Category: Bombs and rockets

Military matters and state security: the hard-edged kind of international relations

Books and the Marine Corps

Reading is an honor and a gift from a warrior or historian who—a decade or a thousand decades ago—set aside time to write. He distilled a lifetime of campaigning in order to have a “conversation” with you. We have been fighting on this planet for ten thousand years; it would be idiotic and unethical to not take advantage of such accumulated experiences. If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you. Any commander who claims he is “too busy to read” is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way. The consequences of incompetence in battle are final. History teaches that we face nothing new under the sun. The Commandant of the Marine Corps maintains a list of required reading for every rank. All Marines read a common set; in addition, sergeants read some books, and colonels read others. Even generals are assigned a new set of books that they must consume. At no rank is a Marine excused from studying. When I talked to any group of Marines, I knew from their ranks what books they had read. During planning and before going into battle, I could cite specific examples of how others had solved similar challenges. This provided my lads with a mental model as we adapted to our specific mission.

Mattis, Jim and West, Bing. Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. 2019. p. 42

Prospects for Mars colonies

I have long been skeptical about the prospects for off-world human colonies. Given that the International Space Station is the most expensive thing we have ever built and it is entirely reliant on supplies from Earth, it would be a gigantic leap just to make a self-sustaining closed life support system. Beyond that are many other obstacles, from radiation to Mars’ reduced gravity and even interpersonal conflict.

George Dvorsky has written an article with details on many of these challenges, which also quotes Louis Friedman on the psychological and philosophical implications of extraterrestrial expansion as an unlikely prospect:

If humans can’t make it to Mars, it means we’re destined to be “a single-planet species,” he said. What’s more, it suggests extraterrestrial civilizations might be in the same boat, and that the potential for “intelligent life to spread throughout the universe is very, very gloomy,” he told Gizmodo.

“If we can’t make it to a nearby planet with an atmosphere, water, and a stable surface—which in principle suggests we could do it—then certainly we’re not going to make it much beyond that,” said Friedman. “But if we’re doomed to be a single-planet species, then we need to recognize both psychologically and technologically that we’re going to have live within the limits of Earth.”

There’s a case to the made that the principal role that Mars is now playing for humanity is as some kind of faint hope that we can wreck the Earth and still somehow survive. That’s probably not healthy on any level. Having a crazy, desperate backup plan isn’t a substitute for a credible plan that doesn’t disregard or sacrifice almost everything humanity has ever valued. Furthermore, to degrade the Earth to the point where it no longer supports people would be an act of vandalism and malice toward the rest of life so severe that it would raise grave questions about whether it would be good for any life form, including us, for people to continue to survive.

Nuclear papers

Over the years I have written a variety of academic papers on various aspects of nuclear weapons and nuclear power:

1) Written for an undergrad international relations course at UBC and subsequently published in a journal and given an award:

“The Space Race as ‘Primitive’ Warfare.” UBC Journal of International Affairs. 2005. p. 19-28.

2) Written during my M.Phil at Oxford:

“Climate Change, Energy Security, and Nuclear Power.” St. Antony’s International Review. Volume 4, Number 2, February 2009. p. 92-112.

3) Written as part of my PhD coursework at U of T:

Climate change and nuclear power in Ontario (self-published on Academia.edu)

Canada’s mixed nuclear policy experiences.

Trump and conflict with Iran

This week’s Economist is reporting about the growing danger of armed conflict between the United States and Iran:

President Donald Trump’s fixation with undoing “Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement” in the form of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal was worrisome and counterproductive enough, in a world where nuclear weapon proliferation is a growing threat and where proliferation in the Middle East is especially likely if any new nuclear weapon powers emerge.

It’s terrifying to think what a new profusion of nuclear powers in the region could mean. Among other things, I think it would greatly increase the risk of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. There were enough US-Soviet close calls in the Cold War, and that was two powers that were far apart, in communication, and well-informed about each other’s capabilities. A nuclear crisis among a larger set of tightly-packed states is a truly fearful prospect.

A conventional American or Israeli attack on Iran is also a fearful prospect, and one that seems almost certain to be less effective at curtailing Iranian nuclear ambitions in the medium term than multilateral diplomacy. Again Trump’s recklessness and the incompetence and ideological drive of his officials like John Bolton is threatening the peace of the world, such as it is holding up these days.

Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3

The first Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was lost on the way to space because of fraudulent metal provided by a supplier.

The OCO was rebuilt at OCO-2, which has since collected data on the spatial distribution of carbon dioxide on Earth.

OCO-3 will be attached to the International Space Station, which will further fill in data gaps and help the world come to terms with its carbon problem.

Israel’s trilemma

The Economist created a graphic illustrating how Israel must choose between three objectives, without being able to achieve all three at once and with objectionable features arising from choosing one pair over the other options:

They need to make some choice between giving up occupied land, ceasing to have a Jewish electoral majority, and being a fully democratic state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent comment that Israel is the homeland “only of the Jewish people” suggests that this government at least is willing to prioritize continued occupation and a Jewish majority over equal treatment of all citizens.

Shuttle lesson: no crew capsule on the side designs

Of course, the Columbia and Challenger accidents have reminded us we need to be ever vigilant. Despite more than two years of careful work to prevent foam shedding from the shuttle’s main tank, my STS-114 mission lost a large piece of foam on ascent, in a circumstance very similar to what happened to Columbia on STS-107. Preventing foam loss was a top objective for the return-to-flight effort, and while this turned out to be an embarrassment, I believe it sent a clear message—future boosters and spacecraft should be designed to protect the ship’s reentry system (the heatshield) because rockets will always shed “stuff” like insulation and ice during the tumultuous minutes of ascent to orbit. This is why we will see future spacecraft designed with the reentry ship on the top of the rocket, rather than beside it, as was the case with the space shuttle. The STS-114 incident was a very sobering reminder that a complex system like the shuttle can never be made completely safe, despite everyone’s best efforts. Our future space travelers will be safer due to the lessons learned from the shuttle missions.

Leinbach, Michael and Jonathan Ward. Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew. Arcade Publishing; New York. 2018. p. 294

Soufan on the ineffectiveness of torture

After [redacted by the CIA] left, Boris had to keep introducing harsher and harsher methods, because Abu Zubaydah and other terrorists were trained to resist them. In a democracy such as ours, there is a glass ceiling on harsh techniques that the interrogator cannot breach, so a detainee can eventually call the interrogator’s bluff. And that’s what Abu Zubaydah did.

This is why the EIT [Enhanced Interrogation Technique] proponents later had to order Abu Zubaydah to be waterboarded again, and again, and again—at least eighty-three times, reportedly. The techniques were in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy, ensuring that harsher and harsher ones were introduced.

Cruel interrogation techniques not only serve to reinforce what a terrorist has been prepared to expect if captured; they give him a greater sense of control and predictability about his experience, and strengthen his resistance. By contrast, the interrogation strategy that [redacted] employed—engaging and outwitting the terrorist—confuses him and leads him to cooperate. The art of interview and interrogation is a science, a behavioural science, and [redacted] were successful precisely because we had it down to a science.

Evidence gained from torture is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. Indeed, as KSM, who was subjected to the enhanced techniques, later told the Red Cross: “During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop”.

Soufan, Ali H. The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. 2011. p. 423