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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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[End of ARMS-D Digest]