ARPAVAX:C70:arms-d (09/19/82)
>From HGA@MIT-MC Sat Sep 18 19:13:00 1982 Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 159 Today's Topics: MSN Microwave Systems News (what I know of it) Nuclear Illusions and Reality ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 5 Sep 1982 1804-EDT From: WDOHERTY at BBNG Subject: MSN Could you please tell me (us) more about what Microwave Systems News is? This is the first time I've heard mention of this behind- the-scenes negotiation and I'm interested to know why a publication involved with Microwave Systems would release such information. Thanks for any info you can come up with. WDOHERTY@BBNG = Will Doherty ------------------------------ Date: 9-Sep-82 23:14-PDT From: DAUL at OFFICE Subject: Microwave Systems News (what I know of it) >From the magazine: "MICROWAVE SYSTEMS NEWS...Published monthly by EW Communications, Inc., 1170 East Meadow Drive, Palo Alto, CA. 94303..." Subscriptions: "MICROWAVES SYSTEM NEWS is sent free each month to individuals actively engaged in microwave programs and projects...." "The market-driven trade magazine (I think it is a "trade magazine") that deals primarily with technological breakthroughs that are shaping or will soon change the industry--not just blue-sky articles or simple design guides.. The only other observation is that all the ads are from the top names in microwave technology. I hope this will help describe the magazine. --Bill ------------------------------ Date: 9 Sep 1982 13:27-PDT From: dietz at usc-cse Subject: Nuclear Illusions and Reality The following review appeared in the September Scientific American. (Review is by Phillip Morrison.) Nuclear Illusions and Reality, by Solly Zuckerman. (Viking, $10.95) Henry Kissenger and Basil Liddell Hart has published their cogent theories. Then came, relates the author of this taut and candid little book, "a series of more empirical studies which, as Chief Scientific Adviser to the British Minister of Defense, I had set in hand early in 1960." He reported to the NATO commanders one summer 20 years ago and published later, to the tune of opposition challenge in the House of Commons. His paper seemed heresy, although is simply summarized the outcome of a series of war games played out on the map of the Central German front where NATO forces face those of the Warsaw pact. It gives us an authentic, if delayed, look at the work of military planners. The rule is clear: both forces deploy in anticipation of battlefield nuclear attack. They spread thinly, one "minor unit" -- 100 men or so, an infantry company, a tank squadron, a battery of artillery -- spaced far enough from the next for a nuclear weapon of 15 to 20 kilotons' yield to be needed against each. Experienced division commanders called the shots. The advancing "Russian" units were dispersed to about that degree; the entreched defenders relied on larger yields, one or two bombs per unit. In one game a British army corps could hold its front along the river Weser by firing 130 nuclear weapons but could not hold by firing only 60. In that example, however, the Russians were assumed not to have resorted to their own tactical nukes. Another game saw three NATO corps engaged, with nuclear weapons fired only against military targets in an area where there were no large towns or cities. That paper battle lasted a few days. The two sides exchanged between 500 and 1000 nuclear strikes. With airbursts a couple of million died, more than 90 percent of them civilians; with ground bursts another several million citizens suffered serious harm from radiation. That neutron bombs could make any difference, writes the author, is "a total illusion." Most of the generals received these conclusions rather poorly; they were "'jammed' in most military minds by a barrier of accepted doctrine." The American general Earle Wheeler, then NATO commander-in-chief, seemed to have heard; Field Marshall Montgomery, audacious by temperament, had a simpler view: "I'll strike first and seek permission afterwards." Only conventional forces can hope militarily to defend Western Europe. Solly Zuckerman is a senior certified expert. He first turned his attention to war from zoology when he undertook searching studies on the epidemiology of blast and shell-fragment injuries in 1942, as one of the most cogent backroom analysts. This book, not without its facts of life and death, is chiefly a tight and historically supported insider's analysis of nuclear-weapons doctrine and forecast over two decades. What of strategic war? Perhaps the new accuracy and the new doctrines of war-fighting make a difference there? The U.S. seeks only military targets for its MIRVed warheads, even in retaliation. Our plans for 1979, however, called for no fewer than 60 warheads on Moscow, all marked for military targets exclusively in that capital city. Muscovites are very likely to overlook the subtle courtesies of our Single Operational Plan when damage circles so grossly overlap around them, even if they have found subway shelter. The U.K. has prepared at heavy expense (and with much doctrinal inconsistency) an "independent" underseas nuclear force. It now plans an increase, to mount MIRVed Tridents, the new U.S. SLBM's. But the nuclear forces of the U.K. or of France are already big enough to deter, Lord Zuckerman argues, even though they are 50 to 100 times smaller than those of the racing superpowers. Zuckerman, conceding the weighty moral objections, is still for a cautious policy of minimal strategic nuclear deterrence. These weapons, he sees, are "too dangerous to use in war; . . . while nuclear weapon states might be detered from turning their nuclear arsenals on each other, the existence of nuclear weapons can neither prevent war nor defend in war." The plasusible scale of such a deterrent force is suggested by the four submarines of the U.K.: the cut from current levels is not by a third but fiftyfold. Zuckerman seems to blame the experts for much of the trouble. It is remarkable to read how the British weapons laboratories preempted decision both with respect to a quite unneeded decoy-and-evasion program (costing a billion pounds) for their Polaris missiles and to the planned deployment of Trident by the Royal Navy. In both cases designs and tests were under way before the ministers heard the news. Yet consent followed under each government; the "politicians have to run hard to catch up with the scientists." One exceptional leader is celebrated: Harold Macmillan, the prime minister whom the author once served. He had set his mind on a comprehensive test ban. "I told [Eisenhower] that we ought to take risks for so great a prize. We might be blessed by future ages as saviors of mankind, or we might be cursed like the man who made il gran rifiuto." The literary Mr. Macmillan here alluded to Dante's description of the refusal (abdication) of Pope Celestine V. The Partial Test Ban ensued, a valuable environmental treaty but not what Macmillan wanted and no impediment to the R&D game. It all happened again in the late 70's. We got no comprehensive test ban in part because the experts found many objections; they always can, and their leaders apparently fear to take risky action. The absurdities are manifest; neither Edward Teller in the 1960's nor Harold Agnew in the late 1970's can claim in hindsight mush more than posturing for their concerns. "The nuclear balance had not been affected in any way by refinements in warhead design." Not reason but rationalization rules nuclear doctrine, today even more than 20 years ago. The 1980's are time for a new effort, a reviewer infers, if we are to avoid the grim glowing catastrophe. That campaign must be -- as it is -- in the press and on the screen, in the streets and at every front door, in the lobbies and indispensibly at the ballot box. Il gran rifiuto is now the public's. ------------------------------ End of Arms-D Digest ********************