US military gets a camouflaged cloud

The Defense Information Service Agency - the US military's IT department - has made its cloud service available for real applications. Up until now it has only been used for testing applications. The DoD's Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE) launched in October 2008, and is part of the Agency's effort to "posture the …

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one ...

... who really, really dislikes the pseudo-word "warfighter"? I'm IN the Army (British, not US) and can't stand it. I've even seen a few uses of it pop up over here in Blighty.

It's not the first instance of US military made-up words getting into our terminology, either. What we used to call a "plan" is now a "scheme of maneuver". :P

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC 09:38

Respect to you sir, and yes I hate the word too.

Begs the question, what are they called if there isn't a war on? Peace keepers? The Unemployed?

[sandman]

@Am I the only one...

Quite right - a soldier is just that, "warfighter" is a silly word - particularly since many in the military will never get anywhere near a war. By the way - isn't the anonymous coward designation just a touch ironic for a soldier? As for "scheme of maneuver", what do you call it when the plan is to sit in a defensive position without moving?

[RISC OS]

Warfighter = former gamers who now control drones

Isn't somone who fights in a WAR a WARrior?

Maybe they need am more encompassing name to include all the fat bastards/geeks who now fly drones and control the robosoldiers that el reg is always writing articles about.

[TeeCee]

Re: Am I the only one ...

Yup. Worse than that it also conveniently overlooks all the other things* that soldiers, sailors and airmen get up to that don't actually involve unloading gigafucktonnes of technologically enhanced death on some bunch of (un)deserving prunes.

So it's not only newspeak, it's bolloxspeak too.

*i.e. At those times** when there doesn't happen to be a convenient major war (international or domestic) with the armed forces deployed fighting it.

**Actually, since this is the US military we're talking about, these may be sufficiently infrequent and of short enough duration to be glossed over.

[The First Dave]

WTF

So WTF do these computers actually do?

And why is demand for them so (apparently) variable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Availability

So when they use cloud computing to run their cloud based kill bots are they gonna be happy with only 99.999% availability of death? Do they get a refund if the server is down and they fail to kill those Afghan farmers on their first attempt? Surely if they outsourced to Google that farmer would have had his account phished and would be so traumatized that bombing him will no longer be necessary?

[amanfromMars 1]

Meanwhile, in the Green Room .....

"Maybe they need am more encompassing name to include all the fat bastards/geeks who now fly drones and control the robosoldiers that el reg is always writing articles about." ... By RISC OS Posted Wednesday 7th October 2009 10:11 GMT

El Reg robosoldiers are more into Network Control of Global and ExtraTerrestrial Assets for Present Placement of Future Programming and Virtual Projects/AIMarkets.

A Great Game 42 Grand Master in Live Operational Virtual Environments.

Along with what you may already Know about everything, is that a Verifiable Fact or a Vacuous Fiction? And if not entirely the latter, is the former inevitably proven as Honest Truth?

[Paul George]

@AC 09:38

>Begs the question, what are they called if there isn't a war on? Peace keepers? The Unemployed?

As the old joke goes "in case of war: break glass". Eventually they'll get stasis chambers for them. But I still say 'warriors' would be a better generic term :-).

Y'all forget that the military has finance systems, personnel systems, training systems, communications (e.g. email), performance reporting, and a blinding array of forms that are being put online. Most systems aren't for weaponry, just like most personnel are support services not combat troops (USMC excepted)

[kurucu]

I can't wait to see the English version

... served up on the Amazon S3 and with a gaping hole in it's security. Then an apology, some overlooked mistakes and everyone walks free saying "computers, eh?"

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm...

Well if they like changing names to semi-descriptive nonesense when we already have perfectly good words then maybe we can change politician to shitspeaker, Political Party to gaggletards and civil servant to Analhead?

I'm pretty sure other people can come up with better things.

[phoenix]

Blue Sky Thinking With Some Clouds

There he (she sometimes) is at the front line taking fire thinking I wonder if I should shift that application over to RACE to improve uptime. REMF user more like.

Damned annoying we share language with the Yanks as they seem hell bent on words for terms and ideas that already exist take for instance "on going " WTF even the Beeb uses it. The word you are so badly scrambling for is "continuing"

@ I Am the only one: my guess is probable "Watch and shoot, watch and shoot"

But will it help it stopping friendlies getting hit?