Force Protection?

In the past, I've posted about available technology (or the lack thereof) for defeating IED's. See the posts here, here, and here. However, earlier today, I received a comment from a guy purporting to have worked on this technology for the government.

He isn't happy...

In fact, he sounded a little testy,

This thread is unbelievable!!! I have worked very closely with this program since its inception and it has had an extremely high level of security assigned to it since "Day 1". Do you have any idea of the danger you could be imposing on our soldiers by openly discussing this system?? If the "bad guys" didn't know about this program before - they sure do now. I'm glad to see that the safety and protection of our Warfighters is top priority on everyone's mind. Nice going!!

I suppose I can take this post as a sort of backhanded compliment. None of the information I've posted is confidential. All of it is considered open-source - freely available on the internet. Supposedly it's has "an extremely high level of security" and yet I gathered this information.

This is what I wrote back as a response,

If someone like me can find out this much about this program, then I seriously doubt the "bad guys" haven't already. Furthermore, I haven't revealed any technical details (since I don't know any) and everything here has first appeared somewhere else. As you probably know, the Israelis have done a lot of research on this topic in the past so it isn't exactly like we just came up with the idea. Of course, if they thought they might be on to something, they'll really know it now that you've made your comments. Nice Going!

I was really tempted to be a little more caustic towards this commenter, but then I realized that he's doing his part for our country and has good intentions.

I thought a little more about the series of posts on this subject and decided that if a reputable Milblogger thinks what I've posted on this topic here endangers the troops that I'll gladly remove or redact the information. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned the guy's a blowhard who should be ignored.

So, how about it Milbloggers? Let me know.

Posted by jdmays at July 14, 2004 09:48 PM | TrackBack