Talk:Historical examples of military swarming

Problems with this statement

"The term derives from the attacks of hive insects such as bees, wasps, and ants."

1. Honey bees and wasps do not attack (don't know but that ants do because some species are highly predatory). But bees and wasps are merely acting defensively to protect their nests.

2. Swarming with honey bees has nothing to do with warfare whatsoever. It is a reproductive act, and a honey bee swarm is exceedingly gentle.

3. Wasps and ants do not swarm in any sense similar to honey bees.

I'm not sure how to fix the statement. Perhaps it would be sufficient to say that it mistakenly derives, based on a misunderstanding of hymenopteran behavior. David L Green 23:13, 3 May 2008 (CDT)

I don't mean for this to go off into a discussion of hymenopteran behavior, but isn't there a distinction between motivation and behavior? While wasps may not be "attacking" other than to defend their nest, would an intruder, who accidentally blunders into a nest and is stung repeatedly, find any practical difference, in his experience, if the motivation is defensive or offensive? Would not the continuing stings be perceived as an attack?

In human warfare, there have been a great many deadly exchanges between units, belonging to different sides, blundering into one anothers' areas. For that matter, "friendly fire" (which isn't) fatalities come when units cross boundaries and the commander decides they are threatened.

I didn't intend to say that military swarming is identical to the behavior of stinging social insects, but I think it is fair to say the term "derives" from behavior. If someone shoots me with their rifle, and their buddies add their fire, my experience doesn't depend on whether or not they thought they were shooting in self-defense. I'm still shot. If more combatants are drawn into a combat either because they scent or hear hard-wired threat triggers, or because they hear gunfire and see flashes, is there a practical difference in the melee? Howard C. Berkowitz 02:09, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

I see your point; not sure you see mine. The simile perpetuates a false stereotype of bees and wasps as viscious, aggressive creatures, which they are not (some species of ants may be - I don't know as much about them). Paranoia about bees and wasps is a significant factor in the environmental issue of pollinator decline. And wasps are incredibly important as biological control agents. Few people understand that human life on the planet is threatened by our own attitude about such species, whose roles are not understood. The average person thinks that the only good wasp or bee is a dead one.

And swarming is still a reproductive term anyway; having nothing to do with stinging. While the article is not about hymenopterans, this IS an encyclopedia, and it is important that it be accurate. David L Green 07:59, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

Let me follow up. There are many fields where another field picks up a technical term and misuses it, to say nothing of what the press and politicians will use. Pick up any news report of people being injured or killed by fragments of the case of an explosive charge, and I will bet it's called "shrapnel", although the reality is that has nothing to do with the type of ammunition invented by Sir Henry Shrapnel.

I have been careful to use the modified term, "military swarming". Whether that properly represents the reproductive behavior of hymenopterans is not going to change the reality that a concept, coincidentally called swarming, is used and will be used in the military literature. In other words, the term "military swarming" is accurate in context; there's no requirement that the military use a term exactly as entomologists do, any more than there's a way to compel reporters to stop calling any warship a "battleship".

If you wanted to write a section (preferably with the main military swarming article), or even as a separate article, that military theorists are not describing social insect swarming when they refer to military swarming, I'd support that. I must, however, object when you put commentary about "mistaken" impressions into the main text of an article, in a clear military context, about military swarming. Should I go to an article on army ants and say it is mistaken, since they do not have allegiance to a nation-state, have a responsible chain of command, wear distinctive uniform, or follow the customary laws of land warfare? Howard C. Berkowitz 00:30, 28 June 2008 (CDT)

The "mistaken" comment does not in any way reflect negatively on the rest of the article; it's just a note at the beginning for clarification and accuracy, so we all know where we are. And just because politicians, etc., misuse a term; it doensn't mean our encyclopedia should... We need to strive for accuracy above all. David L Green 11:20, 28 June 2008 (CDT)

I think I do. In many fields, however, a term from another field may be evocative of an idea that someone is expressing in a different one. The encyclopediac approach should, I believe, not to ban use of such terms or deprecate then, but

1. In editing, making sure the context is clear. We seem to do reasonably well with virus (biological) vs. virus (computer). It would be nice if the originating field could use the term without qualifiers, but, alas, that causes technical problems of disambiguation.
2. You have me thinking about a systematic place to put alternate meanings of a term, above and beyond a disambiguation page. Perhaps there might be a subpage of "alternate meanings", preferably copied to all the articles that use the term, so "swarming" could have, on the subpages, references to insect, human group, and military behaviors.

The military use actually has more parallels than one might think. Isn't it the case that in social insect reproduction, there is chemotactic communication? A number of the military swarming papers make the point that in addition to the usual military communications (usually electronic) from higher to lower headquarters, units in a "swarming" model need to communicate with their neighboring units -- and this is suggested as analogous to how individual insects are attracted to others in joint activity, such as reproductive or nest-repairing behavior.

In other words, as long as there is contextual disambiguation, I simply don't see swarming(military) as inaccurate, but an alternate meaning of a word. Virus, relative, cell, and predator all have such alternate meanings. Howard C. Berkowitz 11:45, 28 June 2008 (CDT)