ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (09/23/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Monday, September 22, 1986 5:24PM
Volume 7, Issue 15
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
TV news erratum: LLL -> Sandia Labs
TV-guided weapons
National Institute for Public Policy
Are Minuteman/MX missiles now targeted especially for LUA?
1st priority of gov't is defense or human rights??
Re: DoD and funding research
Autonomous weapons (forwarded from RISKS)
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Date: Sun, 21 Sep 1986 11:30 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Administrivia
Someone please explain this, or let these guys know that they aren't
getting the digest.
Date: Sunday, 21 September 1986 07:49-EDT
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Re: Waiting mail (msg.aa04629)
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Date: 19 Sep 1986 1213-PDT
From: Rem@IMSSS
Subject: TV news erratum: LLL -> Sandia Labs
Recall my relay of TV-news report yesterday on guards at LLL (Lawrence
Livermore Labs) playing joke on sleeping fellow-guard? Today on noon
news on KPIX (channel 5 in SF), they amended their story, turns out
it was Sandia Labs (is that near Albuquerque? or am I confusing two
places by similar names?). This weakens my argument slightly, but Sandia
does classified military research too (unless I'm really confused) so
the example still holds somewhat. -- Sorry for believing the TV-news
story yesterday, but glad this forum allows errata to be passed along
to readership promptly, unlike TV news where if I didn't happen to watch
the news today I'd miss the correction entirely.
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Date: 20 Sep 1986 12:32:10-EDT
From: Hank.Walker@ohm.ECE.CMU.EDU
Subject: TV-guided weapons
The idea and reality of TV-guided weapons has been around for a long time.
The original version of the Maverick air-to-ground anti-tank missile used in
the Vietnam and MidEast wars was TV-guided. The flight crew had a TV screen
and joystick to guide the weapon. There were several problems with this.
First, small TV cameras were quite expensive back then, and only recently
with the advent of CCD cameras, have TVs in weapons become really practical.
A second problem was one of target identification. An Israeli pilot told a
friend that the Maverick was a pain to use during the Sinai tank battles.
He'd fly over the battlefield, and all the tanks looked like little black
dots. He'd have to go in for a close look, getting shot at all the while,
find an Egyptian tank, remember where it was, and then fly back up and shoot
at it. The TV-guided version of the Maverick was dropped in favor of a
laser-guided version, which unfortunately has also turned out to be quite
expensive. As an aside, the Israelis didn't like the Maverick very much.
It's 300 pound warhead would blow the smithereens out of the tank. Standard
anti-tank weapons like the TOW just burn a small hole in the side, which
allowed the Israelis to patch up the tank and use it themselves.
The idea of using a fiberoptic link and TV camera on an antitank missile has
been around since optical fibers first became practical. The CCD camera
only became commercial a few years ago though. This combination suffers to
some degree from the same problems as the TV-guided Maverick. In addition,
to fly up and then down leads to some problems with the fiber, including its
weight. I've even seen drawings where there was a parachute or ballon to
help suspend the fiber. The missile designs have not turned out to be cheap
either. Overall there is some question whether wire (or fiber) guided
weapons are the best way to go for the future. The average soldier would
much rather have a fire-and-forget weapon. You know there's an enemy tank
over the hill, so you just shoot over the hill and run, without waiting to
see what happens.
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Date: 20 Sep 86 19:57 PDT
From: William Daul / McDonnell-Douglas / APD-ASD <WBD.MDC@OFFICE-1.ARPA>
Subject: National Institute for Public Policy
Could someone tell me more about this organization...where they are, what is
their charter, and what have they done? Any information will be appreciated.
--Bi//
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Date: Mon, 22 Sep 86 09:17:53 PDT
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ@Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>
Subject: Are Minuteman/MX missiles now targeted especially for LUA?
Can anyone confirm that Minuteman missiles' inertial guidance
systems are preset to favor a particular target, and that RAPID
reprogramming (or reselection) of a target implies a penalty in
accuracy? If so, does anyone dispute that the LOW target sets
are the targets at which missiles now geared for LOWC are primarily
targeted at? Is the same accuracy penalty present for rapidly
retargeted MX? Am I barking up the wrong tree somewhere in the
following logic?
Bruce Blair stresses that the United States is "GEARED, though not
optimally, for launch-on-warning." (Our Nation's Nuclear Warning
System: Will It Work If We Need It?; Hearing before a subcommittee
of the House Committee on Government Operations, Sep. 1985, at 38.)
Juxtapose this against the observation that, for Minuteman missiles:
... any change in the azimuth of a ballistic trajectory forces a
tradeoff between employing the missile in a Minimum Response Time
(MRT) mode or waiting for the inertial systems to adjust completely
to the new settings and thus employing the missile with maximum
accuracy - the circular error probable (CEP) mode. Unfortunately,
the choice between MRT and CEP modes would often be the starkest in
the case of time-urgent, hard targets such as Soviet ICBM silos.
(Targeting For Strategic Deterrence, by Desmond Ball,
Adelphi Paper No. 189 (1983), at 27.)
In other words, retargeting a Minuteman missile is virtually
instantaneous, but a short "settling" time is necessary to ensure
highest accuracy thereafter. It follows that designated Minuteman
missiles now on hair-trigger alert are assuredly aimed
specifically at the SIOP's launch on warning target sets.
To: ARMSD@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
To: ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
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Date: 22 Sep 1986 1210-PDT
From: Rem@IMSSS
Subject: 1st priority of gov't is defense or human rights??
Recently somebody on ARMS-D said the primary purpose, top priority, of
any government is defense (actually several people said it).
But in a speech recently, Ronald Reagan seemed to contradict this,
he claims the main purpose of a government, the justification for
its existance, is human rights. Is he speaking without thinking again?
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Date: Mon 22 Sep 86 17:00:18-EDT
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: DoD and funding research
; The only reason the military is being more specific and limiting the
; research to defense related activities now is a law our dear friend Senator
; Proxmire sponsored - which does not allow broadly targeted research
; programs.
This is not really true. The Mansfield Amendment (was it also sponsored
by Proxmire?) was approved in 1969, apparently by a strange coalition of
right-wingers (who wanted the research to be more targeted) and
left-wingers (who wanted to force DOD to publish the military relevance, so
that military research would not be carried out under a false pretense.)
See Science, November 22, 1974, "Department of Defense R&D in the University."
Since then, it was watered down by an administrative decision by Secretary
of Defense Laird in 1970 so that "basic" science could be included within
the scope. [see Science, Feb. 1972, p.866.] According to an article on
the Carter administration efforts to strengthen DOD-university ties,
"The Mansfield Amendment now appears to be entirely ignored."
- [New York Times, May 13, 1980, page C1]
As for the situation today, I don't think it's the same as the 1950's.
DOD is funding more targeted areas because, over the years, greater
interest has been sustained in certain specific areas. Why has
interest in these areas been sustained? Because the results have been
USED by the patrons of the research, the DOD (not just technically --
also politically). Also, there's little chance that the US will
develop great commercial products indirectly through military research
when there are now a dozen technologically competitive countries who
are working on commercial applications directly and will get there
first. [This view is shared by Bernard O'Keefe and Ray Stata,
chairmen of two companies that work on military contracts, EG&G and
Analog Devices, Inc.]
-rich
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Date: Friday, 19 September 1986 16:46-EDT
From: rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw%mcnc.csnet at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
To: arms-d@xx.lcs.mit.edu
Re: Autonomous weapons
> eugene@AMES-NAS.ARPA (Eugene Miya)
> Most recently, another poster brought up the issue of autonmous weapons.
It is worth pointing out that we are *currently* using autonomous weapons
and they are *not* smart enough to distinguish signs of surrender. Give up?
I'm talking about, for example, hand grenades or landmines. These are
autonomous (after being thrown or burried) and their mission (guided by a
particularly simple "computer") is to saturate their environment with
shrapnel after a suitable delay. Bombs with proximity fuses, self-guided
missiles, and so on, where there is "intelligence" in the weapon and a
significant time delay between the decision to deploy and the weapon's
effective discharge can all be considered cases of "autonomous weapons". We
are (in this view) simply trying to make the beasties smarter, so that they
eventually *will* be able to recognize signs of surrender or cease-fire or
other cases of cessation of hostilities. (Picture land-mines getting up and
"trooping" back to an armory after the war is over... )
Perhaps this is more appropos to one of the "arms" lists, but I think it is
worth noting that we are allowing some *very* simple "computers" to be in
charge of some *very* powerful weapons right now. It is an interesting
question to ask if we really *want* to make the weapons smarter. But I
don't think it is a question of whether to use autonomous weapons at all...
we're already using them.
Wayne Throop <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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