arms-d@ucbvax.ARPA (02/20/85)
From: Moderator <ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA> Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 3 : Issue 8 Today's Topics: Emergency Action Messages final version of paper Comments on The Threat (2 msgs) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 15 Feb 85 22:09 EST From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA> Subject: Emergency Action Messages.. To: alice!wolit@UCB-VAX.ARPA cc: ARMS-DISCUSSION@MIT-MC.ARPA In-reply-to: Msg of Thu 7 Feb 85 11:01:58 pst from alice!wolit at UCB-VAX.ARPA In the same issue of ARMS-D, Herb Lin asks: > Do different types of force (bombers, ICBM's etc) get different > messages? I.e. is the bit stream identical? For a good overview of this whole issue, see Paul Bracken's "The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces," Yale Univ. Press, 1983. My understanding is that the different forces do NOT receive the same message. Submarines, for example, are not even under the same command (SAC) as bombers and ICBM. On the other hand, the Emergency Rocket Communication System broadcasts to all the strategic forces, so there must be some compatibility. Still, I suspect you are right on this general point. In addition, current technology limits communication with submerged subs to extremely low data rates -- I doubt that DoD would handicap the rest of its communications network in order to maintain this low-level compatibility. An EAM should not be very long -- say a few hundred bits at most. Data rate shouldn't enter into EAM transmission, or else there would be no point to VLF signaling. Also, submarines can indeed receive message at high data rates but trailing an antenna on the surface; this antenna is small, and essentially undetectable. Also, the control by the National Command Authority (i.e, the Presidential "football" codes, and other links in that chain of command) extends over theatre and tactical nuclear weapons as well as strategic ones, thus including elements of Air Force and Naval TACAIR and army units as well. It is hard to imagine that these forces receive the same "go codes" as ICBM and SLBM crews. I'm not convinced of this; Bracken doesn't say, and I have some doubts. The President surely has the authentication codes, and it would seem reasonable that these be the same for both strategic and tactical systems. The enabling parts (the things you need to put into the persmissive action links) are most likely different for different weapons, but I have no idea where these are inserted. ------------------------------ Date: 15 Feb 85 22:28 EST From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA> Subject: Rebuttal to rebuttal of the Book Review "The Threat" To: rbloom@APG-1.ARPA cc: ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA, LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA From: Robert Bloom AMSTE-TOI 3775 <rbloom at APG-1.ARPA> for J. Miller Are there really that many writers so egotistical as to think that their research in the public domain reveals the equivalent of information collected, analyzed and protected by the intelligence community? That many readers (and book reviewers) who lack the ability to enjoy a well written book while concurrently understanding that a commercial publicist probably does not have the same quantity or quality of intelligence as the Department of Defense? Comments of this sort from those "in the know" from the inside are not new. The problem that the DoD has in "analyzing" data is that so many conclusions are assumption-dependent. The story of how vulnerable U.S. intelligence is to Soviet deception and even to its own misinterpretations is well documented with issues such as the missile gap and the bomber gap and more recent claims in the middle 1970s that the Soviets would have operational beam weapons by the early 1980's. DoD has its own budget shares to protect, and since intelligence data can be massaged to yield conclusions withing fairly wide bounds, it is not clear that DoD analysis is at an advantage or a disadvantage. I possessed a TS-TK/G clearance and access and was in constant contact with masses of information I could never keep up with. Then as now, I considered myself a very small and insignificant fish in a giant intelligence pond- yet I know I had at my disposal vastly more hard copy than Mr. Cockburn had access to. Probably true; but the question is not how much data you had, but rather how much meaningful data you had. Some years ago, the CIA was quite proud of the fact that it acquired a sample of Brezhnev's stool. So what? No amount of war stories from former defense officials or anecdotes from emigres can substitute for carefully analyzed, confirmed and corroborated hard copy intelligence, even if they are injected with spicy, classified "leaked" information. On the contrary, anecdotes from emigres and former defense officials should often do better than "analysis", simply *because* the impressions of people are often *less* subject to missing the forest for the trees. Staying in a cubicle all day with reams of data does not ensure that an analyst will get a more accurate picture, as any mid-level executive in a large company will tell you; talking to those on the shop floor often pays off handsomely. It is an unfortunate fact that an apathetic public forces government to resort to hyperbole in order to arouse awareness of our strategic position. (Apathy that is perhaps due in part to a false sense of security nurtured by semi-informed writers.) It would be terribly dangerous to believe that the exaggeration is enormously disproportionate, by a factor of say, 2 or 3; the reality is more around a factor of 1/8 or 1/10. On the other hand, a factor of 10% isn't hyperbole, but rather in the zone of reasonable doubt. The problem with current DoD officials is that they assert that there is no reasonable doubt about the magnitude of the Soviet threat. The fact is, no matter how inefficient or unwieldy the Soviet military machine is, it is not a paper tiger, it is a severe threat to U.S. security, and it does have the combat potential to defeat NATO- and the U.S., in conventional or nuclear warfare. It is indeed not a paper tiger, at least as much as the U.S. is not a paper tiger. I also regard it as a severe threat. It is NOT a fact that it can defeat NATO and the U.S. in either conventional or nuclear warfare; rather this is a *judgment* that Miller makes. Indeed, any *analysis* I have seen points in the other direction; that they cannot. This is not to say that the U.S. could defeat the S.U., but rather to say that the balance is reaonably robust, and that the outcome would be uncertain. ------------------------------ Date: 16 Feb 85 15:05 EST From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA> Subject: final version of paper on software development for BMD battle management To: ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA a few months ago, I put out an announcement of a paper on Software Development for BMD battle management. The final version of this paper is now available, provided you agree to send me comments on it. This version has incorporated most of the comments made on the previous versions. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 85 08:13:20 PST From: Richard Foy <foy@AEROSPACE.ARPA> To: arms-d@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: J. Millers's Comments on The Threat Methinks he does protest too much. J. Miller generally agrees with the public information in The Threat. He warns against assuming that the Soviets are weak because they are not as strong as the Pentagon claims. He then goes on to blame an apathetic public for forcing the government to "hyperbole". I am afraid that the public and the government are locked into a mutual distrust situation. The public discounts the governments exagerations; the government exagerates more; the public increases its distrust. I wonder when both the public and the government will return to the idea that America is a government of the people by the people and for the people. Is it too late? richard ------------------------------ [End of ARMS-D Digest]