[geeks] engage your cloaking devices!

[Phil Stracchino]

Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> You don't just fire on everything you cannot identify.

In peacetime, no.  If you can see a metamaterial cloaking ... thing, but
you can't see what's inside it, but you *know* it's not yours, the
obvious assumption is it's the enemy's.  And if you're at war, and you
can't identify it but you're pretty certain it belongs to the enemy, you
fire on it *in case* it's a tank or a SAM launcher.

> We have been using decoys for millenia, and until recently they were all
> physical, and it certainly didn't bankupt those who used them. Closer to
> the opposite.  

A plywood-and-canvas decoy, or an IR flare, costs a hell of a lot less
than a complex nano-engineered metamaterial structure.


>> If the enemy has the ability to cloak one of your own units without you
>> ever becoming aware that they've done so, you are *SO* screwed your only
>> hope is to surrender right now.
> 
> That's an assumption you don't have enough information to make.

I can see we're going to have to just agree to disagree on this.


-- 
 Same geek, same site, new location
 Phil Stracchino                     Landline: 603-429-0220
 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net         Mobile: 603-216-7037
 Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker, Free Stater