ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (06/10/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Monday, June 9, 1986 11:09PM
Volume 6, Issue 104
Today's Topics:
A Star Wars Query
Crisis control centers - a high priority for the "peace movement"?
Re: Star Wars Mirrors
"Lance"??
Mirrors...A Star Wars Query
Missle control errata
Economic benefits of SDI software
In flight destruct
Another phoney arms race in the making
SDIO plans
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Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1986 16:58 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: A Star Wars Query
From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
.. mirrors can focus lasers beams to points
much smaller than the mirror diameter.
What about the diffraction limit?
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Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1986 17:09 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Crisis control centers - a high priority for the "peace movement"?
From: jon at uw-june.arpa (Jon Jacky)
... Why should
activists devote their necessarily limited energies to an idea that
enjoys universal approval?
The fact that all of the Congresspeople think it is a good idea does
not necessarily mean that it has the same priority as other items on
the agenda.
....what's
the use of setting up crisis control centers when the missiles fly so fast
there is barely time to say "hello?"...
A crisis can be much more complicated than a bolt-out-of-the-blue
strike. Consider other crises, such as the Cuban missile crisis, that
developed over periods of time long compared to saying hello. They
might be useful there.
Senator Gorton replied (I paraphrase), "Well those are two completely
separate issues. Disarmament is one thing, and crisis control is something
else. We can make progress on that independent of disarmament."
He's right. The agenda in Congress is shaped largely by spending
money. Disarmament is refusing to acquire more weapons or taking
apart those you already have. Crisis control is managing the weapons
you do have.
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Date: Mon 9 Jun 1986 16:12:41 EST
From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Star Wars Mirrors
SDIO seems to be leaning in the direction of ground based lasers bounced
off orbiting mirrors; this puts an upper bound on the power density
of the upgoing beam. I wonder if this limit will prevent the use
of pulsed lasers against spinning ICBMs.
About mirrored ICBMs: the ICBM has the advantage that it doesn't
have to be optically perfect, so it can afford to heat up and warp
a little bit. The laser's mirror must not move more than a fraction
of a wavelength of light.
There was an article in a recent issue of Nature (March 21 1986, page
1387) about the cost of chemical lasers BMD systems. Even if launch costs
are ignored, hardware costs except for the mirrors are ignored, the
lasers are assumed to be perfectly reliable, are assumed to have a
retargeting time of 0.1 sec, are shooting at missiles with
a boost time of 200 seconds, we assume there are no economies of
scale in building ICBMs, and we ignore atmospheric attenuation,
the cost exchange ratio (cost of defense to shoot down a missile
divided by the cost of the missile) is 3; under more reasonable
assumptions the CER is at least an order of magnitude worse, and perhaps
many orders of magnitude worse. No wonder SDIO dumped orbiting
chemical lasers.
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Date: Mon 9 Jun 1986 18:11:00 EST
From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: "Lance"??
> Several years ago someone mailed packages of white powder to various
> DoD sites. The powder was the crystalline form of Lance, a nerve gas; tasting
> the powder would cause instant death and smelling it would cause permanent
> brain damage.
This sounds like an alligators-in-the-New-York-sewers kind of story.
Is Lance the same as VX? Please provide a reference.
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Date: Mon 9 Jun 1986 18:16:11 EST
From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Mirrors...A Star Wars Query
>> .. mirrors can focus lasers beams to points
>> much smaller than the mirror diameter.
>
>What about the diffraction limit?
It's still in effect. The requirement is that the mirror diameter
(and presumably the laser aperture size) is greater than around
(lambda R)**.5, where lambda is the wavelength of the laser light and
R the distance to the target.
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Date: Mon, 9 Jun 86 16:16:24 PDT
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ@SU-Forsythe.ARPA>
Subject: Missle control errata
My last mailing was sent in error (an unedited version). It
referred to a article attributed to Steinbruner. It was in fact
an article by Garwin.
To: ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
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Date: Mon 9 Jun 86 20:41:49-EDT
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Economic benefits of SDI software
Don Estell <estell at nwc-143b> states: (with my bracketed words added)
> The longterm economic benefits to the USA [OF A MARGINAL SDI SYSTEM]
>are attractive; we could sell systems to nations that wanted them, but
>couldn't build their own. Some of the revenue could be plowed back
>into R&D in a many fields, not just defense. The software engineering
>progress made in behalf of SDI probably would apply immediately to
>many other computerized systems. Think about it.
I see it the other way. The shortterm economic benefits would be
attractive to some regions of the country receiving contracts, but the
longterm economic effect would be disastrous. What other country
would be willing to buy such a contraption? If the space shuttle can't
break even, don't even suggest that SDI will.
Secondly, I'm sure software technology can get along just fine without
SDI. To do basic software research in the context of SDI probably
raises the cost of such research by a factor of 10. (It's cheaper to
research in a testable domain.)
-rich
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From: Eugene miya <eugene@ames-aurora.arpa>
Date: 9 Jun 1986 1834-PDT (Monday)
Subject: In flight destruct
Will Martin asked about destruct after launch. I would like to
emphasize that this is one of the last things that the US military
would put into their launch vehicles. This seems to be a point of
naive among many.
The fear is that any signal which can be sent, can be duplicated without
reasonable discrimination.
There are two things destruct could destroy: the warhead and the launch
vehicle. Each has inherent problems at different stages of the launch.
Again, it is the policy to neither confirm nor deny the existence
of destruct mechanisms (which also cost most in dollars, weigh,
insecurity in complexity and so forth).
Generic disclaimer.
From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA
"You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
{hplabs,hao,dual,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix,menlo70}!ames!aurora!eugene
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Date: Monday, 9 June 1986 20:56-EDT
From: michael%ucbiris at BERKELEY.EDU (Tom Slone [(415)486-5954])
To: arms-d-request
Re: Another phoney arms race in the making
"Most of the scientists issuing the warning [that the Soviets
are violating the 1972 biological weapons treaty] sharply challenged
the Pentagon's claim that biological weapons are being developed by the
Soviet Union. Under questioning, John Birkner acknowledged that it was
no more than a working 'hypothesis' and at one point stated flatly that
'the U.S. government admits to not knowing' if the hypothesis is true.
"Several scientists expressed concern that the Pentagon would
soon use its allegations of Soviet biological weapons development to
justify its own development."
-- Science, July 26, 1985
From FOIA information, it appears that this is how we also got
into the nuclear arms race, i.e., the phoney missile gap. It is enough
to make one believe that there are sinister forces in control in
Washington who manipulate the truth for self-fulfilling prophesy.
Information like this even makes one wonder if the nuclear arms race
has been TOTALLY fabricated by the U.S. military.
------------------------------
Date: Monday, 9 June 1986 17:42-EDT
From: Gary Chapman <chapman at su-russell.arpa>
Re: SDIO plans
I just had a chat with Al Marsh, the editor of Advanced Military
Computing. We talked about a lot of different things, but his news on
the SDI was pretty interesting.
Last week, an Air Force official reported at a conference in Dallas
that the SDIO's much-vaunted simulation test bed will be built in
Colorado Springs, Colorado, which is fast becoming Star Wars
headquarters. There will probably be some satellite facilities,
particularly at RADC and the Air Force Institute of Technology, but
most of the activity will be in Colorado Springs. The test bed is
supposed to cost about $1 billion, and it is one of the highest
priorities of the SDIO.
According to Al, the facility in Colorado Springs will also include a
"software institute," staffed with computer scientists working on
battle management software. Not much more to report on this, but it
follows the trend of recent military developments in which the
services are trying to maintain more internal control over software
procurement.
Another interesting bit is that some SDIO officials have proposed
building a simulation facility in Washington, D.C. so that members of
Congress can stop by and see the latest Star Wars "breakthroughs." Al
told me that he warned the SDIO officials that Congress would consider
this gold-plating, and that too many of these things would jeopardize
the whole program, but apparently they aren't listening. A cheaper
alternative to one of the proposals (which envisioned buying a large
building in downtown D.C.) would be to do some modernization of the
already extensive simulation and war-gaming facilities at the National
War College.
Both Al and I agreed that the SDI is in some serious trouble on
Capitol Hill. Abrahamson has been on the Hill so frequently that
there's a smell of blood in the air. He keeps retreating to less and
less exotic, and more and more "off the shelf" technologies, with
correspondingly less grandiose plans for what the hardware can do.
The shift now seems to be toward a commitment to electomagn- netic
rail guns and two-tier ABM systems. And there is a l more talk and
activity on tactical missile defense in Western Europe.There is almost
no more talk about x-ray lasers, "pop-up" systems and giant mirrors in
space.
The administration has requested $4.8 billion for the SDI (not
counting DoE funds). Forty-six Senators signed a statement demanding
that the funding increase be held to $2.9 billion. It appears that a
compromise figure of about $3.5 billion will be the one everyone will
settle on. The Reagan administration is apparently considering an SDI
p.r. campaign to counter the political impact of the statement from
the Senate. But the Reagan administration itself is split on the SDI.
The State Department and the National Security Council are hostile to
the program, while the Defense Department is strongly behind it.
The critical issue at this point is whether the State and NSC faction
will convince the President that the Soviets are serious about
reaffirming and strengthening the ABM Treaty, particularly on the
fundamental issue of what kind of research should be allowed with the
Treaty in place. This faction favors the so-called "restrictive"
interpretation of the ABM Treaty. Two versions of the Treaty appeared
last year when a low-level DoD attorney produced a memorandum
explaining how the ABM Treaty allows testing of ABM components like
these being developed for the SDI. The "restrictive" version of the
Treaty does not allow testing of ABM components in space. The
"liberal" interpretation of the Treaty, which is favored at the
Defense Department, does allow such testing.
The faction supporting the "restrictive" version generally favors the
arms control process and wants the ABM Treaty reaffirmed, with new
language clarifying the research issue, in exchange for deep cuts in
offensive weapons by the Soviets. The faction supporting the
"liberal" interpretation of the Treaty, or those who want the Treaty
scrapped outright, are generally against the arms control process and
want the SDI built whatever the Soviet reaction. Abrahamson has tried
to step into the middle of the fight by telling Congress that a
"liberal" interpretation of the Treaty will make the SDI cheaper. But
Congress doesn't seem to be going for it. In Military Space,
Representative Jim Courter, a Republican from New Jersey, says the SDI
is "in a shambles in Congress," because of Reagan's "inability or
unwillingness to impose order and consistency on the quarreling DoD
and State Department bureaucracies."
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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