ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (10/29/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Wednesday, October 29, 1986 10:03AM
Volume 7, Issue 41
Today's Topics:
Possible scrapping of SDI boost phase intercept
Was vs Slaughter
SDI performance
US bases in Britain
Strategy of Nuclear War and SDI
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Subject: Possible scrapping of SDI boost phase intercept
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 86 17:25:34 -0800
From: crummer@aerospace.ARPA
Answer to Lin's question about the Deployment Phase:
In the Stanford debate on SDI Pete Worden said that the boost phase problem
may be just ignored. We give up trying to hit anything during boost phase.
This means that we have left the post-boost including deployment, mid-course,
and reentry (terminal) phases. Most people I know that are knowledgeable on the subject know that boost phase is about our only
chance at the deal. The whole "SDI" pseudo-system is crumbling before our very
eyes!
--Charlie
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Date: Mon, 27 Oct 86 17:46:34 PST
From: pom@s1-along.arpa
Re: War vs Slaughter
>From: Gary Chapman <chapman@russell.stanford.edu>
. There is a difference between war and slaughter, and the use of autonomous
weapons is the latter, no matter how accurate and how discriminating
they are. War has been for all of human history a contest of wills...
....Therefore the whole basis war crime law is threatened.
That would seem to me to be a leap into a tremendous abyss.
comment (pom): There used to be a difference bewtween war and slaughter,
but I wonder if that would apply to WWIII even with just
existing technology.
An argument can be made about at least parts of the
WWII and I. But you are right, there is something
different about killer robots. That indeed was Capek's
warning. The solution he favored was not to outlaw
the robots but to avoid the war..(He died just before WWII)
>From: David Chase <rbbb at rice.edu>
How effective will it be
on missiles once it has been programmed not to attack non-targets? To
avoid disasters, it seems that we will have to publish its criteria for
deciding between targets and non-targets (how much is an international
incident worth? One vaporized weather satellite, maybe? If I were the
other side, you can be sure that I would begin to try queer styles of launching my peaceful stuff to see how we responded)
comment (pom) : That is a wery good point. How about shooting down
everything which does not clear with GSTC (=Global Space Traffic Control) ??
If you just publish what is "non-target" than 'the other side' may disguise
missiles as planes and weather satellites. The GSTC clearance may include
prelaunch inspection and filed flight plan. Anything which is cleared will
have transpoder and valid code - so there is no doubt of target's ID.
Is there another way?
>from: Sam Wilson, ERCC, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
So, to put a question, if we had to look the victims in the
face while we used any weapon, would we use them at all? Even
if the other guy did? I think my answer would be no, but I'd be
much happier that I'd reached the right decision about killing
someone if I did have to look him in the eye while I did it than
if I did it at a distance of several thousand miles or at the
moral distance of having a robot do it for me.
comment (pom): I think that big part of the problem with this debate
is, that most contributors were never on the recieving end of a machine gun.
While I believe that Sam W. belives what he says, I think that he would soon
change his mind, when under fire. I will quote from a letter of G.B.Shaw
to his german translator (during WWI) :
"There are no longer Germans and Englishmen, Austrians and Russians.
There are only men in a certain uniforms who are trying to kill you and
man in certain different uniforms who are trying to save you. And you
must try to save the men who are trying to save you and kill the men
who are trying to kill you.."
( The quote is from review of a book: Bernard Shaw's letters to
S. Trebitch, just published by Stanford U. Press).
While there may be saints who indeed will turn the other cheek, that
experience of the past wars, which shows that percentage to be very small
I think we can extrapolate..
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Date: Mon, 27 Oct 86 21:03:43 pst
From: king@kestrel.ARPA (Dick King)
Subject: SDI performance
Let me throw out a wild idea.
Hmmm, SDI has to kill 10000 missiles in 1000 seconds. Impossible?
Maybe, but
I am a mediocre Ground Zero player on the Macintosh; I spend maybe ten
minutes per week and I can shoot down several hundered missiles in
those ten minutes. With a dozen teammates and a better mouse I suspect I
could put a real dent in 10000 missiles in a ten minute period.
True, I play in 2-d rather than 3-d, and the game is a bit simplified,
but my point is that the part that computers are poor at, recognizing
the fact of an attack and realizing what it is important to go after,
humans are SUPERB at. Perhaps with the right display, fifteen
wunderkings from the arcade could be the core of the target
designation and battle management: when he clicks on a target with the
(3d) mouse a computer THAT ONLY NEEDS LOCAL INFORMATION can go after
the ICBM he nails.
-dick
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Date: Mon, 27 Oct 86 23:08:51 CST
From: reality1!james@sally.utexas.edu
Subject: US bases in Britain
It is probably true that the reason the US has military bases in Britain is
that the US has a substantially more powerful military than Britain. But this
doesn't necessarily imply coercion. There are no British bases in the US
(as far as I know) because it wouldn't really serve either the interests of
Britain or the US. The cost of such a base to Britain would be too great
just to wave the flag. On the other hand, US bases in Britian put US forces
closer to where US ground forces are likely to be needed, and give Britain
a decidedly strong deterrent force.
Another logical way to view the question would be from the perspective of
history, specifically WW II. Britian clearly needed every US GI they could
get their hands on to avoid disaster at the hands of Hitler. After two
successive world wars in which the US played a strong role (if not deciding
in WW I) in saving Britain, the political leaders must have known that the
US would be the deciding factor in freedom in Europe, a conclusion I think
partially justified by events following WW II. There are probably more than
a few Czecks aand Hungarians who wish there had been US bases in their
countries after WW II (not to mention the Poles...).
---
James R. Van Artsdalen ...!ut-ngp!utastro!osi3b2!james "Live Free or Die"
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Date: Wednesday, 29 October 1986 09:59-EST
From: Phil R. Moyer <prm at j.cc.purdue.edu>
To: ARMS-D
Re: Strategy of Nuclear War and SDI
The point of SDI is to make a nuclear war prohibitively expensive and
uncertain for the Soviets to wage. The point is not to create some
marvelous handed-down-from-the-gods system that will make nuclear
weapons obsolete. To understand why SDI will be (or can be :-)) effective,
a critic must understand the strategies of nuclear war.
If you are initiating a first strike against an enemy you have two goals.
You must destroy or inhibit his ability to retaliate and you must destroy or
inhibit his ability to recover from that strike.
There are two kinds of targets, soft and hard. Hard targets are typically
the ones that determine ability to retaliate and soft targets typically are
those that determine ability to recover.
Soft targets cannot withstand "high" static overpressure (SP). SP is the
downward force under a shock front. Soft targets are such things as
cities, airbases, refineries and power production and distribution centers.
Here are some examples of the overpressures soft targets can withstand.
Wood frame houses will be damaged by 2-5 psi; they will be destroyed by 10+
psi. Windowpanes can only withstand 5 psi. A brick or concrete block
house will be flattened by 15 psi. A concrete and steel office building will
withstand 100 psi, but everything between the floors will be blasted out the
down-blast side of the building. 200 psi will destroy the structure itself.
People can only withstand (at most) 15 psi of overpressure.
Hard targets can withstand relatively high overpressures. Hardened Minuteman
III silos can withstand 2500 psi.
In a first strike, the goal is to knock out a majority of hard targets (silos
and deep command centers) and soft retaliatory targets, then worry about
the recovery ability. For example, you would try to knock out the silos
with extremely accurate (CEP < 200m) land based missiles. Probably 2 500kt
warheads per silo, the first airburst, the second groundburst. Probably
3 such warheads, groundburst, for each soft military target (airbases,
communications arrays and harbors). Then one or two 1 megaton warheads for
the top 75 or so soft targets vital to a recovery from a first strike. Targets
such as refineries, steel mills, power production facilities and other
industrial targets (which usually include cities :-( ).
Now, if you can reduce the certainty of the success of an attack, the enemy
will have to commit a greater number of warheads to each target to ensure
an acceptable kill ratio.
So what's the point, right? The point is, the soviets would probably only
commit 50% of their arsenal to a first strike (ya gotta save some for second,
third, ect. strikes). SDI can reduce the certainty of their attack to the
point where they would need to commit 80 to 100 percent of their arsenal
to ensure an acceptable kill. They won't do that, and they can't build
additional weapons fast enough to swamp the system (sorry, they just cannot
economically double (at least) the size of their arsenal).
The question then becomes not "Is it perfect?" but "Is it good enough?" SDI
was never designed to eliminate nuclear war. Like any good defensive or
offensive system, it is being built to make such a war less likely.
Regards,
-Phil
prm@j.cc.purdue.edu
P.S. I realize this brings up the subject of acceptable loses. For example,
"SDI isn't perfect, but it'll reduce our casualties from 45 million to
36 million, and that's acceptable to us." I'm game if you are.
P.S.S. These views are my own; my employers do not always agree with me.
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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