Quoting from another Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article, this one from Hans Bethe, "The Technological Imperative" Aug 1985. Bethe wrote about how the need/temptation to implement need technological possibilities drove the nuclear arms race.
He talked about several decisive technological leaps in that race.
1. The atomic bomb (1945):
World War I1 ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Albert Einstein summed up the situation after the atomic bombs had been dropped: “Everything has changed, except human thinking.”
2. The H-bomb; the hydrogen bomb, aka, the Hell Bomb. As Bethe observes, this was one point that American policymakers seriously considered voluntarily restraining themselves from pursuing the next technological horizon:
A number of American scientists felt in 1949 that it was necessary to stay ahead of the Soviets and, to this end, that the United States should develop the hydrogen bomb. They found willing ears in Congress and in some parts of the Administration. President Truman was bombarded with arguments on both sides of the question, but the decisive news, which moved him to approve the development of the H-bomb, was the discovery of the treason of Klaus Fuchs. When it was shown that Fuchs had given the Soviets most of the information he had about various parts of the Manhattan Project-including whatever knowledge then existed about the possibility of hydrogen bombs -Truman decided that it had become a technological imperative for the United States to go ahead with the development of the vastly more powerful weapon. (my emphasis)
I posted previously about Klaus Fuchs.
3. The ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile). This was first tested by the Soviets in 1957. Bethe notes that the Sputnik satellite followed soon afterward. "We made a frantic effort to catch up," he writes, "and I think that in this case it was indeed justified to feel a technological imperative."
4. ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems (1960s). The Soviets deployed these first, but the US quickly developed countermeasures.
5. MIRV (multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicles) warheads (circa 1970). Another missed opportunity to restrain a major step in the arms race.
6. Star Wars, now known under Bush as Missle Defense. The Reagan administration formally launched what is now an over two-decades-old boondoggle in 1983. Bethe writes:
The intention of this project is to intercept ballistic missiles before they reach their targets, and thus gradually eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons carried by such missiles. Unfortunately, I and most of my colleagues who have looked into this problem are convinced that none of the proposed systems will work as advertised. [As of 2005, this is still the case. - Bruce] They can, in fact, be defeated easily by countermeasures which will cost much less than it will cost to develop SDI. The technological imperative, however, is strong; our government feels that we must use this new technology in an attempt to reduce the threat of nuclear war.
He mentions in this article the all-too-human pressures coming from weapons laboratories for these technological enhancements:
One of the pressures for developing the Strategic Defense Initiative [Star Wars] comes from the weapons laboratories. Having recognized that there is little more to be done in improving offensive weapons, they are enthusiastic advocates of defensive weapons. And in this advocacy, they are finding a very receptive government.
And he notes with particular reference to the option of foregoing testing of the H-bomb after it was built:
There would have been problems with this alternative path, one of them being the morale of the weapons laboratories. It is very discouraging to spend two or three years on the development of a completely new concept, and then to find that the concept could not even be tested, let alone be accepted into the U.S. weapons arsenal. I know this disappointment well, having worked at both a weapons laboratory and an industrial laboratory concerned with development of missiles. When the missile designed by the industrial laboratory was rejected by the Air Force in favor of that developed by another company, it was a most discouraging blow. However, if we wish to escape the vicious cycle of ever-increasing armaments, we have to find a way to make weapons laboratories operate without the certainty that what they develop will actually be used.
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