ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (01/16/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Wednesday, January 15, 1986 10:05PM
Volume 6, Issue 24
Today's Topics:
Space Invaders/Offensive Star Wars lasers
Beyond War
Missile Flight Test Ban
"Star Wars" may unleash firestorms
US-Soviet TV
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Date: Wed, 15 Jan 86 18:34:22 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Space Invaders/Offensive Star Wars lasers
From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
I recall sending some notes to arms-d on the ground-attack capabilities
of lasers some time ago.
Indeed. I sent them.
The only problem I see is the degradation of the beam(s) by the lower
atmosphere. This can be avoided by attacking during quiet times (night,
say) and by using multiple convergent beams against a single target.
But then you don't get coherence, and the intensity goes linearly with
the number of lasers, whereas if they are coherent, it goes with the
square.
The reference to nuclear winter is silly, however.
I wouldn't push nuclear winter stuff, because it is the plume that is
the primary driver for stuff getting into the upper atmosphere.
Lasers won't do it at all.
The most likely use for an orbital laser
ground attack system would be pin-point strikes against enemy government,
military centers and terrorist bases. I could see the government
building such a weapon even if it is entirely useless against ICBMs.
I agree such is possible; that is my fear.
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Subject: Beyond War
Date: 15 Jan 86 16:02:56 PST (Wed)
From: foy@aero
who should run the Falklands. Quantitative, perhaps, due to the greater
potential for worldwide disaster -- although note that the UK is a nuclear
power and Argentina probably will be soon -- but the fundamental problems
seem awfully similar. Insights on solving one would presumably help to solve
the other. (Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology)
You are right! Thus seeing that the results of having a nuclear war are
unacceptable to human civilization, learning how to settle the disputes
between the US and the USSR without nuclear war can be used as a model
for learning how to settle all disputes between nations.
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Subject: Missile Flight Test Ban
Date: 15 Jan 86 15:48:28 PST (Wed)
From: foy@aero
Lin discusses the merits of a Missile Flight Test Ban as a low cost way of
creating enough uncertainty in a first strike that an agressor would not
be willing to initiate one.
I concur with his reasoning. It also has sthe merits that the Soviets have
taken a step in that direction by having a moratorium on their nuclear tests.
Perhaps if we weren't so devoted to SDI we could join in this moratorium and
perhaps proceed from there to a Missile Flight Test Ban.
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From: dual!epicen!jbuck@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 86 17:17:44 pst
Subject: "Star Wars" may unleash firestorms
Submitted for your approval (or disapproval) -
>From the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 11, 1986:
LIVERMORE - Laser weapons being developed as part of President Reagan's
Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as "Star Wars", could more
easily be used to incinerate enemy cities than to protect the United States
against Soviet missles, according to an article in the current issue of a
leading physics magazine and a separate study being circulated among
government weapons scientists.
Many SDI advocates hope lasers fired down from space stations or shot up
from the earth and reflected off space-based mirrors onto targets below
may one day be part of a defensive shield against enemy missles. But new
analysis suggests that high-intensity laser light from such weapons also
could be used effectively to unleash massive firestorms, possibly producing
an environmental disaster similar to nuclear winter.
The study, which was produced by R & D Associates, an influential defense
think tank based in Los Angeles, cites data indicating that "in a matter of
hours, a laser defense system powerful enough to cope with the ballistic
missle threat can also destroy the enemy's major cities by fire. The attack
would proceed city by city, the attack time for each city being only a matter
of minutes. Not nuclear destruction, but Armageddon all the same."
Lasers "have the potential of initiating massive urban fires and even of
destroying the enemy's major cities by fire in a matter of hours," according
to the article by Caroline L. Herzenberg, a government physicist at the
Argonne National Laboratory.
"Such mass fires might be expected to generate smoke in amounts comparable
to the amounts generated in some major nuclear exchange scenarios," warns
the article in the current issue of Physics and Society, a publication of
the American Physical Society. That could cause "a climactic catastrophic
disaster similar to nuclear winter," a reference to the disasterous lowering
of the Earth's temperature many scientists believe would result from a
nuclear war.
The R & D study does not mention a nuclear winter but does stress that lasers
are not intrinsically defensive weapons and can be used offensively to start
massive fires.
In an interview Friday, Herzenberg, the author of the physics magazine article,
said that "all you need is to dump enough energy on something and if it's
flammable it will go up. The free electron laser, the excimer laser, and the
deuterium fluoride chemical laser (which are the subjects of current research)
all can go through the atmosphere and cause fires."
...
Theodore A. Postol, until recently adviser on nuclear weapons to the chief
of Naval Operations and an expert on the implications of firestorms, said,
"If you were attempting to set fires with an optical laser that was already
sufficiently powerful to attack hardened ICBM boosters, there is no question
that such a device could also be used to create mass fires of enormous scale
and ferocity -- mass urban fires potentially larger and more intense than
those created by the great incendiary raids on Hamburg and Dresden in World
War II."
--
Joe Buck
ARPA: dual!epicen!jbuck@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
UUCP: ...!ihnp4!pesnta!epicen!jbuck
or ...!ucbvax!dual!epicen!jbuck
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Date: 15 Jan 1986 19:33-EST
From: Nicholas.Spies@H.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: US-Soviet TV
It is completely unreasonable to expect that a US-Soviet TV
link will itself prove anything. The power of TV (in other
words, the focussed attention of a large population) is no
less jealously guarded here than in the USSR. The difference
is that here a tiny fraction of the population can afford to
pay for TV time (on approval of TV channel owners) while in
the USSR the Soviet government hogs it all. Even cable "access
channels" are subject to many internal rules to prevent
politically provocative or salacious messages from ever seeing
the light of day. On both sides the result is heavily
censored. The fact that we are probably as self-satisfied with
our form of economic censorship as they must be with their
political censorship proves nothing. In both cases there is a
severe limiting of true public opinion with the object of not
letting certain opinions grow in political importance through
TV.
This is one more indication that the mechanics of domestic
politics in both the US and the USSR plays perhaps a greater
role in the relations of these two nations than their explicit
attitudes (as nations) towards one another. To me, it makes
much more sense to discuss ways that may promote a favorable
change in the public opinion of both the US and USSR
populations to further the objective of mutual co-existance
and increasing freedom without fear. To merely discuss ways to
manipulate fear through weaponry is dangerously shortsighted.
The fact that our citizens are able to let it "all hang out"
should not be seen as a sign of weakness; if Russians are
concerned at all about their individual freedom they would
much more likely wonder at our ability to report shortcomings
of our country than feeling smug about "being better".
Planting this doubt is worth far more than the relatively
small risk of "losing face" while doing so.
A constant diet of TV programs from US==>USSR and USSR==>US
would be very different, if only because so many hours is
difficult if not impossible to completely stage. This might
change many political assumptions much more cheaply than
another round of the arms race.
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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