ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (10/11/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Saturday, October 11, 1986 2:18PM
Volume 7, Issue 30
Today's Topics:
Re: "We have only begun to research the ICBM defense problem"??!!
too much security not a good thing?
penguins
autonomous Weapons and Law
Strategic Deception
surrogate weapons
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Date: Thu, 9 Oct 86 19:20:54 PDT
From: jon@june.cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky)
Subject: Re: "We have only begun to research the ICBM defense problem"??!!
> (You say) By the calender we have not just begun, but intellectually we
> have (if that!)
No, I can't believe this either. FOr one thing, its incomplete - by the
BANK BOOK we haven't just begun. A Safeguard site was actually built
and was at least nominally in operation for a couple of years. Billions
must have been spent on that and other pre-SDI projects. Moreover, I
can't accept that we now know nothing about anti-missile defense. A great
deal must have been learned about the terminal phase during Safeguard.
An interesting study would be a comparison of the money spent on anti-
missile research to date, versus the early days of other technologies
which did prove successful in some sense (e.g. fission bombs, fusion
bombs, jet engines, ICBM's) and technologies still under investigation
(controlled nuclear fusion etc.) I suspect one might find that missile
defense has consumed a very great amount for a very small result, possibly
because it is a more intractable problem than many others.
-Jon Jacky
University of Washington
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Date: 10 Oct 86 11:10:00 PST
From: "ESTELL ROBERT G" <estell@nwc-143b.ARPA>
Subject: too much security not a good thing?
Reply-To: "ESTELL ROBERT G" <estell@nwc-143b.ARPA>
In July '68, the following story was told at a short course at MIT.
I can't recall who told it; i.e., MIT professor, or guest lecturer.
I have never tried to "check it out." I tend to give high credibility
to things I heard there. The purpose of the story was to illustrate the
point that "too much security" can get in the way of success.
In about 1940, the British deployed radars to search for German U-Boats.
The number of U-boat losses rose significantly. The German Navy guessed
that the British had some new sensor; and they guessed that it was based
on infra red technology. So they made lots of mods to subs to make them
"cooler." No help; U-boat losses continued.
Meanwhile, a British radar plane was forced down over occupied France,
with very little harm to the crew, and very little damage to the plane,
or its new radar. The German Army "debriefed" the crew, and analyzed
the radar; wrote a "secret" report of how it all worked.
This "secret" report was discovered by Allied occupation forces in Berlin,
in 1946. It had never been passed to the German Navy - BECAUSE it was
"classified."
You wonder if maybe other countries have similar inter-service problems?
Maybe, yes; maybe, no. For instance, it has always confused me that we are
developing something called "MX" at some risk and some expense; and at the
same time de-commissioning older Trident subs. In my naive way, I sorta
thought Trident was "mx." Gosh, we could even deploy some of those older
subs in the Great Lakes; not many Russian sub hunters there; lots of room
to hide; proven systems; already paid for ...
Bob
All opinions are personal, and may not correlate with anyone else.
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Date: Fri, 10 Oct 86 15:38:30 EDT
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@cch.bbn.com>
Subject: penguins
From _Nature_ 322 (24 July 1986) p. 296:
More dead penguins
The mysterious mortality of rockhopper and gentoo penguins
observed in the Falkland Islands (see _Nature_ 322, 4; 1986) has
now spread to Argentina. But the Argentine National Atomic
Energy Commission (CNEA) has ruled out the possibility,
suggested at a press conference at the Soviet Embassy in Buenos
Aires, that radioactivity is involved. According to the
Soviets, the four British ships sunk during the 1982 Falklands
conflict had been carrying nuclear weapons, the casings of which
had leaked, contaminating the waters. The CNEA scientists,
however, are preserving a proper academic detachment on the
issue. Asked to comment on the deaths of some 300 penguins near
Piero Deseado, they stated categorically that, even if some
radioactive material had escaped into the sea, the concentration
would have been far too low to be dangerous.
Vera Rich
Bruce Nevin
bn@cch.bbn.com
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Date: Fri, 10 Oct 86 15:30:21 PDT
From: Peter O. Mikes <pom@s1-c.arpa>
Re: autonomous Weapons and Law
Motto: Those who do not study literature
are destined to repeat it.
I do not understand why are you attempting to define autonomous weapons,
when the definition is around for years : Reference :
K. Capek : RUR , Originally published (in english) by Oxford Press 1923
republished by Washington Square Press 1973.
The Capek's ( pronounced Chop'ek) play is not just first play about robots,
it is predominantly play about the autonomous weapons. The moral of story
was well understood by Asimov ( whose Sci.Fiction I suppose did actually
popularised the words ROBOT and ROBOTICS), who, undoubtedly inspired by
the question posed by Capek, formulated the three laws of robotics.
The law 1): No robot can harm human being, or through inaction allow
human to be harmed.
That was the Science Fiction of course. In real
life, it would be more like : 1b) No robot can harm human being, unless
that being happens to be enemy. Voila : That's your definition of
an autonomous weapon : Robot in which the First Law of Robotics was
intentionally bypassed or disabled.
All that needs to be done is define what "enemy" means. That's a
nontechnical question and I am afraid a more dificult question than
the question how to build robots. The main motivation for building
of Autonomos Weapons ( i.e. of robots(-1) i.e. robots not subject to the
first law) is not to spare humans of adverse condition but the prospect
of superior soldiers. Robots can aquire the target faster and aim more
accurately than slow humans...
Here is quote from RUR (p44) :
Robot soldiers spare nobody in the occupied territory.
They have massacred over 700 000 citizens,
evidently at the order of their commander. This act which runs counter...
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From: decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 86 03:35:37 edt
Subject: Strategic Deception
> Question 1: doesn't one begin to see a fairly consistent pattern of
> deception here...
Well, no, not quite: what one begins to see is a fairly consistent pattern
of allegations of deception. It's not quite the same thing. Specifically:
The quiescence, or lack thereof, of Libyan terrorist involvement is something
that one might not get unambiguous information about. It really is possible
and legitimate for the best informed guess about the real meaning of obscure
information to be proven wrong in hindsight. It's even possible for it to
be *obviously* wrong in hindsight, to the point where it is difficult to
believe that such an incredible mistake was made. It does happen.
Hersh's account of the KAL 007 case is by no means universally accepted.
There are plausible alternatives.
The Libyan "hit team" case is another one where it really is possible that
the initial intelligence opinion was fair and legitimate but wrong.
The compromise of intelligence methods accompanied by refusal to release
the results can be plausibly explained as a simple blunder mitigated by
unwillingness to make it worse.
Understand me: I'm not saying that these are clearly *not* cases of
deliberate deception. (My personal opinion is that any or all of them
might be, and that anyone who expects a US administration not to engage
in a little self-serving deception is dreaming.) But one must beware of
trying to explain everything in terms of a great sinister plot, without
allowing for human fallibility and stupidity as causes.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
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From: decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 86 03:34:57 edt
Subject: surrogate weapons
> While I think that truly autonomous weapons are unrealistic,
> I believe that we are going to see more and more of what I
> will call "surrogate weapons", which I define as a self-propelled
> weapon which is guided remotely by a human...
> These weapons will be considerably easier to build than
> autonomous weapons, since they require no artificial vision
> or intelligence, and are likely to be far more reliable.
Don't forget the data-link problem. The Achilles Heel of surrogate weapons
is the need to maintain a continuous high-bandwidth communications link
with their human operators, a problem autonomous weapons don't have. If
I were faced with trying to develop an effective defence against such
weaponry, I would put heavy emphasis on jamming techniques and destruction
of relay platforms. The communications links can be made much harder to
cut if they are kept short, but then I'd push things like long-range
artillery to attack the human operators directly. (One of the more
effective defensive tactics against wire-guided missiles is to shoot at
the launch point immediately on seeing a launch; such snap-shooting seldom
actually hits the missile operator, but often makes him miss. If you've
wondered why the emphasis on "fire and forget" weapons lately, that's why.)
I suspect that a concerted effort in such areas would quickly eliminate any
serious threat from surrogate weapons.
(Actually, a concerted effort in such areas would create serious problems
for the more sophisticated of today's armies, too.)
Also, bear in mind that really long-range communications links, say from
EL Salvador to Iowa, will probably go via satellite. Barring whole new
satellite systems, this will mean a considerable speed-of-light lag.
I don't think I'd want to drive a tank at high speed over rough ground
from the other end of such a connection.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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