arms-d@ucbvax.ARPA (03/23/85)
From: Moderator <ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA> Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 3 : Issue 16 Today's Topics: Missile accuracy (2 msgs) Star Wars Thoughts (3 msgs) Correct units for "throwweight" Nuclear build-down, CPSR, etc .. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Mar 85 08:43:27 pst From: alice!wolit@UCB-VAX.ARPA To: ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: missile accuracy > (How many ICBMs would fly more-or-less > North-South trajectories near the North Magnetic Pole in a real war? > Almost all of them. How many have been tested for accuracy under > such conditions? None. No ICBM has ever been tested on a North- > South trajectory at all, never mind the North Magnetic Pole. All > the test ranges, both American and Soviet, run East-West.) > > I used to believe this too, but did you know that SLBM's are tested > from all azimuths? Therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that ICBM's > will be at least as accurate as SLBMs in the N-S ICBM mode. Even if missiles are tested over all azimuths, unless they are tested over the actual trajectories they will follow (hardly an experiment the other side is likely to permit), it will be impossible to gauge completely the effect of gravitational and magnetic anomalies on their flight. Given the stability resulting from mutual low confidence in missile accuracy, it is disappointing (and a little surprising) that the issue of an ICBM flight test ban has received so little attention from superpower arms negotiators. A country depending upon a generation of missiles that have never been flight tested is not going to be confident enough to initiate an attack; a country facing a generation of untested missiles might be more likely to ride out a suspected attack rather than launch on warning. It would be easy to verify compliance with a flight test ban; much more so than verifying compliance with current treaties on encryption of flight test data. Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ; (201) 582-2998 ------------------------------ Date: 20 Mar 85 11:11 PST From: Ted Anderson <OTA@S1-A.ARPA> Subject: Polar ICBM Trajectories To: armsd@MIT-MC.ARPA I always assumed that "they" had very carefully watched polar satellites which are in virtually identical trajectories to the ICBMs and calculated the location and magnitude of all the gravitational anomolies. I also wouldn't be a it surprised if they had put up some polar satellites in low orbits and just watched them as the slowly decayed. The earth turning under them as they go giving them an arbitrarily good look at the earths polar gravitational, magnetic and atmospheric environment. If the satellite eventually deorbits and crashes into the SU you send an appology for the regretable "accident". They're watching it at least as carefully are you are and are probably happy to get the same data. Cheers, Ted Anderson ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Mar 85 11:45:09 PST From: Charlie Crummer <crummer@AEROSPACE.ARPA> To: ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V3 #13, SDI Foolishness Always keep in mind that technologically SDI is foolishness of the highest magnitude. [Ref. Hans Bethe, Sidney Drell, Freeman Dyson, and others of the top physicists in the world.] There is hardly anyone who is actually working on the technological problems of SDI that thinks that it will ever work. I even talked to someone who said that if I only knew some of the classified information that he knew, I would be even more convinced that SDI is unworkable. (Are you listening, Lowell Wood?) It has to be sold to people and it will be sold to these people, as if it matters what they think, as a bargaining chip. We have all heard from the administration that there are no such things as "bargaining chips". Unh! Executive branch speak with forked tongue! (One of the deep and fundamental facts of life.) --Charlie ------------------------------ Date: 20 Mar 85 16:08 EST From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA> Subject: Star Wars Thoughts To: CAULKINS@USC-ECL.ARPA cc: ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA concerning the amount of code for SDI software systems: the SDIO has now been quoted as saying that it will take between 10-100 million lines, so the 6 M line seems conservative (see Washington Post Weekly, National Edition, March 18, 1985). The cost-effectiveness of SWD is crucial - if the cost tradeoff between penetration and saturation methods and SWD doesn't indicate SWD a clear win, the Soviets will move in the less expensive and less risky direction. Even if the cost-exchange ratio favors the U.S., the Soviets can *still* overwhelm an SWD; all they need do is build missiles and hide them from us. During a war, we won't have time to replenish/maintain our defenses. There are strong indications that SWD loses in any such comparison. Several SWD countermeasures have been discussed: Decoys - metallized balloons, some enclosing the real warheads. Chaff IR emitting aerosols, and other things to screw up optical sensors Jamming and spoofing against sensors and communications links You leave out the most significant one of all in this list, though you return to it later -- the Soviet comparative advantage is in their production capabilities and their warehouses. They just haul out old boosters and build cheap new ones (with or without guidance, warheads) by the thousands. ------------------------------ Date: 1985 Mar 20 14:10:28 PST (=GMT-8hr) From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.SU.EDU.ARPA> To: Wedekind.es CC: Arms-D@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: what are correct units for "throwweight"? Reply-to: REM@MIT-MC.ARPA > Date: 12 Mar 85 10:13:11 PST (Tuesday) > From: Wedekind.es@Xerox > Subject: US, USSR nuclear arsenal strengths > > This table, bylined James Owens, appeared in Sunday's LA Times. > ... > * millions of pounds (sic). Throwweight is the product of payload > weight multiplied by the range of a weapon, and is one measure of the > "destructive potential" of a weapon. Obviously if you multiply weight by distance you don't get weight. I presume you also divide by the number of launch vehicles or of warheads (which?), to get unit throwweight instead of total arsenal throwweight, right? The correct unit must be something like: MegaPounds * Distance / ItemsCounted where Distance is in feet or meters or miles or kilometers and ItemsCounted is in launch vehicles or warheads. Does somebody actually know what measure of distance is used and what unit of ItemsCounted is used for ThrowWeight as used above? ------------------------------ Date: 1985 Mar 20 14:43:47 PST (=GMT-8hr) From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.SU.EDU.ARPA> To:CAULKINS@USC-ECL.ARPA CC:Arms-D@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: BMD plan is destabilizing as designed, and useless in any case Reply-to: REM@MIT-MC.ARPA > Date: 19 Mar 85 07:08 PST > From: CAULKINS@USC-ECL.ARPA > Subject: Star Wars Thoughts > To: ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA > > 6) There are hostile military systems against which current SWD > designs will work better than against ballistic missiles; orbiting > objects like parts of the opponent's SWD system, and surveillance > satellites. This kind of attack is clearly destabilizing, since its > first effects are to reduce the quantity and accuracy of information > available to the country under attack. Also accidental weapon firing > induced by software error is likely to escalate into a full-scale > battle between the 2 opposing SWD systems. > > The result of deployment of SWD systems by the US and USSR is more > likely to lead to a new and unstable arms race in space than to some > kind of defense-based peace. This is precisely my argument against *any* kind of forward-basing of defense systems. Forward basing is tantamount to offensive capability (destroy the enemy's defenses) and thus destabilizing. I am therefore opposed to boost-phase and coast-phase defense. Only terminal-phase defense may be stabilizing, but at best can stop 80-90% of incoming warheads if warheads are distributed uniformly. If warheads are distributed non-uniformly, specific targets can be hit by saturating the defense in specific areas. The result is that more warheads get through but fewer targets are randomly penetrated, and since except for particularily important targets the number of targets destroyed is more than the number of warheads that reach target (in fact the latter is almost totally meaningless), the optimal offensive strategy would seem to be to distribute warheads more or less uniformly against targets rather than to bunch them (except for particularily important targets). Defensively, one should therefore harden important targets (defense is meaningless since it can be penetrated by concentration of enemy warheads) and otherwise defend all the rest of the targets uniformly. In summary, Reagan's BMD plan has these major flaws as currently advertised: (1) It relies on three tiers (boost, coast, terminal), two of which are destabilizing thus undesirable. Hence all calculations of effectiveness are grossly overestimated compared to a stabilizing hence desirable terminal-phase-only defense. (2) Preliminary plans to defend only vital military targets are worthless since the USSR has plenty of warheads to penetrate such targets by concentrating warheads against them. (3) Ultimate plans to defend the whole of USA are worthless because enough warheads (10-20% of 25,000 warheads = 2500-5000 warheads) will reach target to destroy our society and create nuclear winter. (4) Of course the suspected secret plan of Reagan, to use BMD to soften a retaliatory strike by the USSR, so we can safely launch a first strike, is also destabilizing and disgusting for obvious reasons. Further research may be desirable merely to refine our information and explore alternative technologies, but faith in the system ending the threat of thermonuclear anihilation in the forseeable future is foolish. [Opinion of REM] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Mar 85 01:22:15 est From: ericson@NYU-CSD1.ARPA (Lars Warren Ericson) To: arms-d@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: Nuclear build-down/sharing technology [] Edward Teller and McGeorge Bundy "debated" last night on the virtues of Star Wars in a public forum at NYU. After an initial showing by the Yippie Pie Thrower (at Teller; tofu and marinated mushrooms) and an attempt to disrupt the meeting by some anti-meeting people, Teller propounded his conception of Star Wars (as Bundy repeatedly pointed out, not equal to the actual SDI proposal), going randomly into more specifics, after his usual "I want to tell you, but it's secret", which was not going to wash because Bundy was ready to go into specifics. Bundy is patrician and acute as a debater; Teller was a little bombastic and senile, but deep down, perhaps more pure of heart. The debate was stacked in the sense that both are hawks; for credentials, Bundy has the Diem coup and the rest of Vietnam; Teller has the H-Bomb and a life of opposition to arms control. So it alternated between Teller saying we should dig more fallout shelters and beware of the Russian menace, and Bundy disparaging SDI deployment (but not research), because it hadn't yet established itself as a cost-effective measure. Two days ago I talked to a computer science professor here who is a member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR). My understanding of that group was that it was started by computer scientists in Cambridge and Palo Alto who refused to be paid by DoD/ARPA/ONR, and that its most concrete activity was helping people find non-military technical jobs. With respect to Star Wars, he told me that they hoped to function as a non-partisan, independent source of technical information with respect to Government proposals. When I suggested they could spend their time promoting a specific policy position (such as nuclear build-down), he said No, that was too partisan, they would lose their tax exemption. (I read in the news yesterday that one member was filing suit against "Launch on Warning Capability", as a violation of the Constitution -- only a President can declare war, and Presidents are not computers, ergo...) Today I talked to a reputedly brilliant mathematics grad student, who told me he was boycotting New Zealand lamb, (because of some variety of farm-worker persecution Down Under...No...) because they had not "shouldered their part of the burden" of defending the Free World, when the U.S. nukes came to call. When I offered the opinion that 1000 warheads would be as militarily effective, and hence as credible a deterrent, as 10,000, that we could base those on land or in the air, and hence did not need to lug them to New Zealand, he told me that only a *big* arsenal would deter, that nukes are not supposed to be militarily effective, or they wouldn't be a good deterrent, and that everybody should thus be willing to have pieces of the arsenal in their backyard, so we can spread the feeling of safety. I am quite confused: perhaps others in ARMS-D can help me out. It seems that CPSR is quite partisan: is it not? Are not 1000 missiles as effective as 10,000, suitably modernized, diversely based? Why did build-down bite the dust? As for SDI: Reagan Administration officials, at least a month ago, were reported in the New York Times to have retracted the promise to share information on SDI implementation with the Russians. Why are people still talking about this as if it were policy? Given the Reagan Administration's past history, this was promise was easily as specious as the identification of ketchup with vegetables. The promise itself, regardless of the utterer, has been attacked on two grounds: first, the Russians could not trust our designs, because we could be giving them a Trojan Horse; second, if we were not, they could turn our openness against us, scrutinizing our true plans for weaknesses. We could exchange sensor information. Computer scientists could certainly play a role in defining such an exchange, in the same way that engineers defined the interfaces in the Apollo-Soyuz docking experiment. Mutual monitoring through the exchange of identical sensor data is not equivalent to revealing defense architectures: it just makes both parties sure that they agree on what is going up in the air. Reliability of this exchange could be improved through things like public-key electronic-signature and encryption procedures. A mutual identical sensor picture of global air-space activity could go a long way towards reassuring people about the possibility of accidental, machine-declared wars. I think build-down and mutual monitoring are good policy ideas. Why isn't there a group of technical people willing to (partisanly) promote constructive policy ideas, rather than run repeatedly into the opposing brick walls of MAD ("liberals") and SDI ("conservatives")? -- Lars Ericson -- UUCP: ...!cmcl1!csd1!ericson -- ARPA: ericson@nyu ------------------------------ [End of ARMS-D Digest]