ARMS-D-Request@MIT-XX.ARPA (Moderator) (01/22/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Tuesday, January 21, 1986 9:35PM Volume 6, Issue 29 Today's Topics: carving up Poland missile flight test ban Orbiting lasers > ground targets offensive lasers Aircraft Carriers Percentage to Defense ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon 20 Jan 86 19:01:12-PST From: Lynn Gazis <SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA> Subject: carving up Poland But, if war with Germany was inevitable, couldn't Stalin have fought just as much of it on Polish soil by sending troops to Poland when Germany attacked it? Why should he let someone he knows he will be going to war with gain more territory? Lynn Gazis sappho@sri-nic ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Jan 86 22:59:11 EST From: Herb Lin <LIN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU> Subject: missile flight test ban From: ihnp4!ihuxl!dcn at ucbvax.berkeley.edu I see two potential problems with a missile flight test ban: 1. When the boosters get old and unreliable, a "use it or lose it" choice may have to be made. NO ONE will start a war because their weapons are becoming unreliable. 2. Since many ICBM boosters double as satellite boosters, how is flight testing of new space hardware limited by this ban? Nothing gets sent on a ballistic trajectory. Actually, I should 'fess up. I don't think an absolute FTB is necessary, or even particularly desirable, except for the short term. Rather, the idea is to impose a very low limit on the number of flight tests to maintain reliability of offensive forces. Thus, we would have a ban for a while to bring the reliability of counterforce down, then begin to allow a limited number of tests to maintain reliability of countervalue forces. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Jan 86 23:03:40 EST From: Herb Lin <LIN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU> Subject: Orbiting lasers > ground targets From: Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI <wmartin at ALMSA-1.ARPA> To me, the capability of "pin-point strikes against enemy government, military centers and terrorist bases" sounds like a good thing to have! What could be better than being able to attack enemy targets precisely, without having to do things like destroy the civilian population of a city surrounding them, which we have done in previous wars? Depends on whether you think things like third world intervention are good and proper things to do. Generally, I don't; thus, I don't want to make it easy for governments to do that sort of thing. It could be used to attack widely-spaced targets, or start forest or grass fires over wide areas, I suppose. Yup; consider the possibility of destroying the coffee crop of some "unfriendly" government in Latin America. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Jan 86 23:10:15 EST From: Herb Lin <LIN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU> Subject: offensive lasers From: (Bob Gottlieb) ... 'in a matter of hours, a laser defense system powerful enough to cope with the ballistic missile threat can also destroy the enemy's major cities by fire. ... the attack time for each city beung only a matter of minutes. ...' The problem with this is that is assumes two things: 1. The laser operates in a frequency range that is transparent to the atmosphere. Many infrared and optical lasers are badly attenuated by traversing the atmosphere. DF can penetrate to the ground, though with attenuation as you suggest. 2. In order to strike a target on earth, and not diverge as to merely warm things up over a general area, some form of abaptive lens would be needed to counteract the defocussing effects of the atmosphere. That's what rubber mirrors and adaptive optics are for, which you would have in boost-phase anyway. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Jan 86 00:23:13 EST From: Herb Lin <LIN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU> Subject: Aircraft Carriers From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry at seismo.CSS.GOV Herb Lin commented a little while ago (I'm catching up on back issues...): > ...[power projection is] a mission that could be > accomplished at a small fraction of the cost by a few fighter-bomber > and tanker aircraft, if it weren't for inter-service rivalry. > Britain doesn't have what we consider to be true aircraft carriers, > just "ski-jump" carriers for the V/STOL Harriers. Not much more than > a freighter and a ramp... > And recall the heavy losses among the support > vessels required by even this ship (e.g., HMS Sheffield). > Besides, the Harrier (the only fixed-wing plane > on British carriers) was not there for "air cover," but for close support > of ground troops, who found themselves plenty harried by Argentine aircraft > anyway. I did not send these messages. I agree with some of them, and concur with Henry's analysis of others. ------------------------------ From: vax135!ariel!solar!news@ucbvax.berkeley.edu Date: Tue, 21 Jan 86 12:58:07 est Subject: Moderated newsgroup This newsgroup is moderated, and cannot be posted to directly. Please mail your article to the moderator for posting. Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site solar.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Path: solar!orion!mtunf!mtuni!mtunh!ariel!vax135!houxm!mhuxt!mhuxr!ulysses!ucbvax!arms-d From: ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) Newsgroups: mod.politics.arms-d Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V6 #17.3 Message-ID: <8601110239.AA07616@ucbvax.berkeley.edu> Date: Fri, 10-Jan-86 20:06:00 EST Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8601110239.AA07616 Posted: Fri Jan 10 20:06:00 1986 Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: ARMS-D%MIT-MC.ARPA@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 142 Approved: arms-d@mit-mc.arpa Arms-Discussion Digest Friday, January 10, 1986 8:06PM Volume 6, Issue 17.3 Today's Topics: See 17.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu 9 Jan 86 22:20:28-PST From: Jim McGrath <J.JPM@Epic> Subject: Complexity measures Reply-to: mcgrath%mit-oz@mit-mc.arpa From: Jim McGrath <Mcgrath%mit-oz@mit-mc.arpa> 5. If you answered no to question 1, or hold SDI to a substantially higher degree of reliability than existing systems, then the logic fails. The problem I have with this debate is that the anti-SDI people are not addressing either of these two points adequately. On the former, people have been concentrating on size of code for SDI. From: Herb Lin <LIN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU> I haven't been. Parnas hasn't been. Who has been? I would not blame people if they did however. Big things are more complex than little things. By far the most common measure of complexity that has been offered in these discussion (whenerver a metric has been provided - often complexity is simply claimed), it has been code size. You made a point of that yourself in your Scientific American article (although in that context you were concentrating specifically on the software complexity issue, so there was no confusion). I have not read Parnas's arguments yet, so refrain from comment, but almost every computer science critic of SDI has concentrated on code to the exclusion of other elements, proceding to generalize there (often valid) concerns about software performance to system performance. I can think of many programs that are large and LESS complex than smaller programs (although they are exceptions). And I can thing of many physical systems that are quite complex, but have quite simple software. Until recently the phone network was almost entirely implemented in hardware. Although people may dispute whether it is as complex as SDI, surely you would not dispute that it is very complex in some absolute sense? Thus I think your statement is clearly wrong. Big things (in a software complexity sence) are NOT necessarily more complex than little things (if the little refers to software and the complexity measure is system complexity). Until critics of SDI stop pretending that software is everything, and concentrate on the system, they are not going to be able to sell people their arguments. Besides, AEGIS is enormously easier to test. Remember, it is a real-time system. SDI will have to handle 10^6 potential targets in 30 minutes. AEGIS is designed to keep track of 200 targets within ~ a half hour flight time. Aegis being a real time system (as opposed to SDI, which is a batch system?) makes it ENORMOUSLY EASIER to test? Anyway, you are using simple complexity measures again. First, an ocean environemnt (or a land environment) is FAR more unpredictable than a space environment. Thus realistic testing (i.e. testing under a good sample of environmental responses) is, alone at least one dimension, far harder. Second, I anticipate that the hardware involved in Aegis is far more unreliable than hardware commonly used in space right now. While some of that may be due to a trade off (Aegis hardware is designed to survive battle conditions), a lot of it is due to either a sense that the hardware can always be replaced (a mistaken sense, given the time you would have under an attack to do so) or to the simple fact than an ocean environment is pure hell on machines. Thus Aegis loses on that dimension. On the statistic you cite, the times involved are the same (which makes it nice - no one can repair/reprogram either system (although it makes me wonder more why people are resisting human involvement in SDI, when it is clearly done in Aegis)). But the projectile numbers are a bit misleading. First, Aegis is covering a limited zone. If the SDI system was set up in a similar zone pattern, the number of projectiles per subsystem would drop accordingly. Second, and far more seriously, you are underestimating the role of the environment. An ocean environment is bound to generate more false signals (birds, etc...) from nature than a space environment. Finally, while we all anticipate countermeasures in space, the environment hampers such attempts (to give one example, maneuvering in space is very difficult and expensive compared to doing so in the atmosphere), so the objects that are there should be, individually, easier to track. Jim ------------------------------ Date: Thu 9 Jan 86 22:44:06-PST From: Jim McGrath <J.JPM@Epic> Subject: Summing up on SDI Reply-to: mcgrath%mit-oz@mit-mc.arpa >From all these messages, I've come to two conclusions. First, that on the whole, I tend to feel that SDI is a more complex system (mainly because of its mission size) than existing ones, such as Aegis. But I could be wrong (either way). And I do not believe that it is "orders of magnitude" more complex than existing systems. Thus it would seem that it could be built to existing system performance standards. The second question is whether these standards are "adequate," and if not can we improve upon them? It is clear that existing systems are not being tested as fully as possible (Herb Lin's report on the Aegis tests makes them appear to be a joke). I've already pointed out that substantial testing of mid-course and terminal phases, far more extensive testing than any of our other systems have received, can be carried out. Thus, provided we have a proper commitment, even our current testing technology can be better applied (with better results) than we have done up until now. To a large extent the standard you require depends upon your definition of the mission of the system. Clearly the system was never designed to make OUR nuclear weapons obsolete (just the Soviet's). So under any mission we would probably retain a force sufficient to destroy the USSR, and so can always fall back on MAD. Any reasonable performance level would protect our weapons to a significant extent (and if not, you can always keep a sub force). So the real question is whether it can protect cities. I would tend to doubt it, under a full and unimpeded Soviet attack. But there are many scenarios (from accidental launch to a limited (decapitation or counterforce) strike to a second strike (the first perhaps going to Europe and/or China)) where it quite possibly could. In any event, I am certainly not sure enough to either commit to SDI deployment nor to terminate research. Since all SDI is at the moment is research, I have no problem with the existing program. Still, knowing how programs have a tendency to outlive their usefulness, I think strong scrutiny is appropriate. But not mindless opposition. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jan 86 11:10:41 EST From: Hank.Walker@UNH.CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Percentage to Defense In digest V6 #28, Sam McCracken states that during the Kennedy administration, a much greater percentage of the federal budget went to defense than now. Clearly lots of Great Society programs lowered the percentage going to defense. However Johnson had Social Security spending included in the budget to make Vietnam spending seem lower. Do these claims (Reagan uses this claim too) include Social Security when discussing federal spending? Part of the bipartisan agreement on Social Security is to remove SS from the federal budget in 1992. Without SS, defense spending would be around 37% of federal spending. This does not include the Veterans Administration or Department of Energy weapons programs. ------------------------------ End of Arms-Discussion Digest *****************************