From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!C70:arms-d Newsgroups: fa.arms-d Title: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #120 Article-I.D.: ucb.1354 Posted: Mon Jun 14 23:12:01 1982 Received: Wed Jun 16 03:47:08 1982 >From HGA@MIT-MC Mon Jun 14 23:05:09 1982 Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 120 Today's Topics: Ships vs Aircraft Fronts Bilateral Freeze Lebanon Operation Sober Facts ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 12 Jun 1982 2304-PDT From: Jim McGrathSubject: Ships vs Aircraft A lot has been made recently in the popular press about the sinking of hundred million dollar warships by million dollar missiles. The implication is that surface ships are not cost effective in a direct battle (of course they are still needed for logistics). However, I think this is misleading. It appears that 15 or so planes were lost for every British ship sunk. Thus the true cost to Argentinia is over $100 million a ship - not such a bargain after all. And this is a case where the aircraft had decided air superiority, and the ships had no land based defenses to support them. More importantly, the Argentine pilots are GOOD. Given the strength of the attacking planes and the badly equiped British fleet (badly equiped for this type of warfare), the outcome of the Falklands conflict seems to neither support nor condemn surface ships. Jim ------------------------------ Date: 12 June 1982 10:33-EDT From: Zigurd R. Mednieks Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #119 Do any of the pacifists out there know what the World Peace Council is? The U.S. Peace Council? The American Friends Service Committee? The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom? If, with names like these you think they must be Soviet fronts, you are right. These have been around for a while, and there are likeley new organisations without such comically obvious names, but nevertheless, these outfits will be in New York for the marches and ralleys. While I am most certainly not a pacifist (and someday I'll explain why) I respect differing opinions on how to maintain freedom in the world. If you want to march, then march, but, be careful under which banner you march. Cheers, Zig ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jun 1982 0622-PDT From: Jim McGrath Subject: Bilateral Freeze Just heard a perfectly idiotic debate on this freeze. The proponent simply ignored the most powerful argument of the opponent, namely that such a freeze would not freeze non-nuclear capability to attack subs or bombers. If you neutralize our subs and bombers, then the US is quite INFERIOR to the Soviets, even if we made similar advances (since they rely primarily on land based missiles). Thus we could face a situation where only land based systems would be reliable, tempting people to adopt a launch on warning strategy or a simple first strike strategy (afterall, we cannot freeze the minds of our planners). Once again, I am really amazed with the capacity of some folks (most notably the left) to adopt policies that so contradict one another. In the long run a freeze is DESTABILIZING. Thus if no additional progress were made (which is likely, since actual reductions are very difficult to negotiate without a lot of pressure), then we would really be in the soup. Jim ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jun 82 9:10:31-EDT (Sat) From: J C Pistritto Subject: Lebanon Operation I think it is entirely possible for the Israelis to secure a 'sovereign national government', as they like to say, of the Lebanon within a reasonable period. The only thing that would make that impossible is if they were to be forced to withdraw immediately. Lebanon was a relatively peaceful country until the Palestinian terrorists showed up. For years the PLO and associated organizations based their operations in Jordan, which culminated in an attempt to take over the Jordanian government from King Hussein. The attempt was fought off by units of the Jordanian Army, and the PLO terrorists were expelled from Jordan, (many of them were killed outright in the fighting). The Syrians didn't want any part of them, the Egyptians had enough trouble already, so they went to Lebanon. Although Lebanon had a very balanced government between the Christians and Moslems, (who were approximately equal percentages of the population at the time), the Palestinians started immediately to usurp the power of the legal government. As the fighting escalated, groups on the Christian side formed their own militias and engaged the Palestinians in open warfare. Eventually, to prevent a leftist state from being formed, the Syrians invaded, stopped the war, and then started exterminating the Christians gradually, (witness the destruction of Christian Beirut, the city of Zakle (sp?), etc.) Now, when the Israelis show up to clean out the PLO, which operated its own government in Lebanon, the Syrians are complaining about people violating the sovereignty of Lebanon, (when they used to occupy 60% of it). With the removal of the PLO, and the Syrians, there is no reason that the people of Lebanon could not reconstruct their shattered nation. If the Lebanese army was built up into a force strong enough to enforce permanently a ban on 'private armies', and to resist Syrian approaches, (possibly via a defense agreement with Israel), then Lebanon would effectively be removed from the war situation it is now involved in. (I'm sure the Israelis would withdraw if they knew they wouldn't have to be back within two years anyway). -JCP- ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jun 1982 0205-PDT From: Jim McGrath Subject: Sober Facts Thanks for the contribution. The facts presented in Access to Energy should be taken with a grain of salt - but then again, facts from anyone on this subject have to be taken with at least a tablespoon of salt. Nuclear war, like war in general, is not something to take lightly - which means that while one should not underestimate the dangers and costs, one should not OVERESTIMATE them either. The real problem I have with the "peace movement" is that they do not take war SERIOUSLY. That is, they do not bother to examine war in a clear headed and rational way - they simply react in a knee jerk manner. A lot of this I think is due to a simple lack of knowledge - while many people get an opportunity to study economics, or political science, very few (in the academic community) have the opportunity to study military arts. Thus people start to judge war on grounds that it CANNOT be judged upon. Afterall, you would not apply the rigor of the scientific method to a non-scientific discipline, like math? Or discuss what SHOULD be the law of gravity? Likewise, an abstract philosophical approach to war is not correct since it ignores vital political, economic, sociological, psychological, and technical components. Part of the solution is to have good military education for the lay citizenship, just as many people desire a sound scientific education for the common folk. If people are to be responsible citizens, then they must have access to a broad base of knowledge and experience. What ultimately urks (sp?) me is that the same people who decry war WILL NOT support military education for the citizenship. This "know nothing" attitude is hardly new to the American scene and, like before, it is destined to cause people a lot of trouble and harm our society as a whole. Jim ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jun 1982 0100-PDT From: Herb Lin Subject: Commentary and minor flame on recent "Sober Facts about Nuclear War" Commentary on the submission of Gene Salamin on the effects of nuclear war is necessary, but is too long to rebut in detail. However, a few claims cannot be ignored. (1) Claim: a single nuclear bomb cannot wipe out a whole city: You would need 438 one-megaton bombs to destroy Los Angeles [1], and none of them could be "wasted" on pulverising the rubble, or you would need more. This is patently false for any reasonable definition of "wipe out". I assume the number of 438 one-megaton bombs comes is related to the fact that the area of L.A. is about 463 square miles, or a "kill area" of about one square mile for a 1 MT bomb. This corresponds to a kill radius of .56 miles. The overpressure varies according to P = 3300 (W/r^3) + 192 (W/r^3)^.5 where W is the yield in MT and r the distance from ground zero in kilofeet. This expression corresponds to an overpressure of about 150 psi. TEN psi is enough to collapse buildings not specially hardened. 150 psi in the range of the original hardening of **missile silos** (originally about 300 psi). Furthermore, there's not a mention of the subsequent firestorm. I contend that for any reasonable definition of "wipe out", a very few one megaton bombs would suffice. (2) Claim: An earth-covered shelter would be undamaged at 1000 yards from ground zero, and a wooden house as above would be comparably damaged at a distance 0f 10 miles rather than 1 mile. One thousand yards corresponds to the 2.97 kilofeet = .56 mile. You are doing very well indeed if you can build an earth covered shelter which will stand 150 psi. Maybe we don't need to spend so much money hardening silos; we can just use dirt. (3) Claim: There is nothing balanced or mutual about MAD..... the US dismantled its anti-aircraft missile defense, canceled its anti-ballistic missile system, and deliberately let its civil defense die, all under the assumption that if the civilian populations were defenseless hostages to nuclear destruction, it would deter war. False again. The U.S. made a MILITARY decision to abandon AA defenses, on the grounds that bombers are useless when missiles will have hit everything worth hitting. It abandonded ABM because there was a fairly broad consensus (a few dissenters) that no proposed ABM system (then, or in my opinion, now) would work. It *never* had a C.D. sysyem worth mentioning. The U.S. **never** conducted evacuation drills, or large scale sheltering drills. (4) Claim: The Soviets have not launched a first strike because their missiles have lacked the accuracy for pinpointing US missile silos (or oil refineries and power plants, or similar jugular points) and an unwillingness to gamble. Once they have achieved the necessary accuracy, they will believe (with good reason?) that America will give in without resistance. Again false. An oil refinery is not much harder than a city, and the Soviets have had for a long time (many years) the ability to kill refineries and other economic targets. In addition, a President is NOT (and has NEVER) been limited to a strike on Soviet population. Soft targets (both counter-value and counter-force) have always accounted for the majority of the targets - Richard Garwin says the fraction has been about 93% since the late 1960's. (5) Claim: There has never been a war as terrible as the next one. So nuclear war isn't much different than previous wars? It is worse in the same way that WWII was worse than WWI? If this really the claim being made, then someone doesn't understand the orders of magnitude involved. The kill rate in a nuclear war would increase by a factor of a hundred or a thousand. That kind of increase is utterly unprecedented; previous wars involved kill rate changes of at most 10. In general, I do agree that nuclear war will not mean the end of everything (well, I agree with a 90% confidence level, but that margin of safety (factor of 10) is not very reassuring. I do not want to think that there will *probably* be a historian in Uganda or Madagascar who will write about WWIII). Nevertheless, the submission from Access to Energy is one of the most irresponsible I have seen in a LONG time. It suffers from most of the same flaws that the usual peacenik arguments suffer from - it didn't do its homework, and it bases its appeal on emotionalism and bull. ------------------------------ End of Arms-D Digest ********************