HIGH-PRECISION WEAPONS AS A PHENOMENON OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
General Oleg K. Rogozin (retired)
Principal Research Scientist, RAS Elorma Program
Former Deputy Chief of Procurement, Soviet Ministry of Defense
The constructive discussion on the dangers of a spontaneous and uncontrolled dissemination of ''dual-use" technologies under the conditions of conversion both confirmed our mutual understanding of the importance of this problem and compelled both sides to search for radical ways of solving it.
Indeed, the fact that the world, and especially the West, has become highly explosive and vulnerable to the power of not only nuclear weapons but also conventional high-precision weapons is becoming more and more obvious to specialists and clear-thinking politicians. The possession of such weapons equalizes the military-strategic and geopolitical chances of opposing countries (coalitions), despite considerably different levels of economic, scientific, technological, and military development. Any preventive (preemptive) strike using conventional long-range weapons against key targets in an economically highly-developed country can at once transform its territory, as well as the territories of the neighboring countries, into absolute ecological hell! It is sufficient to remember the self-destruction of just one nuclear block of the Chernobyl nuclear power station. And in Western Europe alone there are more than 90 nuclear power stations.
This possibility should be taken as an axiom and we should proceed from this premise when dealing with our own most important military-strategic problems and those of international security. The probability of such a scenario is being transformed from a theoretical possibility into an urgent and serious problem.
Today, not only Russia is sick, but also many other countries are sick politically, economically, and socially. Among them are countries overloaded with weapons, such as the former Soviet republics and many former members of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. The fires of war in Yugoslavia are not dying out. The ideas of Islamic fundamentalism are becoming more attractive to peoples in the republics of Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, which possesses nuclear weapons. The southern borders of Russia and Ukraine are practically invisible. Negative tendencies toward considerable and sharp changes in the postwar world order will increase in the near future. The particular danger lies in the political, economic, and social instability in Russia, which for the time being is the main factor and guarantor of geostrategic stability in the Eurasian region. Russia and Ukraine are still having a territorial dispute over the Crimean peninsula, and the fires of military conflicts are still raging in Karabakh, Georgia, Ossetia, and Tadjikhistan. The situation in Moldova remains highly explosive. All of this leads to a situation where the real (not theoretical) thrust of a military threat is changing from "East-West" to "North-
South'', while of all the great powers, Russia, with her clearly weakened military potential, finds herself in the worst situation.
All this gives serious incentives to politicians and Western and Eastern peace-loving establishments to search for new fundamental military-strategic approaches, as well as for nontraditional philosophical and political assessments of how to protect civilization from ill-intentioned or accidentally provoked regional and global catastrophes.
From the complete range of military-strategic problems directly linked to the conversion of "dual-use" technologies, the key problem, in our opinion, is the issue of nonproliferation (containment) of long-range (>300 km) high-precision weapons. However, we should mainly consider questions within the areas of competence and responsibility of our Academies of Science: specifically, how to prevent the results of fundamental and applied research, which could assist in the creation of more powerful high-precision weapons, from falling into the wrong hands during conversion. You can see that while the world community has worked diligently and with some success on curtailing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, just one agreement (in which the former USSR does not participate) is directed toward limiting the proliferation of conventional weaponry manufacturing technologies. It shows that the world community has not yet clearly realized this growing phenomenon of the twenty-first century, which is not less menacing than weapons of mass destruction! Maybe we will turn out to be the first "worded scientists," capable of persuasively informing the world community about this new global danger.
The delivery system is an important component of any type of weapon. Unfortunately, all conventional and possible future delivery systems of weapons of mass destruction can also be used to deliver high-precision munitions, which complicates the problem of identifying and differentiating between high-precision weapons and weapons of mass destruction. In addition, while the existing weapons of mass destruction and their parameters (number of blocs, geographical locations, capabilities of use, et al.) are well-known and defined by agreements between the members of the "nuclear club," there is practically no international quantitative and qualitative curtailing of high-precision weapons. High-precision weapons also are highly mobile, have incomparably wider range of types and nomenclature than weapons of mass destruction, and they can be used both as an aggressive weapon (in the hands of an aggressor) and as a defensive weapon (in the hands of a peaceful nation). And, finally, the high technical complexity of high-precision weapons attracts practically every conceivable scientific endeavor, among which we give the priority to optical electronics, information science, and computer engineering, as well as engineering of new materials and substances.
As mentioned above, the area of responsibility of our National Academies are the forms of collaboration, represented in the first and partially in the second blocks (bottom line), i.e., fundamental and applied research. As we see, there is a great diversity in the types of scientific and technical collaboration, which complicates verification of
converted scientific "product" and, consequently, the export control over its transference abroad. General Igor Lebedev will report on current export controls of the Russian Academy of Sciences, so I do not need to expound on them here. However, I would like to express what is a very important consideration, in my opinion. Neither export controls during conversion, nor free "brain" travel (or more precisely-their carriers, the young, capable Russian scientists living on the verge of poverty) could make people forget the subject of their scientific work and prevent an unintentional transfer of it to a dangerous client! I suppose that most U.S. scientists and experts agree with this, among them the CIA director Robert Gates, the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee vice-chairman Charles Bennett, the president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic University professor Roland Schmitt, and others.
In conclusion, I would like to suggest several proposals.
First, all progressive scientists, especially American and Russian scientists, should direct the attention of the world community toward the necessity of creating strict and comprehensive means of control over proliferation of strategically dangerous weapon systems, "dual-use" (convertible) technologies that can be used to develop new high-precision and, most importantly, long-range weapons. Particular attention must be paid to eliminating the possible transfer of high-precision weapons and corresponding "dual-use" technologies to potentially dangerous countries of the Third World, such as countries dominated by Islamic fundamentalism, which aspire to establish a new world order.
Second, all progressive scientists should strive for the creation of mechanisms of international control over the possible development of "flash points" on our planet, where completely unjustifiable concentrations of high-precision weapons for various areas of application (on land, in the air, in the ocean, and in space) exist, and for taking political, economic and other measures for blocking of these concentrations in a timely manner.
Third, all progressive scientists should direct the attention of the world community toward the necessity of developing principles and criteria for evaluating the development of armed forces and armaments with a purely defensive structure and composition, and reliable and distinctive external indications of defensive weapons, which, along with on-site inspections, will increase mutual trust, eliminate unjustifiable menacing actions by peaceful countries and will assure timely discovery of any preparations for war or aggression.
Fourth, all progressive scientists should direct the attention of the world community to the necessity of developing an international system under the aegis of the United Nations for the effective control of space and the atmosphere, that would prevent the unsanctioned and provocative use of high-precision weapons and intercept and neutralize them in flight.
Fifth, all progressive scientists should direct the attention of authorities toward the necessity of material and moral support of scientists whose work is related to the
development of technologies of weapons of mass destruction, primarily of high-precision long-range weapons. Special attention should be paid to provide an urgent support of scientists and specialists of member countries of CIS (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan), since these countries possess strategic nuclear weapon delivery systems.
Sixth, American and Russian scientists, as well as scientists of other western countries that produce and export weapons, should create a data bank on critical parameters of high-precision weapons, and an international data bank of strategic and military-technical concepts, definitions and terminology. These data banks would help to eliminate exports of dangerous weapons to the countries of the Third World, as well as to reduce the semantic incompatibility during international negotiations and procedures on military-technical matters.
Thank you for your attention. I am far from the thought that I have covered all possible aspects of such complicated problem. I suppose my colleagues professor V. Tsymbal and A. Danilevich, as well as our colleagues from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, will contribute their ideas to this.