Don’t Call It Warfare

Robert N. Charette’s article, “Open-Source Warfare” [November] is interesting, but its use of the word war to describe the current situations in Iraq and Afghanistan is erroneous. Both wars ended years ago—in Afghanistan, when we defeated the Taliban-led government, and in Iraq, when we ended the rule of Saddam Hussein and disbanded his army. In both countries, the U.S. military forces and their allies are now an occupational force supporting an unstable government. There are people in both countries who want us to leave, and they fight like the Chechnyans fight the Russians and the Palestinians fight the Israelis. Of course, these small groups are no match for the armies they are pitted against, and they use the most effective weapons and technologies they can get their hands on. In Iraq today, cellphones and the Internet are the technologies of choice.

Decades ago, guerillas also used the weapons available to them. They used hit-and-run tactics because they could not defeat an organized army. So when Charette writes “when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan finally end,” he really means “when we eventually decide to leave.” Rather than ponder how the U.S. Department of Defense procurement system should be changed to equip an occupying army, the real questions to be answered are these: should an army be used as an occupying force? Are the technologies developed for armies suitable for occupation in a hostile environment?

Eric Holzman

IEEE Senior Member,Ellicott City, Md.

Kudos to Robert N. Charette and to the editors of IEEE Spectrum for publishing this article. As a 40-year veteran of the defense industry, now retired, I found the article refreshing, informative, clear, crisp, and concise. It is the best article I have read in Spectrum this year.

Eli Dalabakis

IEEE Life Senior Member, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Patent Protection

In reference to “Keeping Score in the IP Game” [November]: Lately I keep seeing articles whining about two things—U.S. patent protection is too strong, and U.S. R&D is too weak. You can’t have it both ways. If you weaken patent protection, then you also take away much of the value of industry­sponsored research, thereby weakening R&D. It makes no sense for IEEE members to promote weaker patent protection, because patents are good for engineers. Strong patent protection may be a significant chunk of management’s costs, now that they outsource so many jobs. But it is good for engineers.

Ken Kerpez

IEEE Fellow, Piscataway, N.J.

Powerworks Doesn’t

Can there be any more absurd idea than the Coleman Powerworks power inverter for cars [Resources, November]? There’s something very wrong with this picture: the engine’s alternator generates alternating current (ac), which is converted to direct current (dc) to recharge the battery and is also distributed to a cigarette-lighter receptacle, into which we’re supposed to insert a cigar-shaped plug to send that dc power to an inverter to change it back into ac so that we can plug in our laptop’s power converter, which changes it back to dc to power the laptop! To recap: ac to dc to ac to dc. That doesn’t seem like sound engineering. It’s more like Edison and Tesla are still fighting it out in the backseat of my car.

Why not put in place a professionally engineered electrical system? What’s needed is a simple auto dc distribution network, with small, standard, purpose-built dc plugs, into which we can directly plug music players, GPS units, cellphones, DVD players, and the like. That sounds like a job for the IEEE.

Richard Campbell

IEEE Member, New York City

But Does It Run on Ethanol?

The Big Picture [News, November] featured a photograph of the Pivo 2 concept car. This is a classic example of bad product naming. “Pivo” means “beer” in Czech and other Slavic languages.

Russell Shannon

IEEE Member, Mount Holly, N.J.

Correction

In “Charge of the Ultra­capacitors” [November], the sentence “The sheet is placed in a vacuum, heated to 650 °C, and exposed to a thin hydrocarbon gas, perhaps ethanol or acetylene” should have referred to ethylene, not ethanol.