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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 - 09:39pm Feb 28, 2001 EST (#803 of 808)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Our nuclear balances are less safe than people think, and the more you know about the controls, and the limitations of human nature under stress, the less safe the situation seems.

Here is a text adaptation of CNN's Special Report, REHEARSING DOOMSDAY...which aired Sunday, October 15, 2000 at 10 p.m. EDT.

lunarchick - 04:36am Mar 1, 2001 EST (#804 of 808)
lunarchick@www.com

"two young launch officers, missiliers as they call themselves, serve on combat alert"

The young are used as scapegoats in many wars. Boy soliders in Africa and Asia. Child-Dayaks decapitating citizens in Borneo.

The young follow. They don't exhibit wisdom with leadership.

A question to ask is why do the mature policy makers fob off life and death decisions with unilateral consequences to the young. A wrong, or bad decision on their part, being a thing their consciences will dwell thereon through sleepless nights.

rshowalter - 07:29am Mar 1, 2001 EST (#805 of 808)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

It is surprisingly easy for those young officers, acting alone, making decisions they know how to make, to fire alone. Everybody denies it, but knows it. The controls are much less stable than they look, in terms of individual missile firing, and in terms of how the socio-technical system reacts thereafter.

rshowalter - 07:36am Mar 1, 2001 EST (#806 of 808)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The Russian system is no better in principle, and in practice is probably worse. And the equipment has been treacherous for a long time.

I've posted this sermon When the Foundations are Shaking http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/sermon.html before. Those who want a sense of the human reality - and risk - we face and have faced for many years, should listen to it, skipping, if they wish, the religious parts before 9:27. It tells the story of a failure of Russian equipment that almost killed us all. During the Reagan administration.

The world has already "almost ended" several times - and the risks are getting greater, not less.

lunarchick - 08:16am Mar 1, 2001 EST (#807 of 808)
lunarchick@www.com

Perhaps similar to old equipment ... the handbook gets lost, the equipment is 'tired' .. the operators have to abandon 'new' computer methods and go back from chips through transistors to 'valves' ... sort of thing?

rshowalter - 11:16am Mar 1, 2001 EST (#808 of 808)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The engineering decisions on which the system was built are now largely forgotten, in large part because the patterns of security within the system inhibit questions, and the distribution of information needed for judgement.

Ever troubleshot any complicated system? How do you go about defining what you "need to know" before the fact?

You can't. And so the foundation logic of security - compartmentalization - telling people only what they need to know - stands in the way of sensible engineering decisions, over long duration.

And this is a system that grew, in large part, like topsy, and was supervised by military officers, who are risk takers. And fallible risk takers, as a reading of military history shows.

Some very agonizing, careful decisions about telephone linkages were made carefully, even prayerfully, in the 1950's and 1960's - and the most vulnerable parts of the system stand essentially unchanged. Now, the telephone grid has changed beyond recognition, and since the breakup of AT&T, with no one in effective charge.

The system has other flaws. It is not adequately engineered for technically easy-to-achieve levels of EMP - especially if one considers what that EMP does to the larger sociotechnical system in which the nuclear missile apparatus is inextricably embedded.

No one can check anything much, and the people involved aren't much inclined to even try -- the system is far, far more dangerous than it looks.

It is hard to use words like "worse" after looking at the US system, with its vulnerabilities in the current world. But the Soviet system is probably worse.

This is obsolete, dangerous junk, that could easily destroy the world, and we should take it down.

The men who know the system best - the General Officers in charge of it, want the missiles taken down, too. Without even considering technical concerns that I believe are crucial, and make the system much less reliable than they think. Here is a text adaptation of CNN's Special Report, REHEARSING DOOMSDAY...which aired Sunday, October 15, 2000 at 10 p.m. EDT.

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