From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!C70:arms-d Newsgroups: fa.arms-d Title: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #107 Article-I.D.: ucb.1095 Posted: Sun May 16 02:13:35 1982 Received: Mon May 17 00:32:26 1982 >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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 15 May 1982 1248-PDT From: Herb LinSubject: 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] ------------------------------ Date: 15 May 1982 1240-PDT From: Herb Lin [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. ------------------------------ Date: 15 May 1982 1235-PDT From: Herb Lin 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). ------------------------------ Date: 15 May 1982 1037-EDT From: Eric M. Ostrom 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. ------------------------------ Date: 15 May 82 22:55:38-EDT (Sat) From: J C Pistritto 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- ------------------------------ End of Arms-D Digest ********************