Notes on Chapter 6:
1. This was subsequently expanded to
Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD; what the late Herman Kahn
called "a suicide pact" in his seminal work On
Thermonuclear War.
2. The story is told that in the first
days of McNamara's tenure as Secretary of Defense, he invited the
Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) to explain
the US strategic war plan (known as the Single Integrated
Operational Plan or SIOP). After the review, McNamara said
in horror "General, that's not a war plan! All you
have is a kind of horrible spasm."
3. This is presumably one reason for
Soviet opposition to the Reagan SDI studies.
4. The "madman with a missile"
scenario was first discussed by Herman Kahn. For a time
after 1970 it was not taken seriously, but the rise of Khadafi
and the Ayotolah Khomeni have given it a renewed attention. We
now have the requirement for Northern/Southern Hemisphere
deterrence. Defense against ballistic missiles will be
necessary even if glasnost and perestroika are entirely
successful.
5. Such satellites are, of course,
vulnerable to attack. However, their destruction would
provide unambiguous warning of immanent attack.
6. One approach to vectored energy
weapons is to employ debris, steel slugs, or other physical
objects -- a sort of atomic grapeshot. Another is to focus
radiant energy.
7. As of 1988, the Soviet Union continues
to require every citizen to undertake some thirty hours of
instruction in civil defense, and maintains a system of fallout
shelters. It is said that the Soviet population doesn't
take this training seriously.
8. One of the most far reaching decisions made
by McNamara was canceling the highly successful X Programs in the
name of arms control. This action was consistent with the theory
of arms control: the X projects were a continual source of new
military technology. New military technology is precisely what
arms controllers don’t want.
9. It is very important to understand that the
alternatives to strategic defense are grim: one must either adopt
a policy of launch on early warning, or watch deterrence fail as
the enemy realizes he can overcome the retaliatory force with a
properly planned first strike.
Launch on early warning is dangerous and destabilizing policy,
and even that can be defeated with a well planned pin-down
strike.
10. As access to space becomes cheaper, such
weapons become more feasible. Ultimately such defenses would be
in orbit.
11. There have been many scientific
breakthroughs since this was written in 1969. These have
led to dramatic developments in laser technology, used for
detecting, tracking, and killing enemy missiles; development of
tiny computers for on-board guidance of kinetic energy weapons;
technology for construction of both ground and space-based
mirrors for directing beamed energy; etc.