ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (06/05/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Thursday, June 5, 1986 1:00AM
Volume 6, Issue 99
Today's Topics:
Crummer's commentary
Re: Arms-Discussion Digest V6 #87
survival/annihilation?
A Star Wars Query
Missle control?
Re: Blue Cube article
High-Tech vs. Persuasive Negotiation
Space Shuttle Militarism
Blue Cube article
Are SDI Software predictions biased by old tactical software?
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Date: Fri, 30 May 86 15:49 PDT
From: DonSmith.PA@Xerox.COM
Subject: Crummer's commentary
Charlie Crummer's commentary on the will to negotiate is one of the most
thoughtful and enlightened statements on the subject that I have ever
read. I hope he will publish it and also direct it to appropriate
Administration and Congressional people.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 31 May 86 18:26:57 cdt
From: Bryan Fugate <fugate%milano@mcc.arpa>
Subject: Re: Arms-Discussion Digest V6 #87
I would be interested in seeing the videotape, if you can make
copies.
------------------------------
Date: 1986 June 01 12:29:04 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject:survival/annihilation?
D> Date: Fri 23 May 1986 23:48:57 EST
D> From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
D> Subject: how to prevent human annihilation?
D> If human extinction is a real possibility (it currently is not, even
D> with nuclear winter)
I disagree. With an all-out thermonuclear exchange (which any minor
thermonuclear exchange whatsoever, or any major conventional war
between USSR and any European nation, will quickly become) we will
have nuclear winter and ozone depletion, as well as destruction of
every urban area in the world. There may be a few million survivors
from the initial attack and subsequent radiation exposure, but nuclear
winter and ozone depletion (intense sunburning and crop-killing
ultraviolet exposure) will reduce the population to those who are away
from urban areas and simultaneously have a few years of food saved
ahead of time. Those people will be very few unless your bunker plan
is used, and it currently isn't being used as far as I know. The
problem isn't that there will be zero survivors, but that the breeding
population of survivors will be one here and one there and one over
yonder, with all communication knocked out so they won't be able to
find each other to mate and have children. After a few years they'll
be too old to reproduce, and they'll live out their old ages wondering
if they are the last of their species. Even if a few manage to mate,
the gene pool will be so seriously reduced that even if they do away
with their phobia about incest and indeed do interbreed brother with
sister, father with daughter, they won't be able to resist an
epidemic, instead of only those who aren't resistant dying, either
everybody will be resistant or nobody resistant to some particular
bug, so one disease will go unnoticed and another disease will
exterminate this particular breeding family once and for all. Even if
there are several breeding families in the world, each of them will be
totally destroyed by some particular disease they are all susceptable to.
In summary, I'm not sanguine like you are about "it can't happen to
us, we can't go extinct".
D> then I'd suggest building several hundred bunker/radiation-proof
D> greenhouse/warehouse units at various points around the globe.
There are more than several hundred thermonuclear weapons, in fact I
seem to recall a number like 40,000 recently. USA bunkers will be
prime targets for USSR warheads and vice versa. There's no way we can
afford total resistance to thermonuclear warheads, so the bunkers will
go with the cities and military bases and missile silos and CCC centers.
D> The units would be designed to be sealed and would have mirrors to
D> reflect sunlight to underground growing areas (or, they could have
D> internal power).
How can you harden them against warheads?? Either they are isolated
from the enviornment (no mirrors, no sunlight) or they are vulnerable
to attack.
D> To guard against their being targeted they would be entirely
D> nonmilitary and would be manned by multinational crews.
Nonmilitary is worthless as protection. The whole idea of deterrance
is "if you destroy us as a nation our last act will be to destroy your
populace as much as we can". You're confusing counterforce
first-strike with deterrence. In the former you hit only those
facilities from which they may attack us back, to prevent
counteattack. In latter you try to punish them as much as you possibly
can in all possible ways you can devise. -- Multinational crews (I
would like to say populace instead, sounds less military and more
pleasant life situation) are a possible idea. Actually I'd like to see
a wholescale population exchange between USSR and USA, so any attack
on cities would be killing our/their own people. Such a massive
cultural exchange or whatever program would result in enhanced mutual
understand and acceptance as well as a cheaper solution than bunkers.
Unfortunately it wouldn't work because the weather in Moscow is
terrible (not to mention Kiev recently) and not many people from
California would be willing to swap habitat.
D> For the near future, building such units on Earth will be much cheaper
D> than building in space.
But building them in space is much more effective. You can get
completely out of range of ICBMs, and if better delivery systems for
weapons are built you can go to a different place in the Earth's orbit
to be light minutes away from Earth, it's very easy to move a colony
once it's in deep space, and if you merely change phase of orbit you
don't get too hot or too cold. If we had a ring of colonies in Earth's
orbit around the Sun, even if weapons could get to them, it'd be hard
to destroy them all. Remember that's 93,000,000 * 2 * PI = more than
580 million miles in circumference, where the Earth is only 25,000
miles in circumference, so in terms of travel distance of warheads
that's more than 2000 times as far. If we make a sphere of colonies
at Earth distance from Sun but randomized all three degrees
(dimensions) of freedom (two dimensions for axis of orbit, and one for
phase in that orbit), it'll be awfully hard to knock them all out in
one war before the survivors turn on "warp drive", not
faster-than-light, just emergency scatter in random directions at high
acceleration to confuse targeting methods.
Although space-based colonies may be more expensive than Earth-based
bunkers, they are so immensely more effective in preventing
simultaneous destruction that I rate them as more cost effective as a
survival strategy. -- Rebuttal welcome of course.
------------------------------
Date: 2 Jun 1986 11:45:39 PDT
Subject: A Star Wars Query
From: Alfred Beebe <BEEBE@USC-ISIB.ARPA>
A colleague has posed the following question about the SDI:
There is an aspect of the SDI plan that I have never heard
mentioned, that seems as though it would be a fatal flaw. It
is this:
The plan is to have our lasers shooting at OUR satellites, which
will be safe because they are mirrors that reflect the light to
THEIR missles, which won't be safe. If we assume that we can
(among all our other priorities) create mirrors that render our
vehicles safe, then we should assume that they can create mirror
surfaces that render THEIR vehicles safe. Furthermore, their
effort on this countermeasure must be much less costly than our
effort on the system as a whole.
So, even on its own premises, the system won't do its job.
Surely I am missing something. This seems so simple and
straightforward. Is this really a refutation of the plan?
Can anyone dismiss this countermeasure or give it substantial affirmation?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 86 15:28:51 EDT
From: Will Martin <wmartin@BRL.ARPA>
Subject: Missle control?
Ran across this in USENET's net.followup:
>Remember cruise & SS20 missiles can't be stopped after launching like ICBM's.
And it inspires some thought -- are our ICBM's equipped with destruction
packages so that they can be destroyed after launch in the case of
accidental or unauthorized launches? Do we know if the Soviet missles
have this capability? If they do, is it true that smaller nuclear
misssles do not have such cancellation capability?
And, if our missles do have such a destroy-after-launch capacity, how
far does it extend? Just in boost phase, or later?
Will Martin
UUCP/USENET: seismo!brl-smoke!wmartin or ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 86 14:52:10 PDT
From: wild%oscar@SUN.COM (Will Doherty)
Subject: Re: Blue Cube article
Herb,
This is a response from Edward Hasbrouck about your comments on
his Blue Cube article. Please send any comments and questions to
me; I'll forward them to Edward.
Will Doherty
sun!oscar!wild
To: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: msg of 23 May 1986
I stand by my belief that Lockheed D-5 SLBM's "provoke the USSR to adopt a
policy of launch-on-warning (at best) or of preemptive first strike (at
worst)".
You say, "The Soviets... CAN'T pre-empt the D-5." The can preempt deployment
of the D-5 (or of any other weapon they perceive would give the US
first-strike capability) by striking before it is deployed. I am scarcely
alone in seeing Soviet fear that the US is about to deploy first-strike
weapons as one of the most likely precipitators of a Soviet first strike.
Like you, I believe that "C3 is vulnerable not by choice but by foul-up". I
agree that the vulnerability of C3I (like the characteristics of many military
"systems") can be attributed neither to "design" nor "rationality". Ford, in
the sentence I quoted and you cite, does seem to overstate his case. But the
lack of concern for C3I vulnerability, even now that it is widely recognized
in the "defense community", still says something about current SIOP
priorities.
Thanks for the feedback! Peace,
Edward Hasbrouck
------------------------------
Date: 3 Jun 86 14:40 EDT
From: WAnderson.wbst@Xerox.COM
Re: High-Tech vs. Persuasive Negotiation, From: crummer@aerospace.ARPA
I think that Charlie Crummer's comments contain much for thought. Not
that we can ignore the real or imagined threats from the Soviet Union,
but we certainly can examine our own basis for strength, and our own
motivations for actions.
Recently I had the good fortune to hear Gene Sharp, from Harvard, give a
provocative talk on Nonviolent Action, a topic that he has been
investigating for 30 years. His premise is that, for many situations,
there are more than the two options of violent action or passive
submission. Nonviolent struggle can be very effective as a deterrent to
aggressive behavior. Not that it doesn't take courage -- it may take
more than simply picking up a rock or a rifle. But his point is that we
should elaborate the methods of nonviolent struggle, and show their
strong points and weak points, with regard to common objectives of
political groups. It can only help to have more options available for
the resolution of conflicts. Given more options we may even be able to
improve the effectiveness of nonviolent action.
Currently we all buy into the fact that violence and weapons are the
most powerful arbiters of dispute. We could be surprised to find out
that this is not true. And then we would be more likely to avoid
violence.
I fear that most of the readers of this list will think this simply
naive. I feel a bit of that myself. But if Dr. Sharp is correct, then
we can't lose by exploring nonviolent action as a deterrent to
aggression and an aid to conflict resolution.
Bill Anderson
WAnderson.wbst@Xerox
------------------------------
Date: Tue 3 Jun 86 20:11:02-EDT
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Space Shuttle Militarism
The following is from the 16th volume of the San Francisco magazine
"Processed World," published last month. Any comments? If you'd like
more info on the magazine, a quarterly, I'd be happy to oblige.
-rich
"Since the Russians send up Sputnik in 1957, the U.S. quest in space
has always been primarily a military one. "National security" and the
attempt to gain first-strike capability have underlain most satellite
developments, and are at the root of the shuttle/space/SDI plans.
"The US space shuttle program is portrayed not as humanity's
progress or accomplishment, but that of the Best Country in the World,
the United States. As such it becomes a major prop in the spectacle
of patriotism and also fits into to the historical pattern of US
reliance on the rhetoric of expansion across new frontiers.
"But the appeal of the space program goes deeper than militarism and
nationalism. The exploration of space holds a powerful fascination.
Decades of science fiction literature, film and art, combined with 25
years of space shots, have fired the popular imagination. As space
proponents convincingly argue, curiosity and striving to understand
the universe are essential to our humanity and creativity. The
problem arises when fantasies and the desire for knowledge serve to
justify or obscure the contemporary reality of the space exploration.
Many who support the space program close their eyes to its militarist
function, proclaiming the main purpose of NASA to be the pursuit of
pure knowledge -- despite the by now well-known fact that funding for
the shuttle was only attained by NASA's compromises with the Pentagon,
compromises not likely to be undone as long as the government remains
intact. With the installation of the Navy's head of space operations
at the helm of NASA, and joint appeals from NASA and the AIR Force for
a replacement shuttle, the real purpose is clear.
"Like the H-bomb designers of the 40's, the scientists and
technicians who create the necessary technology are either unaware of,
or psychologically detached from the results of their labor. While
erecting the essential building blocks of global annihilation,
technicians enjoy the thrill of making their toys work and comfort
themselves with fantasies of utopian space colonies where the
conflicts and problems of life on Earth will be left behind.
"The transcendence of social problems through "escape" into space
hooks remarkable numbers of people on space exploration. Establishing
space colonies or homesteading on some heretofore unknown hospitable
planet, would require giant leaps in scientific understanding. And
yet space enthusiasts advocate moving into space as a panacea for
Earth's problems of overpopulation and pollution -- a solution
requiring far more sophistication than would have been needed to avoid
the problems in the first place. Let the Earth and most of its
inhabitants rot, and let us smart, future-looking (probably white)
people move on to clean living in space! In the model colonies
problems that abound on Earth miraculously disappear; families live
happily with problems no more serious than the daily squabbles of
Dagwood and Blondie.
"Less grandiose but equally fantastic proposals include flushing
our toxic and radioactive wastes into space. One hopes that the
shuttle explosion has shaken our faith in such technical fixes, but it
probably hasn't. Under the guise of ecoconsciousness, these
suggestions actually represent a "logical" extension of the
late-capitalist use-it-up-and-throw-it-away mentality, in this case
applied to the whole planet. We may have turned the Earth into a
dangerous garbage dump, but there's plenty of room out there, so let's
just move on.
"The problem is not that the space exploration inspires flights of
fantasy or awakens the desire for knowledge, nor even that it is a
waste of resources. If fewer resources were spent on devising new
means of destruction, and on making wasteful, redundant commodities
and packaging, there would be plenty of wealth and time available for
space exploration. But not a space exploration which is a patriotic
smoke-screen for a military campaign. Un-peopled space probes have
already provided us with much of what we've learned about the universe
-- the Voyager mission through the solar system and the probes of
Venus and Mars. Many astronomers claim that manned expeditions are a
terrible waste at this point, since perhaps ten robot space shots
could be financed by the cost of one peopled shot.
"The gnarly problems of living with humans and nature will never be
solved by sending a few hundreds or thousands off in metal containers
floating in the vacuum of space. In the meantime, understanding how
people come so readily to see this techno-fantasy as a solution to
these problems may help us to penetrate the logic of the social system
that got us into this mess!"
- by "Lucius Cabins/ Maxine Holz"
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1986 00:24 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Blue Cube article
From: Edward Hasbrouck
They [the Soviets] can preempt
deployment of the D-5 (or of any other weapon they perceive would give
the US first-strike capability) by striking before it is deployed.
That is not the usual meaning of the term "pre-empt". You are talking
about PREVENTIVE war, such as Japan executed on the US at Pearl
Harbor.
I am scarcely alone in seeing Soviet fear that the US is about to
deploy first-strike weapons as one of the most likely precipitators of
a Soviet first strike.
But you haven't made an argument to that effect. To do so, you have
to argue that the Soviets would not now be deterred by the existing
arsenal.
But the lack of concern for C3I vulnerability, even now that it is
widely recognized in the "defense community", still says something
about current SIOP priorities.
Why? Moreover, there is NOT a lack of concern for C3 vulnerability;
C3 is indeed one of the programs that the current Administration wants
to exempt from Gramm-Rudman cuts.
------------------------------
Date: Friday, 30 May 1986 14:09-EDT
From: <estell at nwc-143b>
To: arms-d@xx.lcs.mit.edu, risks at sri-csl.arpa
Re: Are SDI Software predictions biased by old tactical software?
I'd like to offer an minority opinion about SDI software; i.e., I infer that
most RISKS readers agree with the assessments that "... SDI will never be
made to work..." 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. But I believe that our projections of the future are inextricably
linked to our past. So let me share some observations on Navy tactical
software as of 1979.
Much of the OLDER tactical software:
Was written in assembly language, or CMS-2. Powerful languages like
FORTRAN and C were not used.
Was implemented by people who may not have ever sailed or flown in combat.
Was not well defined functionally by the end users, for lack of "rapid
prototyping" tools.
Was written before modern notions like "structured programming" were used.
Was "shoehorned" into very old, small, slow, unsophisticated computers
(no hardware floating point, no virtual memory, 4 microsecond cycle).
"Froze" the modules, instead of the interfaces.
Carriers ran tactical software on machines built of early 1960's technology
(germanium diodes). They were remarkable computers for that era, having
almost the power of an IBM 7090 in a refrigerator sized box. They severely
restricted software development. If replaced, tactical software could be
written in several languages, not only Ada (DoD's choice), but also FORTRAN,
BASIC, Pascal, C, etc.; the goal is to use standard languages appropriate
to the task; and to incorporate modules, and support libraries, already
developed and debugged elsewehere.
------
Turning now to the more common arguments, they seem to be:
(1) COMPLEXITY; i.e., there are too many logical paths through the code;
(2) HISTORY; i.e., no deployed CCCI program has ever worked the first time.
The complexity argument leads one to wonder HOW the human brain works. It
has trillions of cells; each has a probability of failure. Some failures
are obvious: we forget, we misunderstand, we misspeak; etc. But, inspite
of these failures - or because of them - we SATISFICE. Even when some go
bonkers, the rest of us try to maintain our sanity. Similarly, one errant
SDI computer need not fail the entire network - anymore than one failing
IMP need crash the entire ARPANET.
The historical argument leads to an analogy. Suppose that after World War
II, President Truman had asked Congress for an R&D program in medicine, to
treat many of the physical wounds of the war. Doctors would have pointed
out that lost limbs and organs were lost, period. But the progress in the
last 25 years changed that. Microsurgery, new drugs, artificial joints,
computer assists, including one system that bridged a damaged spinal cord,
reinterpreting nerve signals so that a paraplegic could walk again.
The "complexity" and "historical" arguments even interact.
Peter Denning observed years ago that the difficulty of understanding a
program is a function of size (among other things). He speculated that
difficulty is proportional to the SQUARE of the number of "units of under-
standing" (about 100 lines of code). Old tactical software, in assembly
language, tends to run into the hundreds of thousands of lines of code;
e.g., a 500,000 line program has 5000 units of understanding, with a diffi-
culty index of 25 million. That same program, written in FORTRAN, might
shrink to 100,000 lines thus only 1000 units of understanding, thence a
difficulty index of one million. That's worth doing!
The medical analogy uncovers another tacit assumption in the SDI argument;
neither pro-SDI nor anti-SDI debaters have dealt with it well. It is the
"perfection" argument. 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.
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. As bleak as this prospect is, the
facts are that if an all-out attack were launched today, whether by malice,
madness or mistake, by either side; and the other side retalliated in full
force, the human race would be doomed by fallout, and by nuclear winter.
-----
I am NOT saying that we have the answers within our reach, much less our
grasp. I am NOT saying that SDI "as advertised" will be made to work ever,
certainly NOT in this decade; I am saying that if we don't try, we won't
progress. We know at the outset that SDI will be flawed, though perhaps
someday acceptable. That's the status of most of today's high technology;
e.g., air traffic control systems, hospitals, electronic banking,
telephone systems, mainframe operating systems, ARPANET, ad infinitum.
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.
That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater! Nor can we extrapolate
the successes of the 1990's from the common practices of the 1970's.
Rather than deplore the past, we must deploy the technology now developed
in Bell Labs, MIT, IBM, Livermore, and other leading computing centers.
When I worked in tactical software ('68 - '79), we were about a decade
behind the state of the art; e.g., we got high level programming languages,
symbolic debuggers, well stocked function libraries, and interactive tools
for writing and compiling, in the late '70's; we patterned them on systems
at MIT and Berkeley of the late '60's [MULTICS and GENIE].
I wonder just how much of the mid '80's technology is available to tactical
developers? Are any tactical computers now offering the architecture and
performance of say a CONVEX C-1? Is Prolog available to tactical program-
mers? Has the "Ada environment" developed the full set of Programmer's
Workbench tools that UNIX [tm] offers? and it is widely available?
-----
The disparity between what scientists know MIGHT be done, and what poli-
ticians are claiming is a dilemma; how can we pass through its horns?
Tell the SDI proponents in DoD and Congress that:
(1) A perfect shield is a vain wish; and
(2) much progress CAN be made, if RDT&E is done reasonably; and that
(3) the real threat is from terrorists, not Russians.
I think it very likely that we cannot deter SDI, at least not before '89;
and even then, Americans will insist on "adequate defense" - even as they
complain bitterly about the cost of it. So I suggest that we not try to
block SDI, but rather that we refocus its energies and emphases.
With luck, we can build a system that will work marginally. It will cost
billions; weigh several tons; and consume megawatts of power. In other
words, it will be confined to land sites only - not ships, and certainly
not space. Thus, it will be fit ONLY for defense. It will be impossible
to attack with it. It will become a sort of "Maginot Bubble." Then we
could sell the plans to our NATO allies, and to members of the Security
Council, including the USSR and China. They won't be able to attack us
with them. Perhaps such a demonstration of goodwill would cool the arms
race. The longterm economic benefits to the USA 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.
Bob
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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