New Technologies Defense Policy And Arms Control

This volume contains the proceedings of the International Conference on Technology, Arms Race and Disarmament which took place at Castiglioncello, Italy, in September 1987. The papers examine strategic defence policies, nuclear weapons proliferation and arms control among many other topics.

In light of the spectacular performance of American high-technology weapons in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, as well as the phenomenal pace of innovation in the modern computer industry, many defense analysts have posited that we are on the threshold of a revolution in military affairs (RMA). The issue has more than semantic importance. Many RMA proponents have begun to argue for major changes in Pentagon budgetary priorities and even in American foreign policy more generally to free up resources to pursue a transformed U.S. military—and to make sure that other countries do not take advantage of the purported RMA before we do. This book takes a more measured perspective. Beginning with a survey of various types of defense technologies, it argues that while important developments are indeed under way, most impressively in electronics and computer systems, the overall thrust of contemporary military innovation is probably not of a revolutionary magnitude. Some reorientation of U.S. defense dollars is appropriate, largely to improve homeland defense and to take advantage of the promise of modern electronics systems and precision-guided munitions. But radical shifts in U.S. security policy and Pentagon budget priorities appear unwarranted—especially if those shifts would come at the expense of American military engagement in overseas defense missions from Korea to Iraq to Bosnia.

This is the 44th volume in the Occasional Paper series of the United States Air Force Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). This report summarizes a three-phase research project undertaken by the USAF Institute for National Security Studies on behalf of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to forecast long-range global trends affecting arms control technologies. The report projects the international political, economic, and scientific environments to the year 2015. It posits economic and technological drivers as shaping the system, including its military and political dimensions. The result will be a two-tiered system, with great danger arising from significant proliferation in the second tier and the transition zone between tiers. The report next draws conclusions from this likely future for the scope, value, and practice of arms control. Arms control will be focused less on limitation and reduction of existing weapons, although the endgame between the United States and Russia will remain a significant effort. The focus will shift to the less well-defined realm of counterproliferation, and to marginal, failing, and failed states as well as nontraditional and non-state actors. New dimensions will be added, including control efforts toward small arms, advanced conventional weapons, military space, and information operations. The report then extrapolates from this future to assess the likely arms control technology requirements in cooperative, noncooperative, intrusive, and nonintrusive regimes. The projection here is continuing requirements for each of these specialized sets of technologies, with particular emphasis on multiple-use technologies for remote arms control compliance and verification monitoring as well as for intelligence detection and collection.

With revolutionary changes in nanotechnology (NT) now on the horizon, many countries have started major research and development (R&D) programmes, which are mainly civilian. Often overlooked are military R&D programmes – in particular those of the US government. This is the first systematic and comprehensive presentation of the potential military applications of NT. In ten to twenty years, these applications may include extremely small computers, robots, missiles, satellites, launchers and sensors. They may also provide lighter and stronger materials for vehicles and weapons, implants in soldiers’ bodies, metal-free firearms, autonomous fighting systems, and smaller chemical and biological weapons. These potential uses raise strong concerns. This assessment is made from a viewpoint of international security, considering the new criteria of dangers for arms control and the international law of warfare, dangers for stability through potential new arms races and proliferation, and dangers for humans and society. Some military applications, such as computers, will be so close to civilian uses that limits are impractical. Others, such as sensors for biological-warfare agents, may contribute to stronger protection against terrorist attacks and better verification of compliance with arms-control treaties. For preventive limitation of these new technologies, specific approaches are proposed that balance positive civilian uses and take into account verification of compliance, with a view to international peace and security, not national military strength. This book will be of great interest to scholars of military technology, non-lethal weapons, disarmament and security studies in general.

President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative has kindled a national debate over the roles of strategic nuclear weapons, ballistic missile defenses, and arms control in U.S. national security policy. It has also underscored the important ramifications of U.S. military space policy.At the requests of the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress undertook an assessment of the opportunities and risks involved in an accelerated program of research on new ballistic missile defense technologies, including those that might lead to deployment of weapons in space. Debate over the relevant political, military, and technical issues has been hotly contested by participants with widely varying assumptions and points of view. OTA has not attempted to resolve the debate, but rather to try to clarify the issues and enhance the level of discourse.This report examines both the "why" and the "what" of ballistic missile defenses. Why would we want ballistic missile defense weapons if we could have them? Would the advantages of deploying them outweigh the disadvantages? What technologies are under investigation for BMD applications? How might those applications serve our strategic goals? These policy and technology questions interact with one another in complex ways: what seems technologically possible conditions perceptions of policy options, while policy choices shape technological pursuits.