From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:arms-d Newsgroups: fa.arms-d Title: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #104 Article-I.D.: ucb.1065 Posted: Wed May 12 01:22:20 1982 Received: Thu May 13 00:46:48 1982 >From HGA@MIT-MC Wed May 12 01:17:36 1982 Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 104 Today's Topics: ZRM's reply (and prophecy) Time-urgent hard-target kill capability U.S. base on Ascension Island Reloading silos Continuing debate on time-urgent hard-target kill capability Retargeting ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 10 May 1982 23:25:57-EDT From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX Subject: Re ZRM's reply (and prophecy) Taking your political points \very/ briefly: - I'm glad you're amused; perhaps now you can pick up your temporal ruler? Burke and de Tocqueville are as outdated as Adam Smith and for similar reasons. - The relative awfulness of Nixon, Carter, and proposed Reagan cabinets is related to one's political position. See the recent ATLANTIC re Nixon. - You have no baseline from which to allege that I "shrilly denounce anything a conservative administration does." I've given up on THE PROGRESSIVE for just this reason. Note also that I spoke of RAH's grip on reality 30 years ago. - Respect for a given ballot box is in the same class as respect for a given church--let it be earned. Shall we argue about elections in El Salvador? - Fertilize your civics lesson. I consider it a far more appropriate function of government to prevent a disaster, rather than abetting it and claiming credit for cleaning it up. Taking a little more time on civil defense, I will note that I have yet to see a sound refutation of the conclusion that evacuating the major cities (which seems to be the primary plan outside of the three-feet-of-dirt school) is sufficiently close to stating that we expect those cities to be bombed that our opponents would strike before evacuation could be well underway, in anticipation of whatever action we plan that we expect to result in the bombing of our cities. It's completely insufficient to argue that our opponents would not reason this way; determining how (and how well) even one individual reasons under stress is close to impossible (try to visualize how your best friend would behave if he were dumped into an Outward Bound-type situation without their support structure). The world now has several examples of how assorting reasoning turned out wrong when it was acted on: ---Did Galtieri really expect the British to react as strongly as they did? ---Did the Iraqis expect effective resistance from the Iranians? ---Did the Chinese expect that their mostly inexperience infantry would be able to handle a blooded Vietnamese army? You have several possibilities: those who initiated the action may actually have been irrational, or reasoning may have been carried out insufficiently (but how do you determine what is sufficient?), or (and this is as frightening as individual irrationalities) a conscious decision may have been made that an outside action, whatever the consequence, was preferable to the status quo (and how do you reason \that/?). Attempting to predict what a human being will do can be as futile as attempting to predict what the next major scientific discovery will be (not simply the area, but what will actually be discovered). ------------------------------ Date: 11 May 1982 0900-PDT From: Herb LinSubject: REM's rationale for time-urgent hard-target kill capability Paraphrase of REM's argument: you need time-urgent hard-target kill capability to prevent him from retargeting his missiles; he wants to wait to see what hits, and in this waiting time, you can hit him. I don't buy this. In the time it takes for you to launch your retaliatory missiles aimed at his silos (another 30 min), essentially all of his warheads will have landed, and he will know what has been hit and what has not. He then retargets in the remaining time, and launches even *without* waiting for warning of your incoming missiles, which he knows will be coming in anyway. What do you buy with your hard-target capability? A number of significance: reprogramming a given missile to hit an arbitrary target takes about 35 minutes on the US side, probably more on the Soviet side. However, it is absurd to think that any missile fire control system has only one target pre-stored inside it, precisely because we (or they) would want the flexibility to retarget. Thus, retargeting from among a finite list of targets (as opposed to reprogramming) can take place essentially instantaneously. ------------------------------ Date: 11 May 1982 18:24-EDT From: Robert Elton Maas Subject: REM's rationale for time-urgent hard-target kill capability It would seem to me that it takes approximately the same time for ICBMs to go from the USA to the USSR as it does to go from the USSR to the USA. I'll assume this is 30 minutes (the figure you used). The enemy can't retarget their second wave until the first wave has struck and reconnaissance has fed back the results. This occurs 30 minutes after initial launch plus any time needed for reconnaissance. But we can send our silo-killers as soon as we see their ICBMs coming at us, say 15 minutes after they launch their first strike, 15 minutes before their warheads reach us. Our warheads will then reach and destroy their silos 30 minutes later, i.e. 45 minutes after their first launch, 15 minutes after their their first strike reaches target. Are you saying that the USSR can perform reconnaissance and retarget their missiles (from a finite list per missile) all within that 15-minute window after their missiles hit target before ours reach their silos? ------------------------------ Date: 11 May 82 09:07:28 EDT (Tue) From: Steve Bellovin Subject: U.S. base on Ascension Island The U.S. has a base on British-owned Ascension Island about 3500 miles from the Falklands. The treaty that permits the base requires us to give full access to the British, and to furnish them with supplies such as fuel. The British have been taking full advantage of this since the whole mess started. According to the press accounts I saw, only one Vulcan bomber participated in the raid. That might make it difficult for American observers to tell when the real attack was starting. Even if it was obvious, that's still only about 6 hours for word to travel to Washington, and thence to Buenos Aires. ------------------------------ Date: 11 May 1982 19:22-EDT From: RMS at MIT-AI I've heard reports that the Russians have hundreds of extra ICBMs ready to put into silos that have been vacated by launches. If this is true, then there is a good reason to be able to destroy Russian silos even after the missiles in them have been fired. I would expect that cruise missiles would be able to do that job, though. Does anyone know whether they can do it? ------------------------------ Date: 11 May 1982 2113-PDT From: Herb Lin Subject: Re: continuing debate on time-urgent hard-target kill capability Under your scenario, we are implementing launch-on-warning. That is the very thing a survivable basing mode for the MX is supposed to forestall. Are you implying that time-urgent hard-target kill capability is dependent on an LOW scenario? If so, since I don't think LOW is the way to go for the usual reasons, t-u h-t capability isn't needed. Nevertheless, assuming your LOW scenario, I think I do believe that they could process reconnaissance information and retarget in 15 minutes; retargeting is essentially instantaneous, and you shouldn't need lots of processing time to determinate the site of an explosion. ------------------------------ Date: 11 May 1982 12:49:48-EDT From: rae at mit-vax Subject: re: armsd Concerning REM's recent remark on the retargeting the second half of one's strategic (read first-strike) nuclear missles. From a talk by Kosta Tsipis, I was lead to believe the retargeting of a balistic missle was a non-trivial task requiring many (14 was the number I remember) hours to perform. Presumably the personnel to accomplish this job are scattered throughout the missle launch system... comments? ------------------------------ End of Arms-D Digest ********************