ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (05/29/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Wednesday, May 28, 1986 10:42PM
Volume 6, Issue 95
Today's Topics:
US/Soviet ICBM characteristics
depressed-trajectory weapons (specifically, artillery)
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Date: Fri, 23 May 86 16:04:31 edt
From: Kevin Sullivan <kjs%tufts.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: US/Soviet ICBM characteristics
For what it's worth here are the best estimates that I have regarding
the operational characteristics of US MMIII and MMIIIA ICBMs and Soviet SS18M4
ICBMs.
Name Number Reliability Availability Warheads CEP Yield
MMIII 300 80% 95% 3 .120nm .335mt
MMIIIA 250 80% 95% 3 .120nm .170mt
SS18M4 308 75% 95% 10 .140nm .5mt
Now my question is: what does this (or Krasnoyarsk or Soviet mobile missile
development) have to do with the value assigned to arms control? I don't
deny that there may be a link, but all of the ad hominun bickering I am
hearing certainly doesn't serve to establish one. It seems to me that the
right way of answering the question: "Is arms control valuable?" is to
compare the world as it stands now with a hypothetical one in which no
arms control treaties served to preclude development/deployment. The
comparison should address (1) crisis stability under the two scenarios, and
(2) likely war outcomes under the two scenarios (which or course feed back
into the question of crisis stability.) If war would be less likely under
one or the other, then that would be real evidence in favor of one or the
other.
Kevin Sullivan
Tufts University
CSNET: kjs%tufts@csnet-relay
BITNET: kjs@tufts
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Date: Fri, 23 May 86 18:18:59 EDT
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@seismo.CSS.GOV
Subject: depressed-trajectory weapons (specifically, artillery)
> [Back-and-forth between me and Herb on Seawolf intercepting shells.]
> The reports I saw were in Flight International a couple of years ago; I
> might be able to dig up more specific references.
>
> If you could, I'd appreciate it.
I don't seem to have saved the original news reports, but Flight's coverage
of the live Seawolf-vs-Exocet test (Flight International, 19 Dec 1983,
page 1590) comments:
There is a proposal to use Exocets regularly for Seawolf
training. As Seawolf has already demonstrated its ability
to hit a 4.5in shell, these are used routinely to test
Seawolf's radar tracking in exercises, the shells simulating
a high-speed dive-attack missile. ... [Sea-skimmers are
simulated with towed targets, which are unrealistically
small and slow, hence the interest in Exocet.]
Various sources (e.g. Flight International, 23 Oct 1976, page 1241) also
indicate that Seawolf has intercepted Mach 2 target missiles with no great
problem.
If you're seriously interested, British Aerospace would probably be
delighted to tell you all about it!
Ethell&Price's "Air War South Atlantic" commends Seawolf for lethality
against Argentine aircraft, with reservations due to reliability problems
with the control equipment. There was an incident in which a flight of
four Skyhawks attacked a Seawolf-equipped ship one at a time; after the
first three went down (two direct hits and a third crashed trying to evade),
the fourth turned and ran for home. But a few minutes later, when another
flight attacked, the control equipment had some unspecified type of digital
indigestion, and they came in unopposed. Mind you, all the British missile
systems suffered from being unserviceable at awkward moments.
> [if Seawolf can intercept a Mach 3 target]
> then I'd say that the US plans to modify the Patriot
> to intercept short range ballistic missiles are silly -- they should
> just buy the Seawolf.
One possible problem with this is that Seawolf is definitely a point-
defence missile, with a relatively short range; most of the references
cite 5 km as maximum range. Patriot can probably do better than that.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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