[fa.arms-d] Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #159

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
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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

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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

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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.

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End of Arms-D Digest
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