Tag: Ground based laser

Surprise

Never underestimate the importance of surprise

On By gyonas2 Comments

The importance of surprise has dominated the thinking of military strategists since beginning of conflict. For instance, the famous Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote in 500 BC, “Those who are skilled in producing surprise will win. Such tacticians are as versatile as the changes in heaven and earth.” In 1520, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, “Nothing makes a leader greater than the capacity to guess the designs of the enemy.” In 1832, Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “Surprise is therefore not only the means to the attainment of numerical superiority, but it is also to be regarded as a substantive principle in itself.”

Modern military strategists take the issue of surprise very seriously when managing investments in technology and preparing for possible future conflicts. Over the years I participated as a contributor in several Defense Science Board studies and often found myself as a member of the red team. My job was to imagine what might be the counter to any of our advances in future technology.  It was never a good way to make friends since my role as a red team member was to invent how and why the best ideas of the blue team would be thwarted.  The goal of the science and technology red team was to imagine and analyze a possible future threat evolution based on analysis of the past and evaluation of present capabilities. Then the blue team was faced with planning to deal with this imagined future.

In 1988, the Pentagon published a document that described the status of Soviet technology and projected what might happen in the future. One future space weapon threat was the use of ground-based lasers and a distribution of space-based relay mirrors to provide lethal blows to space assets and missile launches in their early boost phase.

The Pentagon analysts projected that the space weapon threat shown in the illustration below might be deployed “after the year 2000,” but, as I explained in my last post, at the time neither the Soviets nor the Americans had the needed high power laser technology nor the space launch capabilities for any realistic space-based weapons.  Over the past four decades, however, that technology has advanced to the point where the red team needs to reimagine what might be the new space-based threats as well as our new approaches to offense and defense. In today’s world of Russian attempts to return its empire to greatness, the defense planners are actively attempting to figure out what surprises they may face.

Pentagon illustration of possible Soviet technology, 1988.

It really should not come as a surprise that Russia is now threatening its NATO neighbors with an intermediate range missile called Oreshnik and has demonstrated its operation against a Ukrainian city. This missile is a version of its ICBM capability to deliver multiple hypersonic independently target warheads or MIRV’s to a target. The attacking MIRV’s could be accompanied by multiple light weight decoys so that an effective interception in space would be extremely difficult. So, no surprise there. We have known about this sort of threat for a very long time. Our red teams should have been imagining the threat and persuading our blue teams to figure out how to defend against it.

The fact is that in 1983 when we put together a plan for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or popularly known as Reagan’s “Star Wars” program, we thought about these threats and concluded that we needed a means for intercepting the threat during the early part of its launch, namely its boost phase, and this required that we had to develop and deploy interceptor platforms in space.

The red team was ready for this hypothetical defense and reported that the defense platforms would be “sitting ducks” that would be easily destroyed by ground launched missiles. The blue team responded with hypothetical offensive and defensive moves. That meant that the result would become a full out space war, which could result in escalating exchanges leading to all out nuclear conflict.

No matter how effective the defense, the realistic outcome would likely be nuclear exchanges and total destruction for both sides. Many long term and experienced strategic thinkers explained that any notion of a victorious last move in an escalation exchange was a fallacy. They suggested that a more positive approach would be arms control agreements. Many people never really understood that both Reagan and Gorbachev were arms control advocates and were anxious to get rid of all nukes.

When I got the job as the chief scientist for the SDI program, I concluded that Reagan’s idea to share defenses and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons was probably the only way out of this mess, and was unlikely, but was worth a try. When Reagan and Gorbachev met at Reykjavik in 1986, they almost agreed to rid the world of nuclear weapons, but at the last minute, although Gorbachev had no problem with SDI laboratory research, he demanded that the SDI stopped all testing in space.

Reagan’s advisors were surprised at Gorbachev’s emphatic and often repeated insistence that “it is the laboratory or goodbye.” I have concluded that he was afraid that his own military industrial complex would launch its giant Energia booster that was ready and waiting to launch a space laser research platform.  Such a deployment, even if of marginal utility, would be a “Sputnik event.” Cold War historians have missed the point that he was more worried about his own technical experts that were prepared to initiate a space weapons race that would further contribute to the final implosion of the Soviet economy.

As it turned out, the Soviet Union collapsed because of its own weaknesses and without any real help from us and the threat went away.  But now the threat seems to be back, as demonstrated by Russia’s advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles, its nuclear capable intermediate range missiles, and advanced war fighting methods such as information weapons to wage war. To add to this dilemma, China is not sitting idle but is rapidly advancing its strategic war fighting capabilities. The old ideas of two-party agreements seems to be obsolete.

So, as the famous arms control expert Herb York explained…. there really is no winning last move in an arms race. Instead, I believe that we need to consider a new approach—the road not taken. This imagined road will be an unfamiliar path filled with debris and pot holes that may never lead anywhere, but maybe there is a small chance that it might lead to agreements to avoid a global nuclear war. The problem of deterrence in this increasing complex world is so wicked, any success would be unexpected.  In today’s world of technology advances coupled with confusion, chaos, and conflict, such an outcome could be the ultimate surprise.

Liar, liar, pants on fire

On By gyonas5 Comments

The presidential impeachment hearings are a good example of one aspect of human behavior that I studied recently, when I was involved in a science and technology advisory panel. The question we addressed was: What methods can an observer use to determine if a witness; or if there are two opinions, which side; is credible when they give contradictory answers? It would be wonderful if we really had some method as we watch what is going on in Washington.

In the hearings, the Republicans accused the Democrats of “making false allegations.” The Democrats similarly accused the Republicans of “making statements that ranged from incomplete renditions to outright falsehoods.” Trump tweeted that “the Democrats are liars” and a senator called Schiff “the worst liar in politics.”

The purpose of the panel I served on was to determine if there were technical methods to determine if a subject was telling the truth. Our panel determined that the gold standard of deception detection was the polygraph that measured blood pressure, pulse, respiration and skin conductivity while the subject answered a series of questions. What we discovered from interviewing many experts in the field was that the test really determined a psychological stress response that could be characteristic of a guilty answer, or a response from an innocent person who feels intimidated or even no response at all. In other words, the results were not reliable.

There were also examples in the press of use by the CIA on Guantanamo detainees of sleep deprivation and water boarding to elicit confessions, but they were also found to be not useful and deemed a form of torture. Acute stress induced by torture was also found to destroy memory. From our discussions with professional interrogators, the one approach that seemed to work was to have extensive prior knowledge and then intimidate the subject in order to induce a confession. An expert at interrogation knew how to use psychological methods to condition a person to “spill the beans” with no gadgets at all.

So what does this have to do with my supposed knowledge about missile defense? One of the most controversial and contradictory aspects of my more than 50 years of participation in the technical community  was the response to President Reagan’s request in his national security speech March 23, 1983. Reagan asked the “scientific community…to turn their great talents …to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete” … to “intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies.” His speech was the starting point of my several years involved in trying to satisfy his request by first helping to make a plan for, and then participating in, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as its first Chief Scientist.

Many years later, L. Wood, a primary representative of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories’ proposed X-ray laser program, told science writer J. Hecht, “SDI (AKA Star Wars) was a brilliantly successful bluff…illusion of an awesome technological capability.” Wood said, “I got the results I wanted. The Soviet Union collapsed.”

If there was an intentional hoax, Wood and others sure had me fooled since I was convinced nobody was bluffing. In my opinion, Reagan hated nuclear weapons as much as he hated Soviet Communism, and he believed we could find a way to defend ourselves, that is if we jointly managed a transition to eliminate nukes and then share a defense system. I became convinced that in fact SDI had little impact on the Soviet Union that went bankrupt on their own without our help through their society riddled with deception, mismanagement and moral confusion.

But what about the truth of the SDI? Gorbachev told the Politburo, “Our main goal now is to prevent another new stage in the arms race from taking place. If we do not do that, the danger for us will grow … an arms race that is beyond our strength. We will lose, because now for us that race is already at the limit of our possibilities.” There is no question that Gorbachev was a believer, even though his advisers, such as Evgeny Velikhov, the principal Soviet scientific leader, claimed it was a delusion.

At the same time, Gorbachev’s Military-Industrial Commission advisers told him, “Americans think that a multi echelon missile defense system should allow, at most 0.1 percent of the attacking missiles to get through” and their belief was that the key for missile defense would be “a new type of nuclear weapons consist of transforming part of the energy from a nuclear explosion into powerful streams of directed x-rays or electromagnetic radiation or stream of high energy particles…capable of striking in space or from space ballistic missiles, their warheads, satellites and the targets …at distances of several thousand kilometers.” The advisers added, “Full scale of these weapons is expected to occur in the second half of the 1990s.”

The head of their nuclear programs, Victor Mikhailov, was so convinced that nuclear directed energy was a realistic future possibility that he argued to stop such work that he called the “Evil Jinn.” There was no lack of conviction in the Soviet Union that directed nuclear weapons were critical to the success of the SDI program, even though at the time, Donald Kerr, the head of Los Alamos argued it was an exaggeration, Bud McFarlane, Reagan’s National Security Advisor, said the program was a “sting,” and much latter Reagan’s scientific adviser, Jay Keyworth, even called the work at LLNL “unadulterated lies.”

So what about the lying liars, whether it be in Congress, among scientists, weapons developers and politicians? In my opinion, the best expert on the subject is George Constanza from the television series “Seinfeld.” His memorable quote was, “It is not a lie if you believe it,” and I believe he is right.

Trust me.

A simple, low cost, really nasty new weapon system

On By gyonas8 Comments

Precision drone attack damage of Saudi Oil facility

Could low cost, fairly low tech aircraft defeat the very expensive missile defense system of Saudi Arabia?  Of course not! No way, I thought, since the Saudis rely on our technology and we have spent billions and billions on missile defense since we began the SDI program in 1984.

I never gave this possible threat much thought until the Saudis’ giant oil facility was attacked with high precision on Sept. 14, causing enough damage to measurably reduce the global oil supply.

Yes there was a fairly modern missile defense system in place, but the attack came from tens of small low-flying drones and cruise missiles proving that the best defense against the wrong attack is useless. It looks like I was not the only one surprised since Israel, who should have been the most alert to such threats, has just announced they are reacting to this event. (“Netanyahu seeks billions to fund Israeli defense against Iranian cruise missiles,” Haaretz, Oct. 07, 2019.) Even before that, the Russians announced in Izvestia that their small multi rotor drones “will perform not only reconnaissance missions, but also strike targets with miniature bombs.”

I recall that when the SDI was created, the secretary of state raised the issue of cruise missile defense, but his question was never seriously answered and we focused on the Soviets’ huge investment in intercontinental ballistic missiles. So this new threat is not so new, but I hope the new aspect of swarms of low-cost drones is now being taken seriously.

This wake-up call up call should now be loud and clear, but even worse than we expected, since even though the cost of cruise missiles is very high, the technology and cost of swarms of drones has become very attractive worldwide to even capable individuals. It is now realistic that many of the world’s soft targets, such as cities, are vulnerable to attack. But certainly we could use electromagnetic weapons to jam, confuse, take over or destroy the guidance and communications of drones, high power lasers to destroy their delicate components or just plain old intercept missiles and anti-aircraft guns to blow them out of the sky, so not to worry.  We could even deploy our own swarms of defense drones to attack their offense swarms.

Well, it is not that simple since the real issue is the cost exchange, and the low cost and tactics available to giant swarms of drones could reduce the effectiveness of most of tomorrow’s technologically available defenses.

In addition, there is the element of surprise, demanding an early warning detection and tracking system, as well as the reality of exhaustion of the defense against fake or real repeated attacks. But we know that each low-cost drone could only deliver a pound or so to a target, so what is the big deal? Well, maybe the drones could target critical parts of our exposed electric grid, or maybe disperse biological agents along major streets, or target large sports events with hundreds of grenades or just go after parking lots at crowded shopping centers? The implication of such terror weapons are frightening to say the least.

Certainly Israel has some not so friendly neighbors, and their enemies must be preparing such killer drone swarm attacks, but we don’t have such problems from our neighbors .…  unless the drones are delivered from ships near the big cities near our coasts.

So what to do about all of these new concerns about a threat that might be more likely than intercontinental missile attack that attracted our defense community for decades?  I am sure the Pentagon, the labs and the defense industry are working to figure out our response. Of course, the threat will evolve as well as the defenses, and we need to also prepare for simultaneous info and space attacks, so we may look on the simplicity of the good old days with nostalgia.

 

Herbert_York

“The Fallacy of the Last Move”

On By gyonas7 Comments

One of the military technology as well as arms control leaders at the end of the last century was Herb York. He always argued for weapons technology development based on good physics, and at the same time emphasized arms control based on mutual understanding between the U.S. and our adversaries. He made it clear in his 1995 book, “Arms and the Physicist,” that arms control agreements were hampered by the “fallacy of the last move.” He wrote, “We are confronted by the dilemma of steadily decreasing national security … this dilemma has no technology solution.”

I had reached a similar conclusion ten years before that.  After Reagan called for the initiation of the missile defense “Star Wars” program, the Fletcher panel was organized in the summer of 1983 to create and document a plan of action. I was asked to put together a sub panel on directed energy weapons that were thought to be the source of the next “technology miracle,” and after we completed our effort, I was asked by Fletcher to write a conclusion of the study. I wrote: “We concluded that a robust BMD system can be made to work eventually. The ultimate effectiveness, complexity, and degree of technical risk in this system will depend not only on the technology itself, but also on the extent to which the Soviet Union either agrees to mutual defense arrangements and offense limitations, or embarks on new and more desirable strategic directions in response to our initiatives. Since the outcome of the initiation of an evolutionary shift in our strategic direction will hinge on as yet unresolved policy as well as technical issues…no definitive predictions of the outcome can be made.” The end of the last sentence was not published. Instead, what was advertised was that “a robust BMD system can be made to work eventually.” The notion that the outcome was not only uncertain, but depended on the next move of our adversary did not see the light of day.

The history of military technology has taught us that the development of weapons is always followed by the development of counter weapons. We can learn from the history of the army’s battlefields that the infantry changes, from the machine gun to barbed wire and trenches, to tanks, to anti-tank weapons, to hardened armor, to defensive shields… and on and on. Space weapons will be no different, and will be dominated by sensors and anti-sensor weapons, be they blinding lasers or command and control hackers, and hyper-sonic missiles. The game will go on and on, but the predictability of the outcome will be obscured by the complexity of the actions and the reactions.

The technology marketers will improve their methods to persuade the poorly informed decisions makers that their latest inventions will provide certain victory. The end game, however, will be elusive and will be dependent on not just technical, but social, political, economic and psychological factors.

Will our future consist of an endless arms race or are there more beneficial ways to invest our nation’s increasingly limited financial resources? I believe we should take our guidance from history. Some of the scholars of the end of the Soviet Union argue that the SDI technology advances allowed us to win the arms race with the Soviet Union; however, as I wrote in my book, “Death Rays and Delusions,” the collapse of the Soviet empire was caused by its “moral decay and mismanaged political institutions rather than economic collapse or even scientific and technology competition.” We should learn from history to warn of us of our own social/political and impending cash flow problems as our population ages demanding more and more of available funds, compounded by the return to normal interest rates. I call this the “geezer threat,” and I believe we urgently need to figure out how to deal with the inevitability of “global aging.”