ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (02/21/87)
Arms-Discussion Digest Saturday, February 21, 1987 10:35AM
Volume 7, Issue 104
Today's Topics:
American foreign policy ( pro and contra)
Problems with the B-1B Bomber (from RISKS)
Popular Music
Re: dismantling submarines
SLBMs in the Great Lakes
Hitler, economics of SDI
The economics of SDI
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Date: Mon, 16 Feb 87 08:01:50 PST
From: pom%beneath.s1.gov@mordor.s1.gov
RE: American foreign policy ( pro and contra)
>>pom wrote:
>> Few month back, when Mr. Hasenfus was tried in Managua. White House
>> referred to his trial as a 'show' trial. I am quite happy that Hasenfus
>> was released and could celebrate X-mass with family. Nevertheless,
>>...
>
> In the case of Mr. Hasenfus , the (.....)
>verdict and sentence were known before the trial. Although he was guilty,
>that didn't matter. If he was not guilty, nothing would have changed.
>That makes it a show trial. In addition, he was not allowed to select his
>own defence counsel, and the counsel he was given had only 3 days to
>prepare his case.
I am quite willing to argue with your statement above. Perhaps
we should (your-choice) take this to 1on1 and just post either
1) final agreement, if we reach one, or
2)final positions on where we disagree.
So far I see no basis for your accusation that it would not make
any difference if he would not be guilty. I heard about people who were not
guilty, visited Nicaragua and they were not even charged with any crime.
Are you suggesting that Managua was picking on Mr. Hasenfus because
(they thought that ) he is Jewish?
>
>>> ... many of the guerrillas in the world today are "our"
>>>guerrillas, in places like Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola, and
>>>Cambodia, and our support for most of them has elicited little public
>>>dissent. =============
>>========== They for sure are not 'mine'. Yes, under Carter we have been
>> humiliated as a nation. If we want to demonstrate our capabilities,
>> let's go and clean up Libannon of terrorists.
>
>How do you think we should do this? Blow up the entire country? If not,
>how do we ID the terrorists so we can clean them up?
If you would really want to know, I would be quite willing to talk
about what we should do and how to do it. I consider your question spurious.
When Ms. Hearst was kidnaped, we did not blow up San Francisco, did we?
If somebody would suggest that, I hope you know, that I would oppose that.
>
>>Picking up fights with
>> small nations who never did anything to us, will not impress anybody.
>>There are no American troops directly fighting in any of the war's you
>speak of.
Look, if I pay somebody to bump off my wife, I am not only a murderer;
I would also be a rich cowardly bastard, who does not have guts to do
the dirty job and clean up the mess he co-created, himself.
>> I wonder what we have do to show our dissent. Break up windows and
>> overturn cars? In the last elections, the vote was about %60 for contras,
>> %40 against.
>It is a shame that the people the contra's are fighting don't allow voting
>or demonstrations of dissent.
The other day, I was called to serve as a juror in the murder trial;
we were told that because of the circumstances of the crime ( multiple
kidnaping and murder ) capital punishment may be sought. One prospective
juror said:" Let's just execute the bastard and get over with it. He did not
held any trial before he killed his victims." The man was excused. Is it not
a shame?
>
>>That was before our moral bancruptcy was made public. I think
>> now it would be majority against the senseless slaughter.
>> We should not go to war unless 66% is for it.
>
>If the vote had been 66% for the contras, would you say that we needed 70%
>to go to war? While doing research for a paper a while back, I found a poll
>taken in 68 which showed about 75% of americans supported the Viet Nam war.
>From this, I take it you alow supported that war? (Because they had the
>required 66%).
I picked 66% as 2/3, which is not unusual. Your question
#1 is a cheap shot and your question #2 is totally devoid of logic. Hardly
any war has 100% support but if US would really be attacked and had to
defend itself, I think we would have more than 95% support. By fighting
wars close to 50%, we spend more energy on arguing between ourselves,
than on the war. I say: "before we go to war ( either through marines or
by proxy), let's talk about it and clarify our goals and agree on the means.
That in particular implies the following:" There is time for US to stop
'covert operations to overthrow the governments', at least on this
continent." If we need to do something, let's discuss it and once we
agree (66%), let's do it openly and honestly. Why should we ape the
soviets? (I do no't admire them at all; Do You?)
>> Yes, during the Carter's years we, as nation were humiliated and insulted.>> So, how many lives of Iraquis, Iranians, Nicaraguans, Afganistanians we will
>> demand in vengenace?
>
>The war's mentioned, with the exception of Nicaragua started under the Carter
>administration. Are you saying, for example, that the US made the SU invade
>Afganistan because we were humiliated? How did we manage that?
>As to Iraquiis and Iranians, I think it is safe to say that over 66% of
>Americans would favor a war with Iran when that war started, so I don't see
>why that bothers you (unless you feel that we should be more directly involved
>from the beginning).
Look, I really appreciate that you responded to my questions,
'why we are involved in all this bloody business?'. I knew there must be
some 'reasoning' involved and I have learned something. But let's
assume that most participants in this forum have at least average IQ
and knowledge of facts:
1) We are not engaged in partisan politics here. ( I said
once "Democrats will say 'Republicans did it' " as sarcasm. No matter whose
admin 'started', issue is: "Is it in the best interest of US?"
2) If we indeed can 'influence' our quislings to 'be
democratic', how come we only noticed a 'lack of democracy in Managua',
when "in July 25th, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, 52 years old and weighing
267 pounds " had an heart attack? May we did not care.
3) May be that we do not care about Afghans and their
goats either. May be the 'experts' who run our foreign 'policy' and hope
to 'turn Afganistan into the Soviet Vietnam' did not noticed that
'our Vietnam' was on 'our TV screens' and the 'Soviet Vietnam' would have
to go on 'their TVs' to have any effect on the Soviet people.
May be that our 'experts' really believe that Americans only
oposed Vietnam war, because american blood was shed, and so now, when
we just spend couple hundred millions ( which come private sources anyway)
and get somebody to do it for us, nobody will care. Well, I have higher
opinion about Americans.
And it 'bothers' me, because certain incompetent
people, who twisted the control of Iran from our British allies
(who were doing just fine) and lost it to chaos or to soviets in just 35
years are now messing up Central America and it's just to close
for comfort. There is high time for these people to go 'overt' and
explain to american public what the hell are they trying to do and how.
4) In the case of Iran vs. Iraq, I feel that, you do admit that
we are supporting both sides, in enactment of that Truman's joke:
"So that most get killed" and that the 66% you claim, would support it
as an act of vengenance. May be CA is not typical state; but I lived
in Southwest and Midwest and East Coast and most people I met,
Christians, Budhists, Humanists were not like that; they knew how to
forgive. I propose a) let's have a public debate in which You will
advocate selling arms to both sides and I will argue for forgiveness.
b) Let's than call a vote. If you get 66% support, I will never utter another
posting on this (or similar forums): I am a practical man and can find things
which are more fun, than fighting for lost causes: If God's mercy did
indeed abandoned His favorite country, it could only be because they
did not wanted to witness the final destruction of their fondest hopes
for humanity. If that's true, let's log off and get drunk. pom
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Date: Wednesday, 11 February 1987 00:15-EST
From: decvax!bunker!wtm at ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Bill McGarry)
To: risks@CSL.SRI.COM
Re: Problems with the B-1B Bomber
ReSent-To: RISKS@CSL.SRI.COM
In the January 19th, 1987 issue of Newsweek, there is an article on
the problems with the B-1B bomber project (page 20) . Three key systems
are reported as being "faulty" with two of those attributed to software
problems:
* Terrain-following radar: "Software glitches have prevented pilot training
but Air Force engineers say the flaws will be corrected within weeks."
* Flight-control software: "..is especially critical during delicate
in-flight refueling operations. Faulty software programs make such
operations difficult."
The third key system, electronic countermeasures systems (stealth), is
reported as "jamming their own signals instead of the enemy's" but it was
not mentioned whether software played any role in the problem.
Bill McGarry, Bunker Ramo, Shelton, CT
PATH: {philabs, decvax, ittatc}!bunker!wtm
------------------------------
Date: Wed 18 Feb 87 14:09:29-AST
From: Don Chiasson <CHIASSON@DREA-XX.ARPA>
Subject: Popular Music
I was recently reading "International Affairs", a Russian political
analysis journal and saw an article "Playing with Fire, or How the
Americans Are Urged to Accept the Nuclear Bomb", which contained this
paragraph:
Washington's anti-Soviet, militarist propaganda also finds reflection
in American music. The more fashionable and popular rock groups sell
an extraordinary number of disks that minimize the danger of nuclear
war instead of criticising the arms race. Take, for example, "Neutron
Bomb" a song by Allee Willis and performed by the Pointer Sisters.
.... In it the author, who calls his style "nuclear art", says that a
powerful nuclear blast is going to destroy everybody. The only choice
you have, he goes on, is to feel sorry you have no money, no love,
nothing, or (?) to do the right thing by going to dance, dance,
dance... Prince, well known as a composer and performer of his own
songs, is likewise thinking of doomsday. In an album called `Purple
Rain', he sings of how he makes it up with his girl friend before a
nuclear war in which he would like to see her "in purple rain", that
is, radioactive fallout. ....
The Pointer Sisters song is, of course, "Neutron Dance" and neither it nor
"Purple Rain" has anything to do with war, nuclear weapons, or fallout.
(The article is by Mikhail Beglov, and is in "International Affairs",
December 1986, pp. 96-105; the magazine is available in English.)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 87 16:53:58 PST
From: ihnp4!mhuxd!wolit@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Re: dismantling submarines
> One big issue in the debate over SALT compliance is that the number of
> MIRVed missiles. The problem is that when we deploy something like a
> cruise missile carrying bomber (which counts as a MIRVed missile in
> some ways), we must dismantle a compensating system. Often that
> system is a ballistic missile submarine, which has several MIRVed
> missiles. Thus, to get one newly deployed missile, we may lose as
> many as 15 old MIRVed missiles.
> A solution would be to somehow plug up the missile tubes in a
> submarine, say by filling the tube with concrete.
One oft-mentioned solution would be to move away from reliance on giant,
24-missile SSBNs, and toward smaller ones, each carrying one or two
missiles. This would relieve the pressure on this part of our deterrence
from enemy attack subs, which currently find them to be extremely juicy
targets: 240 highly accurate warheads sitting in a very soft, though
admittedly hard-to-find, shell, in international waters (so a stealthy attack
on them is not nearly as dangerous as, say, an attack on ICBM fields, and
so attack subs can -- if they can find the SSBN -- keep it in their
gunsights). Mini-SSBNs (or even SSBs -- conventionally-powered subs), could
lie silently on the floor of the continental shelf, less vulnerable, less
desirable as targets, harder to find, and more numerous (making a first
strike against them that much harder to coordinate). These subs might not
even require a propulsion system at all -- they could be "seeded" by a
tender on the ocean floor (or on the bottom of the Great Lakes), and perhaps
moved around from time to time. By exchanging one big SSBN for, say, eight
mini-subs, you both gain security and avoid the 15-for-1 problem raised
above.
Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ; 201 582-2998; mhuxd!wolit
(Affiliation given for identification purposes only)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 87 17:40:34 PST
From: ihnp4!mhuxd!wolit@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: SLBMs in the Great Lakes
Partly to follow up on my last submission, I'd like to open
a discussion in this newsgroup on the basing of ballistic
missile submarines in the U.S. territorial waters of the
Great Lakes.
Such a basing mode seems to me to have several advantages
over both traditional schemes, such as open ocean deployment
of SLBMs aboard SSBNs and fixed silo deployment of ICBMs,
and more exotic approaches, such as road-mobile or rail-
based ICBMs or continental shelf-based small submarines (in
no particular order):
1. Submarines based in the Great Lakes would be
completely inaccessible to enemy attack subs, surface
vessels, and nearly all ASW aircraft (certainly to all
peacetime patrols).
2. They would be inaudible to Soviet hydrophone arrays,
since these could be excluded from the Great Lakes.
3. For similar reasons, they would be undetectable by
airborne or heliborne magnetic anomaly detectors.
4. They would operate in an environment that is not
nearly as available to Soviet hydrographic researchers
as is the open ocean. Local data on thermal layering,
salinity, and other physical phenomena important to
submarine detection would be much harder for them to
come by than similar data on the open oceans.
5. Because of the security of the environment,
communication with the subs becomes easier. For
example, hydrophones scattered along the bottom of the
lakes could transmit messages to and from the subs,
undetected by listening devices aboard satellites,
aircraft, or ocean-going vessels.
6. Unlike SSBNs operating in the open ocean, an attack on
lake-based submarines is a direct attack on the home
territory of the U.S., and thus is more highly
deterred. Further, their location all but requires
that they be attacked with nuclear weapons, rather
than conventional torpedoes or depth charges, thus
further increasing the cost (in terms of escalation)
of the attack.
7. Unlike silo-based ICBMs, their positions would not be
fixed, and unlike mobile land-based ICBMs, they could
not easily be observed by satellites.
8. Although based on U.S. territory, an attack on these
missiles would not result in the creation of large
amounts of radioactive fallout, resulting in vast
civilian casualties. (The same, though, is not true
of their ports or other support facilities.)
9. Unlike mobile ICBMs, the technology for submarines is
completely developed. Indeed, older, noisier subs
that have been decommisioned because of their
vulnerabilty to improved Soviet ASW techniques could
be securely deployed in the more benign environment of
the Great Lakes. This would be much cheaper than
continuing with the development of the "Midgetman"
SICBM or a secure basing mode for the MX.
10. Deploying submarines in the Great Lakes would raise no
new arms control or verification problems, unlike,
say, rail-based MXs (e.g., what's to keep the Pentagon
from adding a few more missiles to the system from
undisclosed sources?).
11. Since they would have no need to evade enemy vessels,
their mobility requirements are greatly reduced;
indeed, they need not be self-mobile at all. Unmanned
lauching canisters could be seeded on the lakebed by
tender submarines, linked to control facilities by
cable or hydrophone, and moved around at random
intervals to complicate detection and targeting, or to
allow servicing or arms-control compliance.
12. In the event of the demise of the 1972 ABM Treaty,
SLBMs based in the Great Lakes could come under the
protection of the same sort of terminal-phase
ballistic missile defense system (perhaps even the
very same interceptors) that may be deployed to defend
ICBM fields.
It appears to me that deploying SLBMs in the Great Lakes
instead of deploying additional (even if mobile) ICBMs on
land, would enhance our security while at the same time
reducing arms-control complications, at lower cost. Prior
to developing long-range SLBMs, such as those of the current
generation, this was not an option; in any event, the
Navy's strategic thinking does not, by and large, encompass
the Great Lakes. Additionally, the Air Force might be
reluctant to surrender its monopoly on that portion of the
nuclear "triad" operating in the continental U.S., or the
promise of a new generation of mobile, land-based missiles.
Nevertheless, the prospect of a cheap (or even already-
financed), low-risk (or even already-developed) strategem
that may offer a virtually invulnerable deterrence well into
the next century deserves to be examined further.
----------
Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ; 201 582-2998; mhuxd!wolit
(Affiliation given for identification purposes only)
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Date: Thu, 19 Feb 87 14:01:19 PST
From: pom%under.s1.gov@mordor.s1.gov
Re:Subject: Hitler
--------------------
>Oh, and keep in mind that -everybody- in that part of Europe had a
>non-agression pact with Hitler in the late 30s. Including Poland, for
>all the good it did them. It was the "obvious" thing to do with a
>--Rob Austein <SRA@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
That's simply not true. Czechoslovakia, a direct neighbor, had no
pact with Hitler. It had pact with France, GB, USSR, Rumunia, e.t.c. and it
indeed did not do them any good .
Subject: Economics of SDI (and other military expenditures)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 87 23:01:22 EST
>From: John_Boies@ub.cc.umich.edu
> There are four adverse economic effects of high levels
> of defense spending that I will discuss here. These
> are:
> 1) Shifts in government spending;
> 2) Distortions in the labor market;
> 3) Redistribution of income from the working class and poor to the well off> 4) Reduction in economic growth.
> ......
> ( 2000 lines deleted)
> .....
> Do we want to cut out health care spending, or food stamps, school lunches?
> A second consequence of SDI spending is that investment
>in technically complex weapons systems such as BMD creates
>fewer jobs than most any other type of investment a government or
>business can make.
I have problem with tirades, like the one above: It is not that I would
not agree that arms are expensive. Also, it is perfectly reasonable to
ask if it is worth it and 'will it work?'.
Problem I have is that it seems that John is arguing with somebody
and it is not clear with whom. There are all kinds of stupid arguments
for and against anything (from Fluor in water to irradiation of food to SDI),
but unless somebody on this net, picks up one side, it seems silly to
post a long monologue defending the other side.
No sane person (and even nobody on this net :-) ever advocated SDI
as a tool for the job creation. So, why bother to attack it?
If your thesis is that 'it' (military spending) is not needed, you
should argue that there is no danger (of US being attacked). To give you
a chance, I will answer two questions, posed recently by an intelligent
newcomer (which so far, were ignored) :
Q1: If slimy alien would vaporize all US weapons, would SU occupy US?
A1: yes, for sure.
Q2: If slimy alien would vaporize all SU weapons, would US occupy SU?
A2: I think so; probably with many protests and soul searching.
Reason why, has little to do with socialism vs capitalism; It simply would
be a way to guarantee survival and also to save enormous amounts of money
(and so materials, brainpower, ...) which now are used for arms instead of
the shcool lunches.
Moreover:
If ( A1 ), would it look like Amerika? : Not at all !
If ( A2), what would US do and how?
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Date: Fri, 20 Feb 87 19:41:27 pst
From: pyramid!utzoo!henry@hplabs.HP.COM
Subject: The economics of SDI
> ...as much as $500 billion dollars over a period of 10-20 years.
> ... figures as high as $1 trillion dollars over a ten
> or twenty year period... Figures such as these might sound farfetched
> to some... [goes on to explain that it might well cost that much]
The other side of whether they are "farfetched", of course, is whether they
are ridiculously unaffordable. Remember that the US federal budget now
exceeds a trillion dollars a year, and these numbers don't sound quite so
astronomical any more. $500G over twenty years is only $25G a year, not
a huge bulge in the DoD budget, much less in the federal budget as a whole.
How much is the US likely to spend on farm subsidies, or foreign aid, or
strategic *offence*, in the same period? Assuming that SDI really would
provide a near-total defence against ballistic missiles -- admittedly a big,
big assumption, and almost certainly wrong as things stand now -- is it worth
spending as much on missile defense as on farm subsidies? Probably.
Claims that SDI is unaffordable should stress cost-effectiveness, not the
absolute cost total. Twelve- and thirteen-digit price tags spread over a
decade or two are within the reach of the US government today.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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