752
8 Modern Weapons: Possibilities and Limitations
wave of reciprocal atomic strikes. No manoeuveres or computer simulations would
recreate actual conditions of such battle on a planetary scale.
As we are going to demonstrate in Sect. 8.2, the new emerging weapon systems
were characterized by the increasing operation speed, starting from decision-making
(whether it is necessary to attack or not, place and means of attack, the level of risk, the
forces left as reserve, etc.); this increasing operation speed once again introduced the
factor of randomness, which cannot be calculated, into the game. According to Lem:
Lightning-fast systems made lightning-fast mistakes. When a fraction of a second
determined the safety or destruction of a region, a great metropolis, an industrial
complex, or a large fleet, it was impossible to achieve military certainty, or, as Lem
himself wrote, victory had ceased to be distinguishable from defeat.
It is worthwhile, however, to look at the atomic arsenals of twentieth-century Earth
from a historical perspective. Even in the seventies, they held enough weapons to kill
every inhabitant of the planet several times over.
This situation was fairly well known to the specialists. Given this overabundance of destructive might, the specialists favored a preventive strike, or making
a second strike at the enemy’s stockpiles while protecting their own. The safety of
the population was important but second in priority.
Meanwhile, new generations of weapons were rising in price exponentially. The
airplane of the First World War was made of canvas, wood, and piano wire, with
a couple of machine guns; landing gear and all, it cost about as much as a good
automobile. A comparable airplane of the Second World War cost as much as 30
automobiles. By the end of the century, the price of a jet interceptor or a radar-proof
bomber of the “Stealth” type was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. At this rate,
it was calculated that over the next 80 years each superpower would be able to afford
only twenty to twenty-five new planes. Tanks were no cheaper. And an atomic aircraft
carrier, which was like an antediluvian brontosaurus under fire, cost many billions.
The carrier could be sunk by a single hit from an F&F superrocket, which could split
over the target into a cluster of specialized warheads, each to strike at a different
nerve center of the sea leviathan.
In conclusion to the quoted work, Lem writes:
Successive generations of information theorists and computer scientists had
labored in vain to imitate the functions of the human brain in computers; stubbornly they ignored a mechanism a million times simpler than the brain, incredibly small, and remarkably reliable in its operation. From studying the neurology
and neuroanatomy, the specialists of the mid-twenty-first century quickly obtained
splendid results.
The result was a scientific-technological revolution that totally and irreversibly
transformed the battlegrounds of Earth.
Impressed by the brilliant quoted work by Stanislaw Lem, the authors detailed to
perform a more detailed examination of possibilities and limitations of new weapon
types, including neural weapons, which were predicted over 30 years ago. The results
of our studies are presented in the following sections.
8 Modern Weapons: Possibilities and Limitations
wave of reciprocal atomic strikes. No manoeuveres or computer simulations would
recreate actual conditions of such battle on a planetary scale.
As we are going to demonstrate in Sect. 8.2, the new emerging weapon systems
were characterized by the increasing operation speed, starting from decision-making
(whether it is necessary to attack or not, place and means of attack, the level of risk, the
forces left as reserve, etc.); this increasing operation speed once again introduced the
factor of randomness, which cannot be calculated, into the game. According to Lem:
Lightning-fast systems made lightning-fast mistakes. When a fraction of a second
determined the safety or destruction of a region, a great metropolis, an industrial
complex, or a large fleet, it was impossible to achieve military certainty, or, as Lem
himself wrote, victory had ceased to be distinguishable from defeat.
It is worthwhile, however, to look at the atomic arsenals of twentieth-century Earth
from a historical perspective. Even in the seventies, they held enough weapons to kill
every inhabitant of the planet several times over.
This situation was fairly well known to the specialists. Given this overabundance of destructive might, the specialists favored a preventive strike, or making
a second strike at the enemy’s stockpiles while protecting their own. The safety of
the population was important but second in priority.
Meanwhile, new generations of weapons were rising in price exponentially. The
airplane of the First World War was made of canvas, wood, and piano wire, with
a couple of machine guns; landing gear and all, it cost about as much as a good
automobile. A comparable airplane of the Second World War cost as much as 30
automobiles. By the end of the century, the price of a jet interceptor or a radar-proof
bomber of the “Stealth” type was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. At this rate,
it was calculated that over the next 80 years each superpower would be able to afford
only twenty to twenty-five new planes. Tanks were no cheaper. And an atomic aircraft
carrier, which was like an antediluvian brontosaurus under fire, cost many billions.
The carrier could be sunk by a single hit from an F&F superrocket, which could split
over the target into a cluster of specialized warheads, each to strike at a different
nerve center of the sea leviathan.
In conclusion to the quoted work, Lem writes:
Successive generations of information theorists and computer scientists had
labored in vain to imitate the functions of the human brain in computers; stubbornly they ignored a mechanism a million times simpler than the brain, incredibly small, and remarkably reliable in its operation. From studying the neurology
and neuroanatomy, the specialists of the mid-twenty-first century quickly obtained
splendid results.
The result was a scientific-technological revolution that totally and irreversibly
transformed the battlegrounds of Earth.
Impressed by the brilliant quoted work by Stanislaw Lem, the authors detailed to
perform a more detailed examination of possibilities and limitations of new weapon
types, including neural weapons, which were predicted over 30 years ago. The results
of our studies are presented in the following sections.