There Will Be War Volume VII

by Jerry Pournelle

  Of course, some of the mercenary captains did well; the Sforza family became Dukes of Milan.

  Valhalla For Hire

  Lee Brainard

  Clearchus scowls,

  John Hawkwood grins.

  Trinquier howls,

  and Sforza wins

  “Sit down and tell us your story; we would take it in good part.

  We’ve been listening to each others’ till we know them all by heart.

  That one marched with Chandos, and yon was Braccio’s man;

  I took my pay from the King of France, before my own blood ran.

  “Our mountain lands are stony poor, and Britain’s Crown has gold.

  Two centuries, now, she’s paid our men to guard the land she holds.

  We marched through steaming jungles; we crossed the casteless sea;

  Paraded before her palace gates, that she safely sits to tea.

  “More lands than our troops ever trod. Well, sooner you than we.

  Not even for the Spider would the Switzers cross the sea.

  No cannon for us, nor oceans; and if the cantons had needed men

  and sent the word recalling us, we should have marched home again.

  “Raj Guru gave us leave to go, and to return again.

  He got it for us wholesale when the Crown had need of men.

  From mountain villages, our name has now worldwide renown:

  there’s honor in the weapons we were issued by the Crown.

  “Employers are free with steel and lead; less free with silver and gold.

  It was after the Booty of Burgundy that soldiering took hold.

  The danger’s less on the battlefield than on the last parade,

  When the man who hired you starts to think: Dead men don’t have to be paid.

  “The Crown does not disown our deeds. We were no whores of war.

  We served the Crown as the grandsires of our grandsires did before.

  Our sahibs, too, took up the task their grandsires handed down,

  Whose grandsires marched with Young Sahib, who hired us to serve the Crown.

  “We had a touch of that ourselves, till the Lilies crowned a fool.

  That’s why the dying lion’s carved beside the quiet pool.

  When the Spider hired our halberds, he was miserly with our blood;

  his namesake sacrificed us to the rising rebel flood.

  “I, too, was of the last, without dishonor to the Crown.

  My sons are thriving merchants with their base in Goorka town.

  Their copper shipments pass some teeth my uncle helped to pull;

  where my father searched for foemen, now they deal in tallow and wool.”

  Clearchus scowls,

  John Hawkwood grins.

  Trinquier howls,

  and Sforza wins.

  Debating SDI: Opinion or Fact? by Doug Beason

  Editor’s Introduction

  Years ago when I was employed by the Aerospace Corporation I was required to give a standard disclaimer whenever I made a speech. I’d say something like:

  “The following represents my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinions, policies, or doctrines of the Aerospace Corporation, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the United States of America; and I think that’s a darned shame.”

  Doug Beason, who is both a particle physicist and a serving officer with the U.S. Air Force, wouldn’t quite put it that way; but we are required to say:

  “The views and opinions expressed or implied in this article are those of the author and are not to be construed as carrying the official sanction of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Air Force.”

  The SDI debate has been extremely odd: whereas Mr. Robert A. Heinlein called SDI “the best news since VJ Day,” most of the nation’s press has acted as if there were something immoral about a defense that defends.

  The opponents of strategic defense will not, unless pressed, admit that they don’t want defenses even if they work; they prefer to look as if they are debating laws of physics. “We can’t build it,” they say; but the odd part is that as far as I know everyone who says we can’t build it will, if really hard pressed, admit that it wouldn’t be desirable to put it up even if we could do it quickly, efficiently, and cheaply. They just don’t want a defense that defends.

  Now it’s true that this globe has, under the mutual fear of nuclear war, enjoyed an era without great wars. Those killed in Korea and Vietnam might not appreciate the distinction. Those killed in Cambodia because they were able to read and write certainly wouldn’t understand. We have huge institutions devoted to studies of the Holocaust, and rightly so; why are not three million Cambodians at least half as interesting? Is it because they are not Caucasians, not Jewish, or that there were only three million of them? For whatever reason, they seem to be ignored, and I’ve wandered from my point, which is that we can, I suppose, say that Mutual Assured Destruction—the doctrine that says that I’ll let you kill me provided that I get to kill you back—has kept since 1945 an uneasy state we can call peace even if the price has been pretty high.

  The price of Mutual Assured Destruction, though, is that we build sufficient weapons to assure the destruction of the other guy after he has taken his best shot; which means accumulating more and more missiles and nuclear weapons. Arthur C. Clarke once likened that to “two small boys standing in a pool of gasoline seeing who could accumulate the most matches.” Alas he had the analogy wrong; but in fact it could be done that way. We have the technical capability to build doomsday machines that will automatically set themselves off if the United States is attacked.

  I never met anyone who wanted to make such a thing; which is interesting, because if we really believe in Mutual Assured Destruction, isn’t that what we ought to be building?

  Debating SDI: Opinion or Fact?

  Doug Beason

  No matter how much he tries, or how much he lobbies, President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative just doesn’t have a chance. SDI is as good as dead.

  However, the president’s “Star Wars” program does have a chance. Ever since Teddy Kennedy’s offhand, spur of the moment (knee-jerk?) remark dismissing SDI as so much mumbo-jumbo, the press has incessantly promoted missile defense as “Star Wars.” In this era of linguistic Watergatese and thirty-second “in-depth” analyses, the misnomer Star Wars is here to stay.

  So what?

  So what if “Star Wars” inaccurately portrays what is arguably the most farsighted and noble dream that man has dared to undertake? If, according to Dr. Benjamin Spock, the threat of nuclear war is such a terrible psychological burden to our children, then doesn’t mankind have a duty to prevent it from happening? And being realistic—knowing the myriad Soviet violations of every treaty we’ve signed with them—why doesn’t a mutual shield stopping these missiles appeal to everyone?

  Certainly, tagging a science fictional title onto SDI doesn’t help—but should this be a major concern to those debating SDI? I propose not, for there is something of greater importance to worry about: a disturbing number of anti-SDI opinions, cleverly disguised as facts, bubbling about in the “neutral” press.

  Our society guarantees every crackpot, nut, and ax murderer the right to air their opinions in public. And this is not bad; in fact, it’s the very stuff that makes us free. No matter how weird or disjointed someone else’s view may seem, there just might be a glimmer of insight in that cesspool of twisted rationale.

  The danger comes when those bastions of free thought—the printed, vocal and visual media—take subtle sides in an argument; taking sides by presenting opinions as facts.

  First allow me to clarify a point—it is absolutely essential that editorial freedom exist in the press. In fact, this is the only way good decisions are made. Debate, oration, and cross-examination ensure that every side of an issue is examined in detail. And during this process, an opinion is stated as an opinion and remains mutually exclusive from fact. E
xample: if the National Review (clearly a magazine of opinion) started espousing procommunistic propaganda as a scientific fact, then I would either suspect that William F. Buckley has something up his sleeve or someone is tapping into the magazine’s typesetting link. No surprises here—surprises in the sense that if a journal is (quietly now!) slanted in a particular manner, one is aware that he is being fed editorial opinion and not fact.

  I expect opinion from National Review, not a treatise on quantum physics.

  Contrast this to scientific journals. Undistorted facts, free of preconceived views, are essential to understanding scientific arguments. No one can argue with this.

  Carrying this one step further, when a decision is pending on something as important as defending our country against nuclear attack, editorial license can not be tolerated. Just as in a debate, where people sway one another with facts, opinion should be kept out of the arena—or at least until all the facts are in and a decision is imminent.

  The SDI debate is charged with emotion, and a danger lies in the synergistic mixing of facts and opinions. Example: Scientific American, an age-old and respected scientific journal for both the scientist and layman alike, in three years since President Reagan’s March 1983 SDI speech, has published not fewer than fourteen antinuclear or anti-SDI articles—an average of one every three issues.

  And every one of those articles was the lead article for the magazine that month.

  So what is the problem? They have their right to an opinion, don’t they?

  For one, this journal, usually noted for its unbiased presentation of facts, made sweeping, inflammatory statements which preceeded every anti-SDI article. An example, published in October, 1984: “President Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ program seems unlikely ever to protect the entire nation against a nuclear attack. It would nonetheless trigger a major expansion of the arm’s race.”

  This is an example of unbiased facts? Another abstract, published in June 1984, on antisatellite weapons: “Unless some action is taken to restrain further development of such weapons the positive contributions of satellites to international security will be threatened.”

  Objections? Certainly Scientific American may address social questions as well as scientific ones. There is no problem with this, and it is a commendable effort; social responsibility has long been a precedent among scientists. However, when only one point of view is presented—a point of view tainted by the author’s predisposition—one wonders if this is not an unbiased examination of the facts; especially when many nonscientist readers look to this journal in anticipation of a neutral, nonopinionated presentation. When the author knows a priori what he wants to prove, and incessantly uses only certain facts to gain those conclusions, then the thin guise of neutrality is stripped away and all credibility is lost.

  A legitimate need exists for debate on SDI; that is the only way that SDI’s problems may be ironed out. But for every protest the anti-SDI crowd cries out, a counter example can be given. This article is not intended to challenge the anti-SDI findings (of which some are very good), but a few moments’ thought on some of the issues brings these observations:

  arguing about the Soviets stopping a U.S. laser defense by rotating their missiles as they’re launched (have you ever considered how hard it is just to keep a nonrotating missile stable, much less a rotating one? Ask any launch control officer);

  arguing that the Soviets can neutralize U.S. lasers by painting a reflective coating on their missiles (nothing can reflect every type of laser; furthermore, critics such as Garwin dismiss the obvious implication that the extra weight of the reflective painting cuts missile range and warhead loads. In addition, he misses the point that one less warhead per missile slashes the Soviet nuclear arsenal by over 10 percent!);

  arguing that the Soviets can disguise their missile’s heat emissions to prevent the U.S. from detecting them, by either adding “sputtering” agents or using “fast-burning” fuels (cyrogenic methods—used in detecting faint stars, spy satellites, and other applications—have been around for years; the U.S. leads the Soviets in fast-burning fuels by a factor of five to ten years, and we can’t get our burn times down below a minute);

  arguing “the Soviets can put up more offensive weapons than we can afford defensive ones” (ever hear of Greg Canavan’s square root law? They have to put up the square of any amount we put up. Example: they need sixteen as many systems to defeat four of ours);

  or even arguing that antisatellite measures by the Soviets would make space-based platforms too vulnerable (I like Jerry Pournelle’s idea the best on this one: surround the space platform with twenty feet of concrete—concrete made from material mined on the moon!—and set a U.S. general officer on board. That way, any preemptive attack on the platform by the Soviets is an outright act of war).

  These issues are important, but a journal devoted to disseminating scientific fact is not the place for them to be debated. On second thought, maybe it is just the place; but what about the other side of the coin? How many pro-SDI articles have been published in Scientific American? If this is truly a neutral forum, well, where are they? Social responsibility is a double-edged sword: you’ve got to cut with both sides, or one edge dulls. And a review of the literature will convince you that the anti-SDI side is quickly becoming tedious.

  Another example: Broad’s Star Warriors attempts to discuss the SDI issues, but quickly falls into the mode of presenting a pro-SDI argument, then using weak, ill-thought-out examples to counter each argument. One grows weary reading the book, wondering which obscure critic Broad will quote next to prove his preconceived point. An exception to this: Physics Today presents both sides of the SDI issue, and should be commended as such; but this practice is in the minority.

  What, then, are some of the pro-SDI arguments you never hear about? For one, if we can make the Soviets go to all the trouble of designing, manufacturing and deploying a totally new technology to defeat SDI, then SDI is already working. Their economy cannot handle the extra workload; we’ll bankrupt them. A recent study which says the Soviet infrastructure will be bolstered by their anti-SDI effort has obviously not seen the statistics on what their military production lines (tanks, rockets, bombs—you name it) are already doing to their economy.

  Another ridiculous protest is the constraint that we “must kill 100 percent of their missiles for SDI to be successful.” If the Soviets can not depend on even 50 percent of their missiles surviving a SDI shield (by the way, which 50 percent of their missiles will we get? The 50% they targeted to our missile fields? No one knows), they can’t attack. Too many of our missiles would survive to retaliate against them. In other words, deterrence has reared its head and a “leakproof” SDI is not even necessary; just one that keeps them on their toes.

  Dr. Lowell Wood, an eminent physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was asked at the 1985 Space Foundation Meeting in Colorado Springs, about the newest concern of the anti-SDI folk: the problems in developing a “bug” free computer program to battle manage SDI. Dr. Wood observed that two years ago, the anti-SDI argument was that the technology for SDI would be impossible to attain; last year’s bugaboo was the cost of deploying SDI. Both of those protests were rescinded after proven false—proven false by such demonstrations as an electromagnetic railgun smashing a plastic bullet through an inch and a half plate of steel; a navy laser blasting through a missile at White Sands; the army intercepting, and obliterating, a missile in space, launched from Vandenberg AFB; the air force tracking the Space Shuttle with a laser on a mountaintop in Hawaii; atmospheric distortions removed from a laser beam propagating through the atmosphere; a neutral particle beam experiment soon to fly in space; advances in microwave technology; and a demonstration of the most efficient laser ever made—the free electron laser (FEL). The success of other, highly classified projects, such as “third generation” nuclear weapons—of which X-ray lasers are only one facet—can only be hinted at; but Dr. Edward Teller, the Father of the H-
Bomb, has testified before Congress and is absolutely convinced of their utility.

  Dr. Wood’s question, then, to the anti-SDI crowd was what would be their protest next year? The software “problem,” albeit a necessary worry, has been addressed (and probably solved by using modular programming, a technique that the National Laboratories, and AT&T, among others, have been using for years) and should not be the driving reason for scrubbing SDI. In fact, nor should any one reason be enough to halt SDI. What the critics conveniently forget is that SDI is a research project; a project soley to determine the feasibility of having a defensive shield. How can they be unbiased if they’ve already made up their minds that SDI won’t work?

  For something as important as SDI, and especially before any decision is made to deploy these systems, accurate facts must be presented and examined. But is this truly possible when a small group of scientists (the Union of Concerned Scientists totals less than 1 percent of all scientists) blatantly taint the most important issue of our time with preconceived opinions?

  A recent cartoon portrayed two ways to exercise the scientific method: the first method is to make a hypothesis, gather data, and then compare the hypothesis with the data to reach a conclusion; the second “method” reaches a conclusion, then gathers data to support that conclusion. This second “method” of research is an insult to all those who study the sciences, and in the very least, as a research project, SDI should be accorded the first method.