Tag: Soviet Union

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.

 

Voltaire

Are you smoking something?

On By gyonas7 Comments

One of the readers of my latest couple of blog posts asked me if I was smoking funny cigarettes. I don’t think he appreciated my satire. I really did not know I was in the satire business, until one of the readers of my book, “Death Rays and Delusions,” commented that I was trying to be another Voltaire. Being an engineer, I thought that was an automobile model, (perhaps a Chevy), so I looked it up and found Voltaire was a 16th century philosopher who poked fun at political leaders using a style characterized by wild exaggeration, irony and subtle humor. In my recent blog posts, I poked fun at the obviously silly idea of a new branch of the military, the space force. I knew enough about the subject that I figured the Air Force already had the job well in hand so I opined that one financial benefit would be the use of the surplus uniforms left over from the Star Trek TV series. My other post dealt with the concept that we could dominate space control through investing in new and revolutionary technologies.

In my book, I described the outrageous notions that we could defend ourselves against the threat of nuclear tipped ballistic missiles if we only had to deploy hundreds of giant space-based lasers, or thousands of tiny missiles, or maybe just a few orbiting nuclear weapons to create beams of x rays. When I was the chief scientist of the SDI program, I enjoyed the satirical humor in the “Bloom County “cartoons where I was described as a plump penguin who argued, “Why fer crying out loud…. research physicists need Porches too.”

Maybe the message of my book was lost in the satire, but my point was that decisions were being driven by the tech sales forces of the military industrial complex. They were extremely successful in extracting large sums for unlikely programs, that turned out to be the heart of an elaborate mind game with the Soviets.

The policy decision makers on both sides had no clue about the reality of the technology, but they were mostly motivated by their own philosophical, strategic and economic concepts. Gorbachev hated nukes, the arms race and the impending financial collapse of the Soviet empire. Reagan hated nukes, believed the Soviet Union was on the edge of financial extinction and was willing to make a deal that even shared our technology with the Soviets.

As it turns out, scientists and engineers were involved, but were only along for the ride. Many of them believed that their next miracle would give us the winning move.

hacker

The ultimate missile defense problem

On By gyonas2 Comments

My previous blog posts have focused on lasers, missiles and physical counter measure evaluation. Complicated topics to tackle, however, those are easier to deal with than the fundamental question about making the split second decision to pull the trigger and launch the defense system. The decision would have be made in the unavoidable uncertainties of real war. There are estimates that multiple interceptors would be launched to stop a single attacker, but what if that first attack is a fake? Other analysis suggest a shoot, look, shoot approach to manage the rapidly changing battle or maybe the system is not fully operational or needs to adjust to surprises.

An obvious counter measure to missile defense would be the use of deception and the creation of doubt and confusion. If the attackers can exhaust the defense in an initial salvo, then the real attack could go ahead without any interruption. With the war unfolding in seconds and minutes, much of the process will have to be controlled by computers.

The first step in the attack could also focus on disruption of battle management decision-making software. How can we test that software to determine if it has not already been hacked? Is there a hidden virus ready to be triggered before or during the attack? Ultimately these issues are fundamental, and as I said in my book “Death Rays and Delusions,” software is hard, but at the time I had no idea how vulnerable our information technology would become.

It now appears that even with the most secure hardware and software, the insider, through sloppy procedures or malicious intent, can open the gates to our information systems or insert a virus that would not appear until the moment of attack. So the ultimate success of defense hinges on being able to trust the humans who create and manage the defense software.