Chaos Manor View, Saturday, September 05, 2015

We had a mile walk this morning. Pleasant, and we saw many neighbors. Our new water heater works fine.  It should last as long as we do. Trying to get back to work now that things have settled a bit.

I have been musing on Israeli options now that President Obama’s deal has become assured and the Congress can do nothing about it.

The “deal” (I used to teach Constitutional Law and I knew that treaties ratified by 2/3 vote of the Senate were the supreme law of the land, but I never heard of a deal not rejected by 60% of the Senate was) assures us that Iran will have at least a small force of nuclear weapons whenever whoever is the current Supreme Leader decides to make the effort.  We will not have evidence that will convince those enamored of the deal for quite a bit after the fact, although intelligence operatives will know earlier.  No one can predict who will be the Ayatollah selected to be the Supreme Leader to follow this one, but he – it will be a he – will be an Ayatollah and Koran scholar.  Perhaps he will find an interpretation of the Koran that allows an Israel not subjected to dhimmitude to exist as a truce for his lifetime; that decision will be easier for him if Israel has a very survivable second strike force, 500 psi silos far enough apart that it takes at least one warhead (delivered by missile or by ox cart) to be sure of taking out the silo.  Elementary security can assure that it will be difficult to erect a gas bag fuel air explosion over any silo and even more so to get several at once; that it will take a nuclear strike on each missile.  This is what the US had in the Cold War.  We don’t really have that now; just what the probability of alert readiness of our deterrent is is not known, but it is unlikely to be so high as it was in 1989. It needs to be perceived as very high since deterrence is an event that takes place in the mind of the enemy commander (just as surprise is an event that takes place in the mind of your commander).

Israel could place the deterrent silos on the border of Judea and Samaria and Gaza, making it certain that striking the silo with a nuke would cause enormous casualties in the occupied territories. This would be a further deterrent.

The command and control system would have to be complex because the temptation to a missile officer to stop wasting his life sitting in a hole in the ground by wiping out all those sons of bitches would be high.  We used to have experts in that sort of design; I was one of them, as was Possony (more senior than me, of course) and Kane (Director of Plans for General Schriever and with Possony and me and one of the authors of The Strategy of Technology).  But most of us who really studied that kind of technology are gone, or rather old; I doubt Israel has any.  Design of a second strike deterrent and making sure it is not a first strike force without authorization of the civilian leadership is more complex than most suppose.

I do not think Netanyahu thirsts for the blood of Iranian civilians, so it is likely he is contemplating the enormous effort of building a second strike deterrent force; the window for a non-nuclear strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities is rapidly closing, more rapidly with the deployment of the new Russian SAM system they have just bought. I doubt it could be done now without the cooperation of the USAF air supremacy forces; since that will not happen, the deal’s obligation to have USAF defend Iran against an Israeli air strike is not meaningful, thus saving our pilots from the dilemma that would come up if they were ordered to fire on IDF aircraft.

I think of no other strategy for Israel.  It will be expensive – it sure was for us, and will be again when Iran has the bomb – but it is time for both of us to start.  It means acquiring a group of young men and women, competent enough to fight a nuclear war if deterrence fails, willing to spend a significant part of their lives doing nothing but waiting to hear a klaxon they hope never to hear.

We did it once.  Perhaps we can do it again.

I was asked specific questions in another conference; The answers supplement what I said above.

1. What are the chances Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear sites to prevent them from producing an atomic weapon?

Low and decreasing. The probability of a successful long term delay in Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons without a major strategic nuclear strike against Iran is low and falling; once the new SAMs are employed and operational, that probability approaches zero without USAF – or Saudi-Jordanian – cooperation, and will be low even with that.  A nuclear first strike would take a lot of political maneuvering and be a difficult intention to conceal; as well as being morally reprehensible to most Israelis.  Israel is after all a democracy in the modern sense of the word; there is political responsibility.

2.  If the attack occurs, will Israel use nukes as a first strike to ensure the deep underground facilities are destroyed?   Or as a later strike, perhaps?

See above.  Zero probability without political preparation, which would not be concealable..

3. If Israel does attack Iran, will Israel survive the Iranian retaliation as a nation, if Iranian missiles, Hamas, and Hezbollah go all-out?   Will the Iron Dome protect them?

Possibly, but it is not sufficient to protect Israel from nuclear attack without warning (ox cart delivery of attacks on Iron Dome and IDF air assets, as a possibility).  Israel needs a survivable retaliatory deterrent force.  She does not have one now.

4. If the attack occurs, when do you think it will happen – before or after next year’s Election Day?

After, and by then it will be too late to be non-nuclear, and will require USAF air superiority force assistance ; so likely zero probability.

5. What do you see as the fallout – radioactive and/or geopolitical – from such an attack?

Horrible, but improbable.

6. Will the USA militarily intervene to protect Iran from Israel, i.e., shoot down Israeli planes or missiles?

It won’t happen, but giving such orders would damn near destroy the Air Force and Navy. A lot of senior officers would resign.

As I have said, given the plain language of the Koran that there can be only truce, not peace outside the house of Islam, Israel needs a secure deterrent, and has only a brief time to get to building it.  Design is not easy, and it will be expensive. I do not know of any deterrent experts in the Israeli general staff, but I have few contacts there. Thinking about the unthinkable has fallen out of favor since the end of the Cold War, and we have few people who have continued to study the technology of deterrence, Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and Mutual Assured Survival, which I find preferable although much more difficult and costly. One principle: it is better to intercept enemy weapons than to avenge them. Another: you will not intercept them all in a mass attack, but you may get all those under the control of someone mad enough to launch them.

Deterrence takes place in the mind of the enemy commander; you can strongly influence it. But it is not your decision.

As far as I can determine, the President has decided that we have no choice. He will therefore try to persuade Iran to make truce with the Great Satan and Israel, in the hopes that something will change for the better. This is reliance on deterrence; but I see few signs that we are doing the work necessary to build a deterrent, nor do I see Israel beginning on that. I presume that he is relying on time and our cultural weapons of mass destruction – iPads and blue jeans and rock music – to accomplish the destruction of the Iranian regime. We can pray he is right; containment worked with the Soviet Union. But deterrence was necessary in the Cold War, and is needed now; and we don’t have it.

I invite you to consider this, even though I have quoted it many times. It applies to war as well as economics.

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

…but war is just a hobby

Dr. Pournelle,
Lamenting SAC reminds me of the nursery rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
all the king’s horses
and all the king’s men
couldn’t put Humpty together again.

From which I learned about thermodynamics, entropy, and the complexity of systems. Once disassembled, SAC can’t be re-created. USSTRATCOM will have to be modified to support a new strategy. So far, thanks to Sec State, we have only the beginnings of restarting MADD. Iran will have nukes (I remember a particular North Dakotan reentry system shroud that required removal of “Hey Iran” graffitti), and Putin is threatening to use his stockpile tactically to solidify his reclamation of half of Ukraine.
We’ve unilaterally reduced our strike capability by at least half of what it was at the end of the Reagan administration. Today I see no Truman, no Ike, no Rickover, no LeMay, and no national will to jump start this effort, nor any real inklings of a strategy. On balance, this may be a good thing — I’d not trust any of the current crop of wannabee presidential nominees with the responsibility of being a Cold War CINC.
As stated in an earlier e-mail, “There will be War” is as pertinent today as it was in 1983.
-d

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=there+will+be+war&rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Athere+will+be+war

If you have not seen my squib on NASA, Shuttle, and the bureaucracy of the space program (2007) it is here: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view471.html#Tuesday and I probably won’t think about the subject again for a long while.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Friday, September 04, 2015

This day was devoured by predators. I got up expecting to do a SKYPE discussion with the Britain producers who have me doing comments in their show series; the conference was all arranged for 10 AM, and I would be on line with SKYPE and my headset at that hour. I need the headset for anything that requires me to be very comprehensible. Ten AM because I do not promise to be either civil or coherent before that hour.

But at my morning ablutions before 9 AM I discovered that our downstairs bath had no hot water. The fire was out and the pilot off. I wasn’t likely to be able to do anything about that before the stroke, and I surely wasn’t more competent now, so we called the plumbers who had installed it. That turned out to have some glitches, but they were minor, and we had an appointment for between 1100 and 1400, so I went to keep my 1000 hours SKYPE appointment, only to discover that my appointment wasn’t being kept, could we do it next week? I answered as politely as I could, and of course looked at some mail, and next thing you know it was 1100. Thought I’d take a walk, but Roberta pointed out that the plumbers could come at any time, and the weekly cleaning lady was distraught without hot water, and…

So no walk. No phone conservation. Foul mood. Fortunately the plumbers came at 1115. Same chap who installed it ten years ago. Found water in the gas lines, due to a worn pressure relief valve or something. Could start paying for this and that, but the thing had given us ten years without problems, and it wasn’t expected to last a lot longer. OK, replace it. Get me a new hot water tank. How soon?

The day started getting better, since they could do it today – in fact it’s 1630 and done – so all I’m really out is a few hours of hot water and $4000, which is not a disaster so long as you keep subscribing and John DeChancie keeps working with me on Lisabetta, and Niven and Steve Barnes keep grinding on the – strictly science fiction – novel with the working title of call of Cthulhu but it’s really about the first interstellar colony and mankind’s beginnings as a starfaring people. Good stuff. And I got some more done on Janissaries-Mamelukes even though it’s still harder to type than I like, and I keep hitting multiple keys and having to look at the keyboard and then look up and see all the red and blue wavy lines and have to fix that, and I’m rambling again.

But the work is done, the water is hot, and it’s not too late to take a walk. More later.

Walked a mile. Went out to dinner. All’s well.

record warmth….

http://www.drroyspencer.com/

during the Medieval warm period when trees grew under the glacier whose retreat Obama expressed concern about this week…

J

And I point out again:

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/01_1.shtml

After this great glaciation, a succession of smaller glaciations has followed, each separated by about 100,000 years from its predecessor, according to changes in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit (a fact first discovered by the astronomer Johannes Kepler, 1571-1630). These periods of time when large areas of the Earth are covered by ice sheets are called “ice ages.” The last of the ice ages in human experience (often referred to as the Ice Age) reached its maximum roughly 20,000 years ago, and then gave way to warming. Sea level rose in two major steps, one centered near 14,000 years and the other near 11,500 years. However, between these two periods of rapid melting there was a pause in melting and sea level rise, known as the “Younger Dryas” period. During the Younger Dryas the climate system went back into almost fully glacial conditions, after having offered balmy conditions for more than 1000 years. The reasons for these large swings in climate change are not yet well understood.

The map is not the territory. We do not have good maps. We know that CO2 can add up to a degree per century; but the temperature was rising before CO2. Climate is what we expect: it is a map. Weather is what we get. It is sometimes what we expect, but there are anomalies, meaning our maps are not good.

Re: The Arctic Iris Effect

Jerry,

I think you’ll find the linked article quite interesting. The basic issue is that the greatest effect of Arctic ice is that of an insulating blanket – as opposed to the effect of its albedo. Thick ice cover, itself protected by a thick layer of cold water underneath, acts to insulate the large volume of (comparatively) warm water at greater depths. When ice is not present due to melting and/or wind pushing it aside, the water below is mixed by wind and vents great amounts of heat into the atmosphere. The result is a cooling ocean and a warming lower atmosphere, exactly what has been observed.

The Arctic Iris Effect, Dansgaard-Oeschger Events, and Climate Model Shortcomings. Lesson from Climate Past – part 1.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/01/the-arctic-iris-effect-dansgaard-oeschger-events-and-climate-model-shortcomings-lesson-from-climate-past-part-1/

Regards,

George

PS: I’ve copied the article tile one one line followed by the URL on a separate line both in plain text, just in case that helps to maintain context when your software shortens the URL.

“Skepticism is a core part of science and we need to embrace it. If the evidence is tentative, you should be skeptical of your evidence. We should be our own worst critics.”

<http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/study-delivers-bleak-verdict-on-validity-of-psychology-experiment-results>

Except in ‘climate science’ and human intelligence research, apparently.

It’s ironic that a professor in one of the woo-woo ‘sciences’ has more professional integrity and understanding of the scientific method than many of those in the supposedly more concrete disciplines.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Nuclear Strategy

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I read your discussion on Iran and the Munich-like deal with interest.   I have an extremely naive question:

Can we confront a nuclear Iran with overwhelming conventional force?

What I mean is, if Iran nukes Israel, can we start off with a conventional bombing campaign using cruise missiles and stealth aircraft, then escalate to a ground invasion, culminating in the occupation of Tehran?

You mention the need for SIOPS et al. I suggest we needed that during the Cold War because invading the Soviet Union was a pragmatic impossibility. We could not match the Russians in conventional battle in Western Europe, so nuclear weapons were the only reasonable deterrent measure.

Iran has only a fraction of the old USSR’s population, geography, and military potential. Conventional defeat of the Iranian army and conquest of the country is feasible.

At any rate, I don’t see what else we can threaten them with;  the will to use nuclear weapons on another country is simply not in modern Washington DC. There’s no point in having a SIOP or a SAC if you not only do not possess the will to use them, you cannot even credibly bluff that you will to others.

Which is what happens when you have a chief executive who goes around bowing to other world leaders, but I digress.
At any rate — conventionally speaking, we have the ability to destroy Iran. And it is *deterrence* , which will keep Iran in check.  If we can threaten Iran credibly with conventional weapons, we don’t need nuclear weapons to do it.  Nuclear weapons are only really needed for countries like China or Russia which are beyond conventional military power. 
At any rate, the best thing we can do to deter Iran is to elect a President who will credibly brandish a big stick.    If we have that, we can get by with less weaponry. If we don’t have that, even having the entire 1945 military back will not help.
Respectfully,

Brian P.

Hi Jerry,

Hope this finds you well.

I’ve been reading your displeasure of the current deal with Iran with a great deal of interest since most of what you say coincides with what I’ve been saying for months. I’m also just as flummoxed as you seem to be about what else we could have done since there didn’t appear to be any way to stop Iran from getting a nuke any more than there was in stopping North Korea or Pakistan from doing so; short of invasion. Since this “deal” doesn’t really address this; even the White House on their web site admits all this does is slow Iran from producing enough material to make a bomb from 2-3 months to at least 1 year, it doesn’t appear the intent of this deal was ever to stop Iran from getting a nuke but rather to simply delay it until Obama was no longer in office. Politically, this makes sense because the president gets to proclaim how wonderful his foreign policy was while also blaming whomever takes his place in 2017 for letting Iran get a nuke. He couldn’t stop them anyway, so why not make political points out of it, if possible?

Unfortunately, Congress seems to be completely clueless of the politics behind this deal. At least they seem to be doing everything in their power to ensure they can claim they tried to stop him while quietly behind the scenes patting him on the back for his magnificent political maneuvering. The Corker-Cardin agreement is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen come out of Congress in years; and that’s saying quite a bit. Constitutionally, it has dubious authority and is a completely arbitrary process that Obama could simply ignore even if it went off fully as Republicans expected; with passage in both houses and then an override of his veto. Congress had a much better option and still does.

I’m not sure why Congress simply doesn’t declare this deal to be a treaty as far as Congress is concerned in the form of a Congressional resolution. It would be similar in effect to Obama arbitrarily saying it isn’t and fully within the Constitutional authority granted to Congress to set their own rules and in the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution. All it would require is the ability to get past the certain filibuster of such a resolution in the Senate. With 54 Republicans, this means they only need 6 Democrats and the filibuster dies. This would then require Congress to handle it like a treaty meaning all they would need to defeat it is get 34 votes in the Senate. The president would certainly pitch an executive fit and refuse to accept it. Since it would not have the full authority of law he could ignore it, but Congress is now on record as opposing this treaty including andy and all sanctions relief and the Iranian legislative body would be fully aware that this meant U.S. sanctions would almost certainly go back into place in 2017. They would never accept this and the deal would die in the Iranian parliament. Speculative, to be sure, but it is well within the power of Republicans in Congress to accomplish and would be fully within their Constitutional authority unlike what they are trying now.

This still doesn’t address what to do about Iran acquiring a nuke, however. I would vote for the rapid manufacture and deployment of both land-based and satellite-based Thor systems around and above Iran with a couple of weeks worth of “capability demonstrations” on ISIS targets of opportunity were I in office. Iran might still get its nuke, but would fully understand this is not be enough to avoid total annihilation should they decide to get belligerent in the Middle East. Alas, it would also mean China and Russia would develop their own Thor-type systems and the weaponization of space would begin.

Continue to get better. I am definitely looking forward to your next novel.

Braxton S. Cook

You do realize we’re giving Iran a war guarantee in the event of Israeli attack, sir?

You do realize we’re giving Iran a war guarantee in the event of Israeli attack, sir?

It’s even more insane than the British guarantees of Belgium in the Great War and Poland in the Second World War, much less the blank cheque Wilhelm II gave the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Crazier than the dozens of war guarantees we’ve handed out freely since the fall of the USSR.

I didn’t even think that such was possible, but it has come to pass.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

I wonder how many USAF pilots will actually lock on and fire at Israeli jets.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, September 03, 2015

Managed a three mile walk this morning, on the flat of course, but close to the daily walks I took before the stroke. The walker with four seven inch wheels was a little tricky to learn, but now I have confidence in it, and it was easy and comfortable. I hope to do at least two mile a day, five days a week, in future, weather permitting. I still don’t have any confidence in night walking, which I used to do a lot; my internal gyroscope doesn’t work at all, and while our streets are lighted, there are dark stretches with not enough – or might not be enough – visual cues. I might try driving tonight: Michael will drive me to my club in my car, and nearby is a big well lighted city parking lot nearly empty in the evenings but open all night: the perfect venue for that kind of test. If that works well and I expect it to, then I can contemplate short trips to the store in the daytime. I doubt I’d do many. Ray Bradbury got on all his life owning cars he couldn’t drive, and did rather well…

Later: it was still daylight when we reached the very empty lot, and I found I can steer accurately and stop where I want to. One more goal accomplished.

Obama Secures 34 Senators’ Support for Iran Nuclear Deal

Number guarantees deal can advance despite opposition in Congress

http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-secures-34-senate-democrats-support-for-iran-nuclear-deal-1441203473

It is now assured that the Iran “deal” – not a Constitutional Treaty but the President has assured us that unless 60% of the Senate votes to close debate, it is the Law of the land – will be agreed to. This means that the only thing keeping Iran from acquiring a nuclear force of at least some magnitude will be the will of the Ayatollah who is Supreme Leader under their Constitution. They will have the ability not long after they have the will, and they can keep that secret given the nature of the inspections, some of which not only require 28 day’s notice but have provisions restricting the nationality of the inspectors.

I do not know what, if any, plans we have for the war fighting forces need to deter Iran, and act if deterrence fails. The current Supreme Leader Ayatollah has been explicit in stating the deal does not change his enmity of the United States, whom he considers the great Satan, but then the Soviets under Khrushchev threatened to bury us, and we are not yet interred: but we did have SAC, an elite force dedicated to preventing The Big War (“Peace is our profession” ) but capable of fighting it and possibly winning it if deterrence failed.

As Herman Kahn said of Khrushchev, possibly he’s crazy, but is he that crazy? It was our job as cold warriors to make it clear that launching the first strike was really crazy, beginning with the basic plans. The big Project 75 survey of basing schemes, and finally strategic defense: a policy of assured survival to replace Mutual Assured Destruction – MAD – which we inherited from Kennedy/Johnson. Kennedy himself approved the first efforts, such as Bennie Schriever’s Project Forecast (Conducted by the late Col. Francis X. Kane, my co-author) and Project 75 directed by Bill Dorrance of Aerospace and edited by me. The best way to survive a nuclear war was not to have one; but the best way not to have one was to make sure the other guy would lose big, whatever he did to us.Our weapons would survive his best strike, and there would be enough to finish off his offensive forces while striking a terrible vengeance on anything he held dear. We had the weapons and the warriors to accomplish that no matter what he did. We can do that now; but give Iran a few years, and can we?

Israel has an even bigger problem.

We will be discussing nuclear strategy here; I hope to God there is some group somewhere in the Pentagon discussing that also. But we no longer have SAC. We no longer have the SIOP’s (Single Integrated Operational Plan). We no longer have DEFCON states. We have disbanded SAC.

And we do not have all that long to construct, recruit, train, and build the nuclear fighting force to face a nuclear Iran.

We may hope the Supreme Leader of Iraq believes in truce with the Infidels; he is not permitted to believe in peace. A deterrent force might make truce more attractive. We had best hurry to build one.

We no longer have a nuclear force that believes that Peace is our profession.

God help us.

We will look at principles of basing, problems of morale – how do you attract bright and responsible young men and women to serve for years at the duty of making sure nothing happens, while sitting on boring alert underground, waiting for calls that with luck will never come – learning little about military life and leadership or practicing skills that have little outside value?  What is the career path?  You don’t get to fly. You don’t zoom around in the wild blue yonder.  You sit in a hole in the ground listening for EWO EWO Emergency War Orders, Emergency War Orders, I have a message in five parts.  Message begins.  Tango. X-ray. Alpha…

The logic of deterrence is unforgiving.  We knew how to do it once.  We had SAC. It is gone.  LeMay went to his tomb having seen his beloved SAC accomplish its mission: End the Soviet Union without dropping any atomic bombs. Building SAC was no easy task. Building another will not be easier, and we are not even beginning. We are not even thinking about the requirements.

We need SIOPs, Single Integrated Operational Plans, to deal with possible developments, ranging from strikes at weapons only to vengeance and Armageddon.  We do not have them. And soon we will see the old cries go up. Better to live on your knees than die on your feet.  It is coming.  It is inevitable.

Or, Iran will acquire a Supreme Leader who wants peace in direct violation of the explicit instructions that there can be no peace outside the House of Submission; there can be only truce with those outside the House of Islam. Perhaps such a Supreme Leader will come forward and be appointed by the Council that selects such. And perhaps not.

In which case we need forces that make it plain that truce is better than immediate war, today, tomorrow, on Christmas Eve and the Fourth of July, on Maundy Thursday and Rosh Hashanah, year after year.  Will it be easier to build such forces than to build weapons?  Will it take less or more time? But if we do not start, we will not have them at all. The alternative is to pray that the Ayatollah chooses truce.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.