ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (10/20/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Monday, October 20, 1986 12:25PM Volume 7, Issue 36 Today's Topics: Stealth vs Boston Globe English bases in US? (4 msgs) Soviet SDI--Some facts, please compromise of unintelligence many bush wars * low probability of armageddan = we all die someday (2 msgs) US bases in England Subdelegation of authority to use nuclear weapons stealth (SDI) System effectiveness is NOT a constant! [from RISKS] Editorial on SDI [from RISKS] facade of democracy over fact of dictatorship ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Date: Sun, 19 Oct 86 08:19:07 edt Subject: Stealth vs Boston Globe Martin mentions some general techniques of stealth; it is worth noting that the application of some of these things can be a bit subtle. Things that *increase* radar reflectivity are also a factor, applied properly. For example, the B-1B windshield has a radar-reflective metal coating, which the B-1A windshield lacked. Why? In the absence of that coating, radar goes straight through the windshield, and reflects off the rear bulkhead of the cockpit. The cockpit bulkhead is roughly at right angles to the incoming radiation, while the windshield is sharply sloped, so it's better to make the windshield reflective. Martin also asks whether active countermeasures are part of stealth. There have indeed been mumbles to that effect from official sources. Since stealth techniques make targets harder to see, one needs less in the way of interference to make them effectively invisible. Well, that's the theory anyway; personally I have some doubts about anything that involves active emissions from a stealth aircraft. If you want to see something really ludicrous, look at USAF ideas of stealth fighters that obviously have nose radars! > ... Jamming is no good, as it tells the adversary something's up... Wrong objection. Nobody has ever pretended that stealth techniques are going to be so good that the adversary wouldn't be able to tell he was being attacked! Confusing tracking and defensive systems is about the best that can be hoped for. Among other reasons, long-range warning radars tend to be long-wavelength devices, and the effectiveness of stealth techniques falls off considerably at long wavelengths. > Apart from the interesting physics of stealth, I'd like to know > why this should be kept so secret or "black"? Is it a means of > keeping up skunk worker morale, adding a James Bond spirit, or is > there really some great novelty here ... ? Part of it is that the US military thinks the USSR wouldn't know that water runs downhill if they hadn't found out from the US. These days it is fashionable to blame every similarity between US and Soviet equipment on espionage, so everything is under wraps to prevent it happening again. At least, that's the excuse. There is another, very potent, reason for the deep secrecy: most of the critics of the defense establishment do not have high-grade security clearances. And those who do can't stir up public indignation easily if they're forbidden to discuss details. Even Congressional supervision of programs is greatly hampered by tight secrecy. The US military has discovered that keeping everything secret is a dandy way to keep the critics at arm's length, and predictably they like that idea a lot. Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry ------------------------------ From: decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Date: Sun, 19 Oct 86 08:19:17 edt Subject: English bases in US? > Are there British bases in the United States? While their existance > seems plausible, I have never heard of any... While I agree with the argument to some degree, it's worth noting that England is a lot closer to the perceived threat than the US is, so there is some geographical influence as well. There are British bases in West Germany, even though West Germany probably has military superiority over Britain (ignoring the nuclear aspect). There are also Canadian bases in Germany, which most emphatically doesn't mean that Canada is more powerful than Germany! (Sigh... That one cuts the other way. There are, effectively, German bases in Canada, because Canada is host to a lot of NATO training facilities. The *embarrassing* part is that there are usually more German tanks in Canada than there are *Canadian* tanks in Canada!) Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Oct 1986 10:28 EDT From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: U.S. bases in England (Lin) From: Cowan > Obviously, > agreements to locate US military bases all over the world wouldn't > exist unless we had a military edge over those countries. From: lin >So you believe that U.S. bases in England are the result of U.S. >military superiority over the British? From: Rick.Busdiecker at h.cs.cmu.edu If no British bases exist on the U.S then it seems reasonable to assume that the U.S. bases in England are, in fact, the result of U.S. military superiority over the British. Why? U.S. military superiority over the British is unquestionable. But to make a causal inference from that is entirely unwarranted unless you can argue that the U.S. somehow USED its military superiority to COERCE the British, which was the original spirit of Cowan's comment. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Oct 1986 12:02-EDT From: Rick.Busdiecker@h.cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: U.S. bases in England [see above..] The possibility that U.S. military superiority over the British has resulted in there being U.S. bases in England isn't contingent on U.S. coercion being involved. It appears that some significant portion of the British government consider U.S. bases in England to be in the best interests of England. Coercion is possible, but not necessary. The original spirit of the comment was that military superiority enables the U.S. to make aggreements with other countries that are more favorable for it than they would be if this superiority didn't exist. If the U.S. were on equal footing with the British militarily, it seems unlikely that there would be U.S. bases in England without British bases in the U.S. Having U.S. bases in England is certainly advantageous to the U.S. in that it improves U.S. strategic position. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1986 10:59 EDT From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: U.S. bases in England [see above..] You (rick) and I agree on the facts of the situation. We disagree on the meaning of Cowan's original statement. I continue to believe that coercion was strongly suggested by the full text of the original message. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Oct 86 14:58:50 EDT From: David_S._Allan%UB-MTS%UMich-MTS.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA Subject: Soviet SDI--Some facts, please I have heard on numerous occasions that the Soviets are developing their own SDI-type system, but I have not seen any facts to back this claim. Since the claim is one of the main excuses put forward to justify the SDI program, I would like to know more about what the Soviets actually have. What tests have been done, using what technologies, and with what results? Note that the ABM system deployed around Moscow is permitted by the ABM treaty and has no relevance to arguments for SDI. Note also that the Soviet ASAT system constitutes an issue separate from SDI. David Allan (David_Allan@UM.CC.UMICH.EDU) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Oct 86 23:05:42 pdt From: weemba@brahms.berkeley.edu (Matthew P Wiener) Subject: compromise of unintelligence I'm eating crow about my factual assertions about the Libya bombing, but I still stand by me abstract assertion concerning further damage. Note 1: I am speaking hypothetically on the assumption that the intercepted message is indeed as claimed by our government. Note 2: Apparently the original was in Berber, not Arabic. I have also heard that no encoding/encryption was done, and that it was wrongly assumed that the language barrier was enough. I find that claim dubious. It may have worked in WWII against the Japanese, but they were notoriously poor at intelligence gathering. We are not. Anyway, in response to Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ@Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>: >> > Revealing the actual content of the [Libyan] >> >intercepted communication would have added not at all to this >> >initial [intelligence compromise] damage, [Wayne McGuire] >> >>Yes it could have. It could have alerted other countries to a >>particular kind of weakness in *their* systems. > >How come? What difference would it make to have seen the original >arabic for this particular message? It could have been typed out >on ordinary paper, couldn't it? Am I missing something? But what was the "message"? A spelled out plan-of-attack? Or some sort of code whose analysis is based on several years of deduction? In the first case, I see no immediate harm in its release, although the precedent seems bad--what if next time is like the second case? But in the second case, anyone else who intercepted the transmission would be able to compare before and after, and so get a big clue as to what was crackable. Also, what if a text had been released, claimed to be our experts' reading of the transmitted code/cipher? It only pushes the level of government credibility to a different unknown plateau. Do you now roll over and accept the claimed expert analysis, or do push even further? At some point, you have to look outside and draw your own inferences. > Wasn't the >U.S. caught red-faced because in all the rhetoric it had forgot the >implied original would have been in arabic? I don't know what you are referring to here, even hypothetically. Was something said that turned on some difference between English/Berber grammar, revealing the underlying charade? That's the only meaning I can give to your question, and it seems too unnatural. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 ------------------------------ Date: 1986 October 19 17:22:39 PST (=GMT-8hr) From: Robert Elton Maas <REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA> Subject:many bush wars * low probability of armageddan = we all die someday LIN> Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1986 14:13 EDT LIN> From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU LIN> Subject: Strategic Deception From: Wayne McGuire <Wayne%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU> One must begin to wonder whether getting on with this war has become such an urgent concern for the neocons and their traditional conservative allies that they are--as in the case of false reports about Libyan "hit teams" in the U.S.--willing to use disinformation--including the _manufacture_ of evidence--to push us over the brink into a military confrontation which could rapidly escalate into a world war. LIN> I have asked this question before, but I'd like to pose it again. LIN> Please supply a plausible scenario for how such a confrontation would LIN> push us into world war with the Soviets, especailly given Soviet LIN> behavior in the wake of the U.S. attacks on Libya. If this happened only once or twice your question would demand an answer. But we have been having "bush wars" for thirty years. Each time there is a tiny probability of a major war, but if we have enough of these chances for world war somday we'll be "lucky" and win the jackpot of all out thermonuclear war. We need to reduce these "bush wars" to a rarity so we can use your apparent logic that if the chance is small we don't have to worry about it. One further problem is that with so many "bush wars" is that when a potentially big war appears we're so pre-occupied with three simultaneous "bush wars" that we don't notice the new dangerous situation or we don't have energy to keep it from "exploding". Also we become used to war and accept another war as "life". We have never had peace in recent years, just a facade of peace where we aren't fighting here in our backyards but we're fighting secretly over there somewhere and simultaneously over there and over there. Your question may be valid, but even without an answer there's cause for concern about setting up a principle that our government can lie to us to get us into "bush war" after "bush war" whenever they feel like it. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1986 11:59 EDT From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: many bush wars * low probability of armageddan = we all die someday [see above..] I don't disagree with your logic. I simply asked for a plausible scenario, and I don't think I have gotten one. I do agree that brush-fire wars are bad things, and we should work to eliminate them. Your question may be valid, but even without an answer there's cause for concern about setting up a principle that our government can lie to us to get us into "bush war" after "bush war" whenever they feel like it. Again, I agree. ------------------------------ From: caip!meccts!jlt@seismo.CSS.GOV Date: Sun, 19 Oct 86 22:33:47 edt Subject: US bases in England Reply-To: meccts!jlt@seismo.CSS.GOV (James L. Thompson) >From: Rick.Busdiecker@h.cs.cmu.edu >Subject: U.S. bases in England (Lin) > >Are there British bases in the United States? While their existance >seems plausible, I have never heard of any. If none exist then it >seems reasonable to assume that the U.S. bases in England are, in fact, >the result of U.S. military superiority over the British. I disagree, it is not reasonable to assume that we hold a gun to the heads of our allies in order to place military bases in their contries. The reason we do have bases in other contries and not the other way around is simple, money. The USA not only pays it's own way in NATO but also foots the bill for most of the rest of NATO as well. Unlike the Warwaw Pact countries, the members of NATO are there because they want to be, not because they are colonies of the Soviet Empire... --- James L. Thompson - {amdahl,caip,ihnp4}!meccts!jlt -or- jlt@mecc.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Oct 86 04:39:48 PDT From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ@forsythe.stanford.edu> Subject: Subdelegation of authority to use nuclear weapons > But the crucial question is to what extent this delegation of > authority is to machines. > That is, are humans making the ultimate decisions (good) or are humans merely > rubber-stamping decisions made by software (bad)? We don't know... I agree we need an answer to this. However, we already know we're in the robot's claw by virtue of the *100% dependence* of, e.g., launch on warning, upon computerized sensors, which could go wrong. (My research into dual-phenomenology/data-fusion/posture-statements has lead me to conclude that it amounts to little more than the rule that if two of NORAD's screens give an alarm at the same-ish time, they have the discretion to issue a confirmed attack declaration.) Second, it's not just whether there's machines involved that is the issue, but also whether the Pres. is involved. The 1946 (&1954) Atomic Energy Act was enacted to ensure civilian control of nuclear weapons. It said the Pres., and only the Pres., could order the use of nucs. It still says the same thing. Therefore, if authority has been delegated to the military, that in itself is an impermissible subdelegation. Technically speaking, such delegation violates the Subdelegation Act (1951) rather the Atomic Energy Act. To: ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 20 October 1986 10:38-EDT From: Bryan Fugate <fugate at mcc.com> To: ARMS-D Re: stealth In the Popular Science Magazine, September 1986 edition , was a must-read article "Stealth; first glimpse of the invisible aircraft now under construction". According to the author, T.A. Heppenheimer, the Northrop Advanced-Technology (Stealth) Bomber is based on the same type of flying-wing construction that was evident in the YB-49 Northrop flying wing which first flew in 1947. In order to build a plane without sharp corners and few reflective features, inherent instabilities are introduced in the plane's ability to maneuver. Until recently, stabilization and control problems were so serious that the flying-wing concept was unworkable. New computer techniques, however, as proven in the Grumman X-29 forward-swept-wing aircraft make it feasible for the first time to make the new minimum RCS (Radar Cross Section) technologies to be used. Other techniques for stealth besides minimum RCS are RAM (Radar Absorbant Materials), lowering the IRS (Infra-Red Signature) by hiding engine ducts and cooling exhaust gases, and by sophisticated new ECM techniques. It seems like stealth fighters and bombers have already gone into production. ------------------------------ Date: 16 Oct 86 20:03:00 [...] From: [anonymous] To: RISKS-LIST:, risks at sri-csl Re: System effectiveness is NOT a constant! There seems to be a tendency in the current SDI debate to fall into an old engineering fallacy: that systems scale up linearly. Everyone seems to avoid this trap when talking about cost and effort--it seems to be well accepted that a 10-million line program is much harder than 10 1-million line programs-- but (most) people are *not* avoiding the trap when they speak of SDI's effectiveness. A recurrent argument seems to be that "SDI will be 80% [to use a number currently being bandied about] effective against a Soviet attack of N missiles; thus the Soviets would have to build and launch 5N missiles in order to have N missiles reach their targets, which would be economically ruinous." The implicit assumption is that if SDI is x% effective against N, it will continue to be x% effective against N'. This is fallacious unless x is very close to 0 or 100%. Assuming 80% effectiveness and 1000 missiles, SDI stops 800. Using the reasoning above, against 2000 missiles, SDI would stop 1600; but this cannot be so. If 1000 missiles strains the system to the point that it can only stop 800, why would anyone think it could stop more when the number of missiles and decoys is doubled, straining the system's ability to identify, track, and destroy missiles at least twice as much? Or to put it another way, if SDI could stop 1600 out of 2000, shouldn't it be able to stop 1600 out of, say, 1800 (1800 is surely an easier problem than 2000!). Or turn the argument around: if SDI can stop 800 out of 1000--80% effectiveness--does this mean it can stop only 80 out of a 100-missile attack? Or 8 out of a 10-missile attack? When anyone says that SDI will have such-and-such effectiveness, they must be made to state the assumptions used to calculate that effectiveness. Otherwise the numbers are meaningless. ------------------------------ Date: Saturday, 18 October 1986 17:51-EDT From: scott at rochester.arpa (Michael L. Scott) To: RISKS-LIST:, risks at csl.sri.com Re: Editorial on SDI The following is an op-ed piece that I wrote for the Rochester, NY, DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE. It appeared on page 4A on September 29, 1986. 'STAR WARS' CAN'T SUCCEED AS SHIELD, HAS OFFENSIVE CAPABILITY Can the Strategic Defense Initiative succeed? The answer depends critically on what you mean by success. Unfortunately, the public per- ception of the purpose of SDI differs dramatically from the actual goals of the program. In his original "Star Wars" speech, President Reagan called upon the scientific community to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." He has maintained ever since that this is the SDI goal: to develop an impenetrable defensive shield that would protect the American population from attack. With such a shield in place, nuclear missiles would be useless, and both the United States and the Soviet Union could disarm. Can such a shield be built? The most qualified minds in the coun- try say "no." In an unprecedented move, over 6,500 scientists and engineers at the nation's research Universities have signed a statement indicating that "Anti-ballistic missile defense of sufficient reliabil- ity to defend the population of the United States against a Soviet attack is not technically feasible." The signatures were drawn from over 110 campuses in 41 states, and include 15 Nobel Laureates in Phy- sics and Chemistry, and 57% of the combined faculties of the top 20 Phy- sics departments in the country. Given the usual political apathy of scientists and engineers, these numbers are absolutely staggering. The obstacles to population defense include a vast array of prob- lems in physics, optics, astronautics, computer science, economics, and logistics. Some of these problems can be solved with adequate funding for research; others cannot. Consider the single subject of software for "Star Wars" computers. As a researcher in parallel and distributed computing, I am in a position to speak on this subject with considerable confidence. The computer programs for population defense would span thousands of computers all over the planet and in space. They would constitute the single largest software system ever written. There is absolutely no way we could ever be sure that the software would work correctly. Why not? To begin with, we cannot anticipate every possible scenario in a Soviet attack. Human commanders cope with unexpected situations by drawing on their experience, their common sense, and their knack for military tactics. Computers have no such abilities. They can only deal with situations they were programmed in advance to expect. Before we can even start to write the programs for "Star Wars," we must predict every situation that might arise and every trick the Soviets might pull. Would you bet the future of the United States that the Rus- sians won't think of ANYTHING we haven't thought of first? Even if we could specify exactly what we want the computers to do, the task of translating that specification into flawless computer pro- grams would be beyond our capabilities for many, many years, possibly forever. Current and projected techniques for testing and quality con- trol may reduce the number of flaws in large computer systems, but actual use under real-life conditions will always uncover further "bugs." (For details on the software problem, see Dr. David Parnas's article in the October 1985 issue of AMERICAN SCIENTIST.) The only way to gain real confidence in "Star Wars" software would be to try it out in full-scale nuclear combat. Such testing is clearly not an option. But if effective population defense is impossible, why are we spending billions of dollars on SDI, and why are the Russians so upset about it? The answer is remarkably simple: because population defense is not the goal of SDI. The kinetic and directed energy devices being developed for the "Star Wars" program will have a tremendous range of uses in offensive weapons and in increasing the survivability of U.S. land-based missiles. The Soviets fear "Star Wars" for its first-strike capabilities. To make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete, SDI would have to be perfect. To shoot down Soviet satellites, to thin out a pre-emptive strike on U.S. missile fields, or to develop exotic new weapons for the conventional battlefield, SDI will only need to succeed on a much more modest level. By focusing public attention on the unattainable goal of population defense, the Administration has managed to avoid discussion of the more practical, immediate consequences of SDI research. The weapons developed for "Star Wars" will have a profound impact on both our war- fighting strategy and our treaty obligations. That impact should be the subject of public and Congressional debate. By pretending to develop a defensive shield, the President has fooled the American people into funding a program that is far less clear-cut and benign. In effect, he has sold a system we cannot build in order to build a system he cannot sell. BYLINE: Michael L. Scott is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Rochester. His article was co-signed by 10 other faculty members [almost the entire department] and 36 doctoral students and researchers. The views expressed should not be regarded as the official position of the University of Rochester or of its Computer Science Department. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1986 12:09 EDT From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: facade of democracy over fact of dictatorship, LIN merely stating fact LIN> The U.S. government will not necessarily acknowledge everything LIN> explicitly, especially when it would create a storm of public LIN> controversey. From: Robert Elton Maas <REM%IMSSS at SU-AI.ARPA> ... It sounds to me that LIN is arguing in favor of having some kind of dictatorship here in the USA. LIN> Hardly. I made what I regarded as a statement of fact. Ok, I misunderstood, sorry. As I now understand it, you are merely claiming that in fact we have sort of a facade of democracy over a fact of secret dictatorship, and were expressing no moral value, right? Not quite. No government will make all decisions in the open. All governments will try to mold public opinion by selective release of information. I have no objections to these general statements. The relevant issue is WHICH decisions should be made in the open, and which should not, and more importantly, HOW can you decide? How much molding of public opinion is proper? What are acceptable ways of doing it? These are the hard questions, rather than the abstract principle that "Governments should be open". In general, I believe that the current administration has gone over the line in what is acceptable manipulation and secrecy, but that is a judgment call, not a rejection of the idea that "governments should always be absolutely truthful." There are some circumstances under which governments should be able to misrepresent and lie; not many, but some. But do I accept the general principle that governments should be truthful? Yes. ------------------------------ End of Arms-Discussion Digest *****************************