ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (11/03/85)
Arms-Discussion Digest Sunday, November 3, 1985 1:21PM
Volume 5, Issue 11
Today's Topics:
diversity in deterrence
Scientific American, WSJ, and Matt Meselson
Question someone knowledgeable in arms control
One last thought to Will Martin's Wfta-if
Re: SLBM safety and SDI
Is Software The Problem With SDI
Re: Historical A-Bombs and a "what-if"
Re: Build Your Own Bomb
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 85 08:39:55 PST
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@ucb-vax.berkeley.edu
Subject: diversity in deterrence
> ...soon submarines may be detectable and thus we ought not to put all our
> missiles in subs, have some land-based and some aircraft-based too...
In fact, as long as we are dependent on deterrence (a distasteful and
dangerous situation, but one that will take a while to change), we ought
to be working to increase the diversity of the deterrent forces. There
is nothing sacred about the number three. The more different types of
deterrent force the better, if one is worried about counterforce strikes.
An idea occurred to me a while ago along these lines. During the furious
debate over MX basing modes, there was some discussion of long-endurance
aircraft as launchers. The idea was rejected at the time, perhaps partly
because the people advocating it were pushing radically new technology for
the carrier aircraft. I don't think this is really necessary. I think
one can build a useful ballistic-missile carrier by less speculative means.
Consider the late-model B-52, specifically the B-52H. Its unrefuelled range
is about 13000 miles (no, that is not a typo, thirteen thousand -- it's got
a very efficient wing and the whole aircraft is stuffed full of fuel), which
translates to an unrefuelled endurance of about 24 hours. This is with
engines designed in the late 50s. There has been some discussion of pushing
this further by re-engining with modern turbofans, giving airborne endurance
perhaps approaching 36 hours. Add a more modern wing -- composite structure
(already flying on the AV-8B), active load control (civil version flying or
intended to, on the long-range TriStar), perhaps winglets, certainly revised
airfoil shape and higher aspect ratio -- and maybe some other mods, like
some degree of artificial stability, and I bet you could get 48 hours or more.
This is a realistic patrol time for a missile carrier.
It's got to carry a long-range missile. Which one? The MX is too big for
a B-52, but then the MX was designed to be the biggest missile satisfying the
existing treaties, and was probably specifically intended to be too big to
fit in a submarine. Let's try something a bit smaller: the Trident I. Not
quite an ICBM, but still a long-range missile with a large payload. Its
weight is within the maximum payload of a B-52. A simplistic comparison of
physical size suggests that it would fit, although some structural rework
might be needed -- I seem to remember that the B-52 bomb bay is split into
two sections by a structural bulkhead.
Finally, to improve ability to survive short-warning attacks, add something
that was proposed for normal B-52s: a Titan-derived rocket engine in the
tail, to get the thing off the ground and away from its airbase QUICKLY.
You'd probably want to build these things new, rather than refitting old
B-52s. The remaining B-52s are awfully old and creaky, and in any case
they themselves are a significant component of the deterrent and aren't
really available in enormous numbers. This wouldn't be cheap, but it's
likely to be cheaper than designing from scratch. A hundred such missile
carriers would add a useful fourth leg to the Triad.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 85 15:30:40 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Scientific American, WSJ, and Matt Meselson
I have a call in to Meselson to ask him if he has any comments on the
WSJ quotation; I will report them when I get a response.
Specifically on the WSJ quotation, I have first hand information that
they have in the past reported quotes out of context and even falsely
from people they have quoted. Specifically, Hans Bethe told me that
the WSJ-alleged claim that he (Bethe) has is no technical objection to
SDI is just plain false.
I also know that at a White House background briefing on SDI, Greg
Fossedal appeared as an Administration representative to answer
questions. Greg Fossedal is also the WSJ editorial writer that pushes
pro-SDI positions on the WSJ.
WSJ does not have a very good track record in arms control reporting.
Does Scientific American? They are not reporters; while you may argue
with the positions that some of their articles take, individuals stand
behind their articles, and criticism should go to the authors, not to
the journal. If someone wants to ignore Scientific American as a
source, he should feel free to do so, but to assert that it has an
obligation to report as reporters do is absurd.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 85 15:36:29 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Question someone knowledgeable in arms control
I am looking for some background information on the
"walk in the woods" affair during a round of
arms talks in Geneva last year or the year before. In
particular, exactly what transpired and why nothing came of
it. I hear many references to the "walk in the woods" but
don't have a good idea what happened.
The best piece on it is Strobe Talbott's Deadly Gambits.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 85 13:59:19 pst
From: aurora!eugene@RIACS.ARPA (Eugene miya)
Subject: One last thought to Will Martin's Wfta-if
Excuse the typo in the subject field.
On further thought and I am not doing research in the field so
this did not occur to me early. Will's Question about WWII nuclear
island hopping occurs to me that it did not make sense back then
nuke islands and pass them by. Simply, those islands were quite
well fortified targets not soft like cities. ~10 Kt devices
would have required surface and subsurface bursts to do
significant damage. I don't think subsurface
blasts were well understood until the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Also the size of these devices were not large enough to vaporize
entire islands, and in fact, you would have needed
several to neutralize many islands except for the largest.
Another problem was that much of the fighting involved naval surface
engagements, air power and the like, and the deliverability of
the early weapons were not very good, e.g., against Task forces
with good air cover and wide dispersion.
Sorry this did not occur to me earlier. As for Europe, earlier opinions
stand.
--eugene miya
Disclaimer: see my earlier posting
------------------------------
Date: 2 Nov 1985 19:16-EST
From: Hank.Walker@UNH.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Re: SLBM safety and SDI
Earlier this year or last year a shuttle mission carried a Navy
oceanographer. After the mission, some senior admiral was asked
whether the oceans were getting more transparent. He said that on the
contrary, the oceans were getting much more opaque, and that the
shuttle mission had turned up lots of nifty new sub hiding places. He
also said that sub noise suppression technology was also outpacing
anti-sub warfare technology. He didn't say so, but it is also possible
for subs carrying very long range missiles to be based in coastal
waters and not venture out into the deep blue sea. This was one of the
proposed MX basing modes.
A recent SDI debate here at CMU and the posts on this digest have all
centered on a hard target defense. I guess no one is pretending
anymore that a population defense is possible. In this new argument,
SDI is proposed as a deterrent-enhancing system. What all of these
arguments ignore is the fact that deterrence in the old sense may be
completely obsolete. If it is the case that a city attack generating
lots of smoke, or a counterforce strike generating lots of dust
triggers a nuclear winter, then the attack is self-deterred. A nuclear
winter would also make the idea of attacking only military and economic
targets obsolete, since any major attack anywhere is effectively an
attack everywhere. None of the public debate even mentions this
possibility.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 85 18:08:26 PST
From: Richard K. Jennings <jennings@AEROSPACE.ARPA>
Subject: Is Software The Problem With SDI
From the debate upon this net, and others, and the personal
experience I have had with software I feel fairly comfortable with
the proposition that some hacker will probably be able to write a
program, deliver it to the government, and then live in the hills with
the SDI battle management problem solved. But this is not clear what
relevance this has to the SDI debate.
Instead the focus should be upon how the SDI battle management
task should be split *between* people and automation. Air traffic
control might be a point of departure. Another might be the short
story 'Ender's Game' by Orson Scott Card (found in Jerry Pournelle's
"There Will Be War").
With apologies to AI advocates, it will be a *long* time before
AI/Machine Learning systems can out perform the human brain. Even in
simple things such as playing video games I am not aware of any AI
system that can even come close to people if it can't cheat (ie. it
sees what people do and has no 'inside' information about the game).
So, before we get wrapped around the proverbial axel counting
lines of code lets first decide how to break down the task between
operators and their automated support. To respond to those who worry
about response times, visit a local video arcade with a stop-watch and
then read 'Ender's Game'.
Regards, Richard. (jennings@Aerospace; ATT: 408-744-6427)
Standard universal disclaimer applies -- don't take my word for it,
figure it out for yourself!
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 85 04:41:31 PST
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@ucb-vax.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: Historical A-Bombs and a "what-if"
> ... The island-hopping strategy of the Pacific
> Theatre involved an awful lot of loss of life amongst the soldiers who
> had to invade and take the islands held by the Japanese...
> ...it would have been possible to have saved many thousands of lives...
> by using nuclear weapons to destroy the defending forces.
There would be a practical problem in that a modest nuclear bomb would be
of limited effectiveness against well-dug-in defenders. One of the reasons
why retaking those islands was so expensive was that the Japanese were
*very* well dug in.
Actually, this bears some relation to a tactic that was seriously thought
about: saturating the islands with mustard gas for a few days before the
landings. It probably would not have killed most of the defenders, since
chemical attacks seldom kill well-prepared soldiers, but a few days of
living in gas masks and protective suits would have incapacitated the
garrisons fairly effectively. This idea looked good, but wasn't used
because it was feared that Germany might retaliate by gas attacks against
England.
> Or would we have used these weapons in Eurpoe instead? After all, we had
> an explicit agreement amongst the Allies to make the defeat of Germany a
> higher priority than the defeat of Japan. Would we have been compelled
> to use nuclear bombs instead of massive conventional attacks on German
> cities? Or would there have been enough voices raised against this use
> of nuclear weapons against civilians that it would not have happened?
> Or would it have happened *once*?
Uh, the nuclear attacks on Japan were against civilians, and there was
no major outcry at the time... although the lack of anti-Oriental racism
as a factor might have changed things a little. That aside, the possibility
would have been very real if the timing had come out suitably. During the
worst moments of the Battle of the Bulge, the Manhattan Project did get
asked whether nuclear bombs could be made ready quickly. So there was no
particular inhibition against using nuclear bombs in Europe. (The answer
to the question was "no, several months minimum", by the way.)
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 85 04:41:51 PST
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@ucb-vax.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: Build Your Own Bomb
> The Morland article, later corrections, and an exhaustive discussion of
> the legal case and related matters can be found in /Born Secret: The
> H-Bomb, The *Progressive* Case, and National Security/...
Morland's account of his investigations and the uproar that followed can be
found in his own book "The Secret That Exploded" (1983? my copy isn't handy).
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
------------------------------
End of Arms-Discussion Digest
*****************************