ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (07/05/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Saturday, July 5, 1986 1:19PM
Volume 6, Issue 119
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
Working within the system
Treaty Compliance
Effect of Counterforce Strike
Sensor Technology
SDI
Re: Another phoney arms race in the making
The Minimum Emergency-Essential Communications System
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Date: Fri, 4 Jul 1986 09:25 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Administrivia
Some people are still sending submissions to ARMS-D-REQUEST. Please
send to ARMS-D instead.
Some people are still sending mail to ARMS-D@MIT-MC. While this will
work for a while, eventually that path will die. SEND ALL SUBMISSIONS TO
ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Thanks.
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Date: Thursday, 3 July 1986 21:07-EDT
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN>
To: RISKS-LIST:, risks at CSL.SRI.COM, arms-d
Re: Working within the system
As Herb Lin pointed out, my statement about working within vs.
working outside the system had problems. First of all, I
unfortunately implied (but did not mean) that "people should give up
on the whole thing <lin@xx>"; in fact, I believe that it is almost
always possible to work within the system to change it! I think most
people can have a significant, visible effect!
The problem is that many people define "working within the system" in
a narrow, technical or traditional sense which may blunt or negate the
impact they COULD have. Since the nature of our work and the
prevailing modes of communication are set up in a compartmentalized
fashion to reinforce "the system," one must sometimes circumvent those
normal channels to produce change. People are deluded only if they
think change will occur through "business as usual."
Although "working outside the system" (and I did not mean violence, as
Mr. Jong of Honeywell assumed) sometimes is necessary, organizing a
peaceful, but active protest towards a goal may divide people over the
goal, alienate those who disagree, produce an institutionally funded
backlash, and discourage supporters if it is unsuccessful. Instead of
demonstrating, individuals can try to change the CLIMATE in which
group positions are formed FROM WITHIN THE SYSTEM, just by banding
together in small groups to develop arguments that challenge the
standard corporate line.
STRATEGY:
One possible strategy for changing the climate from within is to try
to MAKE IT ACCEPTABLE for the head of your company/institution to
publicly air your concerns. Although some business leaders may
already have strong contrary views, and be impossible to convince, a
surprising number may already agree with you -- but remain silent for
they lack a support group to give them evidence and confidence.
EXAMPLE:
The president of MIT recently criticized federal research priorities
-- 75% military funding of R&D -- in a public speech (Science June 13,
1986, p. 1333). Two things had to happen for him to do this: a)
students gave him information documenting these trends and b) people
within the upper eschelons of MIT began talking about the issue after
it was raised by faculty and students.
This may not seem very significant, but such criticisms are rarely
voiced by the heads of US institutions highly dependent on military
funding. This sends a signal to all kinds of observers, including
policymakers, that the "establishment" is changing course. It also
sends a signal to management/professors and workers/students (when the
position is reported in the company paper, for example) that makes
it easier for them to discuss the same issues.
If 100 additional university and corporate executives were to each be
persuaded by the actions of a few people in each institution to make
statements on topics generally excluded from public debate, I believe
a significant portion of the "consensus" for US domestic and foreign
policy would erode. (i.e. imagine what would happen if several
corporate executives felt free to voice opinions such as "a foreign
policy which makes friends of thousands and enemies of millions does
not seem to make good long-term sense" or "certain fields get more
research funding than can be efficiently spent.")
WHERE YOU CAN DO IT:
Certainly professional societies and conferences provide a perfect
medium for high tech people to raise such issues, thereby making it
"acceptable" for others in the profession to have the same concerns.
Even a lowly 23-year-old student like myself can have an enormous
impact merely by clipping articles for professors or administrators
whom I know are concerned but lack the time to get in touch with
activist groups or track down references. Given a few good references,
these people won't hesitate to incorporate such ideas into their
conversations or speeches, or to express them to people higher in the
chain of command. When leaders are concerned, the mainstream press
will be more inclined to investigate the issue. When they do, the
non-activist public follows.
Since economics necessitates that most people must remain within the
system, those people may as well try to make people within existing
institutions more open to change. The political role of institutions
(especially the leaders) in setting the tone for debate must be held
accountable to someone -- why not the employees? Think globally, act
locally. People must insist that the meaning of "service to one's
institution" be redefined so that duties besides "maximizing its
profit in the short term" are included. Otherwise solutions embodying
these concerns (i.e. economic conversion) will always appear radical
and be immediately dismissed before they reach the public eye.
-rich
------------------------------
From: decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 86 23:33:30 edt
Subject: Treaty Compliance
Don Smith notes in passing:
> ... When you prepare for war, war is what you will get.
Historically this is not necessarily true, and I wish people would stop
citing it as a fundamental axiom. Britain and France spent most of the
19th century preparing for war with each other. This included a major
naval arms race that drove warship development for many years. There
has been no war between Britain and France.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 1986 09:38 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Effect of Counterforce Strike
From: wild at SUN.COM (Will Doherty)
I think your response about number of deaths from a counterforce attack
is misleading. What kind of deaths are we talking
about? Is this "immediate" deaths, or long-term deaths? What kinds of
short- and long-term effects are taken into account?
The article breaks them down into immediate (blast/fire) and delayed
(radiation). Most deaths come from radiation.
It is not simply a matter
of whether the attacks have targets other than missile silos, the question
is much broader than that. No need to go through all the details of
nuclear winter again, but isn't that danger also a possibility here?
Only minimally for attacks on missiles. Countervalue attacks have
always been the most significant driver of nuclear winter.
Incidentally, the most recent stuff says that nuclear winter is likely
to not be as bad as the initial estimates.
------------------------------
Date: 4 Jul 86 17:53:45 EDT
From: Hank.Walker@unh.cs.cmu.edu
Subject: Sensor Technology
I do not understand Charlie Crummer's post on sensor technology. Note I
don't think a reasonable SDI system can be built in the forseeable future,
but I think many of his points are incorrect.
1) Ten years ago at Hughes they were developing mercury cadmium telluride
CCD infrared sensors with backside collectors. I believe these or something
like them are used in the ASAT, and KH-12. Similar arrays were used in the
IRAS satellite and are in most all Earth-based telescopes. The problem with
seeing very cold objects like interstellar gas is that you have to supercool
the detector array. IRAS used superfluid Helium. I don't know what all
this talk of photoresistors is about. That's Stone Age technology.
Tactical equipment in the field might use it, but nothing new.
2) Detector arrays are read out with a CCD shift register. There aren't a
lot of wires. This is true of modern 1D as well as 2D arrays. The problem
with detectors existing is that they often require 50V to operate, and have
a habit of blowing up just before the demo. Detector arrays are integrated
circuits, and built with the same techniques. Nothing resembling talc is
involved.
3) Given the current rate of progress in digital signal processing hardware
that I am personally familiar with, sufficient processing power at
acceptable cost, weight, size, and power consumption will be available long
before most other components could be perfected (ignoring the fact it
probably can't be integrated). You can get 10 MFLOPS per chip now in an
ALU, and more flexible 20 MFLOPS chips will be available in 3 years.
------------------------------
From: decwrl!decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 86 21:18:24 edt
Subject: SDI
Herb writes:
> From: dhm at sei.cmu.edu
> ...
> () If it causes our enemies to spend a lot of time and resources to match
> it, then the diversion of their resources from their people can
> de-stabilize the government through the rise of dissent and unrest.
>
> Maybe this is good, and maybe this isn't. A time-honored way of
> rallying the people behind you in time of internal crisis is to
> provoke a war...
Over and above this, it is not at all clear that it is in our best interests
to de-stabilize the Soviet Union. For one thing, what would replace the
current government? Let us not fall into the trap of believing that it
would automatically be a democratic, free-enterprise paradise. If for
no other reason, this contention is dubious because the Soviet government
makes sure that its people hear a lot about the problems of Western-style
societies and little about their benefits. Defectors from the Soviet Union
usually (or this is my impression, anyway) defect because the Soviet system
has shat on them once too often and they can't stand it any more, not because
they think the West is a vastly superior place to live. A post-revolutionary
Soviet government would be different in detail but might not differ too
much in overall structure and approach. It also has a fair chance of being
less predictable and less stable.
Also, what would the transition period be like? Revolution and chaos in a
major nuclear power is a chilling thought. Especially if part of the mess
is clearly the fault of outside pressure. Nasty though the current Soviet
regime is, we probably have more to fear from its violent dissolution than
from its continuation.
(This isn't really relevant to Arms-D, but it's worth a brief mention:
If you really want cause to wonder about the wisdom of "pressure" policies,
ask the same questions about the ugly situation in South Africa.)
Forcing the Soviet Union to strain itself to match us is not a good idea.
This is a secondary but *not* trivial argument against projects that would
tend to have that effect. It is better to give them some alternative.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
------------------------------
From: decwrl!decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 86 21:18:36 edt
Subject: Re: Another phoney arms race in the making
> From FOIA information, it appears that this is how we also got
> into the nuclear arms race, i.e., the phoney missile gap...
I'm not up on the latest news on this, but Philip Klass pointed out some
years ago that the missile gap was real in one sense and not in another.
If you believed CIA estimates of Soviet missile strength, there never was
a gap. If you believed DoD estimates, the gap was real and large. Klass
noted that this did *not* imply ulterior motives, because the objectives
of the two organizations are different: the CIA is charged with producing
realistic estimates, while DoD is charged with planning for the worst case
and makes its estimates accordingly. In the pre-recon-satellite environment
of considerable uncertainty, it was inevitable that the two estimates would
differ widely. There was nothing inflated or falsified about the DoD
estimates. Beware of inferring malice in situations where there is really
only uncertainty and organizational bias.
(There was, of course, no shortage of people with ulterior motives to play
up the worst estimates and ignore the cautious ones. Not just inside DoD,
either. And I'm not necessarily claiming that the current situation is
parallel. But the possibility deserves consideration.)
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
------------------------------
Date: Friday, 4 July 1986 17:48-EDT
From: Kurt F. Sauer <ks%a.cs.okstate.edu at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
To: arms-d
Re: The Minimum Emergency-Essential Communications System
Keywords: emergency communications, communications in a nuclear environment, MEECN communications
X-Sensitivity: Not Sensitive
I pieced some information together about the Minimum Emergency-Essential
Communications Network (MEECN), and pose some further questions about it.
Since this is chiefly in response to an article by you in "Arms-Discussion
Digest," Vol. 6, Number 110, I've mailed a copy of this to the Digest for
others to read and comment upon.
Kurt F. Sauer
InfoSec Consultant
Tulsa, Oklahoma
UUCP: ks@svo.UUCP
Internet: ks@a.cs.okstate.EDU (Courtesy of Oklahoma State University)
----Atch 1
Decision Studies Group
subject: Effective Contingency date: 03 JUL 86
Plans Establish Successful
Deterrence: That's What from: Kurt F. Sauer
MEECN Is, Isn't It? Tulsa, Oklahoma
ABSTRACT
The Minimum Emergency-Essential Communications
Network (MEECN) must deliver instructions of
the National Command Authorities (NCA) to U.S.
strategic forces during and after any nuclear
attack on the United States. Memorandum dis-
cusses what the MEECN is, and poses questions
about its operation under stressful condi-
tions. (Author) (Unlimited)
We call it "Nuclear Deterrence." Some call it "MAD,"
but I prefer to think of it as a position of strength-
through-offense. In any case, the President of the United
States is the commander of a very large, very capable
strategic nuclear force. To make some use of this force,
then, the President must have a clear, uninterruptable means
of communicating with these forces.
The responsibility for engineering and maintaining this
communications system has fallen to the Defense Communica-
tions Agency[1]. Termed "MEECN," for the Minimum Emergency-
Essential Communications Network, it provides a broad range
of communications system to the National Command Authori-
ties[2] for direct, survivable communications with strategic
__________
1. The Defense Communications Agency (DCA) is a Defense
Agency under the Department of Defense. It appears at
this writing that DCA will soon merge with the Joint
Tactical Command, Control, and Communications Agency
(JTC3A).
2. The term "National Command Authorities" really refers to
"the President, the Secetary of Defense, and their duly
appointed alternates and successors." Countries with
nuclear weapons have established secret nuclear chains
of command to ensure sufficient redundancy so nuclear
decisions can be made even following a serious
"decapitating" strike.
That's What MEECN Is, Isn't It? - 2
nuclear forces. These forces, operating under a plan
called the SIOP (Single Integrated Operations Plan), monitor
MEECN and other communications systems for Emergency Action
Messages (EAM) which presumably direct which nuclear forces
take which actions.
What is the MEECN, though, and what is it for? The
MEECN is really just a collection of existing communications
systems, with only a few special ones added only for the
MEECN. In other words, MEECN is just a subset of the
Worldwide Military Command and Control System, or WWMCCS.
Its purpose is solely to "get the word out," although it may
be used to assess post-attack residual capability on a
noninterference basis with EAM transmission. Some nodes are
transmit-receive nodes, some are transmit-only nodes, and
some are receive-only nodes[3]. Figure 1 pictorally
describes the WWMCCS and its component parts[4].
During the 60's and early 70's, SAC and other nuclear
commands relied on a MEECN which included such exotic
communications facilities as SATCOM, VLF, and other EHF
systems. But during the time just before President Carter
signed PD-59, a new nuclear warfighting doctrine, DCA
engineers realized that the existing systems which comprised
MEECN all had serious vulnerabilities.
Whether the vulnerabilities lie at Ground Entry Points
(GEP), or ground-based VLF transmitting antennas, each was
"soft" in some major respect. SAC Commander-in-Chief Ellis
warned that existing C3 systems "are essentially soft,
fragile peacetime systems, conceived in the late 1950s and
put into operain in the 1960s. Most are located at fixed
sites or depend on ground communications networks and, like
all terrestrial sites, are highly vulnerable to attack and
destruction [5]."
__________
3. ERCS (See Arms-Discussion Digest, Vol. 6, No. 110) is an
example of just such a transmit-only site. ERCS II, an
updated version, has classified design characteristics,
however, and may be more than an EMP-hardened tape-
recorder, as ERCS is.
4. Rumsfeld, Donald H., "A Command, Control, and
Communications Overview," Signal, Vol. 30, No. 8, page
38, May/June 1976.
5. Zuckerman, Edward, The Day After World War III, page
170.
That's What MEECN Is, Isn't It? - 3
Persian Sixth
Gulf Fleet
+----*----------------------------*----------------+
| |
|_ DEFENSE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM |
| \_ +--------------------------------------+ |
| W\_| | |
| W |\_ | |
BMEWS-* M | \_ +--------------------------+ | |
| C | \| | | |
| C | |NAT'L MILITARY CMD SYSTEMS| | |
PAVE-* S | | +--------------+=====+=====+=====|
PAWS | | | |NAT'L CMD AUTH| M E E C N *-SIOP FORCES
| U | | +--------------+=====+=====+=====|
WARNING | N | | NMCC ANMCC | | *-Theater
SATTE--* I | _/| NEACP | | | Nuclear
LITES | Q | _/ +--------------------------+ | | Forces
| U |/ Unified & Specified-* |
| E_/| Commands & Components | |
| _/ +--------------------------------------+ |
|/ *-Bangkok
| |
+--*----------*-----------*-----------------*------+
Mayaguez Germany Korea "Battle Area"
& A. E. Holt
Figure 1. Worldwide Military Command and Control System
(WWMCCS)
Today, much of the backbone of MEECN has shifted back
to High-Frequency (HF) systems, because of its ability to
work in a nuclear environment. The HF band has several
advantages over other systems, namely:
o The medium of propagation is self-healing
o No intermediate relay stations are required
o Ground terminals aren't heavy or difficult to
transport
o Mobile, airmobile, and shipborne stations are all
feasible, and can be linked together easily
o Primary power needs are moderate
o With proper design, operator skill level requirements
are low
That's What MEECN Is, Isn't It? - 4
A few of the nuclear command-control systems are known
in the public domain (and perhaps readers can contribute to
this list):
System Name Band Notes
------------- ---- -------
WWABNCP HF System HF
CEMETERY Net HF USCINCEUR C2
AFSATCOM EHF
GIANT TALK HF SAC C2
USAF Aeronautical Sta. UHF/HF SAC C2/USAF C2
TACAMO HF/LF USN (USCINCPAC/USCINCLANT)
The summary conclusion is that nuclear forces are
well-connected with control systems. But a large question
is yet unanswered: what constitutes the linkage of control
of nuclear forces? And what is the relationship of
strategic nuclear forces (the so-called SIOP forces), and
non-strategic nuclear forces (NSNF)? Do NSNF stay in
reserve only for post-SIOP use, and do they use the same
loop of connectivity that SIOP forces use?
So, we seem to have run almost full-circle. The more
you know, the more about which there is to ask.
Please direct your comments and questions to me at
"ks@a.cs.okstate.EDU" on the Internet, or at "ks@okstate
.UUCP" by UUCP. Please send copies of non-private
remarks to Arms-Discussion Digest.
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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