From: owner-skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com (skunk-works-digest) To: skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com Subject: skunk-works-digest V9 #44 Reply-To: skunk-works@netwrx1.com Sender: owner-skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com Errors-To: owner-skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com Precedence: bulk skunk-works-digest Saturday, June 17 2000 Volume 09 : Number 044 Index of this digest by subject: *************************************************** Re: FWD (TLCB) Re: NMD [Addendum] Quiz Most folks probably already have a copy! Sidney Cotton Re: Most folks probably already have a copy! RE: Sidney Cotton FWD (EXT) Re: NMD rules of the air Re: rules of the air FWD (EXT) Re(22): National Missile Defense [was - eeyore and tigger] [[Part 1 of 2]] *************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 10:31:50 -0500 From: "Allen Thomson" Subject: Re: FWD (TLCB) Re: NMD [Addendum] UFO said >But it's just around the corner. It's been in development for the past decade or more. If, as I think, we're talking about detecting the radiation given off by a nuclear bomb before it explodes, we'll never, ever have the capability of doing that from space, simply because there's nothing to detect outside the atmosphere if the bomb is on the ground. It's that 10-meters of water equivalent screening, plus the low radioactivity of bombs that gets you. The 100+ km stand-off range doesn't help either. >Testing was done with the ALEXIS and FORTE sats and CALIPOE systems to develop >multi-spectral thermal imaging for the detection of nuclear materials for arms proliferation >uses. 3 or 4 years ago they were able to detect radioactive dust in processing plants. And >that's just the non-secret stuff. Although I still think detection of a bomb will be a few years >off, it will happen soon. there are already "sniffers" in Washington, the Panama Canal and >other places and once they have detection down with sattelites (if we don't already), next >step will be tracking of materials, then bombs. Forte and Alexis are helping to develop new techniques applicable to the detection of nuclear explosions, a different and generally easier task than we're talking about. See http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1997/forte_pr.htm CALIOPE is indeed intended for remote chemical diagnostics to help detect and diagnose WMD production and possibly storage facilities. But it has no application in finding an assembled nuclear weapon. I try to avoid being dogmatic about such things, but it's appropriate in this case: *There is no known physical principle that would allow the radiation from an unexploded nuclear weapon on the ground to be detected above the atmosphere, because the radiation doesn't escape through the atmosphere.* Now if the weapon possess other signatures, such as being mounted on an ICBM sitting on a pad, or being in a crate labled "NUCLEAR BOMB -- USE NO HOOKS," or having a radio transmitter attached to it, then satellites could help. BTW, you're right that ground-based or helicopter-mounted radiation (gamma-neutron) detectors can detect the radiation of a weapon, but generally only at ranges of a few tens of meters. Back in the mid-1970s there was a flap when gamma-neutron detectors the US had installed in the Bosporus registered radioactivity from transiting Russian freighters. AFAIK, the affair kind of died without resolution. >Given a million to one odds, they could be detected by magnetic anomoly detectors in a >ship or helicopter, but only by chance and even if so, they probably wouldn't think a thing >about it. About the same odds of a sub bumping into it unless, of course, they were >looking for it and knew where to look. Yes, I agree. If some sort of advanced warning were received, ships and aircraft could be deployed into the anticipated drift path to search with sonar and MAD and might have a decent chance of finding the infernal buoy. But if there were no warning, forget it. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 09:22:33 -0700 From: David Lednicer Subject: Quiz I've got his autobiography at home - want me to quote from it? - ------------------------------------------------------------------- David Lednicer | "Applied Computational Fluid Dynamics" Analytical Methods, Inc. | email: dave@amiwest.com 2133 152nd Ave NE | tel: (425) 643-9090 Redmond, WA 98052 USA | fax: (425) 746-1299 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 13:09:26 -0400 From: "Morris, Andrew" Subject: Most folks probably already have a copy! NEW! THE WORLD'S FIRST RECOGNITION GUIDE TO NON-TRADITIONAL WEAPONS. From Janes: As populations grow and resources decrease, terrorism, religious and ethnic intolerance, nationalism and extremism are becoming an alarming predicament and non-traditional weapons are proliferating. If you are concerned with maintaining public safety you cannot afford to ignore the possibility that you might one day be faced with an unfamiliar non-traditional weapon. Jane's Unconventional Weapons is the world's first recognition guide to non-traditional weapons. From low intensity booby-traps to the most sophisticated, high-tech Directed-energy weapons, this distinctive resource will provide the data you need to respond quickly and effectively! Andy Morris ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:42:29 PDT From: "wayne binkley" Subject: Sidney Cotton This is a multi-part message in MIME format. - ------=_NextPart_000_15baca40_5dd6ad7e$2467901 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com - ------=_NextPart_000_15baca40_5dd6ad7e$2467901 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Received: from 170.94.240.51 by www.hotmail.com with HTTP; Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:36:07 PDT X-Originating-IP: [170.94.240.51] From: "wayne binkley" To: wbinkley@hotmail.com Subject: a sidney cotton Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:36:07 PDT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html X-Stn-Info:

 

Sidney Cotton

Queensland's Sidney Cotton was born in 1894 , a few years after Bert Hinkler. While in his teens Cotton built an efficient light car. with drive components that continued to be used in the later Frazer Nash cars. At 21 he became a Royal Naval Air Service pilot and with only 5 hours solo he was sent to the front line in WW1 and it was there that he devised camouflage for aircraft, an upward firing gun mounting, long range bombing methods and other inventions. When "Red Baron" von Richthoven was shot down in WW1 he was found to be wearing a 'British' flying suit designed by Cotton.

After the war he moved to Canada where aerial surveying and game spotting were developed,around what later became the Botwood, NF seaplane base. This turned into aerial and colour photography of great beauty. Then just before WW2 he toured Europe taking aerial photographs of strategic sites. His frequent visits to Berlin drew the attention of Colonel Fred Winterbotham an MI-6 agent in the British Foreign Office who who had maintained an interest in aerial photo-reconnaissance while mainstream military interest in it had faded after the war.

Cotton relentlessly pursued the goal of high-altitude recon . He innovated suitable aircraft camouflage for the mission - using duck-egg blue paint on MI-6's Lockheed 12A, modifying the air frame to mount hidden cameras, and developing air-conditioning for the cameras to keep them running at high altitude.

As a result, the British had irrefutable evidence of a build-up in Luftwaffe bases as early as 1938. The military was still incredibly slow to adopt these innovations. His Ace Flyer reputation , and Winterbotham's influence, made it easy for him to make friends with high German officials with military service dating back to Baron von Richthofen's elite unit. At one point Cotton went over Winterbotham's head to the head of MI-6 ("C") to fly a negotiator to Berlin to persuade Goering to Britain to meet the Prime Minister. MI-6 had just suffered severe censure in the House of Commons over the Hitler-Stalin pact, but again this secret operation failed completely.

When war broke out, Churchill instantly demanded an assessment of the opposing forces, but the Air Ministry was at a loss for the required information. It was Cotton who flew the first recon mission and presented a photographic assessment the next day to a stunned and furious Air Ministry. When the storm calmed, Cotton was summoned back. He was greeted with the remark "so you're the one giving us all this trouble!" Cotton replied "No, Sir, His name is Adolf Hitler".

Cotton was then given his own unit at Heston airfield (just west of London) to run recon missions using Spitfire Supermarine aircraft capable of 320 mph. The fastest in the world at that time was needed to deliver intelligence quickly and to counteract the phenomenon of condensation trails that allowed ease of targetting the aircraft's position. He invented the Cottonising process which improved the photo-recee Spitfire by 65 k.p.h. Eddie Leaf looks at this very special and very secret unit.

On 23 of March 1940, he flew Lockheed 12A (registration G-AGAR) from London and, after two stops at Malta and Cairo, landed on British airbase near Habbaniya, Iraq, on the Euphrates River west of Baghdad. Here the registration and the markings of the plane were painted over. Well before dawn of 30 of March Lockheed flew on the first mission. The missions were ordered by Colonel Fred.W.Winterbotham. The crew was made up of four aviators, including Cotton's personal assistant Hugh Mac Phail. They photographed the vicinity of Baku circling on 7.000 meters. In addition to the hidden automatic cameras, two RAF-photographer also used hand-cameras. Lockheed returned to Habbaniya in midday. Baku was a strategic oil target attacked by Britain in the First World War, so the allies were now admitting the possibility of another invasion to counter moves by the Nazi or Soviet forces. During the second mission four days after the plane flew over Batumi, Georgia and photographed the refineries nearby. This time Mac Phail had to encounter the Soviet flack fire.

As his sense of importance grew, he inevitably trod on official toes. One occasion when he was almost court-martialled occurred in Paris , May 1940. When told to fly the Ultra defector and German ciphers to safety at Bletchley Park, England he created a stir by asking others if they wanted to board the plane as well!

Successes including spotting the fleet build-up at Kiel one day before the Nazi invasion of Norway in April 1940. Recon mission successes increased throughout the war, including the preparations that led to the capture of a working German radar at bruneval in late 1941, the sighting of Field Marshal Model's tanks in Arnhem the day before Operation Market Garden, and monitoring the Peenemunde missile program. Von Kármán was one expert who interpreted the Peenemunde photos. Deciphered message intercepts were crucial in finding Peenemunde, but the recon photos revealed much irrefutable detail about the scale and nature of the German missile program. Preparations for D-Day show that the recon lessons had been learned, with over 4 million prints analysed for the one operation. Advancing troops found installations with elaborate counter-reconnaissance measures such as planting trees on roofs.

Aerial reconnaissance or 'open skies' was a key bargaining point in the post-war superpower talks. When Kruschev denounced 'open skies' as espionage in the mid-1950s, the US developed the U-2 high altitude recon plane, and accelerated research in to its satellite program.

Cotton's contribution was documented in a memoir published the year of his death (1969) entitled Aviator Extraordinary: the Sidney Cotton Story. Memoirs of Sidney Cotton edited by Omar Khalidi.

Britain's Official War History (1986) gave much of the credit for wartime recon success to the professionalism and determination of Cotton and Winterbotham, and to the vision shown by their superiors.
References:

  • The Nazi Connectionby Fred Winterbotham,
  • True Australian Air Stories by Terry Gwynn-Jones
  • Bodyguard of Lies by Anthony Cave Brown
  • The Ultra Secret by Winterbotham
  • Forsythe Rosemarie Crisostomo, Politics of Oil in the Caucasus and Central Asia,
    Oxford University Press, 1996
  • Groeler, Olaf Kampf um die Luftherrschaft
    Berlin, 1989, S.52)
  • Hiro Dilip, Why is the USA Inflating Caspian Oil Reserves, Middle East International
    12 September 1997, pp. 18-19
  • Suny, Ronald Grigor, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the
  • Collapse of the Soviet Union,
    Stanford, 1993
  • Swietochowski Tadeusz, Russia and Azerbaijan: Borderland in Transition,
    Columbia University Press, New York, 1995
  • Roberts John, Caspian Pipelines, The Royal Institute for International Affairs,
    London, 1996
  • Sanders A. (A. Nikuradze), Kaukasien. Nordkaukasien, Aserbaidschan, Armenien, Georgien: geschichtlich Umriss,
    München, 1944, 349 p., 73 Abb., 17 Karten
  • Sanders A. (A. Nikuradze), Osteuropa in kontinentaleuropischer Schau,
    München, Bde. 1-2, 1942-43
  • Seidl U., Die tausendtürmige Weltburg. Geschichten und Gestalten aus d. Kampf um d.
    Kaukasus, Salzburg, 1943, 208 p., 26 Ill.
  • Tatarischwili Akaki, Die Industrievereinigungen in der UdSSR,
    Inaug-diss, Göttingen, 1932, pp.116
  • Hoffmann Joachim, Kaukasien 1942/43: Das deutsche Heer und die Orientvölker der Sowjetunion,
    Einzelschriften zur Militärgeschichte 35, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg, 1991, 534 p.
  • Kolarz Walter, Russia and her colonies,
    London, 1952
  • Ogutçu Mehmet, Eurasian Energy Prospects and Politics,
    Futures, Vol. 27, No 1 (January-February), 1995, pp. 37-63
  • Plaetschke Br., Die Kaukasusländer, in: Handbuch der geographischen Wissenschaften (Bd. 3), Mitteleuropa, Osteuropa,
    1935, pp. 435-464
  • Ponten J., Der Zug nach dem Kaukasus,
    Stuttgart, 1940, 261 p., Volk auf dem Wege, Bd. 5
  • Resuladze N., Problem Kaukasus, in: Kaukasus, Nr. 2-3,
    München, 1951, pp. 3 -
  • Ray, Wayne Newfoundland Military Bases
    HMS Press, London Ontario. 1998
  • Spies in the Sky TV documentary
    The History Channel, 1998

Any comments are welcome , please contact webmaster.

 

Next aviator

- ------=_NextPart_000_15baca40_5dd6ad7e$2467901-- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 14:51:28 -0700 From: Dan Zinngrabe Subject: Re: Most folks probably already have a copy! >NEW! THE WORLD'S FIRST RECOGNITION GUIDE TO NON-TRADITIONAL WEAPONS. >From Janes: >As populations grow and resources decrease, terrorism, religious and >ethnic intolerance, nationalism and extremism are becoming an >alarming predicament and non-traditional weapons are >proliferating. > >If you are concerned with maintaining public safety you cannot >afford to ignore the possibility that you might one day be faced with >an unfamiliar non-traditional weapon. Jane's Unconventional Weapons >is the world's first recognition guide to non-traditional weapons. >From low intensity booby-traps to the most sophisticated, high-tech >Directed-energy weapons, this distinctive resource will provide the >data you need to respond quickly and effectively! > >Andy Morris Or you could get essentially the same thing from any number of US Gov't issue field manuals for about $7 through the GPO. While Jane's is nice and informative, they don't tell you how to disarm the darn things! Dan _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ The software you were born with helps you write code into the wee small hours, find the bugs in your competitors' products, and create fake demos for the first six months of a project. It deserves the operating system designed to work with it: the MacOS. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 10:22:07 +0930 From: Dennis Lapcewich Subject: RE: Sidney Cotton My reason for the quiz was the ABC television network in Australia (similar to PBS in the States) this week broadcast a story about Sidney Cotton. If an opportunity arises to see it, I recommend it. Perhaps PBS or a cable network will carry it. See http://www.abc.net.au/tvpub/highlite/h0024thel.htm In addition to his many accomplishments, the producer also implied quite strongly that much of Ian Fleming's James Bond is based on Sidney Cotton. Cotton knew the dangers but wasn't easily ruffled so one could almost assume he could be "shaken, not stirred ..." Dennis ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 23:07:26 -0700 From: "Terry W. Colvin" Subject: FWD (EXT) Re: NMD > Plutonium is just too hard to get, I hope you're right but there are thousands of tons of the stuff and 9 pounds can make a bomb. It's not like money where you can keep track of every cent, whenever you process or machine Plutonium a little sticks to the machinery and is unaccounted for. This worries me. >too hard to handle. I'd have to be careful or I might get cancer, but if I'm crazy enough to kill a million people I probably wouldn't let a little thing like that stop me. >He said that the NMD was so vulnerable that it has >a number of soft radar sites, so that if any one of these is taken out >the whole system is useless. Nowthen, it doesnt take an extropian >to figure out that *no* weapon system is designed with multiple >single-point failure modes and zero redundancy. One half a megaton explosion 90 miles above Washington would create an EMP that would shut down the entire eastern seaboard power grid and blow out every civilian computer and RADAR from Boston to Atlanta. Perhaps the military stuff is tougher but I'm skeptical, they've got sensitive electronics connected to huge antennas and the pulse is so fast, much faster than lightning, that fuses are useless. *I've heard of antenna sites underground and encased in metal as backup *transmitters and receivers in a post-apocalypse. [TWC] >Production is cheap, way cheap in comparison to that. Cheaper than mass producing simple dumb ICBMs? I don't think so. >Once we design a space based laser system Space based? I didn't know you were talking about a permanent orbital battle station. OK. I'll orbit a much cheaper satellite of my own in a similar orbit but moving in the opposite direction. A modern anti tank gun fires a round that weighs about 5 pounds and moves at 1 mile a second, it can destroy a 70 ton M1 tank. The relative speed of our two satellites is 11 miles a second, 121 as much kinetic energy per unit of mass, so a projectile that weighed about half an ounce could nock out a M1. Your space station will certainly not be a tough as a tank so I think I'll just throw a bucket of sand in your path. Even if you miss the grains the first time every 45 minutes the come around again. >Recall that the photons that come out of the business end of >a laser have *already* passed thru a highly reflective surface. Only one end of a LASER is highly reflective, the other end, the one the beam comes out, is about 50% reflective and with many high power LASERS it needs to be replaced after every shot. >those who design and build missile defense systems are not hurting for >employment. They could make waaay more money elsewhere, but dont. I don't believe that for a minute. I think the reasons for the project are bureaucratic momentum and a childish fascination with things that go boom. I'm childish myself and like things that go boom too, but there are limits I will not stoop to. OK, it's easy for me to say that because I'm not an expert on light weight high energy chemical LASERS, but if I was where else could I find a job? It's either star wars or the golden arches, hold the pickles hold the lettuce. > where are you launching [cruse missiles] from? Canada? Mexico? Submarines and distant airplanes. > (BTW: Backpack/suitcase bombs are not that small, or that light) The US government will admit to having built 400 backpack nukes, they thought they might be useful in sabotage if they wanted to destroy something really big like a major dam. It weighed 58 pounds, could be deployed by one man, and exploded with a force of 800 tons of TNT. I'm sure they have classified stuff that's much better nowadays because that was back in 1964. > The testing [X Ray Laser] has all been underground for obvious > legal/treaty reasons, but they've been designed with many focusing > devices on a single bomb. That's not what I've hear, I've heard that the beam had much less power than expected and nobody had any idea how to aim it to hit a tiny fast moving target thousands of miles away. That's why the military doesn't talk much about X Ray Lasers anymore, they've gone back to pushing "smart rocks". John K Clark - -- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@frontiernet.net > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program - ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Allies, CIA/NSA, and Vietnam veterans welcome] Southeast Asia (SEA) service: Vietnam - Theater Telecommunications Center/HHC, 1st Aviation Brigade (Jan 71 - Aug 72) Thailand/Laos - Telecommunications Center/U.S. Army Support Thailand (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73) - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site (Aug 73 - Jan 74) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 10:02:05 PDT From: "wayne binkley" Subject: rules of the air RULES OF THE AIR (from Australian Aviation magazine): 1. Every takeoff is optional. Every landing is mandatory. 2. If you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger. If you pull the stick back, they get smaller. That is, unless you keep pulling the stick all the way back, then they get bigger again. 3. Flying isn't dangerous. Crashing is what's dangerous. 4. It's always better to be down here wishing you were up there than up there wishing you were down here. 5. The ONLY time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire. 6. The propeller is just a big fan in front of the plane used to keep the pilot cool. When it stops, you can actually watch the pilot start sweating. 7. When in doubt, hold on to your altitude. No-one has ever collided with the sky. 8. A 'good' landing is one from which you can walk away. A 'great' landing is one after which they can use the plane again. 9. Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make all of them yourself. 10. You know you've landed with the wheels up if it takes full power to taxi to the ramp. 11. The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival. Large angle of arrival, small probability of survival and vice versa. 12. Never let an aircraft take you somewhere your brain didn't get to five minutes earlier. 13. Stay out of clouds. The silver lining everyone keeps talking about might be another airplane going in the opposite direction. Reliable sources also report that mountains have been known to hide out in clouds. 14. Always try to keep the number of landings you make equal the number of take offs you've made. 15. There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing. Unfortunately no one knows what they are. 16. You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck. 17. Helicopters can't fly; they're just so ugly the earth repels them. 18. If all you can see out of the window is ground that's going round and round and all you can hear is commotion coming from the passenger compartment, things are not at all as they should be. 19. In the ongoing battle between objects made of aluminum going hundreds of miles per hour and the ground going zero miles per hour, the ground has yet to lose. 20. Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgment. 21. It's always a good idea to keep the pointy end going forward as much as possible. 22. Keep looking around. There's always something you've missed. 23. Remember, gravity is not just a good idea. It's the law. And It's not subject to repeal. 24. The three most useless things to a pilot are the altitude above you, runway behind you and a tenth of a second ago. 25. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. There are, however, no old bold pilots ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 14:37:49 -0400 (EDT) From: David Allison Subject: Re: rules of the air Those 25 are pretty good, but they left out a few gems I've seen on similar lists: a) The pilot is always the first to arrive at the scene of the accident. b) If you must ditch, try to hit the softest, cheapest thing you can as slowly as possible. c) Forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission. - D - David Allison webmaster@habu.org S L O W E R T R A F F I C K E E P R I G H T tm / \ / \ _/ ___ \_ ________/ \_______/V!V\_______/ \_______ \__/ \___/ \__/ www.habu.org The OnLine Blackbird Museum ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 17:07:25 -0700 From: "Terry W. Colvin" Subject: FWD (EXT) Re(22): National Missile Defense [was - eeyore and tigger] [[Part 1 of 2]] >Reentry vehicles do not change much with time, > >Cruse Missiles. Attackable with conventional aircraft and surface to air missiles (even of the shoulder fired kind). > Stealth technology. Submillimeter radar. new generation IR sensors. > Cheap balloon decoys. To do what? they have distinctly different ballistic characteristics and radar signatures. > Armored warheads. Added weight reduces the total number of warheads you can carry, and makes the warhead either larger, and thus easier to hit, or else denser, and thus a much hotter and easier to spot target. > Warheads in orbit. Easily detectable with xray and gamma ray observation platforms. Allowing warheads in orbit automatically allows you to put warhead powered xray lasers in orbit, which are far far cheaper and more effective than any other laser technology. Every bomb you use as an xray pump can kill 50-200 targets at once. > Electro Magnetic Pulse Bombs. SHielding. > Suitcase Nukes. Definite concern, but detectable with satellite technology when unsheilded. > And most important of all, quantity. i.e. money. Everyone that hates us is generally dirt poor, with budgets of at most a few million or a few billion bucks. Defending against an expansionist China in the next 40 years is the real goal of SDI. They have this problem about maintaining face which makes them much less tractable than most others. You basically have to drive them into the condition North Korea is in to get them to change anything significant. China's primary targets will be its neighbors, plus Australia, Hawaii, India, and the western coast of the US, plus possibly some Siberian targets as well. When US leaders say 'rogue states' they make it sound like North Korea, but in their hearts they mean China. >I suggest that these ABM systems cannot be easily defeated by >massive redundancy [ever more warheads] because the laser systems can >also be multiplied arbitrarily. > > No, not arbitrarily. You've already admitted that defense is much more > expensive than offence so just building more defense is simply not going > to work unless your resources are infinite. They're not. They aren't however, so long as your cost of defense is less than the cost of potential losses from attack, then you come out ahead in the end. >Me: >if I just buy some paint at Home Depot and paint my warhead white you'll >have to increase the power of your LASER about a hundred times. > >Awww, c'mon John, humor me just a little. Do you really believe that >those who dream up these systems have not anticipated this? > > I'm sure that somebody involved in the project had taken Physics in High > School so the idea must have been tossed around. However they concluded, > quite correctly, that it had nothing to do with the main function of the > system, to provide employment for themselves and their friends. I mean, > if the system is ever actually needed nobody expects to be held > accountable afterward when it fails to work as promised. I would expect they would. A failed system will kill some 1 or two out of every three family members. How pissed do you think the survivor is going to be toward those who promised the system would work? The system is very much a threat like the Chinese did last year toward their airline execs, saying they all had to be in the air on new years eve... With SDI, every day is Y2K, and we are all living on the clock. Mike Lorrey - ------------------ > Attackable with conventional aircraft and surface to air missiles (even of the > shoulder fired kind). You have to know they're there. A relatively slow stealth delivery vehicle with cool exhaust hugging the ground is quite difficult to see, even from above. > > Stealth technology. > > Submillimeter radar. new generation IR sensors. Try spotting a helium-assisted electroflight delivery vehicle, which contains essentially no metal, and is 99% translucent. Or, just camouflage as private aircraft, using teleoperation. > > Cheap balloon decoys. > > To do what? they have distinctly different ballistic characteristics and radar > signatures. It should be not so very difficult to engineer decoys which look like a warhead. In a pinch, just make inflatable warhead-shaped metallized baloons. > > Armored warheads. > > Added weight reduces the total number of warheads you can carry, and makes the > warhead either larger, and thus easier to hit, or else denser, and thus a much > hotter and easier to spot target. Of course you deploy decoys before atmospheric reentry. As soon as the thing encounters enough atmospheric drag to develop a plasma coat, you don't have very much time to hit it. > > Warheads in orbit. > > Easily detectable with xray and gamma ray observation platforms. Allowing Huh? A dormant, well-shielded warhead? From a distance of some 100 km? Uh, don't think so. > warheads in orbit automatically allows you to put warhead powered xray lasers in > orbit, which are far far cheaper and more effective than any other laser > technology. Every bomb you use as an xray pump can kill 50-200 targets at once. Er, you can only align the bomb towards one target. Nuke for nuke, that's quite expensive. Also, it is very, very difficult to destroy a remote target which is shielded by, say, a few cm of tungsten. I haven't heard of any successfull xRay laser tests in orbit (duh). > > Electro Magnetic Pulse Bombs. > > SHielding. Haha. Easily said. Try harden every electronical gadget in the western hemisphere. See how long it takes. See design costs expand by order of magnitude. Try enforcing it. > > Suitcase Nukes. > > Definite concern, but detectable with satellite technology when unsheilded. I haven't heard of a technology which can spot a slightly subcritical piece of fissibles on earth ground from orbit. You sure as hell don't see the radiation, and the IR signature is virtually nil. > > And most > > important of all, quantity. I think shelters everywhere for everybody are much cheaper, and will guarantee >90% survival. Of course, kickstarting everything again in a nightmarish, heavily contaminated soot-covered UV-blasted landscape does not appear trivial. - ---------------- John Clark wrote: > Cruse Missiles. Stealth technology. Cheap balloon decoys. Armored warheads. > Warheads in orbit. Electro Magnetic Pulse Bombs. Suitcase Nukes. And most > important of all, quantity. Bring em on, we'll bust em all! {8-] You bring up a good point: there are plenty of ways to deliver a nuke. The systems that are being proposed do not deal with everything, just the ICBMs. For that reason, they do not violate the ABM treaty of 1972. They are not designed to defeat a massive attack by an advanced foe, but rather a limited attack by crazies and terrorists. The current systems are just a start. Actually I myself doubt the WMD of choice will ever be a nuke. Plutonium is just too hard to get, too hard to make, too hard to handle. Uranium is not that much easier. I suspect we will be looking at bioagents sooner than we would see a nuke. Of course, I am straying from the original argument here, which is the question of whether national missile defense is even possible. I argue that it is feasible, and will leave the politics to the politicians. Speaking of which, I was amused and alarmed to hear some of the arguments being used by the anti-NMD senator on the TV news this morning. He said that the NMD was so vulnerable that it has a number of soft radar sites, so that if any one of these is taken out the whole system is useless. Nowthen, it doesnt take an extropian to figure out that *no* weapon system is designed with multiple single-point failure modes and zero redundancy. That would be like the scene from Star Wars where they knocked out the control system and all the fighter droids went dead. {8^D My amusement was at this senator's ability to tell such a tale with a straight face, alarmed that we have an elected decision maker who might be dumb enough to believe his own story. > You've already admitted that defense is much more expensive than > offence so just building more defense is simply not going to work unless your resources > are infinite. They're not. I could have made this clearer. In an ABM system, the cost is in the design and development stages. Production is cheap, way cheap in comparison to that. Once we design a space based laser system, an airborn laser system, a THAAD, they can crank out copies by the zillions. It is pretty much analogous to building the first copy machine as compared to the cost of making copies on it afterwards. > >>if I just buy some paint at Home Depot and paint my warhead white you'll have to > >>increase the power of your LASER about a hundred times. > > I'm sure that somebody involved in the project had taken Physics in High School so the > idea must have been tossed around. Roger that. Recall that the photons that come out of the business end of a laser have *already* passed thru a highly reflective surface. {8-] > However they concluded, quite correctly, that it had > nothing to do with the main function of the system, to provide employment for themselves > and their friends. Ah, a conspiracy theorist among us. I have a hard time buying that for the following reasons: 1) those who design and build missile defense systems are not hurting for employment. They could make waaay more money elsewhere, but dont. 2) there is not huge profit in most of the missile defense systems for aerospace companies, reason: the profitability of the phases of pretty much any space program increases as you go along. The first phase, bid and proposal phase is usually a dead loss. The early development stages are a breakeven if all goes well. The prototype and test phase makes some money, but the real money is in the manufacturing. Thats why all the headlines from the aerospace companies are about who will get the staggeringly profitable F22 contract and the Joint Strike Fighter. Both LM and Boeing consider it a win or die contract. THAAD is so-so on the profitability scale, since it is a lotta development, not so much production. But the real heart of national missile defense is almost totally low-profitability development and very little high-profit production. That might explain why they havent been lobbying for it much. Makes sense to me. > I mean, if the system is ever actually needed nobody expects to be held > accountable afterward when it fails to work as promised. Thats right. If that system is needed and fails, being held accountable is the very least of our worries. I would do everything I can to make sure the thing does work. spike - ------------------- > I think shelters everywhere for everybody are much cheaper, and will > guarantee >90% survival. Not if we go back to the bad old days where each side had 50,000 H bombs. We'd be very lucky to have 5% survival, and most of them would be ill, or insane. During the 1950's government was very big on bomb shelters, but when H bombs started to be mass produced in the early 60's most realized it was pointless, by the mid 60's even government had figured it out. John K Clark - -------------------- Friends this one is kinda long, but may be one of the more worthwhile things I have posted in a while. Allow me to turn this NMD debate by asking a question. If the argument is over the current non-feasibility of a national missile defense, what future technologies can we imagine that would make such a thing possible? What are we still missing? Note I am not arguing if such a thing *should* be done, I am asking what do we need to make it happen? Heres a personal experience. In 1971, a young Stanford PhD came to work at Lockheed in Sunnyvale. His doctorate was in the then-new field of digital feedback and control theory. He was assigned to a feasibility study group on reentry body interceptors, not because the U.S. wanted to build such a thing, but wanted to make sure the commies couldnt do it. He came up with a feedback control diagram that showed what would be needed. The rocket hardware technology, the valves, the actuators, the nozzles, all that stuff wasnt too out-of-reach at the time. The thing that was in the science fiction realm was the computer needed to make it all work. It required that the computer be carried on-board, which was understandably a radical concept at the time. This young engineer with the freshly minted PhD mapped out, way back in 1971, the system that would eventually become the THAAD missile. It is the stuff of legend today. Now of course, what he proposed at the time would have sounded like "...if we had a computer with the power of 100 crays in a package the size of a marble..." The audience politely thanked him and NEXT! But the miracles of miniaturization kept coming and kept coming. And coming and coming until by the late 80s it didnt look crazy at all to carry an on-board computer capable enough to run a feedback loop fast enough to hit a bullet with a bullet. Last Saturday was the first anniversary of the first successful THAAD hit. Nowthen, my friend who did this study in 1971 still works at Lockheed. He is kind of an honorary godlike character, a visionary, an advisor. But he saw 30 years into the future. I propose we look into the future, with the knowledge that in 30 years, we will likely have 100-cray computers in packages the size of a marble. Then what can we do? What about Rosie the maid from the Jetsons? Given sufficiently high power computers and feedback loops, could we not build droids that could do all the things Rosie did, carrying on witty conversation at the same time? It is all doable, with just superfast computers and sufficiently sophisticated digital feedback control systems! Let us think like Dr. THAAD, not simply dismissing a way-out idea, but rather estimating what would actually be needed to carry out your fondest dreams. Then let us work to make that happen. Wooo hoooo! spike - ---------------- > You have to know they're there. A relatively slow stealth delivery > vehicle with cool exhaust hugging the ground is quite difficult to > see, even from above. True, but where are you launching from? Canada? Mexico? Frankly I'm not worried about sophisticated threats from terrorists. They don't have this kind of capability, and won't for a long time. > > > > Stealth technology. > > > > Submillimeter radar. new generation IR sensors. > > Try spotting a helium-assisted electroflight delivery vehicle, which > contains essentially no metal, and is 99% translucent. Or, just > camouflage as private aircraft, using teleoperation. Carrying a metallic bomb weighing several hundred pounds at the very least? (BTW: Backpack/suitcase bombs are not that small, or that light) A helium lifting device would have to be at least 30 feet in diameter to life that much weight, and an aircraft would not be that much smaller. > > > > Cheap balloon decoys. > > > > To do what? they have distinctly different ballistic characteristics and radar > > signatures. > > It should be not so very difficult to engineer decoys which look like > a warhead. In a pinch, just make inflatable warhead-shaped metallized > baloons. You'd have to make the warhead have the same reentry shell as an IRV, the same mass as an IRV, and its own guidance, like an IRV. The only thing that won't be in your decoy is an actual nuclear weapon, while the decoy takes up as much space and weight as a real weapon. Decoys are dumb. > > > > Armored warheads. > > > > Added weight reduces the total number of warheads you can carry, and makes the > > warhead either larger, and thus easier to hit, or else denser, and thus a much > > hotter and easier to spot target. > > Of course you deploy decoys before atmospheric reentry. As soon as the > thing encounters enough atmospheric drag to develop a plasma coat, > you don't have very much time to hit it. Terminal phalanx and other systems like THAAD are terminal systems like this. Its obviously feasible, otherwise, why would we be focusing on the terminal stage first? > > > > Warheads in orbit. > > > > Easily detectable with xray and gamma ray observation platforms. Allowing > > Huh? A dormant, well-shielded warhead? From a distance of some 100 km? > Uh, don't think so. > > > warheads in orbit automatically allows you to put warhead powered xray lasers in > > orbit, which are far far cheaper and more effective than any other laser > > technology. Every bomb you use as an xray pump can kill 50-200 targets at once. > > Er, you can only align the bomb towards one target. Nuke for nuke, > that's quite expensive. Also, it is very, very difficult to destroy a > remote target which is shielded by, say, a few cm of tungsten. I > haven't heard of any successfull xRay laser tests in orbit (duh). > Actually, no. The testing has all been underground for obvious legal/treaty reasons, but they've been designed with many focusing devices on a single bomb. - ------------------ I am toying with that same notion, when considering a paper produced by Physicist, Seth Lloyd, in his essay, "Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation". Interestingly enough, he briiefly examines the notion of whether a Black Hole can be a computer in its own right, using Hawking radiation. Would a 30 x Cray XMP in a flashlight-sized processor be cheap enough and trouble-free, though? Massively parallel Computational Marble(s)? I think one might then get a chance to produce a "soul catcher" as once envisioned by a British Telcom maven, as well as Hans Moravec. The Yudkowsky would get his chance at uploading. In a message dated 6/14/00 9:57:34 PM Pacific Daylight Time, spike66 writes: << I propose we look into the future, with the knowledge that in 30 years, we will likely have 100-cray computers in packages the size of a marble. Then what can we do? What about Rosie the maid from the Jetsons? Given sufficiently high power computers and feedback loops, could we not build droids that could do all the things Rosie did, carrying on witty conversation at the same time? It is all doable, with just superfast computers and sufficiently sophisticated digital feedback control systems! Let us think like Dr. THAAD, not simply dismissing a way-out idea, but rather estimating what would actually be needed to carry out your fondest dreams. Then let us work to make that happen. Wooo hoooo! spike >> - ----------------- What the heck -- I've been pondering this for a while, so I'll throw the question out: What do you think of the possibility of delivery of nukes in a container ship? This is my main scenario to fear: some North Korean (or other potentially hostile nation) agents bribe dockworkers somewhere close to home (South Korea in this case, though I guess this just got a heck of lot less likely in the last few days) to allow them to insert just one "special" carton among the thousands and thousands of cartons in a container aboard a cargo ship, set to detonate via GPS trigger upon arrival at the correct latitude and longitude. The dockworkers might just assume it's a contraband shipment, not a weapon of mass destruction. In the mideast, this scenario could play out as a nuke stashed in an oil tanker, possibly. I have heard (though never got confirmation, anybody know for sure? Care to tell me I'm wrong and quit worrying?) that the vast majority of cargo arriving in U.S. ports never goes through any kind of inspection, and if it does it's usually a random inspection of a small portion of the contents, making it extremely unlikely that one particular suspicious carton among the Hyundai's or whatever would be noticed. Of course, this gets even easier if it's a bioweapon. Essentially, I'm much more worried about trojan horses more than sophisticated ICBM's or other weapons systems. Regards, James Wetterau - -------------- > > Plutonium is just too hard to get, > > I hope you're right but there are thousands of tons of the stuff and 9 pounds > can make a bomb. It's not like money where you can keep track of every cent, > whenever you process or machine Plutonium a little sticks to the machinery and > is unaccounted for. This worries me. Using only 9 lbs requires capabilities of the highest caliber. You don't just learn how in college. Publicly available designs call for much more. > > >too hard to handle. > > I'd have to be careful or I might get cancer, but if I'm crazy enough to kill a > million people I probably wouldn't let a little thing like that stop me. Plutonium dust poisoning kills you in a matter of a few days. Actual physical skin contact with the weapons grade metal will kill you as quickly. Funny thing about arabs, they have this cultural thing against dying in bed at a young age (at least the bedouins do). > > >He said that the NMD was so vulnerable that it has > >a number of soft radar sites, so that if any one of these is taken out > >the whole system is useless. Nowthen, it doesnt take an extropian > >to figure out that *no* weapon system is designed with multiple > >single-point failure modes and zero redundancy. > > One half a megaton explosion 90 miles above Washington would create an EMP > that would shut down the entire eastern seaboard power grid and blow out every > civilian computer and RADAR from Boston to Atlanta. Perhaps the military stuff > is tougher but I'm skeptical, they've got sensitive electronics connected to huge > antennas and the pulse is so fast, much faster than lightning, that fuses are useless. Even the US doesn't make half megaton weapons any more, and those we did make once were very difficult and expensive. We only made megaton weapons because of missile and reentry vehicle technology constraints in the 50's and 60's, and they don't exist anymore. All of our weapons range from 50k - 250k tons. > > >Production is cheap, way cheap in comparison to that. > > Cheaper than mass producing simple dumb ICBMs? I don't think so. Simple dumb ICBMs are a misnomer. Scuds are tactical missiles, not intercontinental, and they are lucky if they land within a few miles of their targets. Extrapolate that to a longer range system, and you are lucky if Akhmed's ICBM is going to hit the right state. Completely useless. > > >Once we design a space based laser system > > Space based? I didn't know you were talking about a permanent orbital > battle station. OK. I'll orbit a much cheaper satellite of my own in a similar > orbit but moving in the opposite direction. A modern anti tank gun fires > a round that weighs about 5 pounds and moves at 1 mile a second, > it can destroy a 70 ton M1 tank. The relative speed of our two satellites > is 11 miles a second, 121 as much kinetic energy per unit of mass, > so a projectile that weighed about half an ounce could nock out a M1. > Your space station will certainly not be a tough as a tank so I think I'll > just throw a bucket of sand in your path. Even if you miss the grains the > first time every 45 minutes the come around again. My laser battle stations are small nukes with dozens of xray waveguides surrounding a heavy sheilding shell. You can launch literally hundreds of these from the bay of a space shuttle, and they can take sand abrasion as a matter of course. > > >Recall that the photons that come out of the business end of > >a laser have *already* passed thru a highly reflective surface. > > Only one end of a LASER is highly reflective, the other end, the one the beam > comes out, is about 50% reflective and with many high power LASERS it needs > to be replaced after every shot. Actually, mechanical shutters are being used now. > > >those who design and build missile defense systems are not hurting for > >employment. They could make waaay more money elsewhere, but dont. > > I don't believe that for a minute. I think the reasons for the project are bureaucratic > momentum and a childish fascination with things that go boom. I'm childish > myself and like things that go boom too, but there are limits I will not stoop to. > OK, it's easy for me to say that because I'm not an expert on light weight high > energy chemical LASERS, but if I was where else could I find a job? It's either > star wars or the golden arches, hold the pickles hold the lettuce. hardly. laser technology is a booming industry for health care, for industrial cutting and welding, all sorts of things, plus you've got the launch laser program as well... there are way more job openings now for laser research than just a few years ago. - ------------------- > The problem with the scenario is that since we know the container ship came from > a North Korean port, that it was North Korean agents who did it, so NK would not > be likely to exist as a livable region for more than a week after that. That > would not be in the best interest of the North Korean government. Um, my example was specifically the ship coming from South Korea. The idea being that somebody moves the weapon along the first leg of the trip (North Korea -> South Korea) some other way. But anyway, let's assume instead that it's some other portion of the world. You'd be hard pressed to know that the weapon was detonated by the country the ship originated in. > > In the mideast, this scenario could play out as a nuke stashed in an > > oil tanker, possibly. > > > > I have heard (though never got confirmation, anybody know for sure? > > Care to tell me I'm wrong and quit worrying?) that the vast majority > > of cargo arriving in U.S. ports never goes through any kind of > > inspection, and if it does it's usually a random inspection of a small > > portion of the contents, making it extremely unlikely that one > > particular suspicious carton among the Hyundai's or whatever would be > > noticed. > > Actually, all imported stuff is held in bond at the port, and they have drug > dogs sniffing stuff out, as that is the most prevalent thing, though they have > dogs trained to sniff for other stuff. Vehicles get weighed, as well as > containers, and weights must match the bill of lading the receiving customer > has. But not every individual box containing stuff inside a container gets opened and inspected, right? Also, if it's a GPS-controlled weapon, it could detonate as the ship is coming into harbor. Inspection is too late, unless it happens far from shore. > > Of course, this gets even easier if it's a bioweapon. Essentially, > > I'm much more worried about trojan horses more than sophisticated > > ICBM's or other weapons systems. > > a bioweapons would be much easier to sneak in, for sure. I would think nearly unpreventable. Regards, James - ------------------- > > where are you launching [cruse missiles] from? Canada? Mexico? > > Submarines and distant airplanes. How many terrorists do you know that have submarines with ranges of more than 10,000 miles, can carry (and launch) cruise missiles? None. Airplanes are a much better gamble for terrorists of limited means, however all aircraft have IFF identification transponders. If you are an incoming aircraft who has no IFF, or responds with incorrect IFF coding, you will get intercepted well out to sea. I worked in the 318th FIS back in the 80's, a fighter interceptor F-15 squadron in Tacoma. Air Guard and Reserve units have taken over most interception responsibilities around the country which have two to four planes on constant alert at airports a couple hundred miles apart around the entire border and shoreline, except for at Langley and Andrews AFB, which both have large numbers of full time planes on alert status to cover the DC area. All planes on alert status are kept in condition to take off in less than two minutes notice, fully fueled and armed, with an operational combat radius of 1000-1500 miles or more. > > > (BTW: Backpack/suitcase bombs are not that small, or that light) > > The US government will admit to having built 400 backpack nukes, they > thought they might be useful in sabotage if they wanted to destroy something > really big like a major dam. It weighed 58 pounds, could be deployed by one > man, and exploded with a force of 800 tons of TNT. I'm sure they have > classified stuff that's much better nowadays because that was back in 1964. Since there has been no need, then there has been no new designs. The backpack nukes were specifically developed for Keyhole insurgents to carry behind enemy lines in Europe in the event that the Warsaw Pact tried to take western europe. They were basically there for the expressed purpose of taking out a couple dozen key locations where autobahns and railroads intersect in Germany. > > > The testing [X Ray Laser] has all been underground for obvious > > legal/treaty reasons, but they've been designed with many focusing > > devices on a single bomb. > > That's not what I've hear, I've heard that the beam had much less power than > expected and nobody had any idea how to aim it to hit a tiny fast moving target > thousands of miles away. That's why the military doesn't talk much about X Ray > Lasers anymore, they've gone back to pushing "smart rocks". Thats what I expect you would have heard. Disinformation does wonders. Early tests were for the purposes of learning the practical practice of designing xray waveguide and focusing technologies to the level we've had with optics for decades. Its rather to be expected that early attempts were not near theoretical potentials. The reason they are pushing 'smart rocks' is because rocks are not nuclear weapons, while x-ray lasers are. The treaty restrictions on nukes in space put a significant crimp on using this technology, for sure. Primary plans now for them are to install them on some ICBMs to replace MIRVs that have been removed for treaty reasons, so they can be fast launched on demand into the path of whatever incoming wave of offensive nukes occurs. Besides, in their hearts, soldiers actually dislike nukes intensely. The idea of just tossing rocks around has a much broader appeal... - ------------------ << << The US government will admit to having built > 400 backpack nukes, they thought they might be useful in sabotage if they > wanted to destroy something really big like a major dam. It weighed 58 > pounds, could be deployed by one man, and exploded with a force of 800 tons > of TNT. I'm sure they have classified stuff that's much better nowadays > because that was back in 1964. > >> Nick-named The Davy Crocket >> > > In those days we had a bazooka type weapon called the Davy Crocket that > sounded very much the same as what you described. I am wondering if it is > the same weapon and if that explains why the battlefield version disappeared > from our public arsenal. Yes, and there were artillery shells developed for 4 and 8 inch guns that were nuke capable. Once the gummint had a better idea of what lingering radiation could do, many of those were retired and dismantled. Some were kept in europe for helping to winnow down the 20 to 1 odds against us in armor capability the Warsaw Pact had if they tried to take western europe. So far as I know, many or most are no longer in service. Those still in storage are kept at places like Dugway which are VERY secure. - ------------------ > Not to change the subject, but I believe that the technology was also developed by Defense Department scientist, Ted Taylor, as a component for Freeman Dyson's Orion Spacecraft, affectionately known as Bang Bang. Orion would've produced a lot of nuclear 'fallout' as it passed through the atmosphere on its way to the moon. Nuclear Concussions against a pusher plate seem fairly wasteful, but fast. It may somehow be used someday in solar system travel-but not to orbit! - ------------------ On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, John Clark wrote: > The US government will admit to having built 400 backpack nukes, they > thought they might be useful in sabotage if they wanted to destroy something > really big like a major dam. It weighed 58 pounds, could be deployed by one > man, and exploded with a force of 800 tons of TNT. I'm sure they have > classified stuff that's much better nowadays because that was back in 1964. I have "friends" who "hypothetically" carried such devices on covert ops in foreign countries. I also have it on good authority that there are several Russian devices of similar construction believed to be in CONUS. The general philosophy of the U.S. government is to keep the relative idiots from transporting nukes into the country. "Rational" and intelligent enemies don't represent nearly as big a threat, even if they do have the capability. - -James Rogers - ---------------- - -- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@frontiernet.net > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program - ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Allies, CIA/NSA, and Vietnam veterans welcome] Southeast Asia (SEA) service: Vietnam - Theater Telecommunications Center/HHC, 1st Aviation Brigade (Jan 71 - Aug 72) Thailand/Laos - Telecommunications Center/U.S. Army Support Thailand (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73) - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site (Aug 73 - Jan 74) ------------------------------ End of skunk-works-digest V9 #44 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe in the body of a message to "majordomo@netwrx1.com". 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