C70:arms-d (07/13/82)
>From HGA@MIT-MC Mon Jul 12 22:39:18 1982 Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 141 Today's Topics: Firepower or Manpower Expensive vs. cheap Bigger is better Software Safety in weapon systems Brazil in Space World-wide effects of N war Studying peace: disarmies ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 11 Jul 1982 1212-EDT From: Eric M. Ostrom <ERIC at MIT-EECS> Subject: Firepower or Manpower As a student of both military strategy and military tactics (not to mention history), it is obvious to me that it is NOT firepower rather than manpower that wins wars. Even a moderate knowledge of current affairs makes this clear. Who had the firepower in Vietnam? Who had the will to win? How about the "6-day war" between Israel and Egypt? How about Alexander the Great (10,000 men) against the Persians (500,000 men) using the same weapons? Sure, you can "nuke 'em till they glow" with mere firepower, but who needs that much radioactive glass? When push comes to shove, it's the Grunt out there and his will to fight that really makes the difference. Note that I am talking about the quality of the manpower, not the quantity. Mini Bibliography: "The Prince" Niccolo Machiavelli, Bantam 1971 "The Rise of the West" W.H. McNeill, Mentor 1963 "Guerrila Warfare" Che Guevara, Vintage Press 1968 "Coup d'Etat, A Practical Handbook" Edward Luttwak, Fawcett 1969 "The Marine Corps Handbook" (Inquire at the GPO) "Combat Training of the Individual Soldier" US Army, GPO, FM 21-75 "Special Forces Operational Techniques" US Army, GPO, FM 31-20 Remember, there's going to be a pop quiz in the morning... Eric ------------------------------ Date: 11 Jul 1982 23:09:29-EDT From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX Subject: Re: expensive vs. cheap That sort of simplification has a very high likelihood of invalidity. It has been pointed out that one of the reasons the defending Argentines in Port Stanley had to surrender to half their number of besiegers was the relative qualities of the officers and enlisted men in the two armies; would anyone care to guesstimate the relative qualities of Libyan and American flight training programs? There's a number of holes that can be found in that sort of statement, so I'll just point out the most obvious one: it has been demonstrated that some of the current/newest generation of American fighter planes are so expensive that we could have three times as many cheaper planes---and in assorted combat simulation the cheaper planes regularly stomped the high-price spread given that 3-to-1 edge. (This also doesn't allow for the amplification of fighter effectiveness by directrixes like the Z9M9Z\Z\9\M\9\Z E2C.) ------------------------------ Date: 12 July 1982 01:53-EDT From: James A. Cox <APPLE at MIT-MC> Subject: expensive vs. cheap Let's have references on the 3 to 1 simulation you mentioned. ------------------------------ Date: 13 Jul 1982 0008-EDT From: Rodger D. Osgood <RDO at MIT-XX> Subject: Re: Bigger is better I would like to make a few comments on the idea stated by earl and others that bigger and more expensive aircraft are "better". I fully agree that building inferior aircraft that are unable to complete their mission is a silly way to "save" money. However, I feel that much of the complexity and expense of some planes comes from trying to make every plane be able to fly every mission. A case in point; the F15 and F16 were originally billed as a high-low combination, the F15 as an air superiority jet capable of outperforming anything in the sky and to complete difficult attack missions through stiff enemy resistance. The F16, on the other hand, was supposed to be an inexpensive, lightweight, and highly manueverable air to air fighter. It also carried passive radar detectors and a small radar profile making it hard to detect by other aircraft. Now the Air Force brass has added quite a bit of sophisticated active radar counter-measures and bomb racks for ground attack missions, adding to the weight and expense of the aircraft. This has degraded the F16's manueverability and while active radar jammers make an aircraft harder to target they make it easier to detect and therefore avoid. Thus by trying to make an aircraft perform multiple tasks (ground attack and enemy penetration) its ability to perform its prime mission (air to air fighting and providing air cover for our ground troups against enemy air attack) is degraded. I think that considerably more bang for the buck could be achieved if the military consentrated on building aircraft that are optimized for a few related missions, instead of lots of general purpose aircraft that do everything mediocrily. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jul 82 11:05:04-PST (Mon) From: Tim Shimeall <tim.uci@UDel-Relay> Subject: Software Safety in weapon systems I am with a research group working on techniques to reduce latent software errors which lead to failures in systems which could cause catastrophic effects. Certainly weapon systems can be considered too critical to allow to fail unsafely. Are there techniques which are currently used to ensure that software errors will not lead to safety problems with these systems? Tim Shimeall ------------------------------ Date: 11 Jul 1982 2325-PDT From: Jim McGrath <CSD.MCGRATH at SU-SCORE> Subject: Brazil in Space That nation has announced that they will try to put a man in space on their own by the end of the decade. Since we plan on providing space for spacers of most other nationalities on the shuttle, their promise that the technology will be "used for peaceful purposes only" does not ring true with me. Jim ------------------------------ Date: 12 July 1982 09:09-EDT From: Gail Zacharias <GZ at MIT-MC> Subject: Brazil in Space Indeed, why would they conceivably want to do something on their own if they can be dependent on us instead! ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jul 1982 1728-PDT From: Jim McGrath <CSD.MCGRATH at SU-SCORE> Subject: Brazil in Space Indeed, why would they? For commercial transport they should depend upon us (or rather hopefully US companies) just as people do for most high tech services. The only real justification for having an independent capability, especially one developed at a cost of billions of dollars, thousands of man-years of scarce scientists and engineers, and decades behind other nations, is for military reasons (national pride does NOT justify such a fantastic outlay - a smaller one dedicated to joint missions with the US or the USSR is another matter of course). In particular such technology can be used for ICBM development. Given that Brazil is ruled byy a military government, I really doubt they are going to expend all those resources and expect no new militaryy capabilities in return. Jim PS note that the same can be said of the US auto and steel industries, although here at least we make no bones that a major reason for having such large domestic capacity is to supply the military in times of crisis. I object to Brazil's blatant falsehoods about "peaceful" uses of space (along with India's about "peaceful" atomic "devices"), since misinformation is something that should be reduced whenever possible. ------------------------------ Date: 11 Jul 1982 1238-EDT From: Eric M. Ostrom <ERIC at MIT-EECS> Subject: Maximum N-War destruction A friend of mine (of the "I'll just lay down and die if it happens" school), and I recently spent an afternoon with "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons" and an HP-45 and came up with the following interesting numbers: There are approx 3.5*10^6 Sq Miles in the US. ("Times Atlas of the World") The Soviet Union has about 10*10^9 Tons of nuclear warheads (This includes aircraft dropped bombs) ("The Effects of Nuclear War" 1979) This equates to 3 KT per sq mile if evenly distributed (an unlikley but educational hypothesis) This will blow a hole 37 feet deep in solid rock, 42.5 in dirt The radius would be 153 in rock, 184 in dirt. If we assume only the SS-18's and the SS-19's are fired, we get a 1.5KT/sq.mi. 27.5 deep, 116 radius in rock, 35 deep, 137 R in dirt. "cheers" Eric ------------------------------ Date: 11 Jul 1982 1827-PDT From: CAULKINS at USC-ECL Subject: World-wide effects of N war The two references on this subject best known to me are: "The Effects of Nuclear War" Office of Technology Assessment Congress of The United States May, 1979 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-600080 "Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear-Weapons Detonations" National Research Council National Academy of Sciences 1975 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-29733 Available from: NAS Printing + Publishing 2101 Cnstitution Ave, NW Washington, D.C. 20418 Perhaps the most serious (and least well understood) planet-wide effect of large numbers of megaton range nuclear explosions would be the increase in uv-B at the surface of the earth due to the destruction of stratospheric ozone by NOx released in the explosions. This has the potential for causing damage to plant species and possibly producing blindness in diurnal animals. It will certainly raise skin cancer and crippling sunburn rates in humans. The OTA document (P114) summarizes the NAS document as follows: "It is possible that a large nuclear war would produce irreversible adverse effects on the environment and the ecological system." ------------------------------ Date: Mon Jul 12 12:07:39 1982 From: decvax!pur-ee!purdue!pur-phy!els at Berkeley Subject: End of the world Radiation isn't the only killer in a massive East-West exchange. SCENARIO: 1) For global entertainment, the war of the week presents: NATO vs. Warsaw Pact. 2) Some moron initiates an exchange of tactical nukes. 3) Some other MORON initiates a strategic exchange. 4) Let's be pessimistic here and say 500 megadeaths immediate. 5) With US out of the way, think how many other wars start, Arabs vs. Israelis, Black Africa vs. South Africa, India vs. Pakistan, China vs. any Soviet remnant+Vietnam+India. All of these are potentially NBC wars. 6) Dozens of other wars start as the poor nations fight for what little arable land is nearby. 7) Without US food shipments, FAMINE, probably of a scale never before seen. 8) With all the dying and dead and weak from starvation, you pick your favorite disease and I'll bet it kills 10 million people at least. The biggies like typhus might get many 100 millions. 9) Ozone layer partially or totally depleted. Deaths due to skin cancer possibly on the order of several 100 million. Here we have it: Deaths due to radiation are only a small (though still appriciable) fraction of world population. Deaths due to all the rest would possibly be a vast majority of those remaining. This is the way the world ends, with a bang AND a whimper! (My numbers are merely guesses intended to be ballpark figures. Nowhere have I seen any detailed analyses of the combined results of the secondary effects I've postulated. If anyone knows of one I'd appreciate your response. I'd like to know where the civilized world will be centered as we muck around in the rubble!) els purdue:Physics [Note from the Moderator: The probable centers in your scenario would be South America, Indonesia, and Australia (and I imagine South Africa would also survive. - Harold] ------------------------------ Date: 10 July 1982 09:55-EDT From: Zigurd R. Mednieks <ZRM at MIT-MC> Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #139 >From UNIFIL in Lebanon to the continued Soviet domination of Poland there are current examples of how "disarmies", as Jef Poskanzer called them, don't work. Would that they could. Cheers, Zig ------------------------------ Date: 12 July 1982 05:49-EDT From: Robert Elton Maas <REM at MIT-MC> Subject: Studying peace: disarmies. It seems to me that the principle feature of the military is that they are armed trained and organized to carry out war. Anything else they do is a fringe benefit of their discipline and organization. Thus your ten examples of unarmed military actions would see to me not to be military, but to be merely disciplined&organized action. I checked my dictionary for "military" and found: Adj. Of or relating to soldiers or to the army. N. Armed forces; the army. I looked up "soldier" and found: N. A person serving in an army. N. A brave or skillful warrier. I looked "army" and found: A large organized body of men armed for military service on land. It looks like military-->soldier-->army-->military is a circular definition except for the insertion of "armed" in the loop. I conclude that a large organized body of men who aren't armed, aren't soldiers and aren't in an army and aren't military. (I assume by "men" they mean to include women also, as in Israel, and just hadn't yet updated their terminology in 1975 when the dictionary was written.) Note, after the definitions of "soldier" above, the last one is "one who serves a cause loyally". That would include so many random people (Ralph Nader, Linus Pauling, Jerry Falwell, ...) that obviously that wasn't the meaning of "soldier" that was intended in the definition of "military". So, is it reasonable to speak of setting up a whole organization based on unarmed actions and yet referring to them as "military"?? <no> Is there some better term for them?? <??> ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jul 1982 13:01:19-PDT From: jef at LBL-UNIX (Jef Poskanzer [rtsg]) Subject: Studying peace: disarmies. I think you are quibbling over words when there are much more serious concepts to be discussed. Bear in mind, however, that some of the examples in the article are \existing/, \unarmed/, \military/ organizations. ------------------------------ End of Arms-D Digest ********************