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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 07:57pm Jun 4, 2001 EST (#4498 of 4500)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

For sheer tragedy, I'm more concerned with a bombing decision at the beginning or WWII than the bombing decisions right at the end of it. The issue is described, following C.P. Snow, in #84-85 of Paradigm Shift - whose getting there? ---- http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee7726f/105

" Another tragedy-farce-crime, involving science in a classified government discussion, has psychological similarities, and is described in detail by C.P. Snow in Chapters 8, 0 of SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT . That tragedy, again, would have been prevented if a sensible means of umpiring had been in place. Such umpiring, had it existed, might have shortened the "Hitler war" by a year or more, and saved millions of lives.

" In 1942, Britain made the decision to commit all the manufacturing and manpower resources it could to area bombing, directed to hitting the houses of working-class Germans. (Military targets were not targeted, except in propaganda, because they were too hard to find and hit. The decision was in large part the idea of F.A. Lindemann, Churchill's scientific advisor, who circulated a paper that was accepted as truth. The paper claimed that

" given a total concentration on production and use of bombing aircraft - it would be possible, in all the larger towns of German (that is, those with more than 50,000 inhabitants) to destroy 50% of all houses."

"Distribution of the paper went to ministers, and a very few scientists, including Tizard and Blackett, the scientist-administrators most responsible for radar.

Snow goes on:

" The paper went to Tizard. He studied the statistics. He came to the conclusion, quite impregnibly, that Lindemann's estimate of the number of houses that could possibly be destroyed was five times too high." ....."Independently, Blackett came to the conclusion, also quite impregnibly, that Lindemann's estimate was six times too high."

"The bombing survey after the war showed that Lindemann's estimate was ten times too high. The actual effort in manpower and resources that was expended on bombing German was greater than the value in manpower of the damage caused. The loss of high-quality manpower squandered will never be recoverable. The military effectiveness of Great Britain was far less than it could otherwise been.

"Great Britain never would have spent its resources and blood in the way it did, if it had understood the mistake that had been made.

rshowalter - 07:57pm Jun 4, 2001 EST (#4499 of 4500)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The mistake was made because of a scenario not unlike those of "paradigm conflict". Here is Snow:

" I have used the phrase "closed politics" before. I mean any kind of politics in which there is no appeal to a larger assembly - larger assembly in the sense of a group opinion, or an electorate, or on an even bigger scale what we loosely call "social forces." .......... "In my type specimin (the bombing decision) during the whole of his conflicts with Lindemann, Tizard had no larger body of support to call on. If he had been able to submit the bombing controversy to the Fellows of the Royal Society, or the general population of professional scientists, Lindemann would not have lasted a week."

"For reasons of personal politics, Tizard and Blackett were ignored, and they could not (or at least, did not) get to other competent people who could judge the matter. To an extent amazing under the circumstances, they were marginalized, called crazy, and shunned. After reading Kuhn, one might be less surprised.

Here is Snow:

" I do not think that, in secret politics, I have ever seen a minority view so unpopular. I sometimes used to wonder whether my administrative colleagues ......... would have acquiesced in this one, as on the whole they did, if they had had even an elementary knowledge of statistics." ........ "The Air Ministry fell in behind the Lindemann paper. The minority view was not only defeated but squashed. The atmosphere was more hysterical than usual in English official life; it had the faint but just perceptible smell of a witch hunt. ..... Strategic bombing, according to the Lindemann policy, was put into action with every effort the country could make."

Kuhn describes all scientific groups as examples of "closed politics."

The key issue is that when there was credible reason to doubt a "established" decision, checking was denied.