Michael Hastings The Operators Pdf 15

Starred Review. Hastings (I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story) recounts the events behind and beyond his award-winning 2010 Rolling Stone article "The Runaway General," which led to the resignation of General Stanley McChrystal and his replacement with General David Petraeus. Trailing McChrystal and his staff as they travel to Paris, Berlin, and Kabul, Hastings discovers how the nation's foremost "operators"-the special forces and other personnel on "the X...the spot on the satellite map where the action goes down"-regard the war as secondary to their loyalty to each other. Cavalier remarks about key figures and incidents ranging from the infamous cover-up of the cause of Pat Tillman's death to scenes with President Obama reveal the essential divide between military and civilian perspectives. Hastings brilliantly intertwines narratives, whether writing about the halls of Washington, war-torn Baghdad, or rudimentary lessons in counterinsurgency math, a system wherein killing two of ten results not in eight, but twenty insurgents. Hasting's first-class, engrossing reportage reveals unsettling yet human flaws behind one of recent history's most lionized military figures, and a war which purportedly began as a response to terrorism, but whose aims-in the author's estimation-remain ambiguous. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Automation will affect the supply chain far beyond the walls of the warehouse and sorting center; it will change the way goods flow across all modes (exhibit). In the first article in this series, we addressed the impact of autonomous trucking, a critical automation technology, on roads, rails, and ports. And our colleagues recently produced a detailed look at other forms of port automation. They find that while ports are accelerating their adoption of automation, they are not yet recouping their costs. Moreover, while operating expenses are falling as expected (by 15 to 35 percent), throughput is falling as well (by 7 to 15 percent). Port operators can take several steps to get the most out of automation. Among other moves, they can build automation-ready capabilities rather than simply automating old processes. And they can apply better project discipline to ensure that automation investments account for all attributes of port operations.

Of the remaining transport modes, automation in ocean and air freight is quite possible but will probably not move the productivity needle much. In rail, automation will likely begin in terminals, which offer controlled environments and repeatable processes. Intermodal terminals will likely see increased use of autonomous hostlers to move containers to and from trains. Autonomous cranes are also likely to emerge in the near term. While the physics of trains makes automation on the main line a longer-term prospect, rail operators and governments are investing in technologies that lay the foundation. Positive train control (PTC) is a long-desired step toward an automated future: its data links allow for real-time automated control of sets of trains. Several European and US railroads have PTC schemes in the works, and a few have fully implemented them. 2b1af7f3a8