I think Kurzweil completely missed the very important set up point that the campaign on Avavar was not being conducted by the most modern military forces of that time on Earth. It was being conducted entirely by a corporate entity and it's ex-military hirelings (think Blackwater).

I thought this point was particularly well though out.

No profit-driven model of an corporate military campaign to put down a native uprising would send state-of-the-art anything. They'd send on-hand dated military surplus weapons and equipment and troops to fire full auto machine guns, flamethrowers, napalm, white phosphorus rounds, field artillery, and lots of ammo.

State of the art military vs. peasant uprisings are useless. Watch the movie "Zulu Dawn" sometime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_Dawn

Like the gatling guns on the front of A-10s and A-10s themselves the Air Force kept pulling out of retirement. Some situations just don't require anything more sophisticated than a gatling gun and something well armored and maneuverable to hang a gatling gun on the front of.