Nuclear Warfare III – Nuclear Proliferation And Missile Defense

Date: Sept 26, 1983, Location: Moscow, Soviet Satellite command section.

A few minutes past midnight, Sargent Stanislav Petrov was monitoring the systems as a part of normal routine when suddenly one of the alarms started beeping. The radar system had detected a few missiles launched towards Soviet union.

An inner voice inside his mind was telling Stanislav something was not right. If US wanted to launch a nuclear attack, they would have launched it full scale. They would not have stopped at a few missiles. This was more likely to be a computer glitch.

He faced a tormenting decision. Whether to believe his gut and risk a small chance of destruction of his homeland, or whether to follow proper military protocols and alert nuclear command, which could have resulted in Soviet nuclear missile launch. If he waited a few minutes, the boundary radars would confirm if they are seeing missiles or not. But if they were indeed missiles, it would be too late by then.

At the end, he chose to wait. Boundary radars never went off. There were no missiles. It was a computer mistake. The world came back from a brink of total disaster.

This was not the first incident and the people involved in command and control chains on either side were painfully aware that this would not be the last. While…

The last two posts were dedicated to the understanding of nuclear strategy and strategic countermeasures. This post deals with the latest development, LASER missile defense and its implications of nuclear warfare, especially the phenomena of nuclear proliferation.

Let’s visit the strategic objective equation in the previous post once again.

SOA = SOA1 & SOA2

SOA = ( N1 x PS1 x PH1 x BA > TA ) & (  N2 x PS2 x PH2 x BA > TA )

Where N1,N2 are number of nuclear weapons of first and second strike. PS1 and Ps2 are probability of survival of respective strikes. PH1, PH2 are probability of hitting target, or accuracy of weapons of respective strikes, and BA is area destroyed by each bomb or weapon.

TA is total area of the enemy regions.

As we can see in the initial phase of nuclear race, the nuclear powers were focused on the number of nuclear weapons, N1 and N2. This lead to tremendous increase in number of nuclear weapons. We could call this intra-country nuclear proliferation.

Also there was considerable inter-country nuclear proliferation. This was for two reasons.

One, any nuclear power was happy when one of its allies went nuclear. Russia was willing to deploy weapons in Cuba in 1960s Cuban crisis. America was happy to see Pakistan become nuclear, since it meant some America friendly weapons right at the doorsteps of Russia.

There was second and important reason. Once a country goes nuclear, all countries it had conflict with will also want to go nuclear. South East Asia is good example of this phenomenon. Since China became nuclear, and India had fought war with China, India went nuclear. Then Pakistan felt too vulnerable  and it also went nuclear. Sort of a chain reaction.

Going back to blackboard, let us capture that in an equation. Imagine this as “game of life” simulation.

Let Pc = probability of conflict between two countries.

Nmax  = max number, or total number of countries in the world.

Nx = total number of nuclear countries at iteration no x

Let us say that in every iteration of the game max one conflict happens.

So in x’th iteration, the additional number of countries going nuclear is

delta Nx = probability of conflict x probability of conflict between one nuclear and one non nuclear nation

bool[RND{0-1}(x) > Pc]  gives us whether conflict will happen or not in that iteration, where RND{0-1} is a random number between 0 and 1, Pc is conflict probability (also a fraction larger than 0 and less than 1)

deltaNx = [bool(RND{0-1}(x) > Pc)] * (Nx)C1 * (Ntotal-Nx)C1/(Ntotal)C2

But from the basic permutation combination theory we know that (N) C 1 = N

Thus deltaNx = [bool(RND{0-1}(x) > Pc)] * (Nx) * (Ntotal-Nx)/(Ntotal)C2

Total number of nuclear countries in x’th iteration is summation of countries going nuclear in each iteration from 0 to x.

If we were to actually calculate these using some numbers we would notice one interesting thing. The rate at which the world becomes nuclear increases exponentially with increase in Pc. So if the probability of conflict is doubled, you have four times as many countries going nuclear in the same time, eight times if the probability is tripled and so on.

With global warming, financial crisis, etc. we have lot more possibilities of conflict. So the risk of world becoming nuclear increases very fast. And as we saw, unless you and your opponents are capable of fully destroying each other, there exists a probability of nuclear war in the game. Two smaller powers could really drop nuclear bombs on each other. A rogue dictator, or terrorist hell bent on destruction, could end up firing a nuclear missile or two.

So in this new world, USA is not only worried about full scale attack from Russia, it is also worried about small scale attacks from rogue nations. A credible missile defense will serve two purposes.

One, it will reduce the PH, the probability of hitting enemy’s weapons. As we have seen a reduction in PH by factor of two will require the enemy to double their arsenal. This could result in prohibitive costs. Instead it is easier for the enemy to develop similar missile defense and have similar effect on PH of the first country.

This lead to the development of next phase of nuclear warfare, strategic missile defense. In the decade of 1980s the Americans considered this seriously for the first time. The original ambitious star wars program was later scaled down and was implemented as an array of radars linked with strategically placed surface-to-air missiles. The whole world watched this at work in 1991 gulf war, where Iraqi SCUD missles were intercepted by USA patriot missiles. Even though the accuracy of intercept was only in the range of 2%, it was proven to be a feasible option.

While patriot missiles were being used as interceptors, the work was under way to use direct energy, aka LASER beams. It faced multiple problems. The missiles were too fast, thus the heating energy quickly dissipated. A particular chemical, readily available in paint shops was found to be very effective in reflecting LASERs, thus reducing effective heating. Any such LASER beam would have to be fired from Airplane, which made it challenging to focus a beam accurately over a long distance.

One by one the problems were worked out. Finally on Feb 11, 2010 the US Airforce successfully carried out first test of Airborne Missile Defense using YAG  LASER ( LASER beam created using Yttrium Aluminum garnet crystals as lasing medium).

Apart from USA, Russia, China and India are working on missile shields. But no other country has made significant progress, especially as far as direct energy (LASER) weapons are considered.

Effective missile defense will shift the weight of strategy away  from more missiles and weapons. In addition, it will discourage small scale nuclear powers from developing weapons. They can see that their weapons have very minimal chance of reaching target. They are not likely to have enough resources to develop and deploy enough weapons to cause legitimate threat. That’s why, if you haven’t noticed, the announcement of successful LASER missile defense came from USA shortly after the news that Iran made significant progress in developing nuclear weapons material.

A credible missile shield is still a far shot, but LASER missile defense is a giant step in that direction. Again the world stands on the brink of new age, the age of reduced nuclear arsenal, and if the luck smiles, perhaps one day a nuclear free world.

Nuclear Warfare II – Technology Developments

We saw the general nuclear strategy was focused around MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. Since attack was the only defense for nuclear war in this phase, each country was maximizing its capability of attack and people were busy minting nuclear weapons left and right. The defense was primarily concerned with preserving the ability of attack rather than minimizing the destruction.  Following were some interesting developments that took place as each country balanced its own arsenal against the threat.

Underground bunkers –

This is perhaps the most widely used, most common measure countries take against possible nuclear attack. A bunker in a mountain is the safest place you can have against nuclear attack. In early 60s Soviet Russia developed technology to build and operate several such nuclear-resistant bunkers. These bunkers were so well dug and developed that if required ,a small scale version of entire government, a command and control cell, could be operated from a bunker.

To counter these bunkers, bunker buster bombs were developed. But they have limitations and no known measure can guarantee destruction of a concrete bunker buried under large amount of clay and and rocks.

Nuclear Submarine:

If missiles and stealth bombers are rooks and bishops of the game of chess of nuclear warfare, nuclear powered nuclear armed submarine is the undisputed queen of this game. You could store your second strike missiles on deep underground bunkers. But if enemy knew the location of your bunkers, they would direct extra firepower or a weapon like bunker buster bomb. Submarine offers you the option of burying your nuclear missiles under the sea.

So a traditional submarine could offer you a good second strike option. But traditional diesel or electric submarines need to come on surface every now and then to get breathable air. So they cannot travel far from the border.

A nuclear submarine, with a few kgs of nuclear fuel can remain operational for months at stretch. It can recycle its own water and air as it has abundant energy. This means it can travel far, even to the doorsteps of your enemy if required.  Given that sea covers 70% of earth surface, more than double the land area, it offers the nuclear submarine huge roaming field, making it impossible to locate positively at all times. The nuclear submarines can be quite large, carry more crew and weapons than their traditional counterparts. Considering the strategic objective equation in last post again,

SO : N x PS x PH x BA > TA,

where N = no. of nuclear weapons,

PS = probability of survival of the weapons,

PH = probability of weapons hitting the target and BA = area destroyed by the bomb,

Nuclear submarine is difficult to detect, thus maximizing it chances of survival, thus high PS.

Nuclear submarine can be taken almost to enemy shore, thus maximizing chances of the missiles hitting the target, thus high PH.

Nuclear submarine can carry much large number of weapons, thus high N.

So nuclear submarine scores high on three of the four counts, thus making it the queen of the game of nuclear-chess.

Thats why nuclear powers with small geographical footprint , namely Britain and France, have all their nuclear arsenal mounted on nuclear submarines. With wide coverage and  excellent stealth capability compared to other nuclear delivery mechanisms, nuclear submarine is an ace in hand. The nuclear war is not over till you destroy your enemy’s last nuclear submarine.

The  Internet:

If I were to give stars to to each development, this development would unequivocally be worth five stars.

Believe it or not. Internet was born as a countermeasure to nuclear war. In fifties and sixties the architecture of the communication infrastructure in USA was “hub and spokes”. So for each city, there was a big central telephone exchange, which handled all the traffic for that city as well as traffic from that city to the rest of the world. This central exchange made ideal target for a nuclear weapon. If such an exchange were to be destroyed, an entire city would be disconnected from the world.

So DARPA, one of the defense research body of USA Government, launched a project to experiment a network where several nodes would be connected to several nodes forming a complex map. We know that in a mathematical map, the redundancy level of connections between different nodes increases inverse- logarithmically with the number of connections between the nodes. So even if you destroy a few nodes from this map, still most of the nodes will remain connected with the other nodes.

What started as a network to connect universities was later expanded to include commercial organizations, government offices and well, very soon pretty much the whole world.

Global Positioning System, aka GPS –

Consider the old strategic objective equation again.

AOA2: N2a x PS2a x PH2a x BAa > TAr

As we observed, if you could increase the probability of your missiles hit their target by a factor of two, you cut down the required number of missiles by half. So what better way could be there to increase the accuracy than to devise a system that tells the missiles very accurately where it is now and where it is headed.

GPS achieves this by using a constellation of satellites. At any point no less than 23 GPS satellites are active in orbits around earth. This number ensures that at any point a GPS receiver device located anywhere on earth or in space around earth could have at least 4 and maximum 7 satellites in line of sight. The GPS satellite transmit signals containing valuable information, such as the exact time the signal was transmitted. The receiver calculates the distance from the satellite using the time at which it received the signal and calculating the time difference , which when multiplied by speed of signal (speed of light) gives distance from satellite.

We live in three dimensional world, so ideally only three satellites would be enough. But every measurement has some error. If the three satellites seen by the device are orthogonal to each other, then this error would be minimum. But if they are very close to each other ,say all of them are to the east of the device, then the measurement in one dimension would be accurate, whereas measurement in other two dimensions would be highly inaccurate as co-axial measurement errors amplify each other. Thus we need 4th satellite to correct errors because most likely your locator satellites will not be orthogonal to each other.

Need is the mother of invention, and the need to win or at least survive nuclear war was mother of lots of inventions. But rapidly expanding number of nuclear countries poses a new challenge, nuclear proliferation. More on that in the next post.