arms-d@ucbvax.ARPA (02/07/85)
From: Moderator <ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 3 : Issue 6
Today's Topics:
Book Review -- "The Threat," by Andrew Cockburn
Go codes for the strategic nuclear forces
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Date: Mon, 4 Feb 85 14:53 EST
From: Jong@HIS-BILLERICA-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: Book Review -- "The Threat," by Andrew Cockburn
To: ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA
Andrew Cockburn. "The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military
Machine." New York: Vintage Books, April
1984. 534 pgs., $4.95 (paperback).
In ancient Greece, a group of eminent Sophists discoursed
rancorously on the number of teeth in a horse. After a time, a
man joined the discussion and announced he knew the answer. "How
did you reach that conclusion?" the others demanded. "How
presumptuous! What do you know of discourse, of argument, of
philosophy? What logical principles did you use?" "Logic be
damned," the man snapped. "I went around back to the stables and
counted 'em."
Andrew Cockburn, a contributing editor of "Defense Week,"
produced the WGBH-TV documentary "The Red Army," which won the
1982 Peabody Prize for documentary television. "The Threat"
separates facts about the Soviet war machine from fictions
generated by the Pentagon "threat inflators" (and the Russians
themselves). The author demolishes fictions with gleeful vigor.
Mr. Cockburn quotes the head of the Strategic Forces Division
of the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense: "Welcome to
the world of strategic analysis, where we program weapons that
don't work to meet threats that don't exist." The book proceeds
to demonstrate that the quote is nothing less than a statement of
fact.
ARMS-D readers will delight at some of the facts revealed in
this book. For example: What was the true "missile gap" in 1960?
The Soviets at the time had four (4) ICBMs -- with a 30%
reliability rate. What is the extent of the massive Soviet arms
buildup the Reagan Administration struggles to counter? Soviet
arms spending has not changed materially in decades, only the CIA
accounting methods. Does the Warsaw Pact outman NATO in Europe?
Deduct those Soviet troops who do not fight, those who CANNOT
fight, and those "allied" troops who may instantly attack Russian
soldiers the moment they are issued live ammunition, and the
answer is no. Where are the 2,500 tanks a year the Pentagon says
the Soviets are building? The figure is a wild guess; and of
those tanks actually manufactured, half are exported for cash to
buy food. What are the quietest, most deadly attack submarines
in the world? The West German diesel-electric boats, whose
crewmen fear only that a noisy American nuclear sub will crush
them during NATO maneuvers without so much as detecting them.
While the book ostensibly deals with the Soviet armed forces,
the author wields the blunt instrument of common sense against
the military-industrial complexes of both superpowers. To meet
the supposed threat of overwhelming Soviet numerical superiority
in conventional weapons, the U.S. is building "high-tech"
superweapons. Cockburn documents that the battle-worthiness of
these weapons -- be they tanks, planes, or rockets -- is
consistently worse than that of the weapons they replace. Our
continued security lies less in superweapons than in the Soviets'
penchant for aping them, flaws and all. Thus one U.S. Air Force
expert comments that the only good thing about the abortive F-111
fighter-bomber is that "the damnfool Russians went out and copied
it" (with the Su-24). In detailing the eroding effectiveness of
superpower military hardware, Mr. Cockburn stops just short of
suggesting that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are engaged in tacit
disarmament by means of rendering their own weapon systems
impotent (squandering hundreds of billions of dollars in the
process).
"The Threat" also challenges our assumptions about strategic
nuclear warfare with an unbiased, straightforward viewpoint. How
can either superpower even think about a first strike when it
cannot measure the reliability and accuracy (!) of its weapons,
or be guaranteed of the other side's response (since a
launch-on-warning reaction would destroy the attacker)? What is
the purpose in building monumentally expensive weapons systems
that are consistently less effective, less rugged, and less
numerous than their forerunners? How can arms expenditures be
used as a judge of military effectiveness, when the metrics
involved are so conjectural?
The April 1984 edition even discusses the Korean Airlines
massacre, and offers a dispassionate insight into that bizarre
story. The plane was shot down just seconds before it escaped
Soviet airspace entirely. Those responsible may have been trying
to avoid the total humiliation of having a civilian aircraft
penetrate the most secret installations on the Soviet east coast
with impunity.
Mr. Cockburn draws his information from a variety of
classified and unclassified sources, including interviews with
Soviet emigres. After a few chapters, one becomes uncomfortable
weighing statements taken from the Pentagon against news stories
from, say, the Washington Post. Can the Pentagon's credibility
be so poor? Apparently it can. This reviewer also got the sense
that Mr. Cockburn is an Englishman in the classic post-war
position of an Englishman discussing superpower affairs -- smack
in the middle, but left out. Some of the invective is
spleen-venting, surely, but the overall credibility of the book
is not much diminished.
"The Threat" is fascinating, infuriating, juicy, and
ultimately reassuring. The Russian bear, it seems, is too
hidebound to strike; and the Pentagon is more concerned with
collecting its toys than with using them. But while we may be
reassured, we should not be amused.
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Date: 6 Feb 85 15:16 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: go codes for the strategic nuclear forces..
To: ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA
A few weeks ago I asserted that the strategic nuclear forces could arm
their weapons physically without specific code information needed.
I was wrong, but by how much I do not know. Here is what I now know.
The Emergency Action Message is the message sent to US strategic
forces when they are called into action. It has two components: an
authentication part and an enabling part. The first is what the
President sends out -- these are the codes carried in the "football",
and are what enable the recipient of the message to know that the EAM
was indeed sent by the President or his duly authorized successor.
Somewhere later in the system, the enabling part is added to the EAM.
The EAM is then transmitted by all feasible means to the strategic
forces.
The Carnegie Commission report on strategic C^3 authored by some high
ex-defense officials says that "some" strategic systems require the
enabling code to physically arm their missiles. Submarines apparently
need not receive this part. A friend of mine recalls congressional
testimony from the DoD that says bombers DO require enabling codes.
Logically, since bomber communications are less secure than are ICBM
communications, it would make sense that ICBM's require them too, but
I have never seen a statement -- official or otherise -- to this effect.
Questions that I don't know answers to:
Do different types of force (bombers, ICBM's etc) get different
messages? I.e. is the bit stream identical? I believe the answer is
at least partly yes (on the basis of the fact that an emergency rocket
communication system transmits EAMs, and it would be silly to attempt
to transmit different messages. How about others? It would certainly
be possible for bombers (e.g.) to ignore certain EAMs intended for
ICBMs.
Where is the enabling part of the EAM added?
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[End of ARMS-D Digest]