ed@hpmtlx.HP.COM ($Ed Schlotzhauer) (07/21/88)
Steve Frysinger brings a valuable viewpoint into this discussion. It sure is easier to be a self righteous Monday-morning quarterback when *I'm* not the one in a battle zone having to make an immediate, life-and-death decision. I am reading the book "Very Special Intelligence" by Patrick Beesly. It is the story of the British Admiralty's Operational Intelligence Center during WWII. It shows vividly how a major part of the process of making sense of the bits and pieces of intelligence data relies on the experience, intuition, hunches, and just plain luck of the intelligence officers. Granted our "modern" techniques are not nearly so "primitive" (I wonder), but the same must be true today. I haven't finished the book yet, but two observations that immediately come to mind are: 1. In a war situation, you almost *never* have complete or even factual information at the time that decisions *must* be made. 2. I would *never* trust a machine to make operational recommendations. Ed Schlotzhauer