arms-d (04/06/83)
>From The-Moderator@MIT-MC Wed Apr 6 01:32:15 1983
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Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V1 #12
To: ARMS-D-DIST@MC
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Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 1 : Issue 12
Today's Topics:
long... paper on controlling nuclear war (14K characters)
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LIN@MIT-MC 04/04/83 00:26:23 Re: long... paper on controlling nuclear
war (14K characters)
To: ARMS-D at MIT-MC
the following is a condensation of a paper by Desmond Ball with the same title.
Can Nuclear War Be Controlled?
Introduction
Early US nuclear doctrine focused on the conditions necessary to insure that a
nuclear war did not occur; virtually no attention was paid to the question of
what would happen after a nuclear war started. However, in recent years, US
strategists have begun to address this question in depth. The process began
with the notion of "flexible response" in 1962, and has evolved into the
present concern about prevailing in a protracted nuclear war.
Current US strategic doctrine requires the ability to conduct precise military
operations against individual targets chosen for their specific military or
political value to the enemy under the particular set of circumstances extant
at the time of the attack. This strategy demands highly centralized decision
making in attack planning and extensive military force deployments.
The requirements of massive retaliation or assured destruction are easily met,
due to the enormous destructiveness of nuclear weapons. They are so
destructive that only small numbers of nuclear weapons must survive to deliver
the retaliatory blow. Similarly, the command and control system need only
survive to transmit the order to retaliate. Thus, additional weapons or
additional command and control capabilities serve mostly as insurance that
adequate capabilities will survive even a surprise attack.
By contrast, current strategic doctrine requires coordinated and precise
control of attacks: specific targets must be attacked at specific times under
specific circumstances. Therefore, it is necessary to deploy military forces
with capabilities sufficient to cover the full range of possibilities, even if
not all capabilities will be useful under a particular set of circumstances.
Similarly, a more capable command and control system is required. This system
must not only survive for extended periods of time, it must also provide the
tactical information necessary in a rapidly changing environment and maintain
two-way communications between the National Command Authority and field
commanders (to direct US forces) or the enemy (to negotiate his surrender).
Thus, additional capabilities serve to proliferate the number of options
available. As these options are incorporated into strategic doctrine, each new
capability becomes integral to the implementation of a piece of the new
doctrine. The result is that there is little insurance against the loss of
some particular capability, and the success of the new doctrine comes to depend
on the availability of most or all of the system's capabilities.
The US C^3 system has not been systematically designed to fulfill the latter
requirements. Indeed, as the doctrinal emphasis has shifted from one of large-
scale retaliation to one of graduated and controlled response, the C^3system
has incorporated new components without much consideration for the interaction
of these components with the components already in place. Consequently, the
current system is a patchwork of individual components, lacking in overall
coherence and design. Nevertheless, these individual components constitute the
foundation of US C^3 capabilities, and it is appropriate to examine each
individually.
3
The US C System: Components and Vulnerabilities
The National Command Authority (NCA) alone has the authority to order the
firing of nuclear weapons; it consists of the President (who can initiate
firing orders) and the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (who must concur in any such order). To ensure the survival of
the NCA, the US has deployed four ground-based NCA command centers. However,
fixed command centers, even if hardened against nuclear attack, are at least as
vulnerable as missile silos, and the vulnerability of both will increase as
missile accuracy improves. A point of special significance is that the
terminals which allow direct communication between US and Soviet leaders (the
"Hot Line") are housed in these command centers. These terminals do not exist
anywhere else, and so an attack on Washington would eliminate the Hot Line at a
time when its use would be most important.
The vulnerability of ground-based targets has led to the acquisition of
airborne elements; an airplane in flight cannot be targeted easily. These
elements include the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP) for the
NCA as well as airborne facilities which provide communication links between
the NCA and US strategic nuclear forces. However, aircraft must eventually
land, and they are then vulnerable while on the ground. Aircraft support
facilities (e.g., runways, maintenance depots) are also subject to attack. In
addition, the capabilities of the NEACP for communications and rapid
information processing are severly constrained by limited floor space. These
constraints limit the quality of information available and the pace of
generating appropriate options, even as the time available to make command
decisions is more limited.
Satellites perform a large fraction of the facilities for intelligence
gathering, communication, and navigation. However, satellites are designed to
operate over large distances. Thus, they require very sensitive antennae and
sensors which are easily damaged by deliberate enemy overloading; an example is
the temporary blinding of two US satellites in 1975 by natural gas flares. In
addition, the Soviets have successfully tested an anti-satellite weapon which
is capable of attacking satellites in low earth orbit. Thus, all tactical
reconnaissance and meteorological satellites are vulnerable. Finally,
satellite ground control facilities (which display satellite data and control
satellite movement) are few in number, costly to duplicate, and quite
unhardened.
There are about a hundred land-based transmitting stations which feed and
receive signals into and out of cables or radio and radar antennae. While the
stations themselves might be hardened (though in fact, they are not), radar and
low frequency radio links require large antennae which are inherently soft.
High frequency radio links are susceptible to blackout in nuclear environments.
Underground cable can sometimes be hardened, but can be cut by nuclear ground
bursts. Above ground cables, microwave towers, and repeater stations are soft
and vulnerable to sabotage.
Finally, a potential vulnerability inherent to the solid-state electronics upon
which most of our C^3 facilities depend is the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). EMP
is a short but strong pulse of electromagnetic radiation which can generate
large currents in electronic equipment, resulting in permanent damage. Many
physical elements of the C^3 system are in fact quite efficient collectors of
EMP; long cables, large antennae, and metal aircraft bodies fall into this
category. In addition, with the signing of the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty in
1963, full scale testing of EMP effects is impossible.
3
The Survival of C in a Nuclear Environment
The disruption of C^3 capabilities can take place through the temporary
impairment of a critical function, or permanent physical damage to a critical
piece of hardware. The former is more likely if C^3 facilities are not
specifically targetted, while both are likely if they are targeted.
If the Soviets refrain from targeting C^3 facilities directly, any degradation
in C^3 capabilities would result from Soviet nuclear strikes on other targets.
Thus, we might expect HF radio blackout, inadvertent EMP effects on unprotected
equipment, and substantial message traffic on US communication channels. HF
radio is used for voice communications, and so prompt exchange of useful
messages would be difficult. Most US electronic equipment is unprotected
against EMP, and permanent damage to US C^3 facilities might be extensive.
Current communications channels would have great difficulty in routing messages
to their proper destination.
3
However, it is more likely that the Soviets would target C facilities.
Indeed, Soviet doctrine has always emphasized such strikes, in conjunction with
attacks on nuclear and conventional forces and other war support facilities.
An attack on the US C^3 system using only 2% of the nuclear warheads available
to the Soviets could reduce its information handling capacity below that needed
to implement a coordinated and measured response. These warheads would be
aimed at all land based command posts, support facilities for airborne command
and communication posts, control facilities, and several high altitude
explosions designed to disrupt radio communications and generate EMP effects.
It is here that the essential dependence of controlled response strategies on a
fully functioning C^3 system can lead to disaster. Even if relatively minor
parts of the C^3 system are disabled, various pre-planned options will be
impossible to implement. Some bomber group will not be able to perform its
mission, some targeting information will be incorrectly processed, some missile
submarine will not receive its orders in time, and the planned and actual
attacks will differ significantly even though the level of destruction will be
enormous in any case.
Non-Technical Considerations
3
The purpose of the C system is to allow the NCA to carry out whatever
decisions it believes to be in the national interest. Decision making is to
proceed in a rational manner, and decisions are to be transmitted to the field
for implementation. However, in any plausible nuclear scenario, the NCA is
quite likely to be constrained in its decision making, even granting its
ability transmit orders.
In particular, nuclear strikes are likely to follow a period of large-scale
military activity in which casualties would have been high. Tensions would
unquestionably be severe. The additional deaths caused be even a few nuclear
strikes would generate intense political pressures on the leadership.
Externally, these pressures would come from a public clamoring for retaliation
or recoiling from the massive loss of life. Internally, they might arise from
differences between civilian and military leaders, between military leaders and
their subordinates, and between different branches of the military, each
lobbying for its point of view or surreptitiously obstructing a decision not to
its liking.
3
Additional pressures would arise from the possibility of losing C
capabilities; the fact that C^3 facilities could be damaged quickly would
incline leaders to use the weapons controlled by those facilities before they
lost control over them. None of these pressures would facilitate proportional
or graduated responses.
Conclusions
This argument does NOT claim that one or even a few nuclear explosions would
lead to the collapse of the entire US C^3 system. Nor does it suggest that US
strategic nuclear forces could not receive the order to retaliate. It does
suggest that the US ability to pursue extensively controlled and graduated
nuclear responses is fragile.
3
The implications of C vulnerability for defense planning are significant. The
US is currently spending large amounts of money on the development of weapons
whose characteristics (e.g., accuracy in the MX and cruise missile) are
primarily useful in pursuing limited nuclear war scenarios. Those responsible
for firing these weapons are likely to lack the information to follow NCA
orders, and thus these weapons seem militarily irrelevant. Many of the
vulnerabilities of the C^3system are dictated by the laws of physics (e.g., low
frequency radio links require large antennae) or engineering feasibility (e.g.,
airplanes must eventually land), and thus cannot be corrected by incremental
remedies. By contrast, the marginal cost of the forces useful in attacking US
C^3 facilities is relatively small, and so the Soviets could
nullify improvements to US force structure and C^3 facilities at
relatively little expense.
Most importantly, given the extreme difficulty of controlling a nuclear
exchange, the options open to US decision makers are essentially limited in
practice to large-scale retaliation or no response at all - the same choices
available under a doctrine of Massive Retaliation or Mutual Assured
Destruction. Thus, it would seem more prudent to devote more attention to
alternative ways of achieving the goals that limited nuclear options are
intended to achieve. In practice, this is likely to mean greater attention to
deterrence by non-nuclear means.
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[End of Arms-D Digest]