ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (07/04/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Thursday, July 3, 1986 10:19PM
Volume 6, Issue 118
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
Having an influence from within the system
Counterforce deathcounts, the SIOP, and nuclear winter
What's New with SDI
Having an influence from within the system
SDI and the ICBM threat
Re: Eliminating the ICBM threat (Arms-Discussion Digest V6
Sensor Technology and SDI
Women, Science, and Nuclear Policy
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Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1986 22:18 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Administrivia
To the BRL arms-d maintainer:
Please remove ics.stuart@r20.utexas.edu
To: Steve Carlson
[this is a note for steve carlson; the return address wouldn't work.]
Steve, could you supply an alternate address for SRCHP@SLACVM so that
I can send you a copy of the Thurow-Steg-O'Keefe transcript?
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 86 10:13:29 pdt
From: king@kestrel.ARPA (Dick King)
Subject: Having an influence from within the system
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 86 13:18 EDT
From: Jong@HIS-BILLERICA-MULTICS.ARPA
I seem to recall Martin Luther King scoring significant successes
by working within the system (civil disobedience) rather than
outside the system (violence).
No. I can't accept any equation of King's (no relation) civil
disobedience with a researcher's continuation of work on Star Wars in
the hope of either becoming a credible opponent or having influence on
the project. I can't accept equation of refusal to work on SW with
violence.
Refusal to work on a project is not violence. The violent activity
that King rejected would be analogous to coming in the middle of the
night and trashing lab equipment. It is refusal to work on Star Wars
that charatibly might be compared to civil disobedience, and even that
is weak because King's civil disobedience WAS ILLEGAL under the unjust
laws of the time. What a researcher who refuses SW money does is
perfectly legal. (Civil disobedience might be the taking of SW money
and blatantly doing something else with it.)
-dick
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 86 10:11:47 PDT
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ@SU-Forsythe.ARPA>
Subject: Counterforce deathcounts, the SIOP, and nuclear winter
Am important point re the civilian deathcount in a counterforce
action is that "defense planners assume no human casualties when
only missiles are attacked." (Arms Races And War Initiation, by
Thomas Mayer, University of Colorado, Journal Of Conflict
Resolution, Mar 1986.) Accordingly, it wouldn't make much
difference to present nuclear warplans if the ICBMS were based in
New York City or Antartica. This relates to a point I recently
made, namely, that the administration "gerrymanders" its nuclear
"utility" measures to force its real, implemented, nuclear war games
to cross the nuclear threshhold. (N.B. The SIOP *is* a wargame.)
Once there's missiles launched, the operative utility is the
*difference* between the residual U.S. and Soviet destructive
capabilities. (Measuring Strategic Stability With Two-Strike
Nuclear Exchange Models, by J.Grotte in Journal Of Conflict
Resolution, June 1980, at 217.)
A counterforce exchange would likely cause a general nuclear
exchange which would likely cause a nuclear winter, besides
incomprehensible immediate death and disaster.
A counterforce attack cannot be neatly, if at all, delimited:
"The PRM-10 (Presidential Review Memorandum 10, 1977) conclusions
were more sanguine and optimistic than most observers had
expected... Assessing the impact of a major nuclear war between the
two superpowers, the study found that, at a minimum, the US would
suffer 140 million fatalities... (W)ith about half of the Soviet
ICBM fields west of the Urals and several of them located near some
of the most densely populated areas of the Soviet Union, the Soviet
casualty figures following a counter-ICBM attack could be quite
high... At the least, the relative location of Soviet ICBM fields
increases the difficulties of persuading the Soviet leadership to
accept the notion of limited counterforce nuclear warfare... Many
of the political and military leadership centers are located in or
near major urban areas - particularly Moscow and the Republic
capitals... Large-scale attacks on the Soviet leadership would be
virtually indistinguishable from counter-city attacks ... such
attacks would probably mean the end of escalation control."
(Targeting For Strategic Deterrence, supra, by Desmond Ball, at
20,28,32.)
To: ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
------------------------------
Date: Thursday, 3 July 1986 14:10-EDT
From: michael%ucbiris at BERKELEY.EDU (Tom Slone [(415)486-5954])
To: arms-d
Subject: Re: What's New with SDI
>From: Steve Walton <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu>
> 3. STAR WARS RESEARCH WILL BE CUT far below the President's
> budget request of $5.4B in versions passed by the Armed
> Services Committees of both houses of Congress. The House
> panel outdid the Senate, recommending only $3.4B compared to
> $3.95B for the Senate.
This is not good anti-SDI news at all. Reagan obviously asked for more
than he expected, and while he may be outwardly disappointed, his death
toy is still going through and he is undoubtedly inwardly elated.
$3.4B is an immense amount of money and still represents an enormous
commitment by the Congress to waste money on military chicanery.
------------------------------
Date: Thursday, 3 July 1986 14:12-EDT
From: michael%ucbiris at BERKELEY.EDU (Tom Slone [(415)486-5954])
To: arms-d
Subject: Re: Having an influence from within the system
>From: Jong@HIS-BILLERICA-MULTICS.ARPA
>I seem to recall Martin Luther King scoring significant successes
>by working within the system (civil disobedience) rather than
>outside the system (violence).
Civil disobedience is hardly working within the system -- the whole
point of civil disobedience is to destroy or at least permute the
system. To use a direct analogy with scientists working on SDI, King
never worked for the Selma Police Department, or even the State of
Alabama.
------------------------------
Date: Thursday, 3 July 1986 15:41-EDT
From: BEN%YMIR.BITNET at WISCVM.ARPA
To: ARMS-D at MIT-MC.ARPA
Re: SDI and the ICBM threat
Paul Schauble <Schauble@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA> writes:
>Herb Lin writes:
>> The latter statement is a position with which all TECHNICAL analysts
>> agree: a perfect system is impossible. But the POLITICAL debate has
>> been cast in terms of "Do you want to defend yourself or not?",
>> "eliminating (NOT reducing) the threat of nuclear ballistic missiles"
>> and "the immorality of threats to kill innocent civilians".
>
>I'd like to suggest that these two positions are not incompatable.
>Consider battleships, for example. Modern air power provides a good
>defense against battleships. Not perfect. If a fleet were to sail up the
>Atlantic coast shelling cities, they would be sunk, but not before
>inflicting considerable damage.
>
>So, do the residents of Atlantic City, NJ, need to live in fear of
>Russian battleships? NO, because while the available defenses are not
>perfect, they are good enough to make other types of attacks superior.
>
The difference is that the residents of Atlantic City understood the
imperfect nature of the defenses their tax dollars were buying. They
were not promised that airplanes could provide an impenetrable shield
against battleships. In comparison, consider Casper W. Weinbergers claims,
as reported in the New York Times, July 2, 1986. In this article the
secretary of defense claims that SDI will eventually protect 'the
entire population of the United States against attack by nuclear
missles'. At this news conference, presumably watched by the public
who pay for SDI, Mr. Weinberger counters arguments for budget
cuts, claiming they "would destroy the principal goal of the presidents
program: it is not our missles we seek to protect but our people..."
>
>I don't know what weapons will replace ICBM's, but 6000 years of history
>convinces me there will be one. For most of history, the advantages have
>been with the defender. I don't believe current for foreseeable
>technology has changed this permanantly.
>
I wonder what portion of history convinces you that the 'advantages have
been with the defender.' I think the American Indians who were overcome
by the settlers might claim that aggression and new weapons caused their
demise. Similarly the tribes of Africa might disagree with your position,
citing their decimation at the hand of aggressive European colonialism.
I believe the people of Southern Europe, after the rampages of the Roman
legions or Alexander the Great might speculate that the advantage lay with
the attacker. Contrary to your opinion, I think the advantage has historically
lain with the aggressor; however in this age of nuclear weapons the aggressor
will also be the victim.
>
>SDI is nothing more than the next step in a very old arms race.
>
You are correct here, however I see no point to accelerating the race.
Clearly aniti-ballistic missle defenses will lead to anit-anti-ballistic
missle defenses. Perhaps, given our depth of experience, we should consider
an alternative to continuing a race which can never be won.
>
>As to building an SDI this good, I used to believe that it was clearly
>possible. I still believe that all of the technical problems, including
>software (my field) are solvable with only engineering effort and no new
>theory required. I no longer believe that this system is buildable.
>
Given this statement, the rest of your arguments seems superfluous. If
the system is unbuildable, why should we continue to spend billions of
dollars on it? The are many projects (education, social services, etc)
which are demonstrably workable and which would settle for a couple
thousand dollars. To continue to spend exorbitant sums on an unworkable
project is absurd. To continue to trick the population of the United
States into believing that this system will protect their lives is a
travesty.
Ben Staat
Harvey Mudd College
------------------------------
Date: 3 Jul 86 15:47:56 EDT (Thursday)
From: MJackson.Wbst@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: Eliminating the ICBM threat (Arms-Discussion Digest V6
Paul Schauble writes, on the utility of SDI:
"Consider battleships, for example. Modern air power provides a good
defense against battleships. Not perfect. If a fleet were to sail up the
Atlantic coast shelling cities, they would be sunk, but not before
inflicting considerable damage.
"So, do the residents of Atlantic City, NJ, need to live in fear of
Russian battleships? NO, because while the available defenses are not
perfect, they are good enough to make other types of attacks superior.
Air power has eliminated the threats of battleship attack by persuading
potential enemys to build other kinds of weapons."
But if battleships were to cost what airplanes actually do, and airplane
were to cost what battleships actually do, we'd be building battleships
despite their vulnerability to airplanes! You can't force a change in
weaponry by coming up with a non-cost-effective defense, even if it is
technically feasible.
While I disagree that SDI can be done technically, I agree that the
organizational problem is fatal in and of itself. Let me reproduce most
of my posting of June 9 to RISKS@SRI-CSL.ARPA:
In my opinion one of the *major* challenges facing humans is the need to
find better ways of structuring organizations, and training individuals
to function within organizations. Our present performance ranges from
barely adequate to abysmal; the current consequences of this performance
level are extremely serious, and the prospects are that these
consequences will get worse. Blindly intoning "we need less
bureaucracy" is no help.
Those are strong statements; let me explain. When the number of persons
necessary to an enterprise rises much above that appropriate to a single
work-group some *organizational* as opposed to *individual* division of
responsibility becomes necessary. (Xerox doesn't build copiers by
getting several thousand employees together, telling them all to "build
copiers at a profit," and leaving them to their own devices thereafter.)
As the compartmentalization of the organization increases, the
relationship between the output of each unit and the goals of the
organization becomes less clear. "Do your job right" becomes an
unsatisfactory performance criterion; specifications become of necessity
more formal. It becomes possible for individuals or sub-organizations
to prosper by appearing to meet proper criteria, or by actually meeting
improper criteria; such performance may actually hinder the successful
fulfillment of the intended organizational goals. Individual behavior
tends toward that which is *actually* rewarded by the organization, as
opposed to that which is *stated* to be desired. It's like entropy; all
the forces are toward declining performance, and because it's a coupled
(people/structure) problem the trends are extremely difficult to
reverse.
It is presently fashionable to point to the government as a bad example
of rampant bureaucracy. This is to an extent fair; I believe there are
two reasons that the problem is generally worse in government than in
the business sector:
1) We desire of our government that it be one of "laws not of men"; this
requires formal specification of acceptable performance (laws and
regulations). If OSHA published simple, common-sense guidelines ("don't
unduly endanger your employees") they'd be thrown out by the courts on
the perfectly sound grounds that the proscribed behavior was undefined;
instead we get five-page definitions of an acceptable ladder and such.
2) The constraint on organizational reasonableness which acts on
business (don't be so unprofitable as to go bankrupt) is somewhat
stronger than that on government (don't be so expensive and unresponsive
as to cause the voters to rebel).
But the differences are those of degree, not of kind; I suspect that #1
above is the more important, and I am extremely skeptical of those who
contend that a good dose of free enterprise will serve to solve, by
Darwinian selection, the organizational problem. And the problem
applies to not-for-profit, military, and all other "large" organizations
as well.
Draw what parallels with large hardware/software systems you wish; AI
buffs may note the analogy with the notorious difficulty of programming
"common sense", for example.
Mark
"Absolute truth? What's that?"
"It's a five-to-four decision of the Supreme Court."
-- Dan O'Neill
------------------------------
Date: 03 Jul 86 14:09:44 PDT (Thu)
From: crummer@aerospace.ARPA
Subject: Sensor Technology and SDI
This is a reply to Jon Jacky's message of 12 June.
Jacky says:
...
>Gamble also explained why he thought missile defense was once again
>plausible, after being debunked in the early 70's. "What has changed
>since then?" he asked rhetorically, and gave five answers, three of which
>involved sensors: first, long wave infrared detectors and associated cooling
>systems, which permit small warheads to be seen agains the cold of
>space;
[This is NOT TRUE! I believe the euphemism is "disinformation".
Long wave detectors have been developed for use by the Army on
the battlefield, i.e. rifle sights, etc. These detectors are
photoresistors. In order to achieve the sensitivity needed for
sensing "small warheads against the cold of space" the
photovoltaic effect must be used and this technology is MANY
orders of magnitude away in dreamland.]
>second, "fly's eye" mosaic sensor techniques (like the ones used on the
>F-15 launched ASATS and in the 1984 "homing overlay experiment") -- these
>are said to "permit smaller apertures" (I didn't catch the signficance of
>that);
[Again, the "fly's eye" sensors used on the ASAT are the
photoresistive type, not photovoltaic, which puts them out of
the running. The other problem is the nature of the substrate
upon which the photovoltaic sensors must be built. It has roughly
the structural
properties of talc. A mosaic is a very complex structure
requiring not only 64x64 or 128x128 sensors but also the
connections to be put on one chip (perhaps shard is a more
appropriate word). So 1) the sensors themselves don't exist and
2) the substrates cannot survive the assembly line needed to
manufacture the thousands of these that would be needed.]
>and third, low-medium power lasers for tracking, designation, and
>homing. The other two factors were long-life space systems and powerful
>onboard computing capabilities.
>
>There is a large computing component in the sensor field: digital signal
>processing. However, this area is not so well known to computer science
>types. Boeings largest SDI contract - over $300M - is for the "Airborne
>Optical Adjunct," an infrared telescope and a lot of computers mounted
>in a 767 airliner, apparently for experiments in sensing and battle
>managment for midcourse and terminal phase. Two of the systems people
>involved in this project gave a seminar at the UW computer science department
>last January. They mentioned that the signal processing was being handled
>by the sensor people and they just regarded it as a black box.
[This is also true of the sensor people. They ask, "How is this
staggering amount of computing going to be done?" They don't know
so they consider the computer as a black box.]
>
>- -Jonathan Jacky
>University of Washington
...
[Speaking of disinformation, the latest "demonstration of SDI
feasibility" was a "smart rock" that knocked down a mach 3 drone.
I worked at General Dynamics in 1959 and only 4 or 5 years after they
developed the Redeye missile, a shoulder-fired "smart rock" for
knocking down airplanes. This is now quite old technology. It is
quite another thing to hit a boosting vehicle from space. The
rhetorical trick used by the SDI salesmen is to conduct an irrelevant
test of an irrelevant vehicle and call the success relevant to the
feasibility of SDI. --Charlie]
------------------------------
Date: Thu 3 Jul 86 20:15:28-EDT
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Women, Science, and Nuclear Policy
Heeding the call for material on women's attitudes toward the arms
race, I'd like to recommend an article in the January/February 1986
issue of "Science for the People" called "Women and Science: Re-naming
and re-searching Reality" by Barbara Dodds Stanford.
The article focuses on the attitudes of female scientists who do not
wish to conform to male standards, and who therefore wish to transform
the current culture of science. It contrasts average women's attitudes
with the attitudes of the male policymakers who have brought us nuclear
pumped X-ray lasers and nuclear waste.
The magazine is available in the many libraries and bookstores, most
likely in politically "active" geographical areas.
-rich
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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