------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/1TwplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~->
The Hindu July 02, 2004 Opinion - Leader Page Articles When early warning is no warning By Zia Mian, R. Rajaraman & M.V. Ramana Early warning systems in South Asia have no significant utility. Rather, they increase the danger of inadvertent nuclear war. AS A concrete step that would reduce nuclear dangers in South Asia, we have suggested that both India and Pakistan agree not to install nuclear early warning systems (The Hindu, June 4, 2004). This may seem counter-intuitive in that such systems are supposed to give advance notice of a nuclear attack; it is often argued that this warning time is vital for responsible decision-making. For example, in his letter to the editor (The Hindu, June 21), S. Lakshminarayanan worries that "Without an effective early warning system, we will be taken unawares." The notion of early warning, like the deeply flawed notion of deterrence, is a carryover from the nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. It refers to the use of radars and satellites for detecting a nuclear missile attack under way. Detecting the missiles is only the first stage of an early warning system. This has to be followed by an assessment of its reliability and significance before interpreting it as a real "warning." Once confirmed, this `warning' of an imminent nuclear attack needs to be conveyed to the appropriate military and political authorities. They will need time to consider the situation and determine their response - this will involve monumental judgments about the start of a possible nuclear war. Since the target of the incoming missile may be the military and political leadership itself, all these must happen in the time between the detection of the missile and its arrival at the target. In the case of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, this entire process was forced to fit into the 30 minutes their respective missiles would take to reach their target. We have studied the utility of similar early warning systems and decision-making procedures for South Asia. Our assessment of the effectiveness of such systems was published in the journal, Science and Global Security, last year. We explain here the results of this analysis that showed how the combination of missiles travelling many thousands of miles an hour and the geography of South Asia allows at best a few minutes of warning. We make clear why this is no warning at all if there is to be a serious effort at verification of incoming signals and the time taken for responsible decision-making. We also point out that any early warning system would inevitably generate both genuine signals of incoming attack as well as false alarms. In the middle of a crisis, such false alarms, combined with the short decision time involved, can raise the prospect of technological and human error leading to inadvertent nuclear war. We first estimated the missile flight time between different locations in India and Pakistan; examples could be a missile launch from Sargodha towards New Delhi or from Agra to Lahore, a distance of some 600 km. The shortest flight times come from sending long-range missiles to nearby targets. We found that it would take only about five minutes for Pakistan's Ghauri and India's Agni missiles to reach a target 600 km distant. To protect Delhi or Lahore would require an early warning system to work within these five minutes. The first step is detecting the incoming missile, either by radars or special satellites in high altitude orbits. Since India has acquired Green Pine, a missile detection radar made in Israel, we looked at its capabilities. We found that a missile fired from Pakistan's Sargodha Air Force base towards New Delhi may be detected by such a radar, placed for instance at Ambala, around a minute and a half after launch. This is just the initial detection. Confirming the signal is real takes longer. There are many sources of false and unpredictable signals that radars pick up. In the 2003 U.S. war on Iraq, the advanced version of the Patriot system reportedly generated many false radar signals. The source of the problem can often be mundane. Radar systems, for example, have mistaken a flock of birds for a missile. Radar signals also bounce off regions of the atmosphere where no apparent reflecting sources exist. Weather can also affect performance. To be reasonably confident that the radar is indeed picking up a missile requires double-checking the signal. This includes tracking the object over a period of time to determine its path. All this will take some time. In the case of the U.S. and Russia, several minutes were allotted for verifying radar signals before they were passed on to military authorities. Clearly, the five-minute missile flights relevant to South Asia permit no time for such a comprehensive verification. Missile launches can also be detected by special satellites with infra-red detectors that detect the intense heat from the exhaust plume produced by rocket engines. Neither India nor Pakistan has such a system - nor for that matter does China or the United Kingdom have it, while France is still seeking to acquire this capability. Even if they did, such satellites have problems of their own. The heat radiation from the missile plume is absorbed by water vapour and carbon dioxide in the lower atmosphere, and scattered by rain and dust. Nor does it penetrate clouds. Thus a missile can be reliably detected by such a satellite only when it emerges above the clouds, which typically takes about a minute. In effect, a satellite would provide warning no earlier than a radar in South Asia. This is markedly different from the case of the U.S. and Russia, where satellites provided several additional minutes of warning. It is clear that India or Pakistan would gain little if they acquire or develop early warning satellites. Both the U.S. and Russia have elaborate procedures for nuclear warning assessment and decision-making. Technology and operating procedures are both fallible and can combine at times to create false alerts of early warning systems. Typically every year there were about 2,500 false alarms from U.S. early warning systems, due to causes varying from swarms of geese to the rising moon. In some cases, the time allotted for checking the signal proved insufficient to determine that a warning was in fact false. Though both sides built in time for efforts to verify the data from their early warning systems, it must be stressed that assessment and decision-making were forced to fit into the available time before the missiles descended on the decision-makers. U.S. procedures left its President and senior officials only about 10 minutes for deciding whether to launch their own missiles. Russian procedures left even less: their national command authority is allotted three minutes to discuss and authorise permission to launch Russian missiles. Russia had serious concerns that these procedures might not work as planned and as a fallback installed a "dead hand" that would automatically transmit launch orders. Given that missiles can travel between India and Pakistan in less than five minutes, of which a minute and a half would have been lost before they are detected, the information from radars (and satellites, if ever available) would need to be processed and evaluated, decision-makers informed, and action taken within three minutes (and at most nine minutes, in the case of very distant targets in the region). To put it differently, a false signal would need to evade identification only for a few minutes before it leads to the possible calamity of a nuclear response based on a mistake. This is an unprecedented constraint on procedures for evaluation and confirmation of any electronic warning (with all its uncertainties) and for decision-making about the retaliatory use of nuclear weapons. There would, in fact, be barely enough time for the warning to be communicated to decision-makers. There would be no time whatsoever to consult or deliberate after receiving this warning. There would be no decision-making in any meaningful sense of the term. The available time would not permit anything more than praying before "pressing the button." This could only trigger some pre-planned response. It could be the launch of one's own nuclear missiles. In the event of a false signal, this will start a nuclear war where there was none. Alternatively, anti-ballistic missiles could be launched in an attempt to shoot down what are believed to be incoming missiles. Again, a false warning could potentially lead to disaster, since the other side's early warning system might not easily be able to distinguish this response from a nuclear attack. Is our faith in the infallibility of technology and human judgment so strong that we are willing to risk such a catastrophe? It is these considerations that persuade us that early warning systems in South Asia have no significant utility. Rather, they increase the danger of inadvertent nuclear war. India and Pakistan would do well to agree to abandon the pursuit of such systems. (The authors are all physicists - Zia Mian is at Princeton University, U.S.; R. Rajaraman at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi; and M. V. Ramana at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore.) _________________________________ SOUTH ASIANS AGAINST NUKES (SAAN): An informal information platform for activists and scholars concerned about Nuclearisation in South Asia. SAAN Web site URL: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org South Asians Against Nukes Mailing List: To subscribe send a blank message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SAAN compilers SOUTH ASIANS AGAINST NUKES (SAAN): An informal information platform for activists &amp; scholars concerned about the dangers of Nuclearisation in South Asia SAAN Mailing List: To subscribe send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] SAAN Website: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sacw/saan [OLD URL: http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/NoNukes.html ] SAAN Mailing List Archive : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/ ________________________________ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SAAN compilers. aterials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SAAN compilers. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
