hunting Taliban and al-Qaida fighters there. But that can't be: The drones are right there in the frame, sitting on the ground. So who took the picture?

A plain old commercial satellite, apparently. The image was freely available on Google Earth until Wednesday ...

More here.

Present Without Leave

The boss of the Pakistani Taliban likes to train his fighters at a big house in the mountainous region near Afghanistan. Or perhaps I should say, he used to. Reuters has called the house "fortress-like." If U.S. troops had tried to storm it, the militants inside might have repelled or killed them. But the Americans never showed up in person. Instead, on Saturday, they sent an unmanned aerial vehicle, which fired a missile into the compound, killing around 30 enemy insurgents. So much for fortresses.

Then, today, American drones struck another Pakistani Taliban hideout. The initial casualty count at the second compound is even higher. And that's before all the bodies are pulled from the rubble. 

Even by the lowest casualty estimates, these are the two most lethal strikes of the monthslong robot proxy war we've been waging in Pakistan. For those of you keeping score, the number of drone strikes since July is now running into the 30s, and the body count has passed 250, including eight or more senior al-Qaida officers.

The military advantage of sending drones instead of soldiers is that we can blow away fortresses and adversaries while keeping our troops out of harm's way. But there's a political advantage, too: If we don't set foot on Pakistani soil, Pakistan's government doesn't have to explain to its people why it's tolerating an American occupation.

That's why the official U.S. and Pakistani response to reporters' questions about the massacre at the Taliban compound is silence. The CIA, which operates our Predator drones in Pakistan, isn't talking. Neither is our embassy in Islamabad. Neither is the Pakistani government. Nothing to see here, folks. No American boots on the ground. Move along.

But—oops!—it turns out that we do have people on the ground in Pakistan. And they're managing the drones. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., spilled the beans at a Senate hearing on Thursday. Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times explains what happened:

Feinstein expressed surprise over Pakistani opposition to the campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Islamic extremist targets along Pakistan's northwestern border. "As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base," she said. ... [F]ormer U.S. intelligence officials ... confirmed that Feinstein's account was accurate. ... As chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein is privy to classified details of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts.

It didn't take long for Feinstein's slip to hit the Pakistani press. And it was news to most Pakistanis, who, like the rest of us, have assumed all along that the drones flew over the border from Afghanistan.

Predators may be unmanned, but they're hardly unsupervised. In addition to being remotely piloted, they're locally prepped and serviced. In military parlance, they're unmanned "systems," and the systems include on-site crews. If the Predators are operating from a base in Pakistan, then we have personnel at that base to tend and help launch them.

Who are these personnel? Miller reports that in recent years, the CIA "has deployed as many as 200 people" to Pakistan, working "alongside other U.S. operatives who specialize in electronic communications and spy satellites." If the CIA operates the Predators and the Predators take off from Pakistan, then ... well, it's pretty obvious. And this defeats much of the political advantage of using drones in the first place. It puts our forces squarely on Pakistani soil.

Why the agency bases its drones in Pakistan instead of just flying them over the border from Afghanistan baffles me. But a senator blurting out this secret at a public hearing? That doesn't surprise me at all. Unmanned vehicles are getting smarter and less error-prone all the time, but human beings are as fallible and foolish as ever. Maybe now that we've learned how to keep pilots out of harm's way, we can do the same for politicians.

The Underworld

Two weeks ago, when Israel was pounding Gaza, we looked at technical options for blocking or detecting the tunnels Hamas uses to smuggle arms from Egypt. The list ranged from walls to moats to sensors to periodic bombing. The idea was to offer Israel ways to cut off the flow of weapons without having to continue its military campaign.

Israel then halted its invasion, based on a memorandum of understanding in which the United States pledged, among other things, to "provide logistical and technical assistance and to train and equip regional security forces in counter-smuggling tactics." It was pretty obvious who the "regional security forces" were, given that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was already in Egypt.

So what's happened since then? Who's doing what about the tunnels? And can a tunnel, of all things, bring peace to the Middle East?

For now, Israel is still bombing the Gaza tunnels. On Sunday, Israel hit six of them, ostensibly retaliating for rockets launched from Gaza. Here's a photo of one bombed site, taken yesterday. It gives you a rough idea of how much—and how little—damage was inflicted.

The most interesting thing about the bombing is Israel's efforts to avoid killing anyone in or around the tunnels. According to the AP, "Palestinians said residents near the Egypt-Gaza border received calls after nightfall Sunday from the Israeli military advising them to leave" before the tunnel bombings. The recorded message said: "Everybody who is near any place used for terror or weapon storage facility or tunnels, should evacuate the area immediately." Then Israeli planes sent sonic booms through the area, alerting tunnel workers, who proceeded to get out before the planes dropped their bombs. "No casualties were reported from any of the bombings," says the AP.

Will bombing solve the tunnel problem? No. Last week, the commander of Israel's air force admitted, "If we hit them today, they'll open again tomorrow and they'll be dug in the future, too." The Israeli military thinks weapons shipments to Gaza should be intercepted at sea or in the Egyptian desert before they get to the tunnels. But U.S. envoy George Mitchell says the best way to close the tunnels might be to open Gaza's borders above ground: "To be successful in preventing the illicit traffic of arms into Gaza, there must be a mechanism to allow the flow of legal goods."

Mitchell is right. Opening the borders won't stop Hamas from seeking weapons. But it'll ease the economic necessity that currently drives Gazans of all persuasions to dig and maintain underground channels to Egypt. Then we can isolate and target those who work for Hamas and its arms network.

That's where technology comes in. The United States and Egypt, apparently spurred by a U.S. financial-aid requirement and the Jan. 16 agreement with Israel, are trying some of the high-tech options we discussed a couple of weeks ago. Reuters says Egypt began "installing cameras and motion sensors" along its Gaza border on Jan. 29, assisted by "joint U.S., French and German expertise." The system, designed to detect tunnel excavation, is being networked by cables that will run "from south of Rafah to the Mediterranean coast." AP has a more explicit report. Citing an Egyptian official, it says U.S. Army engineers are installing ground-penetrating radar.

I'll be surprised if that works. As we explained last month, ground-penetrating radar can't see below 50 feet of earth, and the Egypt-to-Gaza tunnels run deeper than that. That's why GPR lost its deterrent value along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, the New York Times reported yesterday,

Despite huge enforcement actions on both sides of the Southwest border, the Mexican marijuana trade is more robust—and brazen—than ever, law enforcement officials say. Mexican drug cartels routinely transported industrial-size loads of marijuana in 2008, excavating new tunnels and adopting tactics like ramp-assisted smuggling to get their cargoes across undetected.

In Gaza, tunnels have proved so effective and resilient that Israel is becoming infatuated with them. Yesterday, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak, the guy in charge of bombing them, proposed to connect Gaza to the West Bank via—you guessed it—an underground corridor. "The preferred way to do it would be to dig a tunnel that would be under Israeli sovereignty, but under totally free and unobstructed use by Palestinians," Barak explained. He even has a specific route in mind.

Why run the corridor underground? To avoid disturbing or threatening the surface. Israelis and Palestinians could cross paths without seeing one another. Palestine would be connected without bisecting Israel. That's what's really emerging from the tunnel industry: a three-dimensional way of thinking about land. You build your walls and station your soldiers above ground; we go down 60 feet and dig past you. We demand access to the West Bank; you tell us we can't go through Israel, but we can go under it. In a region where land is scarce and fiercely contested, the third dimension, the one beneath our feet, was bound to become part of the problem. Maybe it can be part of the solution.

Obama's Drones

New president, same war.

Saturday's Washington Post brings the latest report from Pakistan:

Two remote U.S. missile strikes that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts in northwestern Pakistan yesterday offered the first tangible sign of President Obama's commitment to sustained military pressure on the terrorist groups there. ... It remained unclear yesterday whether Obama personally authorized the strike or was involved in its final planning, but military officials have previously said the White House is routinely briefed about such attacks in advance. At his daily White House briefing, press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to answer questions about the strikes, saying, "I'm not going to get into these matters."

Why is Obama sticking with Bush's drone war? Because it's doing its job, grimly and quietly. Reuters has the body count:

The United States carried out about 30 attacks on suspected militants with missiles fired by pilotless drones in 2008, according to a Reuters tally, more than half after the beginning of September. The attacks killed more than 220 people, including foreign militants, according to a tally of reports from Pakistani intelligence agents, district government officials and residents.

That's roughly equal to the body count from the first day of Israel's December assault on Gaza. But the outcry is nowhere near as loud. In fact, the Post notes,

The Pakistani government, which has loudly protested some earlier strikes, was quiet yesterday. In September, U.S. and Pakistani officials reached a tacit agreement to allow such attacks to continue without Pakistani involvement, according to senior officials in both countries.

Pakistan finally piped up today, meekly expressing its "sincere hope that the United States will review its policy and adopt a more holistic and integrated approach."

Why the comparative silence? Because the drones aren't human -- technically, U.S. forces aren't in Pakistan -- and because they pick off their targets a few at a time, not in a massive blitz. They can hover, study, track, and wait for hot intelligence from the ground. That's one reason why they're killing a high ratio of bad guys to civilians.

Regional and intelligence experts say the strikes have improved in precision and have hit several top insurgent commanders in recent months. The notable change in tempo and reported accuracy could be partly attributed to a growing sense of urgency inside the Bush White House as the progress in the seven-year long war in Afghanistan stalled during the waning days of the administration. Samina Ahmed, director of the International Crisis Group in Pakistan, attributes some of the change to increased cooperation between the United States and Pakistan. "Given the fact that the past few strikes have actually gotten their targets with minimal or no civilian casualties, there is obviously better cooperation between the U.S. military and Pakistan," Ahmed said.

Remember, Israel's worst mass killings of civilians in Gaza happened when Israeli forces returned fire. But a drone doesn't need to return fire. It can listen, watch, and wait until it has the bad guys in its sights with few civilians in the way.

If I'm a new U.S. president who needs to hunt, kill, and deter terrorists without invading or occupying countries, this is the kind of war I want.

Closing the Gaza Tunnels

Gaza is riddled with tunnels. Some are for smuggling; others are for transporting weapons; others are for hiding or ambushing Israeli troops. The crucial passageways—400 to 600, by recent estimates—run from Gaza to Egypt, circumventing the closed border. That's how Hamas gets parts and material for the missiles it fires into Israel. Any deal to end the current fighting has to include "an effective blockading" of that border, "with supervision and follow-ups," according to Israel's prime minister. To stop the war—and to keep it stopped—you have to figure out how to stop the tunnels.

But how? Here are some of the options.

More here.

The Purple Brain

Are mental disorders as important as physical injuries? Many advocates say that they are and that we should treat them accordingly. Most of the fight is over insurance coverage of mental health. But part of the action is in the U.S. military. There, the question has been whether to award the Purple Heart for post-traumatic stress disorder. This week, the Defense Department announced its decision: No.

Eight months ago, when we first checked in on this debate, I was skeptical for two reasons. One was that PTSD would turn out to be widely overdiagnosed. In general, mental wounds are harder to define and identify than physical wounds are. There are obvious cases, but there are also fuzzy ones. Where do we draw the line? How do we keep the Purple Heart from being cheapened?

The second reason was that the Purple Heart, unlike basic health insurance, isn't a policy instrument. It's an honor. Officially, it denotes "meritorious action." And honor isn't the first step in a cultural transformation, no matter how worthy that transformation may be. It's the last.

I've been reading DoD's explanation of its decision and looking back at what I wrote eight months ago. And I'm beginning to think the decision may be wrong.

The reason has to do with gay marriage. The "honor" argument against the Purple Heart for PTSD is a lot like the argument against same-sex marriage. Marriage isn't a right or benefit, conservatives argue. It's a special commitment, a moral institution. Gays may deserve equal employment opportunity, just as mental-health patients deserve basic health insurance coverage. But marriage, like the Purple Heart, is a higher standard. It's an honor that should be awarded last, or maybe never.

Andrew Sullivan nailed this argument 20 years ago: Conservatives are largely right about what marriage is. They're just wrong that this understanding precludes extending it to homosexuals. In fact, they have it backward: Marriage would anchor gays, like straights, against "the chaos of sex and relationships to which we are all prone. It provides a mechanism for emotional stability, economic security, and the healthy rearing of the next generation." The key is to preserve the definition of marriage as commitment: to let go of the heterosexual requirement while fortifying the distinction between marriage and shacking up. My favorite proposal, to prove the point, is same-sex covenant marriage.

Something like that should be the solution to the Purple Heart debate. Opponents of the Purple Heart for PTSD say mental disorders can't qualify because the warrior doesn't "shed blood." That's foolish fundamentalism: Lots of people are wounded without literally shedding blood. DoD also says the wound must be "intentionally caused by the enemy." But the Purple Heart is already awarded for wounds that weren't precisely intended by the enemy. The enemy just throws his grenade at your platoon. Exactly which of you gets incapacitated and how—shrapnel, shock, whatever—isn't his concern.

On the other hand, DoD rightly points out that there have to be "objective" medical ways to distinguish clear-cut PTSD from fuzzy or fake versions. Otherwise, Purple Heart awards will become cheap or arbitrary. Along these lines, the department articulates three clear, reasonable, and tight criteria. First, the wound must be "the result of enemy action where the intended effect of a specific enemy action is to kill or injure the servicemember." Second, it must be "an injury to any part of the body." Third, it must be "caused by the enemy from an outside force or agent."

Can PTSD satisfy these criteria? In principle, I think so. The first criterion is relatively easy to address: You must face the same physical risks as any other Purple Heart recipient. The second is more difficult: Objective physical measures of PTSD must be established. This could be done, for example, with brain scans. We aren't there yet, so consider this a research project for the PTSD movement. The third criterion is a nexus of the first two: You would have to assemble some kind of case file showing that the signs of PTSD in the brain scans or other physical measures postdate the combat incident.

Will service members and veterans with PTSD actually meet these standards? Some won't, and even the most qualified cases will be hard to prove. But they should be, because the Purple Heart is sacred. It's just that there's nothing inherently more sacred about being wounded in your backside than in your brain.

Evolving Predators

Is this technology for real? If so, what is it? Since the government isn't telling, I poked around a bit and asked readers for ideas.

Here are some possible leads. First, Slate reader mark_925 flags a list posted Friday on Aviation Week's Ares blog. The list includes several technologies that have improved U.S. efficiency at hunting and killing adversaries in Iraq. They include:

1. Communications intercept sensors "so sensitive that they can pick up the low-power emissions of handheld cell phones."
2. A targeting system called NCCT, which "instantaneously links the intelligence taken from several aircraft, ships or UAVs at once to locate, identify and target electronic emissions, including communications, and associate them with air, ground and sea radar targets."
3. An "IDM communications module" that links communications signals to visible sources, such as cars.
4. Software that facilitates "change detection" from spy aircraft.
5. Helmet sights that immediately translate a physically viewed object into spatial coordinates that enable fast targeting and destruction.

Second: Walter Pincus of the Washington Post flags an article in the U.S. military journal Joint Force Quarterly, written by the general who, as of today, is replacing David Petraeus as commander of multinational forces in Iraq. It credits the upturn in Iraq in part to a "surge of ... full motion video (FMV) assets." Early in the war, "Commanders were rarely allocated more than an hour of FMV a week," says the article. "Since 2003-2004, FMV within the corps has increased tenfold. ... Today, the corps can count on daily support from at least 12 FMV systems," and each brigade combat team "has an organic tactical UAV platoon that provides 18 hours of FMV coverage a day." Drones are dramatically improving military performance, not by doing the killing themselves, but by providing instant, on-demand customized intelligence to ground forces.

Third: Pincus reports that last week, a Senate subcommittee appropriated $750 million for "intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance initiatives." This compounds a $1.3 billion shift of money to ISR programs, approved by the Pentagon in July. According to Defense News, the programs include:

1. "$262.6 million to buy digital data links for Raven UAVs, data links and laser designators for Hunter unmanned aircraft, and various improvements for other unmanned aircraft."
2. "$168.5 million to buy eight Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance airborne systems, including with $52 million for three new Constant Hawk airborne surveillance and target acquisition systems."
3. "$17 million to extend a contract for Scan Eagle UAV services, $15 million to buy a new Northrop Grumman-made Global Hawk UAV and associated gear and services, $26 million to purchase four Boeing-made Scan Eagles."
4. Imaging systems and "sensor packages" for the Air Force.

So there are some possible clues to the recent turnaround in Iraq and the more recent escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan: more UAV deployment and video, faster integration of UAV data into ground operations, more acute communications sensors, and instant targeting data on visible objects. Some combination of these technologies might account for the key breakthrough attributed to the devices now being deployed to Afghanistan: nonvisual identification and tracking of targets. Or not.

Over to you, Danger Room.

Terminator 2: Attack of the Drones

Speaking of Terminators: The drone war over Pakistan is escalating.

Boom. Sept. 4: Seven people killed in a strike on Chaar Kehl, near the Afghan border.

Boom. Sept. 5: Six to 12 more killed in a hit on Al Must.

Boom. Sept. 8: 23 dead and at least 18 wounded in a five-missile barrage on Daande Darpkhel.

Boom. Sept. 12: Twelve more dead in an attack on Tole Khel.

That's about 50 fatalities in four strikes in a single week, all at the hands of unmanned vehicles. An impressive warning from the bloodless killers of tomorrow. Even before the hit on Tole Khel, the Washington Post reported, "The number of Hellfire missile attacks by Predators in Pakistan has more than tripled, with 11 strikes reported by Pakistani officials this year compared with three in 2007." According to the Wall Street Journal, "One official in Afghanistan estimated that drone usage in Pakistan has doubled since the summer, and he said missiles are now being fired at Pakistani targets virtually every day."

Why the increase? Media reports from the ground and military sources indicate several factors: 1) Pakistan isn't really helping, so we've taken the killing into our own hands. 2) We don't want to literally use our own hands, since our ground forces might be captured. So, where possible, we're using drones instead. 3) Drone attacks cause less friction with Pakistan than ground incursions do, since U.S. personnel are never at the scene. 4) We're sick of our troops being picked off in Afghanistan, so we're using drones to even the score. 5) We're relying more on drones to spy in Pakistan because we've failed to develop informants on the ground. 6) Or maybe we're getting better ground intelligence, which is giving us more hot targets to shoot at.

The most intriguing factor, however, seems to be an upgrade in drone technology. In Friday's Los Angeles Times, Greg Miller and Julian Barnes report that Predator drones "above the tribal belt along Afghanistan's eastern border" are now "equipped with sophisticated new surveillance systems." The new systems permit

the tracking of human targets even when they are inside buildings or otherwise hidden from Predator surveillance cameras. Equally important, officials said, the systems have significantly speeded up decisions on when to strike. The technology gives remote pilots a means beyond images from the Predator's lens of confirming a target's identity and precise location. ... The technology allows suspects to be identified quickly. "All I have to do is point the sensor at him," said a military officer familiar with the system, "and a missile can be off the rail in seconds." The devices are roughly the size of an automobile battery, but are heavy enough that outfitted Predators in some cases carry only one Hellfire missile instead of two.

Tracking invisible targets? Nonvisual identification? Miller and Barnes don't explain how the system works. All they disclose is that it "was developed as part of a special project within the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology." But if U.S. drone managers are willing to shed 50 percent of their missiles to make room for these target trackers, they must be pretty valuable.

The arrival of these devices in Afghanistan is only half the story. The other half is where they're coming from. They've been "instrumental in crippling the insurgency in Iraq," according to Miller and Barnes:

A military official familiar with the systems said they had a profound effect, both militarily and psychologically, on the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq. "It is like they are living with a red dot on their head," said a former U.S. military official familiar with the technology who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because it has been secret. ... Officials said introduction of the devices coincided with the 2007 U.S. troop buildup in Iraq, and was an important, but hitherto unknown, factor in the subsequent drop in violence in that country.

How much of the credit we've given to the troop surge in Iraq actually belongs to these devices? Are they working some similar magic now in Afghanistan and Pakistan? And, if so, what the heck are they? I don't know, and the U.S. government doesn't want to tell us, but I'll keep looking for answers with my primitive human eyes. In the meantime, if you've got any good intel on them, let's hear it.

Purple Hearts and Minds

The decisive battles in American culture wars often take place in the armed forces. That was true of racial integration decades ago, and it's true of homosexuality today. Now it's happening to mental health. If psychiatric disorders end up being culturally accepted as medical conditions, with all the attendant insurance coverage and workplace protections, the decisive player in this revolution will probably be the military.

The transition is taking place in three steps. First, mental illness has to be destigmatized. As Yochi Dreazen reports in the Wall Street Journal, this is already underway: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has changed department rules so troops with PTSD can seek counseling without losing their security clearances.

The next step is to treat mental illness like physical illness as an insurance matter. This is harder, because it's expensive. Dreazen reports that legislation in the Senate would take this step by opening Veterans Administration facilities to active-duty troops with psychiatric problems. The bill's architect argues that the expense is worth it because soldiers' mental wounds, like their physical wounds, can be fatal. Specifically, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can lead to suicide.

Now there's talk of a third step: awarding the Purple Heart for psychic wounds. Dreazen notes that earlier this month, Gates called it "an interesting idea" and "clearly something that needs to be looked at."

The argument against expanding eligibility for the Purple Heart is that mental wounds, unlike visible physical wounds, can be faked. Or they can be unrelated to combat, even if the affected service member thinks they are. In response, proponents of the change point out that PTSD is an officially certified disorder and that research has linked it to combat incidents.

The debate won't be settled overnight, any more than integration or homosexuality were. That's because the medicalization of mental health is in part a social issue. Yes, it's medical. But it's also defined and complicated by the problem of invisibility. You can't see psychic wounds the same way you can see physical ones.

Fortunately, science has already encountered and worked through this problem in other contexts. We can't see molecules, but we can measure their effects and correlate their existence with physical conditions. The same should be true of mental illness, even if the variables and data are far more complicated. My guess is that as research progresses, it will satisfy neither side. We'll find that PTSD is as real as any visible wound but that, like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, it's also widely overdiagnosed.

So let's be careful with the Purple Heart. People who want to award it for psychic wounds argue that this will eliminate stigma and encourage counseling. That's the wrong way to look at it. The Purple Heart isn't a policy instrument. It's an honor. In the words of George Washington's original order, it denotes "meritorious action." And honor isn't the first step in a cultural transformation, no matter how worthy that transformation may be. It's the last.