From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:arms-d Newsgroups: fa.arms-d Title: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #155 Article-I.D.: ucb.1694 Posted: Wed Aug 4 04:47:44 1982 Received: Thu Aug 5 00:48:19 1982 >From HGA@MIT-MC Wed Aug 4 04:43:03 1982 Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 155 Today's Topics: Physics of Nuclear Explosions ABM's and the obsolescence of ICBM's Artillery accuracy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 4 Aug 1982 03:15:49-PDT From: pur-ee!Physics.els at Berkeley Subject: Physics of Nuclear Explosions For those who may not have seen this month's issue of American Journal of Physics, it contains a fairly good article on the above topic. The article is written for a sophomore physics level, but carries enough info that we can all be on nearly equal footing (for rough calculations) with those who have copies of 'The Effects of Nuclear Weapons'. The citation is: Am. J. Phys. 50(7) July 1982 pages 586-594 Title: Nuclear Explosions els [Eric Strobel] pur-ee!pur-phy!els ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 1982 03:16:34-PDT From: pur-ee!Physics.els at Berkeley Subject: ABM's and the obsolescence of ICBM's It seems to me that the matter of trust, verification, etc. needs to be circumvented somehow. With India's launching of a satellite, we now have a six-way problem. For any single country (or pair of countries) to agree to reduce nuclear weapons, they need to know that they are safe from ALL possible attacks. The way around this (as a naive first approximation) would be for the high-tech nations to put together a group to design an effective, cheap, easy to produce ABM system. The know-how to produce it would be disseminated to anyone who wants to use it. The advantage to this is that the amount of negotiating is vastly reduced. Either a nation contributes or it doesn't. (Here I now patch a very large hole in the previous paragraph.) Any non-contributory nation must wait some quite frightfully long time before they may have access to the info. Perhaps long enough for the others to render themselves invulnerable and commit nuclear blackmail. That should be strong incentive to contribute. (Before anyone flames on this, remember, this is meant to be a first approximation.) els [Eric Strobel] pur-ee!pur-phy!els ------------------------------ Date: 4 Aug 1982 03:16:58-PDT From: pur-ee!Physics.els at Berkeley Subject: Artillery accuracy Is there such a thing?? I have a friend who is an F.O. and he tells me that with modern artillery you can hit stationary targets within just a few yards on the first try. If the Israeli army is so ultramodern, why is so much damage being done in Beirut? Can't they tell where the PLO is firing from? Maybe the PLO gunners move too much, but that's what I thought heli- copters and some jets were for. els [Eric Strobel] pur-ee!pur-phy!els ------------------------------ End of Arms-D Digest ********************