ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (11/19/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Tuesday, November 18, 1986 8:16PM
Volume 7, Issue 60
Today's Topics:
counterstrike?
ground-based ABMs
treaty verifiability
Re: Response to "Hawaii"
Catching up on "Response"
Two sided war?
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Date: Thu, 13 Nov 86 00:39:37 CST
From: osmigo1@ngp.utexas.edu (Ron Morgan)
Subject: counterstrike?
Reply-To: ngp!osmigo1@ngp.utexas.edu (Ron Morgan)
I raised a couple of questions two or three digests ago that have been
unanswered so far. Perhaps they were somewhat spurious; it doesn't
really matter. Let me put them more explicitly.
At this time, we do *not* have SDI (and I doubt if we ever will). At
this time, the Soviets are capable of raining thousands of warheads
upon the U.S. mainland, killing half the population (at least),
effectively negating our energy, communication, medical, governmental,
economic, transportation, and cultural systems (don't discount the
significance of that last one). In addition, there would be effects
extending beyond our borders, such as massive insect infestation
(remember the Hellstrom Chronicle?), atmospheric/weather disturbances,
EMP, etc. As popular theory would have it, the only thing preventing
them from doing so is our capability to do the same thing to them.
Good old deterrence. The question I raised was:
In the above event, specifically WHAT is the rationale for a
counterstrike?
If you decide to address this question, please avoid knee-jerk
polemics such as "to get even with the bastards" or "take'em down with
us." Consider the effects of such an event occurring in both
hemispheres simultaneously (I consider both strike and counterstrike
occurring in one hour's time to be "simultaneous"). Compare the
consequences of counterstrike vs. no counterstrike. Consider also
that this can be construed as a philisophical question with bilateral
application; your answer could be applied to their counterstrike as
well as ours. Finally, consider the implications of your answer for
first strike/no first strike rationales.
Ron Morgan
--
osmigo1, UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas 78712
ARPA: osmigo1@ngp.UTEXAS.EDU
UUCP: ihnp4!ut-ngp!osmigo1 allegra!ut-ngp!osmigo1 gatech!ut-ngp!osmigo1
seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!osmigo1 harvard!ut-sally!ut-ngp!osmigo1
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Date: 13 Nov 1986 08:41-EST
From: Hank.Walker@gauss.ECE.CMU.EDU
Subject: Re: ground-based ABMs
I believe the reason the North Dakota Safeguard site was turned off
was that the powers-that-be believed it to be a waste of money. It
did not provide a useful level of protection for missile fields.
Someone who worked on the system told me they basically agreed with
that.
I once heard a talk by Noel Gayler where he stated that targeters just
added a fudge factor to deal with the Moscow ABM system, and the fudge
factor wasn't that large.
Endoatmospheric defense systems have gotten much better since
Safeguard, and are now non-nuclear. However they are really designed
for defending hard targets (the intercept altitude is too low to
protect cities), and can only deal with a limited attack. If an
agreement was reached to eliminate all missiles, or all strategic
forces, then such an ABM system would be useful for protecting against
those few missiles each side had secretly stashed away. This argument
is very similar to Johnson's argument that an ABM system could protect
the US against a "thin" Chinese attack. However to protect the whole
country with such a system would be amazingly expensive. I seem to
recall that the North Dakota site alone cost at least $5B, and only
protected the immediate area.
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From: rutgers!meccts!meccsd!mvs@seismo.CSS.GOV
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 86 02:36:22 EST
Subject: treaty verifiability
dm@bfly-vax writes:
>SALT-II was pretty verifiable.
The SALT treaties were specifically designed so they could be
verifiable. For this reason they only cover launchers, not missiles,
etc. But even at that there are many unanswered questions. SALT II
treats the Backfire bomber as only a medium range bomber in the
Euro-Asian theater. At the time, Brezhnev promised its production
rate would not exceed 30 a year. There is some evidence that
production is higher, and that at least two squadrons are positioned
close to the artic circle where they can have extensive coverage over
US targets.
There are still questions about the actual capabilities of the SS-20
missile. There is some speculation that its range is actually greater
than the claimed 3000 miles. If so, the SS-20 gives the Soviet's an
invulnerable, mobile missile. In comparison, it will probably be
about 10 years before the US Midgetman is deployed. If the Soviet's
aren't hiding anything on the SS-20 then the question is why they
conducted tests under the cover of night and encrypted the telemetry
data. Without on-site verification we simply do not know these sorts
of answers.
>The ABM treaty is verifiable.
The Soviet's have been working on an air-defense program for a number
of years. There is some question as to whether the Soviet's have been
hiding research into a strategic ABM system under the guise of the
allowable air-defense program. To what extent we certainly don't
know. Article 6 of the ABM treaty specifically covers this area. In
essence the ABM treaty says that the Soviet's are not permitted to
test their air-defense missiles against incoming ballistic missiles
and must not deploy radar that could track incoming warheads. To what
extent they have followed this provision is not certain.
During the late 70's evidence started coming in that the Soviet's were
working on a particle beam weapon ABM system based on low yield
nuclear weapons. This provided the inital impetus to what has become
known as SDI.
>You don't negotiate treaties on trust.
Supposedly during the inital SALT I discussions, the US told the
Soviet's about the size of our arsenal and asked for them to do the
same. But the Soviet's couldn't tell us the size of their arsenal,
because they claimed they didn't know. So the US delegation got
permission from Washington to tell the Soviet's what size of arsenal
we thought that they had.
>How accurate is a Trident warhead? A 300 kiloton warhead with 50/50
>odds of arriving within 300 feet of its destination sounds pretty
>counterforce to me.
>...Don't look at it from our
>point of view, look at it from the Soviets' point of view. Pretend
>they were aimed at your missiles.
The CEP for a Trident I missile is about 450 meters. This is simply
not accurate enough for a hard target kill counterforce capability.
The Trident I has neither the range, explosive yield, or accuracy to
be considered a first strike weapon. The other problem is that the
general assumption in the SIOP is that the probability of arrival for
submarine missiles is equal to about 80% of the reliability of the
overall system. This makes them (and the eventual successors like the
Trident II) even less usable for a first-strike. You can be certain
that the Soviet's are also aware of this.
The only way for nuclear arms limitations to occur will be through
treaties that are actually verifiable. Without on-site verification
we will just go through these little propaganda shows like the
last one in Iceland. As President Eisenhower wrote in 1955:
No sound and reliable agreement can be made unless it is
completely covered by an inspection and reporting system
adequate to support every portion of the agreement. The
lessons of history teach us that disarmament agreements without
adequate reciprocal inspection increases the danger of war and do
no brighten the prospects of peace...
---
Michael V. Stein
Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation - Technical Services
UUCP ihnp4!meccts!mvs
------------------------------
From: hplabs!pyramid!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 86 19:17:21 pst
Subject: Re: Response to "Hawaii"
> (There is this awful double standard invoked by SDI proponents that I
> just can't stand: technology & engineering & lots of late night program-
> ming sessions will overcome all the difficulties, even though we can't
> ever figure out all possible countermeasures, but it's somehow obvious
> that offensive uses are theoretically impossible, now and forever, no
> matter how ingenious our lab boys (and girls) are...
Now, now, don't put words in the mouths of SDI proponents, even if you
don't like them. That isn't my view, and I suppose I count as an SDI
proponent (although my actual position on it is not that simple). The
way I would phrase the offensive-uses comment is that it is *possible*
to build an SDI system which has no *major* offensive uses.
"*possible*" means that it requires attention to that specific goal in
order to achieve it. "*major*" means, in particular, use against
cities and ICBM silos. Most any SDI technology will be able to shoot
down satellites, and some of them would be useful on the battlefield
as well, but that is not what most people think of when the word
"offensive" is used without qualification.
> o SDI, while it may not do much for stopping arms, does wonders for stop-
> ping arms discussions...
Hmm. My recollection (disclaimer: I am *not* an expert in this and I
have not been following developments in detail) is that somewhat
before SDI came up, the Soviets stomped out of the conference room
swearing up and down that they would never, never, never come back
until the Pershing 2s and GLCMs were out of Europe. Interestingly
enough, they came back after SDI appeared.
> o As mentioned above, SDI can get shot down by a hostile Congress or our
> next President. We bank our security on such a controversial program?
Name one program we bank our security on that *isn't* vulnerable to
this, and that *doesn't* have somebody jumping up and down demanding
it be stopped.
> If R&D are so wonderful, why doesn't Reagan throw some gigabucks at the
> Universities, no strings attached? ...
Because Reagan either doesn't give SDI a high enough priority, or
doesn't understand that he should give it a high enough priority (if
he wants it to happen), to get it out from under the standard military
R&D apparatus. Which means it gets done by the book, and the book
doesn't include throwing money at universities with no strings
attached.
(This actually is my biggest objection to SDI as it is now
constituted: even if it were clearly possible to achieve SDI's goals
-- and the situation is pretty murky, not clear at all -- handing it
to the military bureaucrats and saying "do it" would guarantee an
astronomically-expensive failure. And that is roughly what Reagan has
done.)
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
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Date: Fri, 14 Nov 86 21:14:41 pst
From: Eugene Miya N. <eugene@ames-nas>
Subject: Catching up on "Response"
Excuse me while I try and catch up on some of the discussion about
verification of impact, 24-hour response, and "later" response.
I wonder about the thinking of some of the people in this group and
also about strategic and tactical planners. This is not meant to
an attack on there thinking, only an attempt at understanding. Let me
pose a scenario/question between the presentation of two similar scenarios.
The two similar scenarios: Red Dawn and the coming miniseries: Amerika.
I saw Red Dawn shortly after it came out [Interesting.] We had the
show "The Day After," and now we have Amerika.
I recently saw a Time article about the row over the UN and Amerika.
[for those unfamiliar I am informed the story is 10 years after a Soviet
attack on the US which leaves open to conventional invasion: one
source said they develop a mysterious ray (I doubt this plot), another
says EMP does us in (more probable story line). After the invasion a
"UN" security force polices the US including UN blue emblems (the
controversy) [I assume a puppet US government]. Oh, yes, there are
rebels ala Red Dawn and Afganistan. Probably your usual Quisling
(Benedict Arnolds for US citizens), and sex and violence.) I don't know
how well watched the show will be, but I understood "Day After" was
prominently viewed.] Enough about these scenarios.
Now, new scenario. There is a well published book by an L.A. Times
Reporter about the ex-head of Civil Defense: T. K. Jones (With Enough
Shovels). What I wonder is a what out planners would envision a best of
all possible "New Russia" would be like? Let's suppose some how we
got the drop on the Soviet Union with little or no damage to our
society. (Don't laugh, the above two scenarios assume it, I am just
curious about the optimists in the system.) New question is
depending on damage level of the Soviet Union, do we have invasion
plans (conventional with perhaps some tactical nuc capability?)
or do we assume the Sovets are wrecked and we go on with our lives, or
give them "foreign aid?" I am curious what the most optimistic planner
envisions. I am certain we won't just let wounded dogs lie since they
would probably rebuild and come back with a vengence (oh, we have to
ignore nuclear winter as the two scenarios did, and I am certain most
nuclear planners also ignore, otherwise we degenerate to that other
"liberal" show). Would we then have big battles to take the Soviet
Union? [Watch out for those winters!] Another battle for Leningrad
and Moscow? Or do the planners envision that the Soviet people would
come to us with open arms [I know people believe this latter] as
liberators?
Just curious, I wanted to pose the question before the series Amerika
previews in February. Also, before the the Soviet turn around copy
based on ideas posted to the net comes out and Amerika comes out
(they have mirror copied most of our spy shows).
From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
eugene@ames-pioneer.arpa
"You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
{hplabs,hao,nike,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix,menlo70}!ames!pioneer!eugene
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From: Tom McClure <ecsvax!ciml%mcnc.csnet@RELAY.CS.NET>
Date: 14 Nov 86 14:51:50 GMT
Subject: Two sided war?
The discussions I have read thus far ignore the fact that other
nations are involved and may strike first.
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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