July 14, 2006
I Don't Think That Word Means What You Think It Means
The new weapons system rolled out, to muted fanfare...
...and intense criticism. The system was awash in new technology - revolutionary technology, which promised change the face of, if not warfare itself, at least the niche in warfare that the system was designed to fight, an esoteric and frightening form of warfare that threatened to erase a whole civilization.
The "investigative" press had a field day; the system tries to do too much; it's too expensive; the enemy will be able to swamp it with too many attacks, so it can't respond. Most all, "It doesn't work", or even (from some experts) "It's too complex to ever work".
The first rounds of tests were a disaster. Of ten tests, almost all failed, and failed miserably. "See?", bellowed the critics. "We told you so! It's a lemon! We need to scrap it, and hope for peace!"
The military-industrial complex kept at it, though - and, despite the critics' carping (intercut with their jubilation at the occasional testing difficulties), proceeded to refine the system.
What system was it?
Well, practically all of them - but in this case, I'm talking about...
...the M-1 Abrams.
To the untrained eye, it looks like any other tank - but the Abrams revolutionized armored warfare. Traditional tanks (indeed, all traditional fighting vehicles, from jeeps to aircraft carriers) designs are a calculated tradeoff between mobility, firepower and surviveability. The Abrams jumped the calculation into a new realm, with a multifuel turbine engine giving the tank sportscar-like speed, revolutionary composite armor making it immune from most weapons that have a chance of hitting it (and with a revolutionary ammunition stowage and fire suppression system that makes even a catastropic ammunition explosion, long the bane of tankers, survivable) and a computer-integrated laser fire control system that allows its cannon to kill enemy tanks (or anything else) at a range of 1-2 miles, while on the move.
It came at a cost, of course; the Abrams was and is expensive. But its effect has been all that was advertised; its two wars have been the most lopsided, and blazingly fast, mechanized wars in history; battalions of Abrams cut through divisions of Hussein's Republican Guard, with the finest tanks the Soviets would export in 1991 with historic speed. And to this day, not a single Abrams crewman has been killed by a through-the-armor shot.
They said - literally - that it could not be done. "They" were wrong. Why were "they" - including elite "investigative" reporter Jack Anderson, who railed against the M1 for years - so wrong?
Because "conventional wisdom" is based entirely on "convention" - in other words, what people agree upon based on existing information.
But there was no existing information on tanks with turbine engines, integrated fire control and Chobham armor.
And those miserable, failure-plagued tests - the clogged engines in the desert, the broken-down turbines, the failed computers? The tanks Anderson investigated were prototypes; the testing was designed to shake out problems. So while in 1978 Jack Anderson railed against a tank whose air intaked clogged solidly during desert tests (!), ten years later that same tank made the Soviet armored force recalculate their odds of bulldozing Western Europe. And the evolution was based largely on data gathered in those miserable tests.
Cut to 2006. The left insists - as they have for a two decades - that missile defense won't work, can't work, will never work. This, based now on difficulties in tests, as opposed to the blind, dogmatic opposition to a theory that dogged the idea in the eighties. This, despite the fact that we've been shooting down things like anti-ship missiles for thirty years (note to reflexively condescending people with background in the area; I know, the problem is largely different. And it doesn't matter).
Shooting down a ballistic missile is a major engineering challenge - not some infungible moral anti-certainty.
And with people like North Korea and Iran out there, it's a good thing to figure out.
Posted by Mitch at July 14, 2006 05:10 AM | TrackBack
Let's revisit the argument from the Left's side, and go back in time to the 80's, before Pakistan, before Iran, and before North Korea.
The only nuclear threats at the time were Russia, and China, with the intense focus on Russia.
Growing up during that period, I remember a lot of adminstration talk about "survivable" and even "winnable" nuclear wars ("...with enough shovels"). Their thinking was, that even if the "defense shield" - an incredibly complicated space-based system which relied on orbital nuclear weapons and an array of satellites, brainchild of Teller (a leading nuclear weapons designer, If I remember right Kubrich used him as the template for Doctor Strangelove in his movie of the same name).
There were two key points to the Liberal counter-argument to this. The first was, that no defense was ever 100 percent effective, and that even if the defense shield stopped 99 percent of the Soviet Union's 6,000 strategic missles, that would still mean the destruction of up to 60 American cities. It was likely even more would get through, particularly the sub-launched missiles with their shorter flight time. We worry now about a rogue nuke being used on one city - imagine now having to deal with the leftovers from 6,000.
The second argument was that if the defense shield was built, it would only encourage a first strike calculation from the Soviet Union before the the system went 0nline in a "use it or lose it" response.
There was also a lot of anxiety over this in Europe as well, since the RealPolitik calculations at the time make a nuclear exchange on the continent both more likely and more devastating.
So the Liberal argument was that instead of trying to win a game where each dropped ball had the effect of a September 11th attack magnified a thousand-fold, the only winning strategy was to not start the game in the first place - i.e., diplomacy and negotiations.
North Korea does not have 6,000 nuclear weapons. Neither does Iran, nor Bin Ladin. The numbers and scenario in this case is quite different than one posed with the former Soviet Union, which was where most of the Liberal opposition to this was grounded in.
Posted by: Bill Haverberg at July 14, 2006 07:52 AM"Cut to 2006. The left insists - as they have for a two decades - that missile defense won't work, can't work, will never work."
Dude, it's like you're just trying to pick a fight with Smartie now.
Posted by: rew at July 14, 2006 12:28 PM"it's like you're just trying to pick a fight with Smartie now."
Well, no - but just to be safe, I'm bringing my own food to DrinkMod tonight anyway...
Posted by: mitch at July 14, 2006 12:56 PMBill-
Posted by: Terry at July 14, 2006 01:00 PMYou've done an excellent job of summarizing the left's view of Reagan's missile defense. initiative.
Let me give one view from the Right:
The most realistic & prepared for scenario for nuclear war with the Soviet Union was not a sudden sneak attack or, al'a Strangelove, a mistake that would escalate to catastrophe. It was instead that the Soviets would take advantage of a perceived weakness or lack of resolve in the West & roll their tanks first into West Germany & then further west.
The Soviets had, since shortly after WW2, an unbeatable edge in the numbers of infantry and tanks, as well as expertise at Continental land warfare. The US & Nato acknowledged that in any such attack they would be on the defensive, with their backs to the sea, and so their response would be not to stop the advance but to slow it so that key territory would still be in allied hands when the West completed its conventional mobilization. This would likely have required targeted nuclear strikes to slow down the Soviet advance, hence the famous US refusal to sign a "no first strikes" pact.
Rhetoric aside, we did not know exactly what the Soviet response to such a "first use" would be, but a retaliatory nuclear attack on US cities was a possible response. Hence the American missile defense program. Making the Soviets question the efficacy of a first strike was its military goal, not protecting every American city from every ICBM.
From a military strategy point of view, the Cold war was not about a grand conflict of ideas as much as it was about creating certainties and responses for your own side while denying cetainties and responses to the other side.
By the way, Mitch, your filter rejects my posts unless I replace the m with an * in my email address.
It's ironic that the same left that insists on every possible safeguard on everything from cars to second hand smoke rejects and rejected the idea that a missle shield might make us safer. Even if you can't stop every missle, and Reagan never said it would, it would deter smaller countries and mistakes. Given the destructive power of even a single ICBM it makes some sense to have a limited defense against failures and rogues. Everybody who was paying attention and thinking at the time knew that the system would not be difficult to overwhelm, but the main selling points then and now were against mistaken and smaller rogues. Of course, Bill makes the typical lefty argument that it couldn't be 100% effective and thereby dismisses it. How about we make the same arguments about the effectiveness of public education, poverty eradication, air bags, seat belts, cancer fighting drugs, antibiotics, etc? We should just give up now! We'll never survive!
As to it being impossible to make a missle defense, let's just say it's difficult and expensive to make it. Strangely enough, that was the case for the first semiconductors, light bulbs, and atomic weapons. Heck, it's that way for most things. There may not be a solution, but we're making better progress on this than fusion, despite being at it a much shorter time.
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