In the case of urban warfare it is important to be able to get in close proximity of your enemy, yet in doing so you increase their chances of killing you. In war it is important to kill your enemy first before he kills you, obviously. In urban warfare there are snipers and enemy combatants, which know ever nook and cranny better than you do and thus they have the advantage.

Yet there are ways to over come this advantage and turn it around for instance use underground systems. If you will recall in the Vietnam War the enemy hid out in tunnels underground where we could not see them, thus giving them the advantage in the jungles and forestry areas.

There is a specific and known advantage to controlling the ground under the battlespace, yet so often we talk about air-superiority, Naval Power and ground strategy. Yet this is somewhat linear thinking in a way considering if we are going to think about using the entire region we should think of the battlespace as a spherical area, not merely a dome.

In the new age of net-centric warfare we continually see diagrams of a dome where all the components of the future fighting force and Air Force talk to each other along with ships and submarines in and under the water as well. Yet we do not discuss what is under the ground. Some say why bother there is nothing there?

Oh, but indeed there is for instance tunnels, infrastructure, sewers cables, subways, etc. and we should be using these spaces and incorporate them into the battlespace using sophisticated tunneling bots.

The Military therefore needs various renditions of Tunneling Robotic Weapon Delivery Systems and thus we should be spending R and D monies now to make this happen, so we have them in our future arsenal when we really need them. Think on this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/