ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (06/05/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Thursday, June 5, 1986 9:57AM
Volume 6, Issue 100
Today's Topics:
Analysis of trends in SDI
Debate style debate
Missle control?
Are SDI Software predictions biased by old tactical software?
A Star Wars Query
SDI Software/Terrorist ICBMs?
Unshakeable Faith in Technology
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Date: Tue, 24 Dec 85 11:45:12 pst
From: Gary Chapman <PARC-CSLI!chapman@glacier>
Subject: Analysis of trends in SDI
SOME ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEMS FACING THE SDI
As Congress has now recessed for 1985, I thought it might be
worthwhile to review some of the recent developments on the SDI and
offer some speculation on what the program faces in the future.
The path of the defense appropriations bill was pretty rocky this
year. The Senate passed one version, which funded the SDI at $3.25
billion and featured virtually unlimited ASAT testing. The House
passed another version, which limited the SDI to $2.5 billion and
banned ASAT testing completely. The bill therefore went to a
conference committee, and the version that came out of the conference
committee was vetoed by the House, largely because the House thought
that $10 billion should be cut out of the conference committee
version, they were upset because the committee had compromised and
allowed 3 ASAT tests for the next fiscal year, and because a Military
Reform Caucus package of procurement reforms had been deleted. So the
bill went back to the conference committee after House Speaker Tip
O'Neill decided they would compromise on the spending limits through
the complicated disjuncture between authorization authority and
spending authority.
The latest conference committee bill, which was released on December
13, funds the SDI at $2.75 billion and features a significant
moratorium on ASAT testing. The moratorium on ASAT testing was a deal
between House Democrats and Senate Republicans. For no ASAT testing,
the Democrats agreed to $250 million more for SDI than they wanted,
and the resumption of spending on controversial nerve gas production.
President Reagan has apparently told Senate Appropriations Committee
Chairman Mark Hatfield that he will not veto the bill even with the
ASAT ban. (The bill does say the United States can resume ASAT
testing if the Soviets verifiably end their own three-year old
moratorium on ASAT testing.)
Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger is not pleased. He said, "This
action places the future of the U.S. ASAT program in Soviet hands. It
gives them life-or-death veto power."
The significance of the ASAT moratorium when combined with the
"restrictive" interpretation of the ABM Treaty is that it makes space
testing of SDI components virtually impossible. A pro-SDI House
staffer said, "Obviously, this ban, with restrictive ABM
interpretation, could spell the death knell for SDI. All avenues for
space hardware tests will be shut."
The other major Congressional move that will seriously affect the SDI
is the passed Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction Act, which mandates a
balanced federal budget by 1991. The Act specifically says that 50%
of the cuts necessary for balancing the budget must come from defense.
Many members of Congress have already said that they do not see where
the President is going to find the money to cut from the defense
budget without affecting the SDI. Senator John Warner, Chairman of
the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic and Theater
Nuclear Forces, which has jurisdiction over the SDI, said to an
audience at a luncheon of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
that under Gramm-Rudman, "The SDI will be there as a target. And it
will be a big one."
The ASAT ban, the restrictive interpretation of the ABM Treaty which
is favored in Congress, and the fiscal restraints imposed by
Gramm-Rudman will combine as well. Congress will be hard-pressed to
come up with a reason why so much money is going into the SDI with the
testing restrictions. Edward Teller's recent claim that some of the
tests for SDI components will cost $1 billion *each*, combined with
the criticisms of some scientists at Lawrence Livermore Lab that the
testing of the nuclear-pumped x-ray laser is fatally flawed, will make
Congress even more reluctant.
But there is potentially even more to this. When the House and Senate
passed their separate appropriations bills, Reagan had not yet met
with Gorbachev in Geneva. There was a lot of talk, particularly in
the Republican-controlled Senate, of "not tying the President's hands"
in Geneva by voting down ASAT testing or cutting the funding of the
SDI. In fact, as you may recall, there was a lot of heat generated
early in November when the Air Force announced that it was moving up
the ASAT test scheduled for early December, and the test would be
conducted before the summit, and before the appropriations bill had a
chance to clear both Houses. Congressman George Brown and others
filed a last-minute and unsuccessful lawsuit to stop the test. Much
of their support was limited because Congressional members were
reluctant to criticize the Reagan policy so close to the summit.
Now, after the summit, the true feelings of Congress may be gauged a
little more accurately. And it appears that the Congress is not happy
with Reagan's lack of progress on arms control in Geneva. The
moratorium on ASAT testing took the Defense Department by surprise,
since, ironically, the Air Force had just launched two instrumented
test vehicles for further ASAT testing the day before the conference
committee agreement. (A DoD spokesman said rather bitterly that this
wasted about $20 million, since the batteries on the ITVs will go dead
before the end of the next fiscal year.) But close observers of
Congress note that there has been almost no carryover of policy from
the summit, and Congressional leaders are moving toward taking things
in their own hands. The 1986 elections will play a big role, since
two issues--lack of progress on arms control, and the federal
deficit--will doubtlessly be high on the electoral agenda.
Many Congressional members are getting increasingly edgy about the SDI
for a number of reasons. First and foremost is the issue of money.
With inevitable DoD cuts ahead, the Congress is going to be forced to
make a choice between strategic weapons and conventional
modernization. There are strong pressures to favor the latter.
Conventional modernization plans have been in the pipeline much longer
than the SDI. The Joint Chiefs have damned the SDI with faint praise,
mostly because they are worried that its enormous fiscal appetite will
jeopardize their individual plans. Secretary Weinberger also alarmed
many in Congress by recently stating that he does not consider Paul
Nitze's criterion of the SDI being "cost effective at the margin" to
be essential to the program. Weinberger said in effect that he thinks
the SDI should be funded no matter what it costs, and no matter how
cheaply it can be offset by the Soviets.
The next reason for skepticism in Congress is the confusion within the
Reagan administration over what the SDI is supposed to do. The recent
series of articles in the New York Times described this confusion
vividly. Both Lieutenant General Abrahamson and Richard Perle went on
the record on December 4th as saying that the SDI's primary purpose is
to protect missile silos, but others in the Reagan administration
insist that it is meant as a population defense. (One of the most
ardent advocates of the area defense plan, Presidential Science
Advisor Dr. George Keyworth, announced recently that he is resigning
at the end of the year.) The SDIO released a surprisingly short
announcement of a proposed seven-layer architecture that is intended
to protect 3500 sites, including cities. And then General Abrahamson
and Richard Perle testified that they envision a preliminary system
that will "enhance deterrence" by protecting existing missile fields.
There is also a serious sense of confusion about the strategic
implications of the SDI. Secretary of Defense Weinberger has
repeatedly said that he does not believe that the Soviet response to
the SDI will be to build more ICBMs. But in his notorious letter to
the President that was leaked to the press two days before the summit,
Weinberger said that the United States would have no choice but to
dramatically increase its offensive forces even "in anticipation" of
deployment of a Soviet BMD system. Weinberger has also followed the
President's lead by insisting on the moral superiority of defense
dominance, but then reviled the Soviets for having a research program
on defensive weapons.
Finally, my sense is that the Congress is much less antipathetic to
the negotiation and treaty process than the administration. Part of
this has to do with the Senate's significant role in advising on and
then ratifying treaties. But there also appears to be a general
opposition to the Reagan administration's contempt for the arms
control process. Congress has resisted attempts of the administration
to loosen up the interpretation of the ABM Treaty to allow SDI
testing, while at the same time members of the Reagan administration
such as Perle and Weinberger have openly discussed their opinion that
the United States should not be bound by such an agreement if it
becomes apparent (and they suggest it already is apparent) that it is
not in our interest. The Reagan administration has just released a
report outlining alleged Soviet treaty violations, and at the same
time announced that it will begin to retaliate against these
violations with "tit-for-tat" violations on the part of the United
States, starting with the cancelling of the decommissioning of a
Poseidon sub when the next Trident is launched, a violation of SALT
II. Some key members of Congress, however, think that the proper
response to Soviet cheating is to actually hold their feet to the fire
and bring them into line with the treaty provisions, instead of
eroding the treaty even further with deliberate U.S. violations.
Overall, Congress is much more sensitive to the overwhelming public
commitment to arms control, and the 1986 elections should prompt an
increasing demand for progress from the Reagan administration.
In summary then, the SDI faces an uphill battle from 1986 through 1989
when Reagan leaves office. While the budgetary demands of the program
will increase, the funds available will shrink because of Gramm-Rudman
and Congressional concern over the deficit. It is somewhat ironic to
note that Walter Mondale ran on a platform that called for a 3% annual
increase in the defense budget, while Reagan insisted that national
security would be irreparably damaged without at least a 7% increase.
Since the 1984 election, the average increase in the defense budget,
after inflation, has been only 1.5%, HALF of what Mondale recommended.
Representative Les AuCoin, the chairman of the House defense
appropriations subcommittee, recently remarked that Secretary of
Defense Weinberger had become the DoD equivalent of Babe Ruth, who had
the record for both homeruns and strikeouts for many years: Weinberger
has presided over both the largest increase in the defense budget, and
the largest cut--nearly $100 billion this past round, for a zero per
cent increase in the budget for FY 1986. AuCoin said that if this
trend continued, Weinberger would have to get Willie Nelson and his
friends to sponsor a benefit concert for the DoD--"call it MilAid,"
said AuCoin.
The budget constraints will combine with the general confusion in the
White House over what the SDI is good for--for "enhancing deterrence,"
to use as a bargaining chip, or to protect people. And finally, the
lack of progress in arms control will lead to increased Congressional
reluctance to accept the President's policies and to increased
measures like the ASAT moratorium and a commitment to the ABM Treaty
that will curtail if not halt crucial SDI component development.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1986 01:31 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Debate style debate
From: Dave Benson <benson%wsu.csnet at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
.. Thus you fell into the error --in my opinion-- of distorting
the facts and issues in the same manner as S. McCraken did.
Please describe just what I distorted. I did engage in some
rhetorical flourish, but see next response.
However, the process of several
exchanges which arrived at this outcome might have been less blunt.
I agree. I try to formulate my responses in a manner that matches the
style of my adversary. (Adversary is an appropriate term here, since
McCracken and I *are* on different sides of the political debate; he
has his position to push, and I have mine. Each of us wants our
chosen policies to guide the nation, and they are in many ways
incompatible.) If you look back on his manner of presentation, you
will find that it was his messages that set the tone of the debate.
Not responding to that tone is in effect to give credence not just to
the substance of his message, but to the suggestion thereby implied
that "anyone with an opposing point of view is just plain silly and
misguided." I respect opposing points of view, and I believe they
must be answered or incorporated into my own. But I have tried to
develop my position in a way that is intellectually coherent and
respectable, and it is not appropriate for others to suggest that I
have not.
So, it is an opportunity for a world-wide grown-up bull-session,
especially with the topic(s) of ARMS-D.
I do appreciate ARMS-D for just that reason.
... It is not --in my opinion--
a suitable forum for a formal debate designed to produce winners ("He
had all the facts and good points on his side") and losers.
I agree again. But when someone DOES present something as a formal
debate, and presents it in such a manner that "obviously, my position
is correct and there can be no other valid positions", that does
deserve response. If you ever catch me being the first to use a
disrespectful tone, I will beg forgiveness. But I sure will respond.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1986 01:42 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Missle control?
To my knowledge, no US strategic missiles are equipped with
self-destruction packages.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1986 01:58 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Are SDI Software predictions biased by old tactical software?
From: <estell at nwc-143b>
... At some personal risk, let me say at the outset that SDI,
as ballyhooed in the popular press, may never work - certainly not in this
decade.
It is NOT the public press that says that SDI will create a perfect
defense. It is the President and the Secretary of Defense.
...Similarly, one errant
SDI computer need not fail the entire network - anymore than one failing
IMP need crash the entire ARPANET.
That point has never been made by the critics either. The problem is
not that it WOULD, but that some fundamental design error COULD fail
the entire system. There is no way to rule that out.
... A missile defense is worth having if it is good
enough to save only 5% of the USA population in an all-out nuclear attack.
Not necessarily true. If having a defense that can kill 5% of the
current Soviet threat prompts the Soviets to increase their missile
force by a factor of two, we are not better off, and the missile
defense would not be worth having.
That shield might save 75% of the population in a terrorist
attack, launched
by an irresponsible source; this is far more likely than a
saturation attack
by a well armed power like the USSR.
Where will the Libyans get even one ICBM? Besides, we NOW have the
capability to build defenses against one missile aimed against the US,
and we don't need SDI for that. We solved that problem in the 1960's.
The hard problem is the saturation attack.
... I am saying that if we don't try, we won't
progress...
But my point is that we must not shun the challenge to TRY to improve the
software in the field, and the tools used to design and build and test it.
But if trying makes war and nuclear buildups more likely, then we may
not progress either. Actions are taken or not taken in a context;
most responsible critics of SDI argue that there is a downside to
"just doing research". That downside has to be evaluated.
Specifically, a system that works with questionable reliability or
effectiveness is most useful in the aftermath of a thinned-out
retaliatory blow, i.e., one that most closely resembles your terrorist
attack. Thus, it is not unreasonable to interpret the building of
defenses as an offensive act.
------------------------------
Date: Thu 5 Jun 1986 08:34:07 EST
From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: A Star Wars Query
About mirrors: as a layman, I understand it as follows: building mirrors
that can take a high power density laser beam is nontrivial. The mirrors
are made of polished metal and would be built with embedded channels for
circulation of cooling fluid. They would be heavy, so you couldn't build
an ICBM the same way. You'd also need a heavy heat sink or radiator
attached to the satellite to run the coolant through. I suppose one
could design an ICBM that runs propellant through the skin of the
booster before it reaches the engines, but that sounds heavy.
------------------------------
Date: Thu 5 Jun 1986 08:46:34 EST
From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: SDI Software/Terrorist ICBMs?
I find plausible much of your message, except for the part about
terrorists. Why would a terrorist use an ICBM? They're expensive and
require a tremendous infrastructure to build. They can't be tested
in secret.
A smuggled bomb has the tremendous advantage that it is hard to figure
out who sent it. This would be a very important consideration to
a potential third world country bent on nuclear terrorism: overt nuclear
attack on the US would likely result in large scale nuclear retaliation.
------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, 3 June 1986 21:07-EDT
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN>
To: RISKS-LIST:, risks at SRI-CSL.ARPA, arms-d@xx.lcs.mit.edu
Re: Unshakeable Faith in Technology
[Forwarded by Moderator from Risks]
The following passage from a 6-part "editorial" in the San Francisco
magazine "Processed World" argues that the Space Shuttle disaster will
not (as Proxmire claimed) shake people's faith in technology. Instead,
it may strengthen their resolve to pursue technology regardless of risks.
(Fortunately, the same argument can not be applied to the Chernobyl accident;
people don't have the same love affair with Soviet nuclear power that they
had with the Shuttle.)
Send me mail if you want more info about the magazine; this is from the
recently published Number 16.
"Braking Star Wars, or a New Standard of Patriotism"
by Marcy Darnovsky
"If the fireball that consumed Space Shuttle Challenger slows down the
development of Star Wars, the seven people that perished in it will
not have died in vain.
"To millions of space enthusiasts, the shuttle and the space program
are tributes to curiosity, imagination, courage, and the quest for
knowledge and adventure. These are among the worthy impulses of the
human spacies. But what most space boosters don't see through the
glitter of the stars (leaving aside the problem of how to divide the
purse between cross-town buses and interplanetary travel) is how
these impulses are being used and perverted.
"Whatever its origins, there can be no doubt about what master the
Shuttle now serves. Starting in 1987, the Pentagon had planned to use
half of the spacecraft's cargo bay at least twice a year for Star Wars
experiments alone. It had claimed a third of the available shuttle
launches over the next ten years. Under the National Space Policy
adopted by Reagan, the Pentagon is not only NASA's largest customer,
but also its preferred customer, and as such is entitled to bump
civilian, commercial, and scientific payloads off Shuttle flights.
"For a short time, the suspension of Shuttle missions and the loss of
one of the four orbiters will slow the military's invasion of space.
But before long, the space arms race will be back in harmony with the
spheres. The scientific and commercial aspects of the space program
will probably come out the losers, with NASA dancing to the Pentagon's
tune even more slavishly than before.
"A month after the explosion, some of the astronauts voiced dissatisfactions
with NASA safety procedures and secrecy. It's too soon to tell whether
their criticisms will crack the unnerving unaniminity of popular support for
more space spectaculars.
"Remarkably, instead of planting doubts about the reliability of complex
technologies and the push into space, the destruction of the Challenger
seems to have convinced most Americans that no sacrifice is too great for
the technology that will conquer the stars. NASA reports it received 90,000
letters in the two weeks following the explosion, 99% of them supporting the
space program. "Something like this brings the nation together," said
Daniel Boorstin in the New York Times. "The space program in general has
done that; people understand the grandeur even if not the technology, and to
share that grandeur is what makes a great nation." Boorstin is right: the
majestic lift-off of a rocket with human beings perched atop it raises
modern Americans out of their everyday lives into an epiphany of
technological awe intertwined with chauvinistic pride.
"The Shuttle catastrophe has constructed a new standard of patriotism:
giving your life for your country's technology. Instead of making it
acceptable to question the military takeover of space, the Shuttle
disaster may make the space program more sacred than ever. If the
explosion of the Challenger and the seven dead astronauts have
transformed protest into heresy, it was more of a tragedy than we've
yet realized."
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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