Weapons of War Today ∗

This is part of a larger forthcoming study related to ‘Strategic Studies’. It closely follows die UGC NET syllabus for the same.

‘Naptha’ was the term the Babylonians used to mean ‘the thing that blazes’. It was a surface seepage of petroleum. Keegan John , A History of Warfare. Alfed A. Knop. N. York,. 1993. p. 319. Circumstantial evidence for dissemination of Chinese gunpowder technology to Europe in The Travels of Marco Polo, Penguin, Baltimore, 1958, “Introduction”, p. 15.

Keegan op. cit. , pp. 320–321.

Ibid , p. 320.

Keegan , op. cit. , p. 372.

Christopher F. Foss Jane’s main Battle Tanks. 2nd. ed., London, 1986, “Introduction”, and pp. 44–45.

Groman Jeff (ed.), Weapons of War, Gallery Books, New York, 1985, pp. 125–126 (henceforth, Groman ); on the Abrams Rick Atkinson , Crusade, The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1993, p. 251.

Groman , op. cit , p. 136.

Jajnes’s Fighting Ships, 1988-89, London, 91st. ed., p. 113.

Kirk John Klein Aaron , The US Navy Today. Exeter Books, New York, 1987, p. 29, (henceforth, US Navy).

“Conventional rotating radars are limited both in data rate and in number of target tracks they can handle, whereas saturation missile attacks require sensors which can react immediately and have a virtually unlimited tracking capacity.” AEGIS mounts 4 fixed planar antennae each covering a sector of 45 degrees on the superstructure of the ship. “Each SPY-1 array has more than 4,000 radiating elements that shape and direct multiple beams. Targets satisfying predetermined criteria are evaluated, arranged in sequence of threat and engaged, —either automatically or with manual overide, by a variety of defensive systems. At longer ranges air targets will be engaged by the SM-2 missile, fired from one of two MK 26 launchers. The SM-2 differs from previous missiles in requiring target illumination only in the terminal phase of flight. This means that no less than 18 missiles can be kept in the air in addition to the four in the terminal phase, and the MK 99 illuminators switch rapidly from one target to the next under computer control. At closer ranges back-up is provided by the two 5-inch guns, while ‘last-ditch’ self-defence is provided by two Phalanx CIWS (Close-In Weapons System) guns, assisted by ECM (electronic countermeasure) jammers and chaff dispesers.” Bonds Ray (ed.). The US War Machine. Crown Publishers, New York, 1983, p. 132.

US Navy. op. cit., p. 80. Other US SLBMs are the Polaris and the Poseidon.

Berg John , The Soviet Submarine Fleet, Jane’s, London, 1985. p. 71. The largest submarine in the world, the Typhoon-class carried 20 SS-N-20 SLBMs with a range of about 4,500 miles. Submarines in World War II were usually of just a few hundred tons. Submarines use two kinds of sonar techniques to track hostile submarines. In the passive mode, the submarine’s sonar simple keeps its ‘ears’ open to detect propeller noise. In the the active mode, the sonar sends out impulses under water. If it receives a ‘ping’ sound, then there is a submarine around. However the ping activates the target submarine’s passive sonar. The latter then becomes aware that another submarine is around ! Today, the US Navy is making efforts to make its hunter-killer submarines super-quiet by using stealth technology, which the US Air Force now uses with its fighters and bombers.

US Navy op. cit., p. 13.

Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, Commander-in-Chief of Britain’s Bomber Command in World War II, not surprisingly considered his heavy bombers to have done ‘more than any other single weapon to win this war’. The Statesman. Calcutta, 8 November, 1995, p. 9. On the other hand, British historians admitted after the war that “the potential of strategic offensive was greater than its achievement.” Atkinson, op. cit., p. 58. In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Col. John A. Warden III. who was given the task of designing the air campaign against Iraq, was a strategic bombing enthusiast who claimed that the air campaign alone could win the war. General Colin Powell, Chairman. Joint Chief of Staff, and Warden’s boss, doubted that. Ibid. p. 60.

Speer Albert , Inside the Third Reich, (English transl,), Avon Books, Macmillan. New York, 1970, p. 363.

Littauer Rephael Uphoff Norman (eds.) The Air War in Indochina. Beacon Press. Boston, 1972, p. 93.

B 1B details in Aircraft of the United States. Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., London, 1987, last page (pages unnumbered).

Nickerson Hoffman , Arms and Policy. 1939-1944. New York. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945. p. 267, quoted in Cohen Eliot A. . “The Meaning and Future of Air Power”, Orbis, Philadelphia, Spring 1995, p. 191.

“F-22 to Counter 21st Century Threats”, Aviation Week & Space Technology, McGraw Hill. July 24, 1995, pp. 38–43.

Ibid., p. 190.

See Streetly Martin . World Electronic Warfare Aircraft. Jane’s. London. 1984. pp. 52. 61, 78–79.

A lucid exposition of SDI in Jastrow Robert , How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete. Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1985.

Barnaby Frank Space Weapons. Gallery Books. New York, 1984, p. 7.

Laser is the abbreviation for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission or Radiation.

Barnaby . op. cit., p. 16.

Laser and particle beam are alike to the extent that both use a narrow beam of concentrated energy to destroy a target. But they have different operating principle. Details in Peebles Curtis . Battle for Space. Beafort Books. New York. 1983. Chapters 5 & 6.

‘Smart pebbles’ or ‘smart rocks’ are ten inches long, 15 lbs. of weight, and computer-guided anti-ballistic missile weapons in space, Jastrow, op. cit. , p. 108

Ibid., pp. 103–104. Among other SDI diterature are the following: Schreiber Wolfgang Die Strategische Verteidigungsinitiative, Verlag Ernst Knoth Melle , 3rd. ed., 1986; Enders Thomas (ed.), Standpunkte zu SDI in West und Ost, Verlag Ernst Knoth Melle , 1985; and Strategic Defense and Anti-Satellite Weapons, Hearing defore the Cmtee, on For. Reis., US Senate, 98th. Cong., 2nd. sess., April 25, 1984, US Govt. Printing Office, Washington, 1984.

Bamaby , op. cit. , p. 33.

Bamaby ibid., p. 34.

A fascinating account of the NSA is in Bamford L James , The Puzzle Palace, Penguin, Harmondworth, 1983.

The Statesman. Calcutta, 19 January 1996, p. 5.

Baghdad’s Defence Ministry building, Ba’ath Party headquarters, telecommunication centre and many other targets were hit, inter alia, by Tomahawk cruise missiles. Voice of America (VOA), 17 Jan. 1991, 7 p.m., 8.57 p.m. & 10.30 p.m. 1ST. US ships fired over 100 cruise missiles as of 17 Jan. 1991.

“The Weapons Inside the High-Tech Arsenal”, Time. 4 Feb, 1991, p. 40, VOA, 13 Feb. 1991, 8.30 p.m. IST, BBC, 13 Feb, 1991, 9.30 p.m. IST.

Summarised from NWF, op. cit., p. 23.

A realistic and detailed depiction of the serious consequences of such malfunction in Eugene Burdick & Harvey Wheeler, Fail-Safe, McGraw Hill, New York, 1962.

Details of the KAL 007 shootdown, inter alia, in Johnson R.W. , Shootdown, Viking, New York. 1986. Details of the NSA itself in Bamford James , The Puzzle Palace. Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1983.

VOA, A Feb, 1991, 7.30 p.m. IST, & 5 Feb. 1991, 9.30 p.m. IST.

The Stateman, Calcutta, 2 April 1996, p. 8.

Rohde Commander William E. , US Navy, “What is Info Warfare?” USNI Proceeding, Washington DC, Feb. 1996, p. 35.

The following information on NORAD and other C³ and C³I systems are mostly derived from Daniel Ford, The Button, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1985, NWF, op. cit., pp. 22–23; Fail-Saft, op. cit.

Ford , op. cit., p. 20.

Fail-Safe, op. cit., pp. 199–200.

Ford , op. cit., p. 93.

PAWS stands for Phased Array Warning System.