From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:arms-d Newsgroups: fa.arms-d Title: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #138 Article-I.D.: ucb.1482 Posted: Wed Jul 7 23:37:54 1982 Received: Fri Jul 9 00:57:17 1982 >From HGA@MIT-MC Wed Jul 7 23:24:42 1982 Arms-Discussion Digest Extra Volume 0 : Issue 103 Today's Topics: Another new voice SR-71 et al Much Commentary Israel in Lebanon Mailing-list for "List of lists" update notices ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Jul 3 03:21:07 1982 From: npois!harpo!decvax!utzoo!laura at Berkeley Subject: another new voice ... After reading numerous arms-d articles which seem to reflect a 'dead lion -- live dog' belief, I can only come to the conclusion that some people, at any rate, dont have solid facts. Im one of them. Where do you go to get a good, accurate military library? Right now, at the bookstore I cant tell the non-factual propeganda from the factual propeganda from the factual not-propeganda. Are there any books which everyone ought to read before opening his/her mouth on the subject? In the mean time, I have a few questions: 1) how much nastier/less nasty would a chemical war be than a nuclear one? 2) " " " " " " " biological war be? 3) Public awareness of the 'nuke danger' is already high and growing -- what about knowledge of other, perhaps less desirable ways to fight war? 4) How much more lethal would a "conventional" (ie no ABC) war be now than World War II given the other advances in miltary technology? 5) Using present technology (or projections of today's technology) could a feasible survailance policy be set up to monitor the posession of nuclear devices -- or would we be dependant upon "goodwill" if every nation decided to disarm? Right now, I a would much rather be a 'live lion' than either of the other alternatives. If pushed, I would have to join the 'dead lions'. If any one can point me to a factual, non-emotional argument on how disarment does not lead inevitably to surrender, I would *love* to hear it ... its not that I love nuclear war ... or the threat of nuclear war ... but I have yet to see an alternative that I think can be implemented which will not send people like me out to the North American Gulag, should the Russians decide to aquire more real estate, becuase I am just too bloody minded to "passively" resist anything. Laura Creighton decvax!utzoo!laura ------------------------------ Date: Mon Jul 5 00:52:47 1982 From: decvax!utzoo!henry at Berkeley Subject: SR-71 et al People who are interested in the SR-71 and its brethren should check out the July issue of (!) Popular Mechanics. It has an interesting and informative article. Normally I wouldn't bother looking at such a piece in that particular location, but *this* article is written by Kelly Johnson himself. (For those who don't recognize the name: Johnson was head of the Lockheed "Skunk Works" for many years, and was the chief designer of aircraft including the F-104 Starfighter, the U-2, and the SR-71.) There is nothing earthshaking in it, but there are a lot of bits and pieces that I don't believe have ever seen print before. For example, the odd shape of the SR-71 is not just a question of aerodynamics; a small radar cross-section was a major design goal. Be warned: the article shows signs of having been heavily censored, presumably by security folks (there is a note at the end that it took a long time to get past them). The result is rather choppy prose and a number of places where interesting stuff is foreshadowed and then never delivered. Still quite interesting. ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jul 1982 1619-EDT From: WDOHERTY at BBNG Subject: COMMENTS ON COMMENTS ON COMMENTS In reply to: Jim McGrathSubject: Comments on Comments MILITARY EDUCATION from Jim McGrath-- WD: Why don't we study disarmament instead of military arts? JM: You cannot study what does not exist (a flip, but concise, answer). We have a lot of experience fighting wars, and little of peace. And what we do know about peace seems to characterize that state more accurately as the "absence of war." Thus we need to know about wars and the military who fight them. I would argue that peace studies do exist and that we have as much or more experience waging peace as waging war. It's just a matter of how you choose to look at it. Thus, I could argue that war is "absence of peace" and that we need o know more about peace and the people who practice it. Perhaps a reasonable compromise would be to study peace and war (not Tolstoy) on equal footing. WD: In any case, I'll promote any plan to spend a portion of the present arms budget on education rather than further destruction. Let's not take the funds from the social service budget though, OK? JM: It would most logical to take them from the Department of Education. In my opinion, it would be most logical to spend less money on "defense". If the money were spent on education I feel that would be a much more productive use of our money. I do not feel that it would be reasonable to strip the Department of Education any further of its already extremely limited funding, especially if we use that money to study war. US-USSR FUNDING from Cox-- WD: It just does not make sense to wage war for peace (this in reference especially to U.S. refusal to reject first strike--at least Brezhnev had the sense to wield some popularity by his propagandistic commitment to end Soviet plans for first strike). JM: Right - the USSR was "smart" enough to use their pledge for a propaganda ploy. That really inspires confidence in me as to their commitment to their pledge. I agree that when the government of the Soviet Union pledges to refuse first strike they are propagandizing, just as Ronald Reagan is propagandizing with his talks of START (reductions?). It is the people of both the US and the USSR, not the governments, that will have to bring disarmament. JM: More to the point, as has been repeatedly covered here, we CANNOT honestly renounce first use of nukes without building up our conventional strength - something "peace" advocates also oppose. I oppose conventional buildup, it is true, especially when it is done in the interests of an elite class such as the US-USSR governments and their minions. However, I recognize that the first priority is to remove the blemish of nuclear weaponry from our planet, therefore I work with those who suggest conventional buildup, as long as they try to get rid of the greater "evil" of nuclear weapons. RISKING DEATH from Cox-- WD: The centralized control of armed forces in both the United States and the Soviet Union makes such democratic decisions impossible. JM: What are you talking about? "Centralized control?" You MUST mean CIVILIAN control, or somesuch, since CENTRALIZATION has no relation to democracy per se. And the fact is that the US military is responsible to a democratically elected government, while the military forces of the USSR often DETERMINE their "civilian" government, which is in any case an outright dictatorship. I would argue that the rich and powerful in either society determine the "civilian" government positions. The US has only a facade of democracy, just as the Soviet Union has only a facade of the true philosophy of communism. I do not think it would be possible to have a true democracy with the number of people in the United States and their present consciousness. It seems clear that individual liberties in the Soviet Union are more restricted than in the United States, but the foreign policy, thus the armed forces, seem, on the whole, equally terroristic. What makes the activities of the US armed forces any more justifiable than the same activities performed by the Soviet armed forces? Both actors in the war games are equally reprehensible if the methods they use are just about the same. In any case, I do not believe that the people, or even the business elite (see p.A23 of the Focus section in the Sunday Boston Globe) here in the US want to deal with the possibility of nuclear war. They want an alternative solution. I would imagine that the same situation exists in the Soviet Union--only those people (assuming adequate information is available) who benefit (re profit) from the machinations of war will support the war machine. True democracy will require a long germination. It will be a long struggle even to approach it from where we (humanity) are now. I also believe that true democracy cannot be achieved while there are individual nations on the planet, vying for control of resources and labor pools, so that a part of the population can benefit from the sweat on the brow of the masses. I am certainly not suggesting that the Soviet Union is a model government for such a utopian state, any more than I could expect such a thing from my own country. As I said before, it will be a long time coming, if it ever even occurs. WD: At least until we are sure that our very survival depends on the use of violence, I feel that we should not use violent means. JM: If someone threatens to cut off your arm, would you disarm them? Even if it involved striking them, and thus committing "violence?" As stated, your position is the ultimate in pacifism - and thus very counter survival in this rough world of ours. It seems to me that an arm is, in a practical sense, a necessary tool for survival. If I can defend violence of any sort, it would be violence directed at the community of friends and family that surround the victim of violence. This does not seem to extend to tactical nuclear weaponry owned and operated by the US in Western Europe or any kind of military "aid" to El Salvador or CIA operatives in Nicaragua or the assassination of Allende in Chile. This is, in fact, the kind of violence from which I would expect those communities to defend themselves (and it seems as if many of them agree with me). It is a matter of ending the most atrocious forms of violence first. This will make it easier to end much of the other violence which, in most cases, is retaliatory or truly defensive violence. WD: We can start by recognizing that almost all of the conflicts we have are solved peacefully, that violence is the exception not the rule. JM: Most decisions in this world are made peacefully. Most decisions are also trivial. Important decisions are often decided violently. I believe that this is again a matter of attitude. We could go on for hours listing peaceful and violent resolutions to various conflicts which we would consider of varying importance. The only sure thing is that there are times of peace and times of violence. I still tend to believe that nonviolence is the dominant state. I appreciate your considerate and coherent response to my comments; you seem to be honestly interested in open communication. I decided not to send this to arms-d (at this point at least) because some people do not seem to approve on dialogue which doesn't relate the specifics of death research and destructive capability. Do you feel I should forward the message or not? Will (WDOHERTY@BBNG) PS: I decided to forward the message on the recommendation of JM. ------------------------------ Date: 5 Jul 82 16:26:43-EDT (Mon) From: J C Pistritto Subject: Israel in Lebanon An interesting story appeared in the Baltimore Sun on Sunday, July 4th, along with the stories about the Columbia returning to earth. It seems the Israeli army has deployed some 'secret weapons' against the Syrian army in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. One weapon, calld 'SATARM' is a missile projectile, that launches three terminally-guided submunitions that home on Syrian T-72s, completely knocking them out. It is very reminiscent of the US/Vought Assault Breaker concept, although that shouldn't be ready for full scale testing for a bit yet. Another version is parachuted over the area where enemy tanks are, and takes them out quite nicely. Reportedly Syrian tank crews 'abandoned their vehicles and fled in fear' after seeing the devestating effectiveness of these weapons. (200 tanks knocked out in two days, most in an afternoon). Another weapons is the missile used by Israeli warplanes to devestate the Syrian SAM-6 batteries, which reportedly, couldn't even get off a shot before being destroyed. This is apparently an anti-radiation missile of the same class as Shrike. A third weapon is a 'black box' that confuses Soviet SAMs so effect- ively that even drone aircraft are able to fly into the Bekaa and return safely to base. It is believed that these are NOT US weapons being loaned for testing, but represent independent Israeli efforts, mainly by the electronics subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries, Elta Electronics. If so, this would be easily as impressive as Israel's Gabriel sea-to-sea missile, which performed well in the 73 October war... -JCP- ------------------------------ Date: 6 Jul 1982 2316-PDT From: Zellich at OFFICE-3 (Rich Zellich) Subject: Mailing-list for "List of lists" update notices For those of you not previously aware of it, I maintain a master list of ARPANET mailing-lists/digests/discussion groups (currently 756 lines or ~29,000 characters) on OFFICE-3 in file: INTEREST-GROUPS.TXT For ARPANET users, OFFICE-3 supports the net-standard ANONYMOUS login within FTP, with any password. To keep people up to date on the large number of such lists, I have established a mailing list for list-of-lists \update notices/. I do not propose to send copies of the list itself to the world at large, but for those ARPANET users who seriously intend to FTP the updated versions when updated, I will send a brief notice that a new version is available. For those counterparts at internet sites who maintain or redistribute copies for their own networks (DECNet, Xerox, etc.) and can't reach the master by ARPANET FTP, I will send out the complete new file. I do \not/ intend to send file copies to individual users, either ARPANET or internet; our system is fairly heavily loaded, and we can't afford it. There is no particular pattern to the update frequency of INTEREST- GROUPS.TXT; I will occasionally receive a burst of new mailing-lists or perhaps a single change of address for a host or mailing-list coordinator, and then have a long period with no changes. To get on the list, send requests to ZELLICH@OFFICE-3, \not/ to the mailing-list this message appears in. Cheers, Rich ------------------------------ End of Arms-D Digest ********************