C70:arms-d (05/16/82)
>From HGA@MIT-MC Sun May 16 02:10:44 1982
Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 107
Today's Topics:
Storage of missile reloads...
Soviet reduction of Afganistan
Political commentary on ARMS-D
Radiation decay
Soviet reloading of silos
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Date: 15 May 1982 1248-PDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN at WASHINGTON>
Subject: Storage of missile reloads...
I can't imagine that we don't know where the reloads are stored.
Missiles are big things, and they are either assembled at factories
and brought to the storage area, or they are kept where they are
built. In the first case, we can see them being brought in, and in
the second case, we'd target a missile factory anyway.
RMS's second comment about needing silos for firing is well-taken:
Certainly the SS-20 can be fired from mobile sites, and some people
claim that the SS-20 can be made into an ICBM with the simple addition
of a third stage.
RMS's third comment about safety in a nuclear blast zone has two
additional facets. On one hand, much more is known now about
radiation hazards than was known in Hiroshima days (into which people
*did* enter after a few days), and it all point to need for greater
precautions (and thus longer waiting times. On the other hand, the
Soviets are perfectly capable of using prisoners and other expendable
personnel to do their dirty work; Science magazine recently reported
on Soviet use of prisoners to clean up a reactor waste spill.
[Note from the Moderator: To my recollection, the SS-20 is the top two
stages of the SS-16: as a side note, I remember reading recently that
after two or so years of debate, the intellegence community has
finally agreed that the Soviets have deployed the SS-16 as a mobile
missle. (So much for timely intellegence analysis.) - Harold]
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Date: 15 May 1982 1240-PDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN at WASHINGTON>
[From ZRM]:
Nor are the lessons of El Salvador universally applicable: The
Soviet Union appears ready to shoot as many Afganistanis as it
takes to win.
This isn't obvious to me. They haven't moved in a million soldiers;
they seem to maintain dreams of pacifying it with limited force.
They're certainly not suffering from a manpower shortage, so there
have to be other reasons why we don't see a full-scale attempt to wipe
out Afgan resistance.
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Date: 15 May 1982 1235-PDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN at WASHINGTON>
Subject: Re: Political commentary on ARMS-D
Re Political Commentary on ARMS-D: I agree that the political context
has something to do with the general topics of discussion on ARMS-D.
However, PLEASE keep political analysis directly tied to concerns such
as war-winning and the like; it is possible to go overboard on
political discussion, and I think the most recent exchange on El
Salvador was far too verbose (though it might not have been if it had
been compressed by a factor of 5).
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Date: 15 May 1982 1037-EDT
From: Eric M. Ostrom <ERIC at MIT-EECS>
Subject: radiation decay
The canonical rule of thumb for fallout decay is "for every sevenfold
increase in time, the radiation level will decrease by a factor of
10...For example, the radiation level at the end of 7 days will have
fallen to roughly one-tenth of that at the end of 1 day." Typical
early fallout dose rates are in the low thousands. Three is considered
abnormaly hot. Remember that radiation will continue to be emitted
for a very long time, although at a gradually decreasing rate.
Principal problem with delayed fallout is that the principal
components, Strontium-90 (half life 27.7 years) and Cesium-137 (30.5
years) are bioactive, and can get into the food chain. Sr-90 looks
like calcium to the body which happily stores it into bone.
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Date: 15 May 82 22:55:38-EDT (Sat)
From: J C Pistritto <jcp@BRL>
Subject: Re: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #106
Soviet reloading of silos:
It is my understanding, from seeing pictures of Soviet
missiles being loaded into silos, that a rather large crane-like
structure mounted on a tractor-trailer type arrangement, is required
to lift the missile and position it vertically over the silo, at which
the silo's own cranes are used to lower it in. On the films I saw,
this was occuring fairly slowly, (on something as big as an SS-18, I'm
not surprised). Also, that vehicle *has* to be available to grab the
missile, (It is not attached via hold down rings, but by large arms
that wrap around the missile). I would suspect it would take the
Soviets more than 12 hours to reload their silos, plus I suspect they
only have enough of those vehicles to load only a small of their
silos.
A more interesting thing is how difficult it is to launch an
SS-18 from open terrain, using only a small expendable tower to
support the missile. (We used to launch missiles this way, in the era
before Minuteman). It might be messy, but I suspect it could be done
in far fewer than the 12 hours minimum it would take to load a silo...
-JCP-
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End of Arms-D Digest
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