Tom Clancy's Legacy: The Military-Entertainment Complex

Tom Clancy's expertise was contagious. He knew how sonar could be defeated, how rubber bullets could kill, how the Secret Service could respond to a passenger jet nose-diving into the Capitol building, and myriad other ways the United States government could and likely would respond to threats at home and abroad. He knew all of this with a chilling degree of accuracy. And if you read Clancy's novels, you knew it, too.

The best-selling author, who died Tuesday night in a Baltimore hospital, wrote tales of derring-do. But his cinema-ready heroes and villains employed startlingly realistic tools and protocols. Did you know that the U.S. Air Force developed missiles that could be fired from an F-15 to take down a satellite? Or that rounds from a submachine gun could punch through a car frame as easily as fingers through rice paper? I certainly didn't, and neither did millions of other readers in the 1980's, during Clancy's pre-internet heyday. Back then, the mechanics of death and mayhem, on scales both tactical and strategic, weren't at anyone's fingertips. They were locked away in hardcopy textbooks, encyclopedias, and war games. In fact, Clancy famously simulated the naval maneuvers in his first two novels, The Hunt for Red October (1984) and Red Storm Rising (1986) using the paper maps and cardboard counters of the war game Harpoon.

Why does it matter that Clancy workshopped best-selling novels by sitting around a table with friends, pushing fake fleets and squadrons across make-believe warzones in the military dork's equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons? Because Harpoon, which was developed by civilians, is still used to this day by Navy instructors to train officer cadets. Its numerical models of both American and then-Soviet vehicles and weapon systems were so detailed that, as legend has it, the Department of Defense paid a none-too-friendly visit to Harpoon's creator, Larry Bond (who co-wrote Red Storm Rising with Clancy), demanding to see his classified materials, only to find that Bond had culled all the information from non-classified sources. Apocryphal or not, that is Harpoon's legacy?a naval simulation so good, it borders on illegal.

That's where military expertise used to reside: In the military itself, and in brilliant games that no one in the mainstream had ever heard of, much less played. Tom Clancy put an end to that. He sold millions of books, which were adapted into blockbuster movies. And even if Hollywood took some shortcuts, that air of realism and convincing interplay of military and espionage assets often made it to the screen. Clancy's complex depictions of the modern art of war were shocking, especially compared to James Bond's campy super-gadgets, and Stallone and Schwarzenegger's bulging, cartoonish action heroism.

And ultimately, Clancy won. Today's movie heroes, on the whole, don't mow down entire gangs and battalions with hip-fired machine guns or spin-kick their way out of a jam. Actors move from cover to cover, firing smooth and steady, just the way their special forces consultants trained them. They fight quick and dirty up close. They paint targets with lasers for drone-launched Hellfire missiles or request airstrikes from the AC-130 gunship circling overhead. There are exceptions, naturally. But most Hollywood action now has the look and feel of military action.

That's Clancy's legacy, or part of it. While he didn't invent the techno-thriller, he spread its themes and sensibilities throughout our culture. And like the most powerful contagions, the author's contribution mutated. He brought the hard-nosed military content and perspectives of techno-thrillers to video games, with franchises that bore his name such as Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. Though Clancy's licensed shooters are now eclipsed in sales by the likes of Call of Duty, the military first-person-shooter owes him a great debt. The use of real weapons, and the attempts to model their mechanics?including their range, rate of fire, recoil, and even their ability to penetrate walls, doors, or other features?are Clancy's legacy too. But so are the legions of teens playing soldier on Xbox Live, the online commenters who chillingly respond to stories of America's increasingly common mass shootings with exasperation that the killer used an AR-15 as opposed to a larger-caliber Kalashnikov, or the face-palming disbelief at the shoddy marksmanship of local sheriffs seemingly spraying rounds at a barricaded suspect. Everyone is an expert in military tactics now.

What Clancy curated so expertly, and shared so thrillingly, was privileged information. He showed us weapons as they are, and warriors as they use them, at a time when knowledge of that kind wasn't easily known. That he changed our culture is clear. That it's for the better remains to be seen.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/weapons/tom-clancys-legacy-the-military-entertainment-complex-15995880?src=rss

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