ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (01/28/87)
Arms-Discussion Digest Tuesday, January 27, 1987 9:31PM
Volume 7, Issue 100
Today's Topics:
Star Wars as Bad
Security clearances
Reagan Doctrine
SDI and fixed orbits
Economics of SDI (Request)
Thanks and making the Arms-d better
Battle Management Systems
Space mines
I'm Warning You!
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Subject: Star Wars as Bad
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 87 16:54:24 -0800
From: crummer@aerospace.ARPA
There are components of the Star Wars pipe-dream that would be
offensive; they would threaten cities. I think that offensive systems
are bad unless all other nations have good reason to trust that we
will not use them offensively. (No one is afraid that the Swiss will
use their "defensive" weapons offensively, not because they are by
their nature defensive but because everyone trusts the Swiss to only
use them defensively.)
The high-speed projectile (smart rock) would be capable of accurately
delivering meteorite-like energy on the ground. (The kinetic energy of a 1
kg. mass at escape velocity is equivalent to about 1 ton of TNT!)
--Charlie
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Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1987 00:48 EST
From: Anonymous (through Lin)
Subject: Security clearances
I'd like to offer a few comments about the problems I have in
carrying on a discussion in a public forum.
A little about myself: I work for the defense department, I have a
fairly high level security clearance, and am involved in problems to do
with the navy. I am a civilian, but for purposes of protocol, I am
considered equivalent in rank to a Lt. Colonel. I find two problems
in dealing matters of information. (Note: for this discussion, I am
omitting cases of misinformation.)
The first is deciding what information is classified. I do have
access to classified information on a variety of topics, but clearance does
not give the right to access all classified data: I must have a valid
`need to know'. Suppose a question relevant to my expertise comes up in
ARMS-D, and I have seen the answer in a classified document. Then that
information is classified and I cannot reveal it. Suppose I have also seen
that same information in a unclassified source, then can I reveal it? The
answer is probably `NO' because another unclassified source may have
provided a different answer and I would be pointing out the correct answer.
A variation on this is if the information is outside my field. I
sometimes see more than is required by a narrow interpretation of `need to
know'. (Strict compartmentalization does occur at higher levels of
security.) I speak with co-workers in context about their jobs, attend
classified seminars, and read various classified documents. Again
something comes up on ARMS-D. What do I do? I may not be sure of the
classification status on certain information, or even where I got the
information. It may be that I read the classified information and forgot
it, or had access and just didn't read it. In any investigation, saying I
thought the information was unclassified would get me no sympathy. The
safe thing is to just not comment.
My second problem is that it is not appropriate for government
employees to comment on public issues. There is a risk that such comments
could be taken as a statement of policy. Indeed, that is why some
information is classified.
Thus, I spend more time reading than writing on ARMS-D. Some of
you may accuse me of being a coward; perhaps you are correct. People like
the president, and senators may reveal classified material for various
reasons, but they are in different situations. For me, I don't feel the
return is worth the risk.
I hope the ARMS-D dialogue keeps up. I know that some things are
not always accurate, but that's OK. Hearing a broad spectrum of opinions
from people ensures interesting discussion. Oh, by the way, there was some
question about P3's and nukes, well the policy on that is yjr wiovl ntpem
gpc ki,[d pbrt yjr ;sxu fph.
It is not illegal to lie about classified [material], it is only
illegal to tell the truth. -attributed to Helmut Kohl
(West German Chancellor)
P.S.: To NSA and clones, shift fingers one place to the left.
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Date: Friday, 23 January 1987 07:36-EST
From: This space for rent <"NGSTL1::SHERZER%ti-eg.csnet" at RELAY.CS.NET>
To: arms-d
Re: Regan Doctrine
X-VMS-To: SKACSL::IN%"arms-d-request%xx.lcs.mit.edu@csnet-relay"
>Whoa. If you think there has been little public dissent, you reading
>must be confined to the (appallingly supine) mass media. In the
>Boston area alone, several thousand people have signed The Pledge of
>Resistance, promising to participate in non-violent acts of civil
>disobedience in the event of a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua. There are
>demonstrations against the U.S. Central America policy every month or
>so here. If this dissent doesn't make it into the mainstream media,
>that says more about the media and its relationship to its ultimate
>masters than it says about the dissent.
Perhaps is says more about the people who live in Boston.
>Finally, let us not forget that the U.S. clients in Cambodia, the
>Khmer Rouge, are those wonderful folks who brought you Pol Pot and his
>merry band of mass murderers.
Not true. There are several groups fighting the Cambodian government
of which Pol Pot is one. We support Sieodnuk (I know that is spelled
wrong, but I can't find the correct spelling). Although Pol Pot is
making sounds like a western style democrat, he has not fooled anyone.
Allen Sherzer
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Date: Sun, 25 Jan 87 00:56:38 est
From: David Sher <sher@rochester.arpa>
Subject: SDI and fixed orbits
Reply-To: sher@rochester.UUCP (David Sher)
Why would an SDI be limited to fixed orbits? How much would having
SDI platforms capable of periodically and randomly changing orbits
cost over a fixed orbit system and would such a system foil very many
counter measures?
[I hope that this doesn't screw up, this is my first posting to arms-d]
--
-David Sher
sher@rochester
{allegra,seismo}!rochester!sher
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Date: Sun, 25 Jan 87 17:27:12 est
From: Larry Yaffe <princeton!pupthy.PRINCETON.EDU!lgy@seismo.CSS.GOV>
Subject: Economics of SDI (Request)
Most of the SDI discussion in this group (and in the media) seems to focus
on ethics, philosophy, or technology, but not economics. In my opinion,
this seriously weakens most anti-SDI arguments. After all, many (perhaps most)
people would agree that some level of research on strategic defense is
completely appropriate. And naturally, if cost is no object, one cannot
meaningfully argue that some level of defense against ballistic missiles
is technically infeasible. The big question (in my mind at least) is how
much money should be put into SDI related projects. This posting is a
request for information and discussion on topics such as the following.
How much money has been spent on SDI to date ?
How much money is likely to spent in the next few years ?
How does this level of money compare to the amount of federal funding
for basic science ? For applied science ?
How does this level of money compare to the total NSF, DOD, DOE, etc.,
budgets ?
How much impact is SDI funding having on basic research funding ?
If SDI continues (at the level requested by the president) how serious
will its impact on basic research funding become ? On other
government funding ?
Is the money spent on SDI well spent ?
Obviously, these questions range from precise to vague. I'm hoping
that someone with information at their fingertips will be able to respond
to the precise questions, and that the vague questions will provoke
thoughtful responses related to cost/benefit estimates for SDI.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 87 19:10:51 pst
From: Eugene Miya N. <eugene@ames-pioneer.arpa>
To: lin
Subject: Thanks and making the Arms-d better
[leq: And what news group do YOU think the NSA likes to read the most?]
Thanks again. Enjoyed meeting you. I recommend other readers to stop
by and see you some time.
On making the discussion a better place. I suggest you write:
Prof. Lawrence Badash
History Dept.
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
His speciality is the history of the atomic age. He has numerous issues
and topics which arms-d has yet to discuss. His most recent book was
a set of Reminscences of Los Alamos including a chapter by Richard Feynman.
[A reproduction of which appear in Feynman's autobiography in three
chapters.]
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
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Date: Mon, 26 Jan 87 12:10:54 PST
From: sun!toma@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Athanasiou)
Subject: Battle Management Systems
In reply to Bryan Fugate <fugate at mcc.com>:
>Complex decision-making aids that rely on distributed networks
>are precisely what several major research projects in the U.S.
>are working on. As the work on expert systems progresses and
>massively parrallel machines come on line to coordinate thousands
>or millions of processes concurrently, then something like SDI
>battle management, while not becoming a trivial matter, will
>become immenently more practical. Process control in CAD/CIM
>applications in industry will be driving the need to produce the
>software. It could become a way also of rationalizing things
>like the air traffic control system.
This is an EXTREMELY optimistic view, one that glosses over a
number of very important problems.
In the first place, "complex decision-aids that rely on distributed
networks" must, of necessity, be programmed to discard "irrelevent"
information during the sensor-fusion process. Needless to say,
programmers don't always guess right about what is irrelevent, and
the information lost can be crucial. It is worth noting that, in
the corporate world, there has been a reaction against the kind of
engineering management style that is fostered by reliance on MIS
systems that are not even real-time, and thus can be presumed to
deliver higher quality information that battle-management systems
ever would. I suggest you read some Clausewitz -- in particular
his crucial distinction between War and War on paper. The
important quotes are in Fallow's National Defense.
In the second place, parallel machines have made no notable
contribution to solving these kinds of problems. Indeed, they may
have made matters worse by forcing the computer science community to
confront the problem of automatic program decomposition. There has
been little progress, and little is expected in these sorts of
applications. Right now there are about 50 different parallel
machines in the country -- no one knows how to program any of
them in any kind of reasonably general-purpose way.
In the third place, expert systems don't work very well. This is
often difficult for people to realise because there is such a high
level of hype (and federal funding) in the industry. Wall street
has realized it though, and AI stocks have been in trouble for some
time. Check out Gary Martins' article -- AI, the Technology that
Wasn't -- in the Dec 1986 issue of Defense Electronics.
>This is the big advantage the U.S. has over societies like the
> SU, we don't control the avenues of technological progress from
>one big super funding agency.
Actually, DARPA's Strategic Computing Program -- which only four
years ago was suppossed to help AI take off, is now best described
as a life-support system for the AI industry. And, as point of
fact, the Federal government funds as great deal of garbage research
that is going nowhere, research that would never be funded in, for
example, Japan. And with the R&D process becoming increasingly
militarized -- 75% (I believe) of all computer science research is
now funded by the government, we can expect this trend to continue.
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Date: Tue, 27 Jan 87 13:54:09 PST
From: "Clifford Johnson" <GA.CJJ@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Space mines
> From: Wyle <wyle%ifi.ethz.chunet@RELAY.CS.NET>
> The USSR anti-satellite system must first park the mine near
> his target. Their geosych capability is weak, and we would
> see the killer satellite coming for a long time during its
> deployment.
I don't dispute this. But my precise question is, whether we
can presume this has already happened? For every U.S. satellite
in geosynchronous orbit over the U.S.S.R., isn't there a Soviet
satellite or three close enough to be a space mine, regardless of
its purported purpose? Is it the case such proximities exist,
or not? If they exist, don't we have to assume the worst about
them? I'm not sure of the answer, though I recognize the Soviets
claim not to have space weapons deployed. Is this verifiable?
I would think not.
To: ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
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Date: Fri, 16 Jan 87 18:22:08 -0800
From: Karen E. Wieckert <wieckert at ICSE.UCI.EDU>
To: arms-d
Re: I'm Warning You!
> From: Allen Sherzer; Wednesday, 7 January 1987 09:01-EST
> If you goal is to defend, then you need to deploy as many assets as
> possible because you don't know when the attack will come. On the other
> hand, if your goal is attack you can maintain a much lower state of
> rediness (sic) because you get to pick the time when you will attack.
> From: Henry Spencer; 10 Jan 87 19:15:47 pst
> The biggest question is what contribution the in-transit boats could make
> in the event of sudden nuclear war.
(I am not sure if this subject has been discussed on arms-d. If it has, I
apologize for raising the issue and request pointers to the discussion...)
The above two recent postings both make an assumption about our strategic
situation: we must defend against a ``bolt from the blue'' attack. As I
look through decisions to deploy ``defensive'' and ``offensive'' systems
from WWII on, I see this argument cropping up over and over again. For
instance, the justification for the Semi Automatic Ground Environment air
defense, developed and ``deployed'' during the 50's, had at base, just such
an argument. Warning information had decreased to hours, since bombers
could deliver nuclear warheads in that time from the USSR. Yet, this
assumption was based on no prior warning of mobilization of Soviet forces.
I hark back to this example mainly because I see it as the first major
effort undertaken and justified by the assumption that the US needs to
prepare for a ``bolt out of the blue'' as redefined in the nuclear age.
Is this a realistic assumption? What would happen to our position if we
relaxed our perception of ``warning'' (i.e. assumed that we would have at
least a day's worth or more of advanced warning to prepare for a Soviet
attack?)
ka:ren
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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