12/12/2012

Academia discovers geospatial intelligence

You have to give them a couple of decades but eventually they'll catch up:
Looking at the Battle of Gettysburg Through Robert E. Lee’s Eyes.

This blog has gone through Quincy Gillmore's eyes, Gary Gilmore's eyes, and now Robert E. Lee's eyes, all in a week. But I ask the Gettysburg readers, did we need geospatial for this?
The sight lines show Lee couldn’t see what Longstreet was doing. Nor did he have a clear view of Union maneuvers. Longstreet, meanwhile, saw what Lee couldn’t: Union troops massed in clear sight of open terrain he’d been ordered to march across.

Rather than expose his men, Longstreet led them on a much longer but more shielded march before launching the planned assault. By the time he did, late on July 2, Union officers—who, as Knowles’ mapping shows, had a much better view of the field from elevated ground—had positioned their troops to fend off the Confederate advance.
One would think the authors had this "mapped out" long ago ...