" Mein Fuhrer!... I can _VALK_!"

Nifty little find by Scott Lowther:
http://www.wired.com/politics/securi...?currentPage=1

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
Nifty little find by Scott Lowther:
http://www.wired.com/politics/securi...?currentPage=1


Pat

Gotta love this, p3:

|

"The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a
secret!" cries Dr. Strangelove. "Why didn't you tell the world?" After
all, such a device works as a deterrent only if the enemy is aware of
its existence. In the movie, the Soviet ambassador can only lamely
respond, "It was to be announced at the party congress on Monday."

[...]

So why was the US not informed about Perimeter? Kremlinologists have
long noted the Soviet military's extreme penchant for secrecy, but
surely that couldn't fully explain what appears to be a self-defeating
strategic error of extraordinary magnitude.

The silence can be attributed partly to fears that the US would figure
out how to disable the system. But the principal reason is more
complicated and surprising. According to both Yarynich and Zheleznyakov,
Perimeter was never meant as a traditional doomsday machine. The Soviets
had taken game theory one step further than Kubrick, Szilard, and
everyone else: They built a system to deter themselves.

By guaranteeing that Moscow could hit back, Perimeter was actually
designed to keep an overeager Soviet military or civilian leader from
launching prematurely during a crisis. The point, Zheleznyakov says, was
"to cool down all these hotheads and extremists. No matter what was
going to happen, there still would be revenge. Those who attack us will
be punished."
|

-- Peter Fairbrother

Peter Fairbrother wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:
Nifty little find by Scott Lowther:
http://www.wired.com/politics/securi...?currentPage=1

"The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a
secret!" cries Dr. Strangelove. "Why didn't you tell the world?" After
all, such a device works as a deterrent only if the enemy is aware of
its existence. In the movie, the Soviet ambassador can only lamely
respond, "It was to be announced at the party congress on Monday."

[...]

So why was the US not informed about Perimeter? Kremlinologists have
long noted the Soviet military's extreme penchant for secrecy, but
surely that couldn't fully explain what appears to be a self-defeating
strategic error of extraordinary magnitude.

Because Perimeter was a command-and-control system, not a Doomsday
Device - the Soviet equivalent of ABNCP or TACAMO. What it was
capable of doing, what it was intended to do, has often been vastly
overstated, which mythology this article only adds too.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Derek Lyons wrote:
Because Perimeter was a command-and-control system, not a Doomsday
Device - the Soviet equivalent of ABNCP or TACAMO. What it was
capable of doing, what it was intended to do, has often been vastly
overstated, which mythology this article only adds too.

The fresh water you drank on that sub...that wasn't _fluoridated_ by any
chance, was it?
Just checking...we can't have our boomer crews getting all sapped and
impurified, or there's a good chance Mr. Russki will catch us with our
pants down when the balloon goes up. ;-)

Pat

Derek Lyons wrote:
Peter Fairbrother wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:
Nifty little find by Scott Lowther:
http://www.wired.com/politics/securi...?currentPage=1
"The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a
secret!" cries Dr. Strangelove. "Why didn't you tell the world?" After
all, such a device works as a deterrent only if the enemy is aware of
its existence. In the movie, the Soviet ambassador can only lamely
respond, "It was to be announced at the party congress on Monday."

[...]

So why was the US not informed about Perimeter? Kremlinologists have
long noted the Soviet military's extreme penchant for secrecy, but
surely that couldn't fully explain what appears to be a self-defeating
strategic error of extraordinary magnitude.

Because Perimeter was a command-and-control system, not a Doomsday
Device - the Soviet equivalent of ABNCP or TACAMO. What it was
capable of doing, what it was intended to do, has often been vastly
overstated, which mythology this article only adds too.

Hi Derek:

I know that you know this - but I feel a need to make this point
explicitly to try to quell this meme of a Soviet automatic "Doomsday
Machine".

What Perimeter does is transfer launch authority to another human: a
predesignated national command authority (NCA) in a secure location.
There is no automatic launch of anything at anyone. This is not a
Doomsday Machine!

(And as you note the U.S. has the same practice for the same reasons.)

What I find bizarre (but far from unprecedented, I see this sort of
thing depressingly often) is that the article CONTAINS ITS OWN
REFUTATION! (Sorry for the shouting.)

The fact that Perimeter is in no way an automatic Doomsday Machine is
known to the article's author, but this does not deflect the flow of
specious narrative.

I am a bit more sympathetic to the numerous readers who seem not to
notice this contradiction since most are unfamiliar with the actual
Doomsday Machine concept, Dr. Strangelove, and nuclear command and
control issues, and assume that the author is offering them a reasonable
interpretation of the facts.

But, heck, why should mere truth dissuade a journalist from selling a
juicy story? (Next stop: the Weekly World News!)

Carey wrote:
But, heck, why should mere truth dissuade a journalist from selling a
juicy story? (Next stop: the Weekly World News!)

No kidding. I have a really hard time accepting that the codes for the
PALs on our warheads were 'set to zero'. Where the hell did he come up with
that piece of folly? Cites or sources? I found that article mostly
horse ****, but hey it's Wired mag, consider the source. I can't even
read that friggin rag with its f*cked page layouts.

BTW, some 'Doomsday Machine'. Some missiles stashed in hardened bunkers?
Supposedly able to command launch of other missiles on launch? Yeah, so
what? If those other missiles are already destroyed, what is there
to command? You don't think we've thought about how to target missiles
in hardened bunkers either? Where the hell is the *news* here? I'm with
Derek, we're quibbling over command and control.

Stick with the 'Bulletin of The Atomic Scientist' if you want something
reliable.

If you want wild doomsday machine stories, think of this one. During the
70's a series of shortwave radio stations appeared that sent out continuous
streams of single Morse code letters. On one freq. there was a station
sending out 'A' after 'A' after 'A', another freq. 'B' after 'B' after 'B', etc.
I don't know if these station are still in operation, at the time no-one
was sure what they were about, but the speculation was that they were
located in major Russian cities. The wild story scenario? If a Russian
'boomer' commander was in doubt about launch orders, he could run up a
mast antenna and listen to see if they were still sending. Of course,
does it not occur to anyone that an adversary would want to set up
their own stations on these same frequencies, sending the same letters?

'Mr. President, we cannot afford a Morse Code Gap!'

:-)

Dave

Carey wrote:

The fact that Perimeter is in no way an automatic Doomsday Machine is
known to the article's author, but this does not deflect the flow of
specious narrative.

There's a new article on the Perimeter-related satellite constellation
he http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2472/...old-war-relics
IIRC, we had a similar system that would launch radio transmitters
vertically atop some of our Minuteman missiles which would send the
launch codes to all the silos in case the central C&C was destroyed by a
surprise first strike.

Pat

David Spain wrote:
I don't know if these station are still in operation, at the time no-one
was sure what they were about, but the speculation was that they were
located in major Russian cities. The wild story scenario? If a Russian
'boomer' commander was in doubt about launch orders, he could run up a
mast antenna and listen to see if they were still sending. Of course,
does it not occur to anyone that an adversary would want to set up
their own stations on these same frequencies, sending the same letters?


Directional antenna on the sub to find out the direction the signals
were coming from?
It could also be to let the sub triangulate its position in the same way
by locking on to several signals, or serve to let the sub lock on to
the frequency its launch code signal would be transmitted on.
The "woodpecker" was pretty oddball also:
http://www.qsl.net/n1irz/woodpeck.html
I used to have a shortwave radio, and would run into both it and another
strange and powerful signal that sounded like some sort of giant
turboprop aircraft engine and high RPM propeller.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
There's a new article on the Perimeter-related satellite constellation
he http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2472/...old-war-relics
IIRC, we had a similar system that would launch radio transmitters
vertically atop some of our Minuteman missiles which would send the
launch codes to all the silos in case the central C&C was destroyed by a
surprise first strike.

The missile-launching-missiles seems a bit far-fetched, but there was a
back-up command path.

Last week I was on vacation in the Rapid City, SD area and took a tour of the
Minuteman I missile museum in South Dakota[1][2] (there's a Minuteman III
museum in Pat's back yard that I'll get to some other year). One of the
things the park rangers showed us was UHF antennas at the launch control site
and the missile site. They were there for communication with an aircraft,
called Looking Glass. The officers responsible for launching missiles could
communicate with them as an alternate path for orders. The aircraft could
also communicate directly with the missile silo to command a launch.

The park rangers also told us that one launch control site was not enough to
initiate a launch. The systems required that codes and keys be entered from
two launch control sites (IIRC, it had to be from two different flights within
the squadron).

Glen Overby
[1] http://www.nps.gov/mimi/index.htm
[2] http://www.nps.gov/history/history/o.../mimi/hrst.htm

Carey wrote:

What I find bizarre (but far from unprecedented, I see this sort of
thing depressingly often) is that the article CONTAINS ITS OWN
REFUTATION! (Sorry for the shouting.)

Worse yet, this whole thing has gone viral - the blogosphere is alive
with posts pointing to that article (or articles pointing to it, or
articles pointing to articles pointing to it) all a' trembling and a'
tingling with fear and horror over the RUSSIAN DOOMSDAY MACHINE - IT'S
ALIVE! IT'S COMING FOR US!

Completely ignoring the self refutation, which is hidden down at the
bottom where most readers have long since given up and headed out to
comment.

The fact that Perimeter is in no way an automatic Doomsday Machine is
known to the article's author, but this does not deflect the flow of
specious narrative.

He's got papers to sell - and facts don't sell papers. Atomic
doomsday and nekkid chicks sell papers.

Even the, normally more level headed and informed than most, Arms
Control Wonk gets it wrong.

I am a bit more sympathetic to the numerous readers who seem not to
notice this contradiction since most are unfamiliar with the actual
Doomsday Machine concept, Dr. Strangelove, and nuclear command and
control issues, and assume that the author is offering them a reasonable
interpretation of the facts.

One of the great gifts of the internet is that it allows more people
to be misinformed by shoddy yellow journalism, the likes of which we
haven't seen in decades, than ever before. No matter how narrow your
worldview, no matter where on the political spectrum you reside, you
can find a blog (or blogs) that agree with you 111%.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL