ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (10/15/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Wednesday, October 15, 1986 10:57AM
Volume 7, Issue 33
Today's Topics:
The Right To Know
compromise of unintelligence
Fossedal asserts 80%+ effective SDI imminent
Disclosure of info to electorate, or dictatorship?
Stealth cruise missiles
"threatening" posture of US (formerly Re: Phil and SDI)
Re: Stealth cruise missiles
SDI
Administrivia
arms control discussion
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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 86 11:17:11 PDT
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ@Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>
Subject: The Right To Know
[This continues a discussion between Cliff and Lin, some of which was
conducted in private.]
> Is your claim that we don't have enough information to determine if
> the U.S. government is in legal compliance?
No. My claim is that the government is definitely not in legal
compliance with the Subdelegation Act, N.E.P.A., and the First
Amendement (et alia) merely by virtue of our ignorance on these
(pre-delegation) matters.
> Is your claim that a detailed
> knowledge of the questions you raise is necessary for determining what
> would happen if a war broke out?
No. I'd like to know if we're already at war, for starters. And
how come we got an immobile mobile missile (the MX), when it was
researched and developed specifically to be mobile and thereby
avoid launch-on-warning predelegation? Are US missile designers
all that incompetent, or was it a secret decision to disregard the
public's express demands? When the Soviets wanted a mobile
missile, they built one.
To: ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 86 11:27:27 PDT
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ@Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>
Subject: compromise of unintelligence
> > Revealing the actual content of the [Libyan]
> >intercepted communication would have added not at all to this
> >initial [intelligence compromise] damage,
>
> 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? Wasn't the
U.S. caught red-faced because in all the rhetoric it had forgot the
implied original would have been in arabic?
> > And more significantly, our
> > intelligence was shared with our European allies, who agreed with
> > our evaluation.... In this situation, I consider our allies'
> > concurrence a sufficient substitute for "objective analysts".
> >
> >But according to accounts I read in a number of major newspapers, there was
> >considerable dissension among European security specialists about the
> >significance of this intercept. By no means was there unanimity about this
> >evidence in European capitals.
>
> This I haven't heard. In particular, I got the impression that the West
> Germans were directly involved.
Didn't the British government publicly demand a copy of the message
in its original arabic in order to make a big show of their
disbelief? I've talked to people from West Germany who told me they
certainly don't believe the bombing was Libyan-related.
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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 86 12:08:48 PDT
From: jon@june.cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky)
Subject: Fossedal asserts 80%+ effective SDI imminent in NEW YORK TIMES
SDI proponents frequently argue that claims SDI must be a
nearly-perfect shield are a "straw-man" argument, an effective defense
need not be "100% effective" to be worthwhile. I occasionally
challenge SDI proponents to propose their own quantitative criteria
for acceptable performance and am rarely rewarded with a straight
answer (Paul Nitze's criterion of cost effectiveness at the margin is
one such criterion). Now, rushing in where digest contributors fear
to tread, Gregg Fossedal writes in a NEW YORK TIMES editorial this
morning, (Oct. 14 1986, p. 13 - National Edition - title of editorial
is "For Star Wars and Arms Control, Too"):
Last week, Reagan's critics were prepared to hail as a
breakthrough an agreement that would reduce the Soviet
Union's offensive missile forces by 30 percent. Yet defenses
available even in the short run could form a much more
effective shield, of 80 per cent or better ... Against a
defense that is, say, 80 percent effective only 200
warheads - or perhaps even fewer - of the 1,000 warheads
in such a (hypothetical) Soviet stockpile could be expected
to reach the United States. No general wants to spend billions
of rubles building weapons if only 2 in 10 are likely to reach
their target.
He just asserts the 80% figure, he does not cite any evidence, or defend it,
or explain that it was selected merely for purposes of example.
Does ANY technically-informed person believe this figure is plausible?
Is there ANY weapons system that is 80% effective against a determined
and well equipped opponent under actual battle conditions?
This editorial was a real eye-opener for me. It is dawning on me that
apparently influential people really take the naive view of SDI quite
seriously - and think it is just around the corner! How about that!
All this esoteric stuff about "increasing the uncertainty surrounding
a pre-emptive attack," etc., is just beside the point for them.
-Jonathan Jacky
University of Washington
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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1986 19:11 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Disclosure of info to electorate, or dictatorship?
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM%IMSSS at SU-AI.ARPA>
> From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>
> If this is so, why isn't the fact of predelegation conceded? Why
> must we be left to *imagine* that predelegation exists?
LIN> The U.S. government will not necessarily acknowledge everything
LIN> explicitly, especially when it would create a storm of public
LIN> controversey.
Is this a democracy where our ELECTED representatives do OUR wishes,
tell US what the hell they are doing, and if we don't like what they
do we remove them from office at the next election?? Or is this a
dictatorship or monarchy where OUR opinion/wishes is of no concern,
where our ROYAL leaders simply do whatever they do with no regard for
our opinion/wishes, and try to hush anything that might cause a
rebellion?
... It sounds to me that LIN is arguing in favor of having
some kind of dictatorship here in the USA.
Hardly. I made what I regarded as a statement of fact.
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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1986 19:13 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Stealth cruise missiles
From: jlarson.pa at Xerox.COM
Does anyone know why stealth technology couldn't just as easily be
applied to cruise missiles as to bombers ?
In fact, the production of the current air-launched cruise missile has
been terminated in favor of the Advanced Cruise Missile, that will
reportedly include stealth features.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1986 19:22 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: "threatening" posture of US (formerly Re: Phil and SDI)
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN>
On the rest of the DOD budget, I'd guess that the academic community
knows little, but they support a defense budget that's big enough to
fund seldom-debated developments such as JSTARS, NAVSTAR, GWEN, and
anti-submarine warfare (ASW).
I don't believe it, given that the American public at large generally
believes that defense spending should be cut.
; Lin: What would you characterize as a legitimate defensive purpose?
Well, responding to a direct military threat to US territory, strictly
speaking.
So you would argue that the U.S. should have no alliance committments,
such as NATO?
... if we adopted that definition for
"defense" all along, we would not have as many global military
commitments or economic interests abroad.
With your definition of "defense", what committments *would* we have?
Obviously,
agreements to locate US military bases all over the world wouldn't
exist unless we had a military edge over those countries.
So you believe that U.S. bases in England are the result of U.S.
military superiority over the British?
Note that the threats don't have to be stated explicity or publicly
(that's what diplomats are for), nor do they have to be executed
directly by US armed forces; the US can get foreign leaders to respond
without firing a shot. Once US power has been used, the assumption
that the US is a force to be reckoned with is built into all diplomacy
with the US, and no overt threat is necessary (it's similar for the
Soviet Union, too).
I believe that most U.S. diplomats would give a great deal for this to
be true. Why doesn't it work the other way -- the U.S. military edge
is regarded as bullying, and makes the nation in question MORE
reluctant to go along with U.S. wishes.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 86 16:59:59 PDT
From: jlarson.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: Stealth cruise missiles
Thanks. I suspected as much. I also suspect that stealth technology
makes effective defense against cruise missiles extremely difficult.
Considering how cheap cruise missiles are, a partially ineffective
defensive system could be easily overwhelmed.
John
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Date: Wed, 15 Oct 86 01:08:54 PDT
From: tedrick@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Tedrick)
Subject: SDI
By the way, the ideas underlying SDI are not all brand-new.
J.F.C. Fuller was writing about strategy for war in space
as far back as WW2. Liddell-Hart discussed the subject in
his writings in 1950 and probably earlier.
(As a side note, anyone discussing arms should really think
of Fuller and Liddell-Hart as required reading.)
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Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1986 08:00 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Administrivia
Someone please note that I have been getting back this nonsense from
SRI-NIC for a while. Someone please help!!
Date: Wednesday, 15 October 1986 02:48-EDT
From: The Mailer Daemon <Mailer at SRI-NIC.ARPA>
To: ARMS-D-Request
Re: Message of 13-Oct-86 23:36:14
Message undelivered after 1 day -- will try for another 2 days:
*ts:<sappho.mail>arms-d.txt@SRI-NIC.ARPA: Disk quota exceeded
....
Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V7 #32
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Date: Wed, 15 Oct 86 14:51:28 -0100
From: Thomas Mellman <mellman%hslrswi.UUCP%cernvax.BitNet@violet.berkeley.edu>
Subject: arms control discussion
In the September 25th edition of Arms-Discussion Digest, Jonathan Jacky
recommends a book by Walter A. McDougall which has the following thesis:
... that the Soviet Union was the world's first technocracy.
Not that the scientists ran the country, but that the state assumed
total control of all scientific and technologic effort to
accomplish political goals. Sputnik and Vostok were the most
spectacular successes of Soviet technocracy; the author argues that
they were anomalous and are unlikely to be repeated. The author
argues that rivalry with the Soviets has largely turned the US into
a technocracy too; here, as well, the Federal government directs
science and engineering to accomplish political goals, on a scale
undreamt before WWII. The author argues that Sputnik and the space
race which followed played a very important role in legitimizing
federal management of science, technology, and pretty much
everything else, in the eyes of almost all political factions in
the US. He is very admiring of Eisenhower, portraying him rather
poignantly as the skeptic who kept his wits while the press and the
Democrats (particularly Lyndon Johnson) outdid Kruschev in whipping
the American public into a frenzy over Sputnik.
Something occurred to me recently while paging through an old
encyclopedia: When the nuclear submarine Nautilus crossed the north
pole in, I believe 1954, it was touted in our press as a marvelous new
symbol of modern progress. I suggest that in fact, its purpose - and
effect - was probably to make the simple statement to the Russians that
"Now we have you *completely* surrounded".
Of course, if one is looking for aggressive U.S. technology, he doesn't
need to look as late as 1954: private Truman papers suggest that the
purpose of using the atomic bomb against Japan was more to ensure that
Stalin didn't get his troops there before Japan surrendered, thus
fulfilling his promise to Roosevelt, then to end a war with a
vanquished nation.
Thomas Mellman
Hasler AG, Belpstrasse 23, CH-3000 Berne 14, Switzerland
Tel.: +41 31 652798
Uucp: ... {seismo,decvax,ukc, ... }!mcvax!cernvax!hslrswi!mellman
Bitnet: mellman%hslrswi.UUCP@cernvax.BITNET
Arpa: mellman%hslrswi.UUCP%cernvax.BITNET@wiscvm.ARPA
Edu: mellman%hslrswi.UUCP%cernvax.BITNET@ucbjade.Berkeley.EDU
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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