Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: can.politics Subject: Re: problems with Star Wars #2 (part 1: a side issue) Message-ID: <5757@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Thu, 4-Jul-85 17:46:30 EDT Article-I.D.: utzoo.5757 Posted: Thu Jul 4 17:46:30 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 4-Jul-85 17:46:30 EDT References: <1197@utcsri.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 49 [Thought I'd never get around to my promised followup, didn't you? No such luck.] First, I want to get a side issue out of the way: linkage of SDI to offensive strategic weapons. Then (in the next message) I will discuss the central issue of software problems of SDI. > The response [to a detected attack] may be [activation of defences] > ... or even the launching of retaliatory > nuclear weapons; these responses would be automated. This is a theme that SDI opponents assert repeatedly: that implementation of SDI may/will involve automation of the offensive nuclear systems as well. There is no logical necessity for this whatsoever. The *only* system that needs split-second response is boost-phase interception; nothing else requires action within seconds. In particular, the launch of retaliatory offensive weapons does not require such lightning response. So there is no requirement that it be coupled to SDI activation. Also, such a coupling would fly in the face of forty years of practice and policy on the activation of nuclear weapons. One hears scare stories about accidents causing nuclear alerts, with the implication that the world was on the hair-trigger edge of war. Nonsense. False alarms in warning systems are much more common than people realize, and even in the well-publicized cases, there was never any serious chance of war. This is precisely *because* nobody takes the hardware's word for it. Nor, for that matter, any single human being's word for it. This policy is not an accident. There are elaborate safeguards around strategic nuclear weapons, aimed at making *certain* that no irrevocable action occurs without positive confirmation that an attack is in progress. (Something that bothers me is the "peace movement"'s serious ignorance of the nature of the systems they criticize.) Much of the recent uproar about "launch on warning" is because a launch-on-warning policy would require seriously weakening the "positive confirmation" criteria. (Note that "launch on warning" does *not* inherently imply automatic launch, despite some of the more hysterical reports.) I emphasize that the positive-confirmation rule and the multiple precautions are not an accident, but the direct result of major policy decisions which will not be lightly overturned. So automatic initiation of offensive weapons, definitely a scary thought, is not only unnecessary but would be a total about-face from long-entrenched fundamental policy. And in any case, the issue of automatic initiation of offensive weapons has little or nothing to do with SDI deployment. The two policy issues are quite independent, although if both were adopted their implementations might (repeat, *might*) share some hardware. Let us not confuse the two. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry