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From: rigney@uokvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Accidental war - (nf)
Message-ID: <4340@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 4-Dec-83 23:00:51 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.4340
Posted: Sun Dec  4 23:00:51 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Dec-83 23:06:28 EST
Lines: 35

#R:tekig:-166800:uokvax:5000034:000:1377
uokvax!rigney    Dec  3 10:02:00 1983

The most probable cause of the Tunguska incident was a
strike by a small comet.  Yes, our radars are good enough
to tell the difference between a comet and a missile.

By the way, there seems to be a general thought that
if war is more likely to occur by accident or mishap
than deliberately, i.e. one side launches a missile
unintentionally, and the other side retaliates with
a full scale attack, causing the first side to launch
all its forces.

Doesn't this strike anyone as pretty farfetched?  If
just one (or a few) missiles were spotted incoming,
they couldn't possibly have any major effect on the
retaliatory capability, so there's no immediate need
to launch a counterstrike.  Forces would be placed on
full alert, of course, but until many more tracks 
were spotted, or the first missiles hit without any
word from the other side, there seems to be no reason
to strike back.  And I assume that if a missile were
launched accidentally (although I can't imagine how
the launch codes got from the football to the missile,
or whatever the Russian equivalent is), both sides 
would be on the hotline very fast, to clear it up.

Does anyone know if the Pershing II's have the accuracy
and size to be effective against silos, and what 
percentage of the Soviet missiles they can destroy?
Or is all this talk about Soviet fears just rhetoric?

	Carl
	..!ctvax!uokvax!rigney