Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ucbvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxi!houxm!ihnp4!cbosgd!ucbvax!eric From: eric@ucbvax.UUCP Newsgroups: fa.arms-d Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V1 #60 Message-ID: <164@ucbvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 17-Oct-83 06:31:39 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.164 Posted: Mon Oct 17 06:31:39 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 21-Oct-83 03:29:55 EDT Sender: eric@ucbvax.UUCP Organization: U. C. Berkeley Computer Science Lines: 135 >From @MIT-MC:JLarson.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA Mon Oct 17 03:30:28 1983 Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 1 : Issue 60 Today's Topics: Gromyko's Plane Request for info Anti-submarine warfare ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 12 October 1983 04:17 EDT From: James A. Cox Subject: Gromyko's Plane To: velu%umcp-cs @ UDEL-RELAY [Velu Sinha] ... the US is acting very much out of place by refusing to let Gromyko enter the United States in peace (ie in a civilian airliner, at a civilian airport) to attend UN meetings. You've got your facts wrong. Governor Cuomo's letter to the New York Times of last Sunday explained what happened. There has been a ban on Aeroflot flights to the US since the invasion of Afghanistan. The State Department asked New York and New Jersey to make an exception in this case to allow Gromyko to come to the UN meeting. They declined. Gromyko could still have come via another country's civilian airline, as many other Soviet diplomats did. Or, the United States offered to let his Aeroflot plane land at a military field. He chose neither, which made Cuomo at least think that he decided not to come because he didn't want to hear the inevitable criticism of his country's actions in shooting down the airliner, rather than because of anything New York or New Jersey did. ------------------------------ Date: 11-Oct-83 00:24 PDT From: William Daul - Tymshare Inc. Cupertino CA Subject: Re: spending spree If anyone has further information on the DoD spending spree, I would love to hear it? Does anyone know what they spent $4.2 Billion dollars on? Thanks, --Bi<< ------------------------------ Date: 15 Oct 83 22:42 PDT From: CAULKINS%USC-ECL@MINET-NAP-EM.ARPA Subject: Anti-submarine warfare In the Fall 1983 issue of International Security (Vol 8, No 2, PP52 - 67) Richard Garwin has an article titled "Will Strategic Submarines Be Vulnerable ?". Garwin divides potential threats to strategic submarines (SSBN) into three categories: 1) Those in which deployed SSBNs are kept within easy reach of an attack weapon; this is known as "trailing". 2) Those in which the attacker can locate the SSBN accurately enough so that one or more weapons (e.g., aircraft) can be directed to a relatively small area to find the SSBN and attack it; this is known as "tracking". 3) Those in which the entire SSBN deployment area must be searched at the beginning of hostilities, and submarines destroyed only as they were detected, localized, and attacked; this is known as "open ocean search". Garwin gives some numbers for SSBN operating areas as a function of SLBM range (Moscow as the target): 2,800 km - 5.5 million km^2; 4,600 km - 19 million km^2; 7,400 km - 62 million km^2; 11,000 km - 180 million km^2. He states that a homing torpedo has a range of 1 km or more, and a rocket-propelled nuclear warhead of the SUBROC type 20 km or more. A number of trailing countermeasures are suggested: 'delousing facilities' through which the trailed SSBN could pass in which the trailing submarines could be detected and attacked; areas of artificially high acoustic noise to break sonar contact; ejection of explosive charges by the trailed SSBN to destroy the trailers. Tracking systems have a 'time-late' problem; even with perfect target location, SSBNs can move significant distances during the propagation time required by acoustic systems. Sound propagates at a speed of 1.5 km/second in the ocean; at a range of 5,000 km an 18 km/hr SSBN could be anywhere in an area of 4,400 km^2. A 1-megaton warhead descending to optimum depth in the ocean would have a kill radius of about 5.6 km against a submarine at 100-meter depth. Using 30 minutes for the flight time of the missile leads to the requirement to barrage some 2,300 km^2, which would require 23 single megaton warheads to destroy a single undecoyed SSBN detected at 5,000 km range with perfect accuracy. An attack on SSBNs with nuclear weapons would spoil the ocean basin for long-range acoustic detection for many hours because of the intense sound produced by nuclear explosions and the subsequent multiple reflections from the ocean boundaries. Even noisy submarines radiate total acoustic noise of 0.1 watt; quiet submarines in the range of 0.01 watt or less. It would be a trivial matter to provide a long-endurance noisemaker which could transmit a recorded submarine signature for a period of hours or days. The provision of hundreds or thousands of such devices could well eliminate any SSBN detection at all. Blue-green laser ASW would involve the use of satellites or aircraft on which the lasers would be mounted. These would be used to scan the ocean surface (penetrating to a depth of 100 meters or so) and detect disturbances in the received signals. Whether satellites or aircraft were used, clouds would totally vitiate any capability to detect submarines. Detailed analysis, independent of progress in laser technology, shows there is no possibility of strategically significant blue-green laser ASW because even the optimum laser color does not penetrate (in a round-trip) to the comfortable operating depth of existing submarines. Against passive acoustic ASW, the technologies currently known for reducing radiated noise, for raising the ocean noise level in the region of submarine operations, and the provision of decoys to simulate submarine noise would seem to have the advantage over prospective developments in sensor technology and systems. Jamming and decoys seem also to be considerably cheaper and more rapidly dployable than vast arrays of sensors. Dragging the ocean botoom to cut long-range communication by cable or fiberoptics ia an old art. Among the strategic offensive forces thus far discussed [land-based missiles, air-breathing weapons, strategic submarines], a fleet of strategic submarines is our greatest assurance of continued invulnerability. ------------------------------ [End of ARMS-D Digest]