ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (01/09/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Wednesday, January 8, 1986 10:50PM
Volume 6, Issue 14.1
Today's Topics:
SDI forcing a Shift of Policy
Soviet Defense
KAL007 et. etc.
[jrisberg: Stanford SDI debate (12/19) summary]
Re: cybernetic process
Goals Worth Perusing
International Enforcement Agencies
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 86 00:46:05 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: SDI forcing a Shift of Policy
From: Jim McGrath <MCGRATH%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU at MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
I agree with your point in principle (I like fallback positions), but
fail to see the practical import. What is Reagan now doing that he
would not be doing without SDI?
He is undermining deterrence. Given that deterrence must be the basis
for US security policy for the rest of our days, that isn't a good
thing to do. You can't consider technology development in a vacuum --
i.e., without considering how talking about it and what it will be
able to do affects the perceptions of the public at large or even the
defense community. For example, consider that RR pushed SDI forward
saying that MAD was immoral just after European leaders had just
finished trying to persuade their publics that deterrence was good (as
part of the decision to deploy the Pershing II and GLCMs). That
wasn't exactly a plus for US foreign policy.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 86 12:20:38 EST
From: Jeff Miller AMSTE-TEI 4675 <jmiller@apg-1>
Subject: Soviet Defense
I would raise again the question of defining defense. The USSR
admittedly gears its policies in terms of defense, defense of its
basic imperialist encroachment, which is in its turn a defensive
reaction... What difference does it make that the Soviet leadership
considers its military outlays purely defensive if their defensiveness
is based on a paranoia that requires them to look upon the world from
behind militarized borders and bands of buffer states which never seem
to totally satisfy?
You have hit the nail on the head for my purposes. What do *we* in
the US consider to be legitimate *Soviet* defense needs? Never mind
about their paranoia -- what do we think?
> That should have been obvious from my answer. In general, we
see their defense needs as being far less than that of sheilding
their imperial encroachment.
My point was that our techniques of command and control and of
logistics, which, like numerous other factors, increase combat
potential, are probably not so great that they would significantly
offset the Soviets capabilities in the same areas, which would, of
course, bring us back to square one in the bean counting.
Then why do we spend so much money on these things?
> What makes you think the Soviets don't spend as much or more in
the same areas?
This is a specific case of a more general proposition -- the NATO
outspends the WP in defense even taking into account differences in
manpower costs, has more total people under arms, and has more
advanced military technology. How come the balance is so lop-sided??
> I am curious to hear the numbers you think are involved in
Europe, as well as your sources. The only way I can come up with
NATO outnumbering WP and Soviet forces as deployed against W.
Europe is to include US forces not currently stationed in Europe,
UK forces not currently stationed on the continent, and French
forces not currently stationed in France or Germany.
A blockade of Libya that the Soviet Navy tries to break doesn't to me
count as 3rd world intervention. We would want to attack land targets
in Libya; what would the Soviets want to attack?
Until you can answer that, you haven't addressed my sense of
interventionary PP.
> I hope we don't get into a maze of personal interpretations of
power projection. It means the ability to demonstrate your
power, either by direct force or the threat of force, at
extraordinary distances. The fact that the Soviet Navy is strong
enough to threaten any US action around the globe as they have
done over a Libyan blockade, that is power projection. Again,
the idea that Soviet naval forces would have this capability was
unthinkable 20 years ago, and our supposed eternal naval superiority
was cause for much of the general complacency about Soviet power.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 86 08:45:14 EST
From: Michael_Joseph_Edelman%Wayne-MTS%UMich-MTS.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: KAL007 et. etc.
From: Andreas.Nowatzyk@A.CS.CMU.EDU
According to a study by the German equivalent of the FAA which
was cited in an article of "Der Spiegel", KAL246 did not fly a
steady magnetic heading of 246...
This is the only citation I've seen that claims this. What course
does Der Spiegel claim the craft took? Sayle's statement is based
on the few waypoints known, of course. No one was tracking KAL007
for most of its flight, from the time it left Alaska until the Soviets
picked it up. At that time, it was on a bearing of 246 from point
of departure.
They used a 747 simulator and tried
several versions of possible pilot errors, such as
a) forgetting to switch to inertial navigation
b) Typos while programming the INS (transposing 2 digits of the
coordinates of one waypoint comes close)
c) skipping a waypoint
Sayle rejects b) and c) as well. But a) still looks reasonable.
...By the time the plane
passed the last VOR in Alaska, the deviation from the normal
course was already significant....
If KAL007 was on magnetic 246. You can't have it both ways.
It was noted that the spy-community uses events like this to study
the electronic signatures of the opponent's radars etc. and their
intercept procedures.
True. But we use military craft to do this regularly. And they can do
it better, and more safely.
From: foy@aero
Michael Joseph Edelman states that there is no concievable mission that the
KALoo7 could have accomplished that could not have been accomplished better{
by other craft...
How about a mission to determine if it is possible for a civilian aircraft
to overfly Soviet military installations.?
Don't think so; we already know from a previous craft forced down that
this wouldn't work well. And that evening would have been a very poor
time to try it.
Mike
------------------------------
End of Arms-Discussion Digest
*****************************