ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (11/02/85)
Arms-Discussion Digest Saturday, November 2, 1985 10:06AM
Volume 5, Issue 10
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
Bomb back in your court
insulting 3rd parties
strategy in central Europe
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From: Moderator <ARMS-D-Request%MIT-MC.ARPA@MIT-XX.ARPA>
Please address all comments of a substantive nature (arguments,
discussion, rebuttal, requests for references, etc) to the list as a
whole (i.e., send them to ARMS-D). Please use ARMS-D-REQUEST only for
administrative matters such as requests for additions, deletions, etc.
Also, I would appreciate it if people who have set up redistribution
points for arms-d could let me know who they are and what the name of
their redistribution list is -- I am having trouble keeping track of
people who ask me for deletions when I can't find their names on my
own lists.
Thanks.
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From: aurora!eugene@RIACS.ARPA (Eugene miya)
Date: 31 Oct 1985 2310-PST (Thursday)
Subject: Bomb back in your court
> Date: Mon, 28 Oct 85 14:04:54 EST
> From: Will Martin <wmartin@brl.arpa>
> Subject: Historical A-Bombs and a "what-if"
I'm game.
> these battles. But what if we HAD had enough nuclear weapons early
> enough to have used them in this role? Would we have done it? What would
> have been the result, both in the immediate aspects of the war, and in the
> impacts on the post-war world? Would Japan have surrendered without
> a nuclear strike on the home islands? (After all, it was proposed to
> use the Hiroshima bomb as a demonstration weapon on an island instead
> of making the first use be on a city; this was rejected at the time.
> This would have been a series of "demonstrations", in effect.)
You open up many ifs. 1) let's assume enough basic raw fissionable material
(which was not the case), then Hanford and Oak Ridge would have had to have
been in production early. We will have to assume a different test schedule.
Don't forget that a lot of information was learned at the first city drop.
An tropical island had much different characteristics than a city when
the device was perceive as a "weapon of mass destruction." Islands for
the most part are trees, rock, and relatively uninteresting. Fallout
and other conditions had to be learned about. Would we land ground
forces on a nuked island? Probably. We assume the Chicago letter wold have
not started early.
We would have to forget briefly about the "psychological" effects of
"demostrations." Many officers in the Japanese High Command guessed
correctly that the US had only a very small number of bombs, and they felt
they should keep fighting. Once we dropped the bomb on a relatively
unimportant island, 1) I am certain the main Japanese island would have not
heard about it as the Japanese public was mostly ignorant of the distance of
the fighting until late. 2) You could be certain the Japanese physicists
would have started a more crash program to make their own bomb. Counter
measures would have to be developed. So the first bomb whould have quite
an impact to be used effectively.
We will assume the US keeps its island hopping plans, then we would bypass
some major islands. 1943 was still a long flight to try and drop these things
from a distance on the Main Japanese island. The conveys carrying
weapons were quite nice targets would would have been more so once
a device was known to the world. Could we have kept the secret from the
American public? probably not.
> Or would we have used these weapons in Eurpoe instead?
> Would we have been compelled
> to use nuclear bombs instead of massive conventional attacks on German
> cities?
Forgetting the fire raids for a moment. I think we would have wanted a
pretty good target: again relatively fresh, but hardened. An experiment.
Again we could have polarized the few remaining German scientists. Depends
at what time during the course of the war you introduce this device.
Pre or post Normandy? After would be hard to justify. Before,
better have a good target. What would the Japanese have done at that
early a German date? Not a secret for long.
> Or would there have been enough voices raised against this use
> of nuclear weapons against civilians that it would not have happened?
Good possibility. Friendlies too close to hostiles. We certainly would
not have dropped on a French city, right?
> Or would it have happened *once*?
Perhaps. During war time the motivations for crying are different.
WWII as a medium scale nuclear conflicit would be a pretty nebuluous
thing to think of. The German would probably have not easily made
a fission device, but would probably have resorted to radiological toxins.
The prevailing winds work against them. Again, sabotgage on the US
mainland would probably been a big priority.
> It seemed to me that many of the moral objections against using nuclear
> weaponry do not apply when such use as reducing the defenses of an
> isolated fortified island is considered. I'd not hesitate to nuke
> the island. But then I've never had to make any
> such life-or-death decisions, so that is speculation.
The problem is we try to keep morality during wartime. I think we should
probably consider the justification of bombing of civilians during WWII
as a good guideline for thinking about this. We don't use gas, but
flame throwers are ok. Are they chemical weapons? [use for chemical
rather than ballistic properties?]
Don't forget tactical use of nuclear weapons is still a big unknown. The
LLNL Janus work, planners using their biggest weapons in a panic shows
some problems. The early weapons were not exactly 6 inch shells.
But we will ignore that. This would probably mean I think that the Japanese
and Germans would have to put a high price to locate and destroy the
plans making such destructive weapons like we did with V-2 factories.
> I find this an intriguing speculation. If we had had a large stock of
> nuclear weapons immediately after defeating both Germany and Japan (and
> this might have happened earlier if we had used nuclear weapons earlier
> [like 1943 or so]), I would think that our actions would have been
> different at that time.
Sure they would have been different. The way to start is a couple of good
historians and tactians and plan the "game" out from say Sicily. Would
you drop the 1st bomb on Berlin? Penamuda [V-2 base] (sp)? How would you
as the German or Japanese force react. First investigate, next think
of counter measures, and lastly counter attack (use gas?).
> Would we have attacked the Soviet Union, or
> forced them to withdraw deep into Asiatic areas, leaving the
> once-German-occupied territories as independent states?
Doubtful. Would we have been any better at it than the Germans?
How many bombs would we have needed, plus delivery devices. Too much
land mass. They would only have felt madder than hell. You have really
polarized the Soviets against the West.
> If Japan had
> surrendered earlier, with less damage inflicted to the home islands,
> would they have developed differently without the experience of
> destruction and rebuilding to shape their outlook?
>
> Regards, Will Martin
Let me add that in a recent issue of Life, a Japanese soldier (survivor)
from one of the island campaigns said he fully understood they the US
dropped the bomb on Japan and I think he resolved that was "the best course."
Also, on a recent visit to a mentor's house [he was a Colonel who was
responsible for the disarmament of Mitsubishi NW of Toyko immediately
after the war], my friend opened a package of letters to his wife.
There were photos, news clippings, army orders (unclassified). This
was the way history was collected in the past, I thought. I was reading
a picture of the time sort of like reading Faulkner except a real person's
life.
This observation of the psychology of the people were interesting.
Utter disbelief that they lost. My friend feared for his life while
sleeping for the first few months.
My friend collected 16,000 Samuari swords for melting. I found hoarded
weapons, silver, food, destroyed machinery. Located defense invasion
intelligence info. It was a picture of American society being exposed to
a completely alien world [another planet he said]. He wrote about his first
raw fish and various other foods. He did find several research labs for
experiments on death rays (failed) wich he wrote about. My friend's
final conclusion is that he was glad but sorry that the war ended like it
did. But it was over. I think the lesson is that people when
pushed to the wall will do a lot to survive, and we would have to think
about that. You ball Will. I await your return and others to
simplify the logic for many possible outcomes.
--eugene miya
The above opinions do not reflect those of my employer.....
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 85 12:48:19 PST
From: phil%dean@BERKELEY.EDU (Phil Lapsley)
> Date: 1985 October 25 07:02:01 PST (=GMT-8hr)
> From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.SU.EDU>
> Subject: Are SLBMs safe?
> But like Ike or somebody said, a couple hundred H-bombs
> should be sufficient deterrence to protect us. (and I add, providing
> the warheads are single-per-silo/sub)
But with deterrence, "sufficient" is in the mind of the enemy.
That you or I think 200 H-bombs are enough does not imply that
the Soviets believe that is enough. And should the Soviets
decide that's not enough...
Which causes me to wonder about a different use of SDI. What do you
think of this idea: Instead of protecting the entire U.S., we
protect only a missile field containing, say, 100 MX missiles with
10 warhead MIRVs? We put these in superhardened silos, and put up a
BMD around the perimeter.
If the Soviets wished to destroy these missiles, it would
require a tremendously large percentage of their strategic force
to do so, if we could come up with a BMD of 95% efficiency.
And if they decided to do this, the existing Minuteman and
SLBM based forces would be untouched. (Granted, this would
violate some treaties wrt total number of warheads).
This would certainly not render nuclear weapons obsolete, or any
other noble and far reaching goal similar to that. What it would
do is provide the U.S. with a guarenteed second strike capability
with ~ 1000 of our most accurate warheads. This would increase
deterrence, much the same way that the SLBM fleet does now.
But if the SLBM fleet becomes less of a deterrent though vulnerability,
we will need some replacement.
Some technical questions spring to mind, however: Is it any
easier from a BMD point of view to defend a small area? It
would seem to be so, but that would also imply that a more
concentrated attack would be made on that small area. Therefore
the density of incoming missiles / unit volume increases, and
target selection would be made correspondingly more difficult.
Also, would some aspect of orbital mechanics make a space based
point BMD unfeasible?
Finally, this issue ignores totally the command & control
aspects and vulnerabilities of the situation.
Phil Lapsley
phil%dean@Berkeley.EDU
...!ucbvax!dean!phil
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Date: Fri, 1 Nov 85 10:12:52 EST
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@bbncch.ARPA>
Subject: insulting 3rd parties
It isn't good practice to criticize or insult 3rd parties without giving
them a chance to respond. This is most obvious in the case of telling a
relevant interest group that a particular company's H/W or S/W product
is defective, and the company (with no representatives in the interest
group) has no idea what the rumor mill is saying about them, much less
any chance to point out that you were maybe using the product wrong.
I think this principle of electronic mail ethics applies to your
comments on this list about Scientific American.
Now if your posting reported correspondence with the editors of SA in
which you pointed out why they should not have run the article, and in
which they responded `yes, we knew that, but we ran it anyway because it
sells magazines', or the equivalent--that we could take seriously.
A more likely SA response in such correspondence would be `we found out
too late to change that issue, we plan a retraction'. The article
appeared the same month as the WSJ article. Given publication schedules
of magazines (something the WSJ reporter and editors surely know are
different from their own!), Meselson may have informed them too late to
withdraw or change the article.
Were this the case, and the editors of SA failed to use some of its
discretionary space budget to print at least a cautionary note, they
should be taken to task in public--not criticized behind their backs in
a discussion forum like this, that most of the public does not even
imagine exists.
One could add a requirement that SA print a retraction of the erroneous
article. Does Nature do this? No, it is up to the authors or other
scientists to publish contradictory findings, and they are not even
obliged to do so in the same journal! Anyway, the place SA has suitable
for publishing retractions is the Letters column, and there is no letter
there from Meselson in the October or November issue. Now, if he sent
one but SA omitted publishing it, that would be a real issue. You could
write (US mail!) and ask him if you really want to make a case.
Optimistically, the fault may rest with Meselson for not notifying the
editors of the new results in time for them to remake the magazine; less
optimistically, for not notifying them at all. Or is the claim that the
editors should have known about the later results independently? Where
and when were these results published, that the editors should have
known about them before SA's publication `drop-dead date'?
I have not yet seen the WSJ article (the BBN library throws newspapers
out after 2 weeks, and not all public libraries keep back issues on
microfilm). I would be curious how it came about that a Harvard
biochemist came to issue his retraction of a scientific hypothesis (one
that has important political implications!) in a WSJ interview. I would
also like to see what sins of omission the editors of WSJ charged the
editors of SA with. Is Meselson claiming they made cuts he did not want
them to make or did not authorize, or is he covering his gluteus
maximus? Seems to me it is up to SA to protest the WSJ article, not
Meselson, since he comes out smelling like a rose.
I assume the facts in the WSJ article are accurate, given their track
record for factual accuracy whatever their bias in selection of facts to
report and in expressions of opinion about those facts--and given the
much faster turnaround time that a newspaper has for reportage, as
compared with a magazine. If it is not accurate, then BOTH Meselson and
SA are entitled to public protest.
The request was that no one on this list ever cite an article from SA in
an arms-control context. I don't think this request should be taken
seriously. I hope you agree that that was an ill-considered flame.
If you have a case against Scientific American, you need to make it in
more detail. And include them in the discussion!
Bruce Nevin
bn@bbncch.arpa
BBN Communications
33 Moulton Street
Cambridge, MA 02238
(617) 497-3992
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Date: Wed, 30 Oct 85 17:24:05 PST
From: ihnp4!ihuxl!dcn at ucb-vax.berkeley.edu
To: ihnp4!mit-mc.arpa!ARMS-D-Request at ucb-vax.berkeley.edu
Re: strategy in central Europe
I just saw an episode of Gwen Dyer's `War: A Commentary' concerning a modern
war in central Europe. Many interesting points were made, and here are a
few to consider:
1) Production rates of weapons are too low to re-supply a full-scale
war, so the side with the most left over may win by default.
2) Centralized battle control facilities will get hit early, leaving
skies full of lost aircraft and masses of men and tanks milling about.
3) Since NATO's defences are not very deep, they plan a `forward
defense' that hits attacking forces before they reach the lines.
This ends up looking like an attack instead of defense.
4) If either side begins to lose, they will fall back on nukes, starting
an escalation that is not likely to stop.
Point 1 is against NATO since they are outnumbered, but point 2 may be in their
favor since Warsaw Pact forces seem to depend more heavily on central control.
Point 4 is a lose-lose situation for everybody!
Dave Newkirk, ihnp4!ihuxl!dcn
P.S. I'm not sure if this is the correct address - please let me know if
is a better path. Thanks.
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Date: Sat, 2 Nov 85 10:03:13 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Date: 1 Nov 1985 1625-PST (Friday)
From: zappe at cad.berkeley.edu (Hans P. Zappe)
To: arms-d-request at mit-mc.arpa
cc: zappe at cad.berkeley.edu
Re: Arms digest question and reply
Subject: Question someone knowledgeable in arms control
Hello,
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.
Could you perhaps relay this to one of your arms digest
readers who may care to answer ? I appreciate your help.
Thanks.
Hans
Subject: Re: Arms-Discussion Digest V5 #6
In-Reply-To: your article <86@Glacier.ARPA>
In response to the article asking about the level of false alerts
at NORAD:
Indications that a missile attack is underway are checked
at three basic levels, each of which have a name, but these
escape me at present:
1) Initially, the incoming signals are reviewed by the
staff at NORAD, without any higher level involvement.
This happens about 1000 times a year (yes, about 3 times
a day, on the average) and most false alarms are checked
here.
2) If level (1) cannot resolve the issue in time (10 minutes
or so) (i.e., the incoming whateveritis still looks like
a missile and has no other explanation), a higher level
conference is convened to consider the matter further.
This occurs 3 or 4 times a year, and has always
successfully identified the problem. Recent false alarms
that have made it to this level have been due to things
such as a soviet SLBM test (they should have known about
it, it had been announced), a malfunctioning MUX chip
sending random data and (a really scary one) a wargame
simulation tape that had accidentally been mounted on
the wrong tape drive. If I am correct, these happened in
1983.
3) If the previous levels fail to check the problem, the
whateveritis is still on its way, the president is
notified and he must make the appropriate decision. This
has never happened. Yet.
It should be noted that this entire process, from initial
detection to the president being forced to make a decision,
would take less than half an hour.
Hans P. Zappe
Solid State Group, EECS
UC Berkeley
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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