Only two things in mans history has revolutionized warfare to the
extent that the computer has. These two things are metal and the gun.
These two factors contributed to countless deaths throughout man’s
history and with the invention of the computer many, if not more
lives will be at stake. The days where two opposing armies clashed
in a free for all hand to hand attempt to overcome the other is gone
and will never return. Today a single missile strike would simply
decimate that kind of force. I know of no better place for
the creation of new inventions and upgrading of old ones than the
military. The computer was first developed by the military to
facilitate documentation and make global communication more efficient.
The Internet was also the result of the U.S military’s ambition to
create the perfect tool for which would place it superior (military
wise) to any other country in the world. Presently our government uses
it computers to hold top secret information, personnel files, satellite
hookups ect... Our Armed Forces holds an amount of information that
cannot even begin to be imagined, all of which is stored in it’s
computers. Efficiency has always been the first thing computers are
used for, and what organization needs to be more efficient than the
Armed Forces? Military oriented communications is done through
huge net works and satellites, making them hard to trace, track, and
break into. Imagin if our military had no computers! Radio telegraph
and telephone would be our means of communication. All three of these
things are easily breachable and top secret information could be
easily picked up by hostile people or countries. public security
would be greatly diminished. The fact that our computers and
satellites are extremely hard to de-code gives us a feeling
of security, but we mustn't forget that codes, like a puzzle, can
eventually be pieced together. Today guided missiles are
our main offensive armament, They use computer style on-board
processors to guide them hundreds sometimes thousands of miles to
targets and then hit with devastating pin-point accuracy. For
example Bill Clinton has recently ordered missile attacks on
suspected weapons sites in Iraq. No more than 300 Tomahawk cruise
missiles were launched from U.S warships stationed in the
Persian Gulf. 98 percent of these missiles struck within 1 square
yard of their targets. This accuracy was thanks to the highly
sophisticated processors placed in the nose of the warhead. These on
board computers allow the missile to be guided or flown, by whomever
fires them. If not for the invention or versatility of computers ,our
armed forces would still be relying on unguided (dumb) bombs to strike
at the enemy. Thousands upon thousands of civilian casualties are
prevented with the use of these computer flown missiles. Yet it is
next to impossible to avoid civilian deaths. The main problem being
the Governmen