[AR] Re: Damascus AR Incident
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2017 00:46:09 -0500 (EST)
On Wed, 18 Jan 2017, Andrew Burns wrote:
Another point he made was that weapons of the time were armed by a
simple electrical pulse signal, an electrical pulse that could
conceivably be generated unintentionally during a mid-air aircraft
break-up for example. ... The only thing that stopped them detonating
with full yield was that during the break-up they didn't get an
erroneous pulse of voltage in the right place to arm them.
I think he may have misunderstood what was going on there -- not least
because the details are not well known. As I understand it, starting
quite early, the arming signal was a pulse *sequence*, and a non-trivial
one, which had to be exactly right. (The buzzphrase for this is "unique
signal generator".) This was specifically and explicitly a precaution
against accidental arming by, say, breaking wiring in a disintegrating
aircraft -- it was a guarantee that bombs could not be armed except by
deliberate human action.
This was about safety, not security, and the pulse sequence did have to be
mechanically generated, so it was still possible for human misbehavior to
arm bombs inappropriately. But arming without human cooperation was meant
to be impossible.
Later on (starting in the 60s, although it took quite a while for full
implementation), a further hurdle was added, possibly using some of the
same technology: Permissive Action Links required a human-entered arming
code which had to be supplied by higher authority -- under normal
peacetime conditions, the operating crews would *not* have the codes.
This one was about security, ensuring that bombs (especially ones that
were in the physical custody of NATO allies) weren't used without proper
authorization.
My main takeaway from the book was just how uncontrollable and pointless
a full nuclear exchange between superpowers would be, not being an adult
during the cold war it's hard to believe that people ever thought that
they could 'win' a large scale nuclear exchange...
(Getting pretty far off-topic, but I'll yield once to the temptation...)
Well, do bear in mind that the alternative -- thinking that a full nuclear
exchange would be the end of everything -- was largely a Western belief.
People who had been on the receiving end of a Nazi war of extermination(*)
had different ideas about how much damage one could absorb and still win
in the end. They agreed that such a war was highly undesirable -- one
devastating war was plenty -- but if it did happen, winning it was a
meaningful concept. In fact, surely the best way to deter the West from
starting such a war was to make it clear that the Soviets would win it.
(One reason why the Cold War was nerve-racking at times was that the two
sides were often reading from somewhat different scripts, and puzzling
over why the other side wasn't picking up its cues properly.)
(* In the West in WW2, the goal of German occupation was mainly to keep
potential troublemakers under control, while possibly also harnessing
local resources to the war effort. In the east, the long-term goal was
the expansion of Germany -- the ideal outcome was that the subhuman scum
cluttering up the desirable real estate would all die, making room for
Germans. Living under German occupation wasn't pleasant in the West, but
in the East it was orders of magnitude worse. Similar story in the
Pacific: Japanese occupation was bad in places like the Philippines, but
immensely worse in China. )
Henry
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