sci am special online issue 2002.no01 - the science of war - weapons

2

6

12

17

22

28

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ScientificAmerican.comspecial online issue no. 1THE SCIENCE OF WAR��WEAPONS

The art of war, according to Sun Tzu's 2,000-year-old text of the same name, is largely amatter of strategy, but the science of war begins squarely with weapons. Physics andengineering—and more often today, chemistry and biology—drive the creation of newmilitary tools, from smart bombs and stealth aircraft to nerve gases and plastic explo-sives. Thus it is with a collection of articles about weapons that we are launching online aspecial anthology of Scientific American's recent coverage on war.

In this issue, scientists share their expertise on one terror of the ancient battlefield, thetrebuchet, as well as several modern-day scourges, including land mines, third world sub-marines and biological arms. Additional articles feature in-depth research by staff editorson more futuristic threats—in the form of swift subsea systems and so-called non-lethalweapons. The complete table of contents appears below.

ANCIENT WEAPONS The TrebuchetBY PAUL E. CHEVEDDEN, LES EIGENBROD, VERNARD FOLEY AND WERNER SOEDEL; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, JULY 1995Recent reconstructions and computer simulations reveal the operating principles of the most powerful weapon of its time.

BLACK MARKET WEAPONS Third World SubmarinesBY DANIEL J. REVELLE AND LARA LUMPE; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, AUGUST 1994The proliferation of submarines may be a threat to established navies and regional stability, but to arms manufacturers it is a market opportunity.

HIDDEN WEAPONS The Horror of Land MinesBY GINO STRADA; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, MAY 1996Land mines kill or maim more than 15,000 people each year. Most victims are innocent civilians. Many are children. Still, mines are planted by the thousands every day.

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS The Specter of Biological WeaponsBY LEONARD A. COLE; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, DECEMBER 1996States and terrorists alike have shown a growing interest in germ warfare. More stringent arms-control efforts are needed to discourage attacks.

NON-LETHAL WEAPONS Fighting Future WarsBY GARY STIX; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, DECEMBER 1995U.S. military planners hope to rely on improved versions of the technologies tested in the Gulf War to help fight the next Saddam Hussein. They may be preparing for the wrong conflict.

SWIFT SUBSEA WEAPONS Warp Drive UnderwaterBY STEVEN ASHLEY; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, MAY 2001Traveling inside drag-cutting bubbles, secret torpedoes and other subsea naval systems can move hundreds of miles per hour.

1 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE FEBRUARY 2002Copyright 2002 Scientific American, Inc.

Centuries before the development ofeffective cannons, huge artillery

pieces were demolishing castle wallswith projectiles the weight of an uprightpiano. The trebuchet, invented in Chinabetween the fifth and third centuriesB.C.E., reached the Mediterranean bythe sixth century C.E. It displaced otherforms of artillery and held its own untilwell after the coming of gunpowder.The trebuchet was instrumental in therapid expansion of both the Islamic andthe Mongol empires. It also played apart in the transmission of the BlackDeath, the epidemic of plague thatswept Eurasia and North Africa duringthe 14th century. Along the way itseems to have influenced both the devel-opment of clockwork and theoreticalanalyses of motion.

The trebuchet succeeded the catapult,which in turn was a mechanization ofthe bow [see “Ancient Catapults,” byWerner Soedel and Vernard Foley; SCI-ENTIFIC AMERICAN, March 1979].Catapults drew their energy from theelastic deformation of twisted ropes orsinews, whereas trebuchets relied ongravity or direct human power, whichproved vastly more effective.

Recovering Lost Knowledge

The average catapult launched a mis-sile weighing between 13 and 18

kilograms, and the most commonlyused heavy catapults had a capacity of27 kilograms. According to Philo of By-zantium, however, even these machinescould not inflict much damage on wallsat a distance of 160 meters. The mostpowerful trebuchets, in contrast, couldlaunch missiles weighing a ton or more.Furthermore, their maximum range

could exceed that of ancient artillery.We have only recently begun to re-

construct the history and operatingprinciples of the trebuchet. Scholars asyet have made no comprehensive effortto examine all the available evidence. Inparticular, Islamic technical literaturehas been neglected. The most importantsurviving technical treatise on these ma-chines is Kitab aniq fi al-manajaniq (AnElegant Book on Trebuchets), written in1462 C.E. by Yusuf ibn Urunbugha al-Zaradkash. One of the most profuselyillustrated Arabic manuscripts ever pro-duced, it provides detailed constructionand operating information. These writ-ings are particularly significant becausethey offer a unique insight into the ap-plied mechanics of premodern societies.

We have made scale models and com-puter simulations that have taught us agreat deal about the trebuchet’s opera-tion. As a result, we believe we have un-covered design principles essentially lostsince the Middle Ages. In addition, wehave found historical materials thatpush back the date of the trebuchet’sspread and reveal its crucial role in me-dieval warfare.

Historians had previously assumedthat the diffusion of trebuchets west-ward from China occurred too late toaffect the initial phase of the Islamicconquests, from 624 to 656. Recentwork by one of us (Chevedden), how-ever, shows that trebuchets reached theeastern Mediterranean by the late 500s,were known in Arabia and were usedwith great effect by Islamic armies. Thetechnological sophistication for whichIslam later became known was alreadymanifest.

The Mongol conquests, the largest inhuman history, also owed something to

this weapon. As a cavalry nation, theMongols employed Chinese and Mus-lim engineers to build and operate treb-uchets for their sieges. At the investmentof Kaffa in the Crimea in 1345– 46, the trebuchet’s contribution to bio-logical warfare had perhaps its mostdevastating impact. As Mongol forcesbesieged this Genoese outpost on theCrimean peninsula, the Black Deathswept through their ranks. Diseasedcorpses were then hurled into the city,and from Kaffa the Black Death spreadto the Mediterranean ports of Europevia Genoese merchants.

The trebuchet came to shape defen-sive as well as offensive tactics. Engi-neers thickened walls to withstand thenew artillery and redesigned fortifica-tions to employ trebuchets against at-tackers. Architects working under al-Adil (1196–1218), Saladin’s brother andsuccessor, introduced a defensive systemthat used gravity-powered trebuchetsmounted on the platforms of towers toprevent enemy artillery from comingwithin effective range. These towers, de-signed primarily as artillery emplace-ments, took on enormous proportionsto accommodate the larger trebuchets,and castles were transformed fromwalled enclosures with a few small tow-ers into clusters of large towers joinedby short stretches of curtain walls. Thetowers on the citadels of Damascus,Cairo and Bosra are massive structures,as large as 30 meters square.

Simple but Devastating

The principle of the trebuchet wasstraightforward. The weapon con-

sisted of a beam that pivoted around anaxle that divided the beam into a long

The TrebuchetRecent reconstructions and computer simulations reveal

the operating principles of the most powerful weapon of its time

by Paul E. Chevedden, Les Eigenbrod, Vernard Foley and Werner Soedel

2 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE FEBRUARY 2002

Originally Published in theJuly 1995 Issue


SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE 3The Science of War: Weapons

and short arm. The longer arm ter-minated in a cup or sling for hurling themissile, and the shorter one in an at-tachment for pulling ropes or a counter-weight. When the device was positionedfor launch, the short arm was aloft;when the beam was released, the longend swung upward, hurling the missilefrom the sling.

Three major forms developed: trac-tion machines, powered by crews pull-ing on ropes; counterweight machines,activated by the fall of large masses; andhybrid forms that employed both gravi-ty and human power. When tractionmachines first appeared in the Mediter-ranean world at the end of the sixthcentury, their capabilities were so far su-perior to those of earlier artillery thatthey were said to hurl “mountains andhills.” The most powerful hybrid ma-chines could launch shot about three tosix times as heavy as that of the mostcommonly used large catapults. In addi-tion, they could discharge significantlymore missiles in a given time.

Counterweight machines went muchfurther. The box for the weight mightbe the size of a peasant’s hut and con-tain tens of thousands of kilograms. Theprojectile on the other end of the armmight weigh between 200 and 300 kilo-grams, and a few trebuchets reportedlythrew stones weighing between 900 and1,360 kilograms. With such increasedcapability, even dead horses or bundledhumans could be flung. A modern re-construction made in England hastossed a compact car (476 kilogramswithout its engine) 80 meters using a30-ton counterweight.

During their heyday, trebuchets re-ceived much attention from engineers—indeed, the very word “engineering” isintimately related to them. In Latin andthe European vernaculars, a commonterm for trebuchet was “engine” (fromingenium, “an ingenious contrivance”),and those who designed, made and usedthem were called ingeniators.

Engineers modified the early designsto increase range by extracting the mostpossible energy from the falling coun-terweight and to increase accuracy byminimizing recoil. The first differencebetween counterweight machines andtheir traction forebears is that the sling

on the end of the arm is much longer.This change affects performance dra-matically by increasing the effectivelength of the throwing arm. It alsoopens the way for a series of additionalimprovements by making the angle atwhich the missile is released largely in-dependent of the angle of the arm. Byvarying the length of the sling ropes, en-gineers could ensure that shot left themachine at an angle of about 45 degreesto the vertical, which produces thelongest trajectory.

At the same time, so that more of theweight’s potential energy converts tomotion, the sling should open onlywhen the arm has reached an approxi-mately vertical position (with the coun-terweight near the bottom of its travel).Observations of the trebuchet may haveaided the emergence of important me-dieval insights into the forces associatedwith moving bodies.

Swinging Free

The next crucial innovation was thedevelopment of the hinged counter-

weight. During the cocking process, theboxes of hinged counterweight ma-chines hang directly below the hinge, atan angle to the arm; when the arm ofthe trebuchet is released, the hingestraightens out. As a result of this mo-tion, the counterweight’s distance fromthe pivot point, and thus its mechanicaladvantage, varies throughout the cycle.

The hinge significantly increases theamount of energy that can be deliveredthrough the beam to the projectile. Me-dieval engineers observed that hingedcounterweight machines, all else beingequal, would throw their projectiles far-ther than would fixed-weight ones. Ourcomputer simulations indicate thathinged counterweight machines deliv-ered about 70 percent of their energy tothe projectile. They lose some energy af-ter the hinge has opened fully, when thebeam begins to pull the counterweightsideways.

Although it exacts a small cost, thisswinging of the counterweight has a sig-nificant braking effect on the rotatingbeam. Together with the transfer of en-ergy to the sling as it lifts off and turnsabout the beam, the braking can bring

the beam nearly to a stop as it comesupright. The deceleration eases thestrain on the machine’s framework justas the missile departs. As a result, theframe is less likely to slide or bounce.Some pieces of classical-era artillery,such as the onager, were notorious forbucking and had to be mounted on spe-cial compressible platforms. The muchgentler release of the trebuchet meantthat engineers did not have to reposi-tion the frame between shots and socould shoot more rapidly and accurate-ly. A machine of medium size built bythe Museum of Falsters Minder in Den-mark has proved capable of groupingits shots, at a range of 180 meters, with-in a six-meter square.

Capturing the Trebuchet’s Lessons

Later engineers attempted to capture the great power that trebuchets rep-

resented. Some of these efforts are madevisible in historical records by the prolif-eration of counterweight boxes in theform of the mathematical curve calledthe saltcellar, or salinon. The counter-weight boxes of the more elaborate tre-buchets took this shape because it con-centrated the mass at the farthest dis-tance from the hinge and also reducedthe clearance necessary between thecounterweight and the frame. The sameform reappeared on later machines thatincorporated pendulums, such as pen-dulum-driven saws and other tools.

Most attempts to extend the trebu-chet’s principles failed because the coun-terweight’s power could not be har-nessed efficiently. Success came only intimekeeping, where it was not the tre-buchet’s great force but rather its regu-lar motion that engineers sought. Pen-dulums were a dramatic step forward inaccuracy from earlier controller mecha-nisms.

Although the pendulum is usually as-sociated with the time of Galileo andChristiaan Huygens, evidence for pen-dulum controllers can be traced back toa family of Italian clockmakers towhom Leonardo da Vinci was close. In-deed, da Vinci explicitly says some ofhis designs can be used for telling time.His drawings include a hinge betweenthe pendulum shaft and bob, just as ad-

During their heyday, trebuchets received much attention from engineers—

indeed, the very word “engineering” is intimately related to them. In Latin and the European

vernaculars, a common term for trebuchet was “engine” (from ingenium,“an ingenious

contrivance”), and those who designed, made and used them were called ingeniators.


vanced trebuchets hinged their counter-weights, and show notable formal re-semblances to fixed counterweight ma-chines as well. In the case of earlierclockwork, there is a marked similarityboth in form and in motion between thesaltcellar counterweight and a speedcontroller called the strob. The strob os-cillates about its shaft just as the coun-terweight does before quieting down atthe end of a launch.

Trebuchets also appear to haveplayed a role in the greatest single me-dieval advance in physical science, theinnovations in theoretical mechanics as-sociated with Jordanus of Nemore. Thekey to Jordanus’s contribution is hisconcept of positional gravity, a revivalin the Middle Ages of the idea of a mo-tion vector, or the directedness of aforce. Jordanus held that for equal dis-tances traveled, a weight was “heavier,”

or more capable of doing work, when itsline of descent was vertical rather thanoblique. In particular, he compared cas-es in which the descents were linearwith those that followed arcs. Eventual-ly this understanding led to the notionthat work is proportional to weight andvertical distance of descent, no matterwhat path is taken.

The connection is clear. Engineersknew that machines with hinged coun-

The Physics of the Trebuchet

�he motion of the trebuchet issimple enough in its essentials

to have inspired medieval studiesof motion, but its details are subtleand require computer simulationsto interpret accurately. Only recentlyhave we come to understand howthe rotation of the counterweightplays a crucial role in transferringenergy to the beam and thence tothe sling and projectile.

Earliest trebuchets were powered by crewspulling on ropes rather than by counterweights.Crews of as many as 250 men pulled to sendprojectiles 100 meters or more. In this example ofa small traction machine, the sling-holder’s weightflexed the beam and increased the range.

Addition of counterweights increased the power of the treb-uchet. The elimination of the pulling ropes made possible anoth-er innovation: by placing a trough under the trebuchet beam tohold the projectile, engineers could lengthen the sling and in-crease the range even further. The sling rotates faster after theshot is airborne, so its length controls the launch angle.

TRACTION

FIXEDCOUNTERWEIGHT

Sling was attached firmly to the beam at one endand looped over a metal prong at the other. When itreached the proper angle in its arc, the loop wouldfly free, releasing the projectile. Proper adjustmentof the prong and the overall length of the sling werecrucial to achieving maximum range.


terweights, in which the weight de-scends essentially straight down duringthe first, crucial part of the launch cycle,would throw stones farther than wouldtheir fixed counterweight equivalents, inwhich the mass travels in a curve.

Other aspects of Jordanus’s workmay show military connections as well.The suspension of the hinged counter-weight, with the constantly changingleverage of its arm, may have spurredJordanus’s related attempts to analyzethe equilibrium of bent levers and toemphasize that it was the horizontaldistance between the mass on a leverarm and its fulcrum that determined thework it could do. Observations of thediffering distances to which fixed and

hinged counterweight machines couldthrow their stones may have helped Jor-danus in his pioneering efforts to definethe concept of work, or force times dis-tance. Jordanus’s observations are usu-ally studied as an example of purephysics, based on the teachings of earli-er natural philosophers, such as Archi-medes. The closeness of his mechanicsto trebuchet function, however, suggeststhat engineering practice may have stim-ulated theory. Closing the circle, Galileolater incorporated such Jordanian ideasas virtual displacement, virtual work andthe analysis of inclined planes to sup-port such newer mechanics as his fa-mous analysis of the trajectory of can-non shot.

Galileo’s theoretical innovations cameonly after the replacement of trebuchetsby cannon, a process that took nearlytwo centuries and was not fully accom-plished until metallic shot replacedstones. The last instance of trebuchetuse comes from the New World, at thesiege of Tenochtitlán (Mexico City) in1521. As ammunition was running crit-ically low, Cortés eagerly accepted aproposal to build a trebuchet. The ma-chine took several days to build, and atthe first launch the stone went straightup, only to return and smash it. In viewof the tremendous power of these de-vices, and the finesse required to makethem function properly, would-be repli-cators should take careful note.

Hinged counterweightmachines added yet anotherincrement to the range by im-proving the efficiency withwhich the trebuchet convertedgravitational energy to projec-tile motion. The center of grav-ity of the weight fell straightdown during the first phase ofacceleration; as the hingestraightened, the rotation ofthe weight around its center ofgravity added to the energytransferred. Continued rota-tion helped to slow the beamas the projectile was released,reducing strain on the mecha-nism. The smoothness of thetrebuchet’s action meant it didnot have to be repositioned af-ter each shot and so could dis-charge more missiles in a giv-en time.

Propped counterweightsallowed engineers to squeezeeven more energy out of thecounterweight. By proppingup the counterweight at an an-gle before firing, they gave itslightly farther to fall. This in-novation also increased thedistance between the center ofgravity of the counterweightand the pivot around whichthe trebuchet beam rotated.

—Vernard Foley

JAR

ED

SC

HN

EID

MA

N D

ES

IGN

HINGEDCOUNTERWEIGHT

HINGED AND PROPPEDCOUNTERWEIGHT

The Authors

PAUL E. CHEVEDDEN, LES EIGEN-BROD, VERNARD FOLEY and WERNERSOEDEL combine engineering and history intheir studies of the trebuchet. Chevedden, ahistorian specializing in premodern siege tacticsand fortifications, teaches at Salem State Col-lege in Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D.from the University of California, Los Angeles,in 1986. Eigenbrod, an associate professor ofmechanical engineering technology at PurdueUniversity, teaches statics, dynamics and finite-element analysis. He spent 24 years in industrybefore going to Purdue. Foley, an associate pro-fessor at Purdue, specializes in the history oftechnology and science. This is his fifth articlefor Scientific American. Soedel is a professor ofmechanical engineering at Purdue, with astrong interest in mathematical models andsimulations of machinery. He reports that hisidea of a good time is to sit in the garden andread history books.

Further ReadingTREBUCHETS. Donald R. Hill in Viator, Vol. 4,pages 99–115; 1973.

CHINA’S TREBUCHETS, MANNED ANDCOUNTERWEIGHTED. Joseph Needham inOn Pre-Modern Technology and Science: Stud-ies in Honor of Lynn White, Jr. Edited by Bert S.Hall and Delno C. West. Undena Publications,1976.

BESSON, DA VINCI, AND THE EVOLUTIONOF THE PENDULUM: SOME FIND-INGSAND OBSERVATIONS. Vernard Foley, Dar-lene Sedlock, Carole Widule and David Ellis inHistory and Technology, Vol. 6, No. 1, pages1–43; 1988.

ARTILLERY IN LATE ANTIQUITY: PRE-LUDE TO THE MIDDLE AGES. Paul E.Chevedden in The Medieval City under Siege.Edited by Ivy Corfis and Michael Wolfe. Boydell& Brewer, 1995.

SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION IN CHINA,Vol. 5: CHEMISTRY AND CHEMICALTECHNOLOGY, Part 6: MILITARY TECH-NOLOGY: MISSILES AND SIEGES. JosephNeedham and Robin D. S. Yates. CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE 5The Science of War: WeaponsCopyright 2002 Scientific American, Inc.

During the spring of 1993, Iranput the first of its new Russian-built Kilo-class submarines

through sea trials in the Persian Gulf. Itspresence raises the specter of an Iranianattempt to close the Strait of Hormuz,the narrow waterway through which afourth of the world’s oil now passes.

Throughout the cold war, the U.S.Navy’s highest priority mission was toengage Soviet nuclear-powered subma-rines in a global game of hide-and-seek.As that threat has faded, conflicting pri-orities have emerged. On one hand, theU.S. Navy is concerned about the threatthat growing Third World naval forcespose to its ability to operate in coastalwaters around the world. On the otherhand, concern about the fate of the coldwar industrial base is creating pressuresfor the U.S. to join former allies and en-emies in supplying advanced diesel-powered attack submarines to develop-ing countries.

More than 20 developing countriescurrently operate over 150 diesel attacksubmarines. North Korea has 25 suchvessels, India 18, Turkey 15, Greece 10,Egypt 8, Libya 6 and Pakistan 6. Manyof these boats are obsolescent, poorlymaintained or operated by ill-trained

crews. Others, however, could be amatch for many vessels in the navies ofthe industrial world.

Third World nations have pur-chased their most advanced ves-sels from Russia and western Eu-

ropean countries, both of which have asubmarine manufacturing base far inexcess of their own needs. Hans Saeger,sales director for the German subma-rine builder HDW, has estimated thatNATO countries have the capacity tobuild 19 vessels a year, although NATOmembers generally purchase only twoor three. The incentive to employ the re-maining capacity is strong.

Germany in particular is a major ex-porter of submarines. Its sales are of ex-ceptional concern because they fre-quently involve the transfer not only ofvessels but also of production equip-ment and know-how for building sub-marines. Such “coproduction” dealspromote sales, but they also lead to anincrease in the number of nations com-peting to sell submarines, thus makingproliferation even more difficult to con-tain. Germany has made coproductionagreements with South Korea, India andArgentina—the last has been licensed toproduce two additional submarines forreexport.

Russia looks to weapon sales as asource of desperately needed hard cur-rency. The Russian navy stated severalyears ago that it intended to continueproducing two diesel submarines a year,keeping one for itself and selling theother for ready cash. Soviet customershave included Libya, North Korea, In-dia and Algeria. More recently Iran pur-chased two of the Kilo boats with theoption to buy a third.

Other nations are in the business, too.France has supplied its Daphne andmore modern Agosta models to Paki-stan. China has sold somewhat outdat-ed Romeo-class submarines to NorthKorea and Egypt. Sweden is marketingsubmarines to Malaysia and is lookingfor other sales in South Asia. The Neth-erlands is considering the sale of 10 sub-marines to Taiwan in what is expectedto be the last big sale of the century.Britain, meanwhile, is selling off fournew Upholder-class diesel boats that itsfleet no longer has the money to sup-port, even offering to lease them com-plete with mercenary crews.

Although the U.S. Navy has pur-chased only nuclear-powered attacksubmarines since the 1960s, the U.S.government recently gave approval fordomestic production of diesel vessels. Ina 1992 report to Congress, the navy ar-gued: “Construction of diesel subma-rines for export in U.S. shipyards wouldnot support the U.S. submarine ship-building base and could encourage fu-ture development and operation ofdiesel submarines to the detriment ofour own forces.” Nevertheless, in April1994 the State Department gave Ingallsshipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., the go-ahead to produce HDW’s Type 209 un-der a license from the German firm.Egypt wants to buy two of these boatsbut cannot afford to purchase them di-rectly from Germany. The vessels builtby Ingalls will be bought using U.S. mil-itary aid, which may be spent only onweapons of American manufacture.

Once this new production line is inplace, economic considerations willprobably generate pressure to make fur-ther sales to developing countries. Tai-wan and Saudi Arabia are the next like-

Third World SubmarinesThe proliferation of submarines may be a threat to

established navies and regional stability, but to armsmanufacturers it is a market opportunity

by Daniel J. Revelle and Lora Lumpe

DANIEL J. REVELLE and LORALUMPE worked together in the Arms SalesMonitoring Project at the Federation ofAmerican Scientists (FAS) in Washington,D.C. Revelle received a degree in physicsfrom Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.,and is currently a graduate student in aero-space engineering at the University of Col-orado at Boulder. Lumpe directs the FAS’sArms Sales Monitoring Project and edits abimonthly newsletter on weapons exports.


Originally Published in theAugust 1994 Issue


ly customers for U.S.-made Type 209vessels.

As shrinking military budgets add to economic woes, arms manufac-

turers are aggressively seeking to expand their markets. Submarinemerchants have targeted nations bor-dering on the Gulf of Oman, the Med-iterranean, the Arabian Sea and north-ern Indian Ocean, the South China Sea,and Pacific waters near the north Asiancoast. If successful, their sales campaigncould pose serious risks to internationalstability.

Even a handful of modern, well-main-tained diesel submarines could havemade a significant difference in the Per-sian Gulf War. If Saddam Hussein hadbought six modern vessels “and posi-tioned three of them on either side ofthe Strait of Hormuz, that would havecomplicated matters,” according to U.S.vice admiral James Williams. “One die-sel sub can make a great difference tohow you drive your ships,” he asserts.

During the Falklands/Malvinas war, asingle Argentine Type 209 managed toelude 15 British frigates and destroyersand the antisubmarine aircraft of twocarriers. The San Luis maneuvered intotorpedo range of the British fleet andlaunched three torpedoes, although allthree shots were unsuccessful. Early inthe conflict a British submarine sank theArgentine cruiser General Belgrano withtwo straight-running torpedoes of a de-sign that dated to World War II.

Both the U.S. and British navies aredeveloping active antitorpedo weaponsfor the turn of the century, but at pres-ent evasion and electronic countermea-sures are the only way to avoid a torpe-do already in the water. Courtesy of theindustrial nations, most Third Worldnavies now have advanced torpedoesthat can home in on a ship and explodejust underneath its keel for maximumdamage.

Some also possess submarine-launched antiship missiles. The U.S. hassold the Harpoon missile to Israel, Pak-istan and others, and the French aremarketing a submarine-launched ver-sion of the Exocet missile.

The deadliness of submarine-launchedweaponry makes early detection anddestruction of attacking submarines acrucial factor in antisubmarine warfare(referred to as ASW). Submarines ingeneral are obviously much more diffi-

cult to detect than are surface ships oraircraft. Diesel attack submarines canbe very quiet. When moving slowly,they can rely for days on battery power,eliminating engine noise or any need tosurface or snorkel for air.

Diesel submarines have a relative-ly short range, and so they tendto inhabit littoral waters rather

than the mid-ocean depths. Indeed,most developing countries have only afew vessels deployed defensively neartheir own coastlines, leading some ana-lysts to deride them as mere “intelligentminefields.” Nevertheless, the task oftracking and destroying these sub-marines can be complex and fraughtwith pitfalls.

The “shallow” areas that usually har-bor diesel submarines may be as deep as300 meters, giving a vessel plenty ofspace to hide. At the same time, the bot-tom is close enough that false sonarechoes can mask a boat’s location,much as “ground clutter” can hide low-flying aircraft from radar. Ships, oil rigsand sea life can add noise in coastal wa-ters, further complicating the ASW op-erator’s job. Magnetic anomaly detec-tors, used to find submarines in theopen ocean, can be especially confound-ed by the clutter of a shallow seafloorand the “magnetic garbage” that littersthe coastal plain.

To detect submarines and determinetheir location, ASW operators must cat-alogue other sound sources in the re-gion where submarines might travel andmap thermal, depth and salinity profiles

and bottom conditions that can affectthe path of acoustic emissions andsonar returns [see “The Amateur Scien-tist,” page 90]. The U.S. Navy has onlybegun to turn its attention to this prob-lem for waters such as the Persian Gulf,which was free of submarines until1992. At that time, Iran acquired itsfirst Kilo boat, and the U.S. assignedtwo Los Angeles–class nuclear-poweredattack submarines to patrol and mapthe area.

Although diesel submarines have many advantages when deployed under appropriate conditions,

they are not without weaknesses. Theirengines make more noise than do nucle-ar reactors and cannot drive a subma-rine as fast. When running at high speedunder electric power, a submarine candeplete its batteries in a few hours. Evenat slower speeds it must still approachthe surface to take in air every four to10 days, depending on the submarine’scapabilities and the captain’s willingnessto risk running out of power to avoiddetection. Consequently, ASW forcescan prevail by blanketing an area withvessels and aircraft. Admiral HenryMauz, U.S. Atlantic commander inchief, explains, “If you don’t let himsnorkel, you hold him down. Prettysoon he can’t work—it’s too hot, toosteamy, too much carbon dioxide and monoxide.”

The newest submarine designs aim toreduce these liabilities. The Kilo andType 209, for example, emit much lessnoise when snorkeling than do theirpredecessors. Moreover, Swedish, Ger-man, Italian, Russian and South Koreanshipyards are developing air-indepen-dent propulsion (AIP) systems, whicheliminate the need for frequent snorkel-ing and may enable a vessel to remain atdepth for up to a month. Sweden hastested and incorporated into its next-generation design an AIP system using aStirling engine, an external combustionengine that does not burn fuel explo-sively and is thus much quieter than astandard gasoline or diesel engine. Oth-er designs may use liquid oxygen andhigh-efficiency combustion systems, orchemical fuel cells with up to five timesthe net energy density of lead-acid bat-teries.

Most submarine fleets fielded byThird World countries do not currentlypresent an insuperable threat to naval


Swedish, German, Italian,

Russian and South Korean

shipyards are developing air-

independent propulsion

(AIP) systems, which

eliminate the need for

frequent snorkeling and may

enable a vessel to

remain at depth for

up to a month.


Attack Submarines for Sale

�iesel-powered attack submarines now being sold to developing nations are smaller and slower than are the su-perpowers’ nuclear versions (such as the U.S. Los Angeles–class vessel pictured immediately below). Neverthe-

less, they pose a significant threat to shipping and to naval forces that might wish to intervene in regional conflicts.


operations. U.S. Navy representativespoint out that “only a relatively smallproportion of the ocean is less than1,000 feet deep, and most of that is lessthan 30 miles from shore. Controllingthe deeper water,” they contend, “guar-antees battle group operation safety and‘bottles up’ potential threats in restrict-ed shallow water areas, where they aremore susceptible to mines and otherforces, while ensuring the sea lanes ofcommunication remain open.”

The new Kilos, to be based in south-ern Iran, are regarded by one U.S. intel-ligence official as so easy for U.S. air-craft to find and destroy that eliminat-ing them would be little more than a“live fire exercise.” Less capable subma-rines do not necessarily pose a seriousdanger even in large numbers. NorthKorea’s fleet, for example, consists ofantiquated Chinese-built Romeo-classvessels, a type the Soviet Union stoppedselling in 1960. Libya’s submarine crewshave a reputation for being poorlytrained, and their boats are so shoddilymaintained that only one or two out ofsix may be operable—not one has rou-tinely gone to sea since 1985.

Faced with this mixed situation, theU.S. Navy has taken two contradictorypositions. In its posture statement theservice pledges to “ensure we maintainthe ASW edge necessary to prevail incombat along the littoral,” thus implic-itly acknowledging that its current ASWforces are adequate to meet existing andnear-term threats. At the same time, of-ficials are justifying a new nuclear attacksubmarine program and several newhelicopter, sonar, radar, torpedo andship defense projects based in large parton the peril that could arise from dieselsubmarines in shallow water.

Indeed, the dangers that submarinefleets of the developing world present toU.S. forces will increase if nations con-tinue to export more advanced andstealthy diesel submarines and weaponsystems. Are there ways to limit thespread of the submarines?

It is difficult to convince exportersthat halting the sale of submarines tothe Third World would be in their bestinterests, but the idea of forgoing poten-tial sales is not unprecedented. In 1987,when Western countries became suffi-ciently alarmed about ballistic missileproliferation, they managed to put asidetheir financial interests to limit the saleof missiles and related technology. TheMissile Technology Control Regime(MTCR) bars the transfer of missiles,equipment or know-how that couldlead to widespread proliferation.

Missiles were an object of specialconcern because they could penetrate

enemy defenses and were highly suit-able for surprise attack—destabilizingcharacteristics also shared by subma-rines. Attack submarines in the hands ofrogue states raise the specter of terror-ism against commercial shipping andcould also wreak havoc against major-power forces attempting to operate inlittoral waters. As with the MTCR, thebest way to stop the spread of subma-rines to potentially hostile regimes is tocontrol the export of these weaponsworldwide. Routine sales of ballisticmissile capabilities are no longer consid-ered a legitimate commercial opportuni-ty for nations to exploit. The same canbe done for submarines.The marketmay not be such a large one for the de-

veloped countries to give up. Modernsubmarines cost too much for mostcountries—Pakistan, for example,would pay $233 million for each ofthree Agosta 90 models it is seeking topurchase from France. But China iscompeting with France for the Pakistanisale. Both countries are offering gener-ous financing packages that reduce theprofitability of the deal. In today’s buy-ers’ market, cash-paying customers arefew. In the U.S. deal with Egypt, the rev-enues that Ingalls shipyard would re-ceive are U.S. taxpayer dollars, alreadyrequired to be spent on U.S. goods andservices.


PERSIAN GULF has been the site of sub-marine operations since 1992, when Iran re-ceived its first submarine from Russia and builta base at Bandar Abbas. The U.S. then assignedtwo Los Angeles–class nuclear-powered attacksubmarines to patrol and map the area. Rough-ly a quarter of the world’s oil passes this singlemaritime choke point.

AFRICA

ASIA

AUSTRALIA

EUROPE

JAPAN

NORTH AMERICA

SOUTH AMERICA

28

189

9

197

185

93

24

SHIPMENTS OF OIL IN 1992(MILLIONS OF TONS)

NATIONS WITH SUBMARINE FLEETS

PROBABLE SUBMARINE BASES

ISRAEL

PAKISTA

N

LIBYAEGYPT

TURKEY

INDIA

IRANGREECE

SYRIA


Many submarine sales involve agree-ments to license the designs and tech-nology for building the boats. Thus, thepurchaser may become independentand may even compete with the originalseller for future orders. Brazil, Argenti-na, South Korea and India, all formersubmarine purchasers, have producedsome of their own vessels. It was pre-cisely such proliferation of productioncapabilities that spurred formation ofthe MTCR. The developed countriesmay similarly wish to act before losingcontrol of the world trade in subma-rines, along with the market itself, toThird World submarine producers.

Submarine exports are sometimes jus-tified on the basis of the need to preservethe defense industrial base, but the ca-pabilities that are preserved may not beall that useful for a modern nation’sown defense. Germany has sold Type209 submarines for nearly 20 years, but

there is not a single Type 209 in the Ger-man navy. Of greater aid in maintaininga submarine industrial base in Germanyand Sweden are current domestic con-struction orders for submarines withair-independent propulsion systems,which will provide work through thelate 1990s. For the U.S., production ofdiesel vessels in Mississippi would nothelp maintain nuclear submarine pro-duction in Virginia and Connecticut, al-though it would help keep Ingallsafloat. Instead it would create a produc-tion line whose output the U.S. Navy isinterested neither in purchasing nor inseeing proliferated around the globe.

A good step toward eventual controlof submarine exports might be to re-strict the sale of advanced submarine-launched weapons, such as modern tor-pedoes and antiship cruise missiles.These weapons, a single one of whichcan sink a large surface vessel, are par-

ticularly destabilizing. Furthermore, theU.S. could set an example by stoppingthe export of Harpoon missiles. Theseantiship weapons allow a submarine toattack a target such as an aircraft carri-er from as far away as 90 miles, well be-yond the reach of its inner defenses.

Missile and torpedo sales valued inthe hundreds of thousands of dollarsmay be easier for governments to resistthan submarine sales worth hundreds ofmillions. Whereas even the most basictorpedo can sink a ship, more modernweapons, which are faster, stealthier,longer range and better guided andwhich can defeat modern countermea-sures, could place naval forces in immi-nent peril. By limiting sales of underseaordnance to the most basic types, ex-porters would limit the threat from ex-isting boats. An agreement restrictingcoproduction or sale of submarine pro-duction technology would be another

IMPORTERS

PRIMARY SOURCE: International Institute for Strategic Studies

PLANHAVE

CHINA

FRANCE

GERMANY

NETHERLANDS

RUSSIA

SWEDEN

U.K.

ALGERIA

CHILE

COLOMBIA

CUBA

ECUADOR

EGYPT

GREECE

INDONESIA

IRAN

ISRAEL

LIBYA

MALAYSIA

PAKISTAN

PERU

PHILIPPINES

SAUDI ARABIA

SINGAPORE

SOUTH AFRICA

SYRIA

TAIWAN

VENEZUELA

ARGENTINA

BRAZIL

CHINA

INDIA

NORTH KOREA

SOUTH KOREA

TURKEY

CO-PRODUCERS

2

4

2

3

2

8

10

2

2

3

6

–

6

9

–

–

–

3

3

4

2

4

4

45

18

25

4

15

–

–

–

–

–

2–6

–

–

–

2

–

?

3

–

?

?

?

–

–

4

–

4

3

–

6

–

8

7

EXPORTERSPLANHAVE

Diesel Submarines inThird World Countries

�early two dozen developingnations currently possess

diesel-powered attack submarines.Many of these countries are seekingto expand or modernize theirfleets, and a handful of additionalnations intend to join the subma-rine club. Meanwhile a growing setof exporters (including some for-mer and current submarine buyers)is competing for the developing na-tions’ business. The U.S., which hasnot made diesel submarines forabout 30 years, is about to reenterthe export market.


logical move toward cessation of sub-marine exports in general.

Countries that purchase submarineswould be expected to object to restric-tions on their availability. An outrightban on sales would affect neighbors andenemies equally, however. An effectiveinternational agreement could preventnaval arms races before they begin.

Given the long lifetime of subma-rines and other advanced weap-ons, exporting them even to

countries that are now staunch allies isa risky business. Iran had six GermanType 209 submarines on order at thetime of its fundamentalist revolution.Had those weapons been delivered, Iranwould likely have used them to great ef-fect against Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil ship-ments during the Iran-Iraq war andcould have turned them against the U.S.fleet when it intervened to protect those

deliveries. Although Third World sub-marines do not pose an overwhelmingthreat at present, continued sales ofmodern submarines and munitions haveled to real and serious proliferationrisks.

Submarine-producing countries needto look beyond short-term commercialinterests to long-term security necessi-ties and organize a regime whereby thesale of advanced submarines is slowedor halted entirely.

��

THERE IS A SUB THREAT. Rear AdmiralJames Fitzgerald, U.S.N., and John Benedictin Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute,Vol. 116, No. 8, Issue 1050, pages 57–63;August 1990.

. . .FROM THE SEA: PREPARING THENAVAL SERVICE FOR THE 21ST CEN-TURY. U.S. Department of the Navy,September 1991.

THE SUBMARINE. Special section in NavyInternational, Vol. 97, Nos. 11/12, pages311–330; November/December 1992.

THIRD WORLD SUBMARINES AND ASWIM-PLICATIONS. John R. Benedict, Jr., inASW Log (now called Airborne Log), pages

5–8; Spring 1992.ATTACK SUBMARINES IN THEPOST–COLD WAR ERA: THE ISSUESFACING POLICY-MAKERS. Center forStrategic and International Studies, June1993.

NAVY SEAWOLF AND CENTURION AT-TACK SUBMARINE PROGRAMS: ISSUESFOR CON-GRESS. Ronald O’Rourke. Con-gressional Research Service Issue Brief, April7, 1994.

THE SUBMARINE REVIEW. Publishedquarterly by the Naval Submarine League,Annandale, Va.


Finally, the terrible bloodshed inRwanda had come to an end. Alphon-sine and her family were returning totheir house when Alphonsine steppedon an unseen mine. At the hospital inKigali, run by the surgical team of therelief organization EMERGENCY, I andother physicians did what we could torepair the damage. The explosion hadsmashed Alphonsine’s legs and fracturedher left forearm. We had to amputateboth legs above the knee. Her sister sus-tained a penetrating brain injury from ametallic fragment; she never regainedconsciousness and died six hours aftersurgery. Their father, who had been me-ters away from the two girls, had onlymultiple small wounds in his chest.

As a surgeon for EMERGENCY, I have treated many children such as Alphonsine and her

sister—victims of a new kind of war.The great majority of modern conflictsare now internal rather than interna-tional: they are civil wars, struggles forindependence, ethnic and racial “cleans-ings,” terrorist campaigns. Today armiesof irregulars without uniforms routine-

ly fight with devastating weapons in themidst of crowded areas. Many armedgroups deliberately mix with the popu-lation to avoid identification. Sometimesthey actually use civilians as shields.Quite often, targeting and terrorizinglarge civilian groups are part of anarmy’s primary military strategy.

Accordingly, civilians have increas-ingly become victims of war. DuringWorld War I, they represented only 15percent of all fatalities, but by the endof World War II the percentage had ris-en to 65 percent, including Holocaustcasualties. In today’s hostilities, morethan 90 percent of all of those injuredare civilians. Numerous research insti-tutes, among them the Stockholm Inter-national Peace Research Institute andthe International Peace Research Insti-tute in Oslo, and humanitarian organi-zations involved in victim assistancehave confirmed these figures.

One of the most dramatic aspects ofthis catastrophic change is the ever morewidespread use of inhumane weaponssuch as antipersonnel mines. They char-acteristically pose an indiscriminate andpersistent threat. Land mines do not dis-tinguish the foot of a combatant from

that of a playing child. Land mines donot recognize cease-fires or peace agree-ments. And once laid, they can maim orkill for many decades after any hostilitieshave ended. For this reason, the anti-personnel mine has been referred to as“a weapon of mass destruction in slowmotion.”

Mines have been used in variousguises since the beginning of the centu-ry, but military philosophy has evolvedover the years to make more cunninguse of them. They are no longer seensimply as weapons for denying an ene-my certain lands, or for channeling anenemy’s troop movements, or for pro-tecting key installations. Instead they arenow often laid to deprive a local popula-tion access to water sources, wood,fuel, pathways and even burial grounds.In many countries, in fact, helicopters,artillery and other remote means havebeen used to scatter mines randomlyover villages or agricultural land as de-liberate acts of terrorism against thecivilian population.

In technical terms, an antipersonnelmine (also known as an AP mine) canbe defined as a device designed to killor maim the person who triggers it. (In

The Horror of Land MinesLand mines kill or maim more than 15,000 people each year.

Most victims are innocent civilians. Many are children. Still, mines are planted by the thousands every day

by Gino Strada

PATTERN A INJURIES are most of-ten caused by small blast mines,such as the VS-50 mine shown atthe right. These weapons, lessthan 10 centimeters in diameter,most often amputate a foot or leg,depending on how they arestepped on. Rarely do they pro-duce wounds higher than the kneeor on the opposite leg.

Patterns of Injuries

PATTERN D INJURIES indi-cate that a person hastripped a fragmentationmine, such as the POMZ-2“stake” mine above.These mines usually killanyone who comes into di-rect contact with them bydischarging metallicshards over a wide area.

PATTERN C INJURIES are produced by thePFM-1, the so-called butterfly mine (left).These mines explode only after cumulativepressure has been applied to their wings,which help them initially to glide to theground after being released from a heli-copter. Because they are usually being han-dled when they go off, these mines ampu-tate fingers or hands and damage the faceand chest as well. Almost all victims are chil-dren, who eat the mines as toys.

PATTERN B INJURIES, result from steppingon antipersonnel mines such as the PMN((above). These mines are not much largerthan small blast mines, but they pack farmore explosive material. As a result, they of-ten blow off the lower leg and cause furtherharm to the thighs, genitals or buttocks.

PAM

ELA

BLO

TNER

The

Arm

s Pr

ojec

t/PH

R (dr

awin

gs)


Originally published inthe May 1996 Issue


contrast, antitank mines, usually calledATMs, are specifically designed for blow-ing up tanks and vehicles. They explodeonly when compressed by somethingweighing hundreds of kilograms.) APmines are generally rather small in diam-eter, frequently less than 10 centimetersacross, and difficult to detect. In somecases, the color and shape of the minehelp to camouflage it so that it becomesvirtually invisible at a glance.

A land mine is activated when the vic-tim triggers the firing mechanism, usu-ally by applying direct pressure to themine itself or by putting tension on atrip wire. That action sets off the deto-nator, which in turn ignites the boostercharge, a small amount of high-qualityexplosive. The detonation of the boostercharge detonates the land mine’s maincharge, completing the explosive chain.

In recent years, mine technology hasevolved significantly. The developmentof plastic mines, as well as those con-taining a minimum amount of metal,has made these weapons cheaper, morereliable, more durable and harder to de-tect and dismantle. In addition, remotedeployment systems (such as helicop-ters) have made it possible to deliverthousands of mines to a broad territorywithin just a few minutes. Laying minesin this way also makes it impossible torecord exactly where they land, so re-covering them is all the more difficult.

Mine Pollution

Unfortunately, land-mine technologyis quite simple and its price very

low—most weapons cost in the range of$3 to $15. As a result, they have beenprofitably manufactured and sold by arising number of countries in pastyears, including many in the developingworld. Approximately 50 nations haveproduced and exported antipersonnelmines, and at least 350 models are cur-rently available, not only to officialarmies but essentially to all fightinggroups and armed factions worldwide.

The number of unexploded mines inplace around the globe is not known.According to several sources (includingthe United Nations, the U.S. State De-partment and various humanitarianagencies), at least 100 million are nowscattered across 64 countries. Becauseneither manufacturers nor users typical-ly keep records, though, these figuresvery likely underestimate the real situa-tion. Whatever the case, a significantportion of the world undeniably suffers

from what might be considered “land-mine pollution.”

The agencies offering victim assistanceor operations to clear mines estimatethat during the past two decades theseweapons have killed or maimed approx-imately 15,000 people each year. Ofthese victims, about 80 percent werecivilians. In fact, the actual number isprobably even higher given that manyaccidents occur in remote areas withoutmedical facilities and so are not docu-mented. In a mined area, many every-day activities—gathering wood or food,drawing water, farming, playing, tend-ing livestock—become highly risky. Ihave personally treated 1,950 people in-jured by mines; of them, 93 percent werecivilians, and 29 percent were childrenyounger than the age of 14.

The Damage Mines Inflict

Practically speaking, antipersonnelmines can be divided into two large

groups: blast mines and fragmentationmines. Blast mines usually respond topressure—for example, from a descend-ing foot on a sensitive plate. The injuriesto the body from blast mines are directconsequences of the explosion itself. Incontrast, fragmentation mines are usu-ally activated by trip wires. When theyexplode, a large number of metallic frag-ments fly outward for a considerable dis-tance. These fragments are either con-tained inside the mine or result fromthe rupture of its segmented outer case.

The type of mine, the specifics of itsoperation, its position on the ground,the position of the victim and the char-acteristics of the environment at the ex-plosion site all affect the nature and ex-tent of the damage a mine causes. Vic-tims suffer from a broad range ofinjuries. Nevertheless, four general pat-terns are recognizable. I apologize if thedescription I shall offer of those injuriesis disturbing to many readers. Yet tograsp how truly awful these weaponsare, one must be aware of what they doand how they do it.

Small blast mines, having diametersof less than 10 centimeters, produce avery common pattern of injury that wecall Pattern A. Among the most com-mon mines in this group are the Italianscatterable mines TS-50 and SB-33 andthe hand-laid VS-50 and VAR-40, theU.S.-made M14, and the Chinese Type72. Typically, these weapons amputatethe foot or leg. In some cases, only partof the foot may be blown off, depending

on how the mine was placed and how itwas stepped on. In most cases, the inju-ries from these types of mines occur be-low the knee, and no major wounds arepresent higher on the body or on theopposite leg.

Larger antipersonnel blast mines, suchas those in the Russian PMN series, usu-ally cause a different type of injury (Pat-tern B). This difference arises in part sim-ply from the discrepancy in the size ofthe weapon. The diameter of the “small”VS-50 is 9.0 centimeters, whereas aPMN is 11.2 centimeters. The shockwaves from both mines explode out-ward at the same high speed, approxi-mately 6,800 meters per second, seventimes the speed of a high-velocity bul-let. But the cone of the explosion—thevolume carrying the explosive force—ismuch wider for the larger mine. Thelarge mines also contain much morehigh-quality explosive material. A VS-50, for instance, has 42 grams of RDX-TNT; a PMN-2 carries 150 grams ofTNT; and a PMN contains 240 grams.

Victims stepping on these large anti-personnel mines invariably suffer a trau-matic amputation. Quite often the low-er part of the leg is blown off. A pieceof the tibia (the large bone in the shin)may protrude from the stump, and theremaining muscles are smashed andpushed upward, giving the injury agrotesque cauliflowerlike appearance.Occasionally, the lower leg is blown offcompletely, along with the knee. Largewounds are often sustained in the thigh,the genitals or the buttocks. In many pa-tients the opposite leg is also damaged,bearing gaping wounds or open frac-tures. As a result, sometimes parts ofboth legs are lost. Penetrating injuriesof the abdomen or chest are also fairlycommon. The Russian PFM-1, the so-called butterfly mine, causes a third pat-tern of injury (Pattern C). This mineearned its nickname because it sportssmall wings that enable it to glide to theground after it is released from a heli-copter. A huge number of them weredropped during the conflict inAfghanistan.

As has often been pointed out, thePFM-1 is particularly fiendish becauseit is a “toy mine”—a weapon mas-querading as a plaything. Specialists in-sist that the shape of the PFM-1 is dic-tated by function, but the fact remainsthat it is attractive to children.

A unique feature of these mines is thatthey are activated by distortion or cu-mulative pressure on their wings; in oth-


er words, they do not necessarily go offwhen first touched. In Afghanistan myco-workers and I were told several timesthat a child had taken the butterfly—or“green parrot,” as the Afghans call it—and played with it for hours with friends

before any explosion occurred. Theterm “toy mine” therefore seems totallyjustified. In our group’s surgical experi-ence of treating more than 150 victimsof this type of mine, we have never seena single injured adult.

Technically, the PFM-1 is just anoth-er type of small, scatterable blast mine,but because of the peculiar damage itcauses, it deserves a separate descrip-tion. The PFM-1 is usually being heldwhen it goes off, so it traumatically am-putates one or both hands at the wrist.In less severe cases, only two or three fin-gers are destroyed. Very often the blastdoes further harm to the chest and theface. Injuries to one or both eyes are verycommon, producing partial or com-plete blindness.

Antipersonnel fragmentation minescause the fourth pattern of injury (Pat-tern D). Within this group are the“bounding” fragmentation mines, suchas the Italian Valmara-69, the U.S.-man-ufactured M16 series and the RussianOZM series. These weapons are laid onthe ground but, when triggered, jumpinto the air before exploding so thatthey can disperse their fragments overthe maximum range and to the mostlethal effect. Directional fragmentationmines—including the U.S.-made M18A1(or “Claymore”) and the Russian MONand POMZ “stake” mines, which aimtheir projectiles toward a target—are alsoin this class of weapon. All these minesare typically operated by trip wires.

The defining feature of fragmentation mines is that they fire metallic shardsover a wide area. The Valmara-69, forexample, explodes at a height of 50 to100 centimeters—roughly the level of aman’s waist—and projects some 1,000bits of metallic shrapnel across a 360-degree spread. Mine specialists considerthis mine to have a “killing zone” witha 25-meter radius and an “injury zone”of up to 200 meters.

Fragmentation mines produce injur-ies throughout the body. The size of thewound depends in part on the size ofthe penetrating splinter. If the victim ismeters away from the site of the explo-sion, the fragments will frequently pen-etrate the abdomen, the chest or thebrain, particularly if a bounding mine isinvolved. For shorter distances, the in-juries resemble those of Pattern B. Still,doctors rarely treat traumatic amputa-tions caused by fragmentation minesbecause the weapons usually kill in aninstant anyone who activates them bydirect contact.

In northern Iraq, during the PersianGulf War, for instance, we observed sixcasualties from the explosion of a Val-mara-69. The two persons who weretrying to defuse the mine to recover itsaluminum content—worth about $1 on

AVERAGE NUMBER OF LAND MINES DEPLOYED

PER SQUARE MILE

TOTAL NUMBER OF LAND MINES DEPLOYED IN MILLIONS

23

16

15

10

10

10

10

3

2

2

1

1

1

1

0.5

0.5

0.2

59

25

31

40

142

3

60

152

92

7

28

4

1

4

1

13

5

EGYPT

IRAN

ANGOLA

AFGHANISTAN

CAMBODIA

CHINA

IRAQ

BOSNIA- HERZEGOVINA

CROATIA

MOZAMBIQUE

ERITREA

SOMALIA

SUDAN

UKRAINE

ETHIOPIA

JORDAN

YUGOSLAVIA

BO

RIS

STA

RO

STA


BAR CHART shows the number of minesplanted in regions only where such esti-mates are known. The boxes (left) indicatethe density of deployed land mines in thoseregions, measured as the average numberof mines per square mile.


the local market—were immediatelykilled. At the same time, four other peo-ple nearby, including two young shep-herds, were severely injured. Only twoof them survived.

The injury patterns I have describedidentify the prevalent distribution ofwounds that a patient may suffer, butthey do not correspond cleanly to levelsof severity. A traumatic amputation ofthe foot with only a small wound in thethigh—a Pattern A casualty—might belife-threatening if the thigh injury in-volves the femoral artery. Commonly,the patient who sustains a land-mine in-jury is in critical condition. Often a vitalstructure is directly damaged, or thewounds (including the traumatic am-putations) are so extensive that the pa-tient is imperiled by hemorrhagicshock. In such an emergency situation,identifying a pattern of injury with aspecific category of land mine can pro-vide useful information to the surgicalteam (and also to any personnel in-volved in clearing the area of mines).

The Challenge of Treating Victims

For several reasons, surgery on mineinjuries is a complex and challeng-

ing discipline. Often the medical teamhas to work in hazardous areas wherethe fighting is ongoing. The availablefacilities are typically primitive. Scarceresources, the lack of proper hygiene,and sometimes even the absence of wa-ter and electricity make the job ex-tremely difficult. Furthermore, the sur-geons must be trained to deal with allkinds of emergencies: vascular, tho-racic, abdominal, orthopedic and soon. Fragments of bone, for example,can become “secondary bullets.” I oncehad to reconstruct the axillary artery inthe shoulder of a patient that had beencompletely severed by a piece of bonefrom the patient’s traumatically ampu-tated foot.

From the technical point of view, thekeystone operation is the debridement,or surgical cleansing, of the wound.When a blast mine goes off, stones,mud, grass and even pieces of the pa-tient’s clothes or shoes can be pusheddeep into the tissues by the ascendingexplosion. The removal of all foreignbodies and, even more important, theexcision of all dead, dying or weakenedtissue from the lesions are of paramountimportance in preventing life-threaten-ing postsurgical infections. Most pa-tients who recover from land-mine ac-

cidents never truly regain their ability totake an active part in family life or soci-ety. Rehabilitating these patients underthe best circumstances is often im-mensely problematic. And many vic-tims live in developing countries, wherepoor living conditions make it evenmore difficult to overcome physical andpsychological handicaps. Moreover, be-yond the tremendous human cost thatmines claim in lives and suffering, theyalso impose a severe social and eco-nomic burden on entire societies andnations. An army’s decision to mineagricultural land has long-term devas-tating effects on farming communities,who rely on the land for survival. Thepresence of land mines also detersmany wartime refugees from returningto their homes. The displaced peopletend to become permanent refugees whooverload the economic and social struc-tures of the regions to which they flee.

In 1980 the U.N. adopted what iscommonly known as the Conventionon Inhumane Weapons. Although thisconvention and its protocols were sup-posed to guarantee protection to civil-ians, events during the rest of that de-cade demonstrated all too clearly theinadequacy of those regulations. In re-cent years, more than 400 humanitari-an organizations in nearly 30 countrieshave launched a campaign to raise theinternational community’s awareness ofthe devastating effects of antipersonnelmines. They have urged the U.N. andnational governments to ban the pro-duction, stockpiling, sale, export and useof mines. The campaign has had signifi-cant results, and several countries havedecided to stop the production or ex-port of land mines, at least temporarily.

A Deadly Legacy

In September 1995 a U.N. review con-ference of the convention gathered in

Vienna. International diplomacy focusedthe discussion on various technical andmilitary aspects of land-mine use. Froma humanitarian point of view, the Vien-na conference was a fiasco. A total banon these indiscriminate weapons—theonly real solution—was not even takeninto consideration. Moreover, it seemsunlikely that a ban will be proposed inthe session of the conference that is cur-rently under way in Geneva. Certainlymost countries and citizens of the worldnow realize the horrors of nuclearbombs. It is astonishing that those samecountries do not object to the daily mas-

sacre of innocent civilians by way ofantipersonnel mines.

Still, the world in the next century fac-es a terrible legacy. Many of the minesdropped decades ago may have effectivelifetimes of centuries. Indeed, even if nomore mines are laid in the future, thosethat are already in place will cause colos-sal tragedy and will challenge relief or-ganizations of tomorrow. We may hopethat the international community willsoon make the issue of land mines a toppriority and provide the funds neededto carry on essential humanitarian ac-tivities. Emergency surgical assistanceand the subsequent rehabilitation of vic-tims, as well as operations to clear minesand to educate people about their dan-gers, will in fact remain the only optionsfor easing the suffering of hundreds ofthousands of people. Even for a veteranwar surgeon, looking at the body of achild torn to pieces by these inhumaneweapons is startling and upsetting. Thiscarnage has nothing to do with militarystrategy. It is a deliberate choice to in-flict monstruous pain and mutilation. Itis a crime against humanity.


The Author

GINO STRADA received his medical de-gree from the University of Milan. In 1988he joined the International Committee ofthe Red Cross mission in Pakistan and hasworked as a war surgeon ever since. He hastreated land-mine victims in Afghanistan,Cambodia, Peru, Bosnia, Djibouti, Somalia,Ethiopia, Rwanda and northern Iraq. In1994 Strada founded EMERGENCY, a human-itarian association serving civilian war vic-tims. For more information, contact EMER-GENCY, via Bagutta 12, 20121 Milan, Italy;telephone: 39-2-7600-1104; fax: 39-2-7600-3719.

Further Reading

Hidden Killers: The Global Problemwith Uncleared Landmines: A Reporton International Demining. Political-Military Affairs Bureau Office of Interna-tional Security Operations. U.S. Depart-ment of State, 1993.

Landmines: A Deadly Legacy. The ArmsProject of Human Rights Watch andPhysicians for Human Rights. HumanRights Watch, 1993.

Social Consequences of WidespreadUse of Landmines. Jody Williams inICRC Report of the Symposium on Anti-personnel Mines. ICRC, Geneva, 1993.

Ten Million Tragedies, One Step at aTime. Jim Wurst in Bulletin of the AtomicScientists, Vol. 49, No. 6, pages 14–21;July–August 1993.


In 1995, on a whim, I asked afriend: Which would worry youmore, being attacked with a bio-

logical weapon or a chemical weapon?He looked quizzical. “Frankly, I’mafraid of Alzheimer’s,” he replied, andwe shared a laugh. He had elegantlydismissed my question as an irrelevan-cy. In civilized society, people do notthink about such things.

The next day, on March 20, the nerveagent sarin was unleashed in the Tokyosubway system, killing 12 people andinjuring 5,500. In Japan, no less, one ofthe safest countries in the world. Icalled my friend, and we lingered overthe coincidental timing of my question.A seemingly frivolous speculation oneday, a deadly serious matter the next.

That thousands did not die from theTokyo attack was attributed to an im-pure mixture of the agent. A tiny dropof sarin, which was originally devel-oped in Germany in the 1930s, can killwithin minutes after skin contact or in-halation of its vapor. Like all other nerveagents, sarin blocks the action of acetyl-cholinesterase, an enzyme necessary forthe transmission of nerve impulses.

The cult responsible for the sarin at-tack, Aum Shinrikyo (“Supreme Truth”),was developing biological agents as well.If a chemical attack is frightening, a bi-ological weapon poses a worse night-mare. Chemical agents are inanimate,but bacteria, viruses and other live agentsmay be contagious and reproductive. Ifthey become established in the environ-ment, they may multiply. Unlike anyother weapon, they can become moredangerous over time.

Certain biological agents incapacitate,whereas others kill. The Ebola virus, forexample, kills as many as 90 percent of

its victims in little more than a week.Connective tissue liquefies; every orificebleeds. In the final stages, Ebola victimsbecome convulsive, splashing contami-nated blood around them as they twitch,shake and thrash to their deaths.

For Ebola, there is no cure, no treat-ment. Even the manner in which itspreads is unclear, by close contact withvictims and their blood, bodily fluids orremains or by just breathing the sur-rounding air. Recent outbreaks in Zaireprompted the quarantine of sections ofthe country until the disease had run itscourse.

The horror is only magnified by thethought that individuals and nationswould consider attacking others withsuch viruses. In October 1992 ShokoAsahara, head of the Aum Shinrikyocult, and 40 followers traveled to Zaire,ostensibly to help treat Ebola victims.But the group’s real intention, accord-ing to an October 31, 1995, report bythe U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcom-mittee on Investigations, was probablyto obtain virus samples, culture themand use them in biological attacks.

Interest in acquiring killer organismsfor sinister purposes is not limited togroups outside the U.S. On May 5, 1995,six weeks after the Tokyo subway inci-dent, Larry Harris, a laboratory techni-cian in Ohio, ordered the bacterium thatcauses bubonic plague from a Marylandbiomedical supply firm. The company,the American Type Culture Collection inRockville, Md., mailed him three vialsof Yersinia pestis.

Harris drew suspicion only when hecalled the firm four days after placing hisorder to find out why it had not arrived.Company officials wondered about hisimpatience and his apparent unfamiliar-

ity with laboratory techniques, so theycontacted federal authorities. He waslater found to be a member of a whitesupremacist organization. In November1995 he pled guilty in federal court tomail fraud.

To get the plague bacteria, Harrisneeded no more than a credit card and afalse letterhead. Partially in response tothis incident, an antiterrorism law en-acted this past April required the Cen-ters for Disease Control and Preventionto monitor more closely shipments ofinfectious agents.

What would Harris have done withthe bacteria? He claimed he wanted toconduct research to counteract Iraqi ratscarrying “supergerms.” But if he hadcared to grow a biological arsenal, thetask would have been frighteningly sim-ple. By dividing every 20 minutes, a sin-gle bacterium gives rise to more than abillion copies in 10 hours. A small vial ofmicroorganisms can yield a huge numberin less than a week. For some diseases,such as anthrax, inhaling a few thou-sand bacteria—which would cover anarea smaller than the period at the endof this sentence—can be fatal.

Kathleen C. Bailey, a former assistantdirector of the U.S. Arms Control andDisarmament Agency, has visited sever-al biotechnology and pharmaceuticalfirms. She is “absolutely convinced” thata major biological arsenal could be builtwith $10,000 worth of equipment in aroom 15 feet by 15. After all, one cancultivate trillions of bacteria at relative-ly little risk to one’s self with gear nomore sophisticated than a beer fermen-ter and a protein-based culture, a gasmask and a plastic overgarment.

Fortunately, biological terrorism hasthus far been limited to very few cases.

The Specterof Biological Weapons

States and terrorists alike have shown a growinginterest in germ warfare. More stringent arms-control

efforts are needed to discourage attacks

by Leonard A. Cole


Originally Published in theDecember 1996 Issue


One incident occurred in September1984, when about 750 people becamesick after eating in restaurants in anOregon town called The Dalles. In 1986Ma Anand Sheela confessed at a federaltrial that she and other members of anearby cult that had clashed with localOregonians had spread salmonella bac-teria on salad bars in four restaurants;the bacteria had been grown in labora-tories on the cult’s ranch. After servingtwo and a half years in prison, Sheela,who had been the chief of staff for thecult leader, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh,was released and deported to Europe.

But as a 1992 report by the Office ofTechnology Assessment indicated, bothbiological and chemical terrorism havebeen rare. Also rare has been the use ofbiological agents as weapons of war.Perhaps the first recorded incident oc-curred in the 14th century, when anarmy besieging Kaffa, a seaport on theBlack Sea in the Crimea in Russia, cata-pulted plague-infected cadavers over thecity walls. In colonial America a Britishofficer reportedly gave germ-infestedblankets from a smallpox infirmary toIndians in order to start an epidemicamong the tribes. The only confirmedinstance in this century was Japan’s useof plague and other bacteria againstChina in the 1930s and 1940s.

Grim Reality

As the 20th century draws to a close,however, an unpleasant paradox

has emerged. More states than ever aresigning international agreements toeliminate chemical and biological arms.Yet more are also suspected of develop-ing these weapons despite the treaties.In 1980 only one country, the SovietUnion, had been named by the U.S. forviolating the 1972 Biological WeaponsConvention, a treaty that prohibits thedevelopment or possession of biologicalweapons.

Since then, the number has bal-looned. In 1989 Central IntelligenceAgency director William Webster re-ported that “at least 10 countries” weredeveloping biological weapons. By1995, 17 countries had been named asbiological weapons suspects, accordingto sources cited by the Office of Tech-nology Assessment and at U.S. Senatecommittee hearings. They include Iran,Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Tai-wan, Israel, Egypt, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba,Bulgaria, India, South Korea, SouthAfrica, China and Russia. (Russian

leaders insist that they have terminatedtheir biological program, but U.S.officials doubt that claim.

The first five of these countries—Iran,Iraq, Libya, Syria and North Korea—are especially worrisome in view oftheir histories of militant behavior. Iraq,for example, has acknowledged theclaims of U.N. inspectors that duringthe 1991 Persian Gulf War it possessedScud missiles tipped with biologicalwarheads. A 1994 Pentagon report toCongress cited instability in eastern Eu-rope, the Middle East and SouthwestAsia as likely to encourage even morenations to develop biological andchemical arms.

Reversing this trend should be ofparamount concern to the communityof nations. Indeed, the elimination ofbiological as well as chemical weapon-ry is a worthy, if difficult, goal. The fail-ure of this effort may increase the likeli-hood of the development of a man-made plague from Ebola or some othergruesome agent.

Dedication to biological disarmamentin particular should be enhanced by an-other grim truth: in many scenarios, alarge population cannot be protectedagainst a biological attack. Vaccines canprevent some diseases, but unless thecausative agent is known in advance,such a safeguard may be worthless. An-tibiotics are effective against specificbacteria or classes of biological agents,but not against all. Moreover, the inci-dence of infectious disease around theworld has been rising from newly resis-tant strains of bacteria that defy treat-ment. In this era of biotechnology, espe-cially, novel organisms can be engineered

against which vaccines or antibioticsare useless.

Nor do physical barriers against in-fection offer great comfort. Fortunately,most biological agents have no effecton or through intact skin, so respirato-ry masks and clothing would provideadequate protection for most people.After a short while, the danger couldrecede as sunlight and ambient temper-atures destroyed the agents. But certainmicroorganisms can persist indefinitelyin an environment. Gruinard Island, offthe coast of Scotland, remained infectedwith anthrax spores for 40 years afterbiological warfare tests were carried outthere in the 1940s. And in 1981 RexWatson, then head of Britain’s Chemicaland Biological Defense Establishment,asserted that if Berlin had been bom-barded with anthrax bacteria duringWorld War II, the city would still becontaminated.

Although many Israelis did becomeaccustomed to wearing gas masks dur-ing the 1991 Persian Gulf War, it seemsunrealistic to expect large populationsof civilians to wear such gear for monthsor years, especially in warm regions.U.N. inspectors in Iraq report that inhot weather they can scarcely toleratewearing a mask for more than 15 min-utes at a time.

Calls for more robust biological de-fense programs have grown, particular-ly after the Persian Gulf War. Propo-nents of increased funding for biologicaldefense research often imply that vac-cines and special gear developed throughsuch work can protect the public as wellas troops. But the same truths hold forboth the military and civilians: unless anattack organism is known in advanceand is vulnerable to medical interven-tions, defense can be illusory.

Indeed, the Gulf War experience wasin certain respects misleading. Iraq’s bi-ological weapons were understood tobe anthrax bacilli and botulinum toxin.(Although toxins are inanimate prod-ucts of microorganisms, they are treat-ed as biological agents under the termsof the 1972 Biological Weapons Con-vention.) Both are susceptible to exist-ing vaccines and treatments, and protec-tion of military forces therefore seemedpossible. Research that would lead toenhanced defense against these agents isthus generally warranted.

But the improbabilities of wardingoff attacks from less traditional agentsdeserve full appreciation. Anticipatingthat research can come up with defens-


As the 20th century draws to

a close, an unpleasant

paradox has emerged. More

states than ever are signing

international agreements to

eliminate chemical and

biological arms. Yet more

are also suspected of

developing these weapons

despite the treaties.


es against attack organisms whose na-ture is not known in advance seems fan-ciful. Moreover, even with all its limita-tions, the cost of building a national civildefense system against biological andchemical weapons would be substan-tial. A 1969 United Nations report in-dicated that the expense of stockpilinggas masks, antibiotics, vaccines and oth-er defensive measures for civilians couldexceed $20 billion. That figure, whenadjusted for inflation, would now beabout $80 billion.

Vaccines and protective gear are notthe only challenges to biological defense.Identifying an organism quickly in abattlefield situation, too, is problemat-ic. Even determining whether a biologi-cal attack has been launched can be un-certain. Consequently, the Pentagon hasbegun to focus more on detection.

In May 1994 Deputy Secretary of De-fense John Deutch produced an inter-agency report on counterproliferationactivities concerning weapons of massdestruction. Biological agent detectorsin particular, he wrote, were “not beingpursued adequately.” To the annual$110 million budgeted for the develop-ment of biological and chemical weap-ons detection, the report recommendedadding $75 million. Already under waywere Pentagon-sponsored programs in-volving such technologies as ion-trapmass spectrometry and laser-inducedbreakdown spectroscopy, approachesthat look for characteristic chemical sig-natures of dangerous agents in the air.The army’s hope, which its spokesper-sons admit is a long way from being re-alized, is to find a “generic” detectorthat can identify classes of pathogens.

Meanwhile the military is also ad-vancing a more limited approach thatidentifies specific agents through anti-

body-antigen combinations. The Bio-logical Integrated Detection System(BIDS) exposes suspected air samples toantibodies that react with a particularbiological agent. A reaction of the anti-body would signify the agent is present,a process that takes about 30 minutes.

BIDS can now identify four agentsthrough antibody-antigen reactions: Ba-cillus anthracis (anthrax bacterium), Y.pestis (bubonic plague), botulinum tox-in (the poison released by botulism or-ganisms) and staphylococcus enterotox-in B (released by certain staph bacteria).Laboratory investigations to identifyadditional agents through antibody-anti-gen reactions are in progress. But scoresof organisms and toxins are viewed aspotential warfare agents. Whether thefull range, or even most, will be detect-able by BIDS remains uncertain.

The most effective safeguard againstbiological warfare and biological ter-rorism is, and will be, prevention. Tothis end, enhanced intelligence and reg-ulation of commercial orders for path-ogens are important. Both approacheshave been strengthened by provisionsin the antiterrorism bill enacted earlierthis year. At the same time, attempts toidentify and control emerging diseasesare gaining attention. One such effort isProMED (Program to Monitor Emerg-ing Diseases), which was proposed in1993 by the 3,000-member Federationof American Scientists.

Although focusing on disease out-breaks in general, supporters of Pro-MED are sensitive to the possibility ofman-made epidemics. The ProMEDsurveillance system would include de-veloping baseline data on endemic dis-eases throughout the world, rapid re-porting of unusual outbreaks, and re-sponses aimed at containing disease,

such as providing advice on trade andtravel. Such a program could probablydistinguish disease outbreaks from hos-tile sources more effectively than is cur-rently possible.

In addition, steps to strengthen the1972 Biological Weapons Conventionthrough verification arrangements—in-cluding on-site inspections—should beencouraged. The 139 countries that areparties to the convention are expectedto discuss incorporating verificationmeasures at a review conference in De-cember of this year. After the last reviewconference, in 1991, a committee to ex-plore such measures was established.VEREX, as the group was called, haslisted various possibilities ranging fromsurveillance of the scientific literature toon-site inspections of potential produc-tion areas, such as laboratories, brew-eries and pharmaceutical companies.

Given the ease with which bioweap-ons can be produced, individuals willalways be able to circumvent interna-tional agreements. But the absence ofsuch agents from national arsenals—andtightened regulations on the acquisitionand transfer of pathogens—will makethem more difficult to obtain for hostilepurposes. Verification can never be fool-proof, and therefore some critics arguethat verification efforts are a waste oftime. Proponents nonetheless assert thatsanctions following a detected violationwould provide at least some disincen-tive to cheaters and are thus preferableto no sanctions at all. Furthermore, astrengthened global treaty underscores acommitment by the nations of the worldnot to traffic in these weapons.

The infrequent use of biological weap-ons to date might be explained in manyways. Some potential users have proba-bly lacked familiarity with how to de-


A 1969 United Nations report indicated that the expense

of stockpiling gas masks, antibiotics, vaccines and other

defensive measures for civilians could exceed $20 billion.

That figure, when adjusted for inflation, would now be

about $80 billion.


velop pathogens as weapons; moreover,they may have been afraid of infectingthemselves. Nations and terrorists alikemight furthermore be disinclined to usebioagents because they are by nature un-predictable. Through mutations, a bac-terium or virus can gain or lose virulenceover time, which may be contrary tothe strategic desires of the people whoreleased it. And once introduced into theenvironment, a pathogen may pose athreat to anybody who goes there, mak-ing it difficult to occupy territory.

But beneath all these pragmatic con-cerns lies another dimension that de-serves more emphasis than it generallyreceives: the moral repugnance of theseweapons. Their ability to cause greatsuffering, coupled with their indiscrimi-nate character, no doubt contributes tothe deep-seated aversion most peoplehave for them. And that aversion seemscentral to explaining why bioweaponshave so rarely been used in the past.Contrary to analyses that commonly ig-nore or belittle the phenomenon, thisnatural antipathy should be appreciat-ed and exploited. Even some terroristscould be reluctant to use a weapon sofearsome that it would permanentlyalienate the public from their cause.

The Poison Taboo

In recognition of these sentiments, the1972 Biological Weapons Convention

describes germ weaponry as “repugnantto the conscience of mankind.” Suchdescriptions have roots that reach backthousands of years. (Not until the 19th

century were microorganisms under-stood to be the cause of infection; beforethen, poison and disease were common-ly seen as the same. Indeed, the Latinword for “poison” is “virus.”)

Among prohibitions in many civiliza-tions were the poisoning of food andwells and the use of poison weapons.The Greeks and Romans condemnedthe use of poison in war as a violationof ius gentium—the law of nations. Poi-sons and other weapons considered in-humane were forbidden by the ManuLaw of India around 500 B.C. and amongthe Saracens 1,000 years later. The pro-hibitions were reiterated by Dutch states-man Hugo Grotius in his 1625 opus TheLaw of War and Peace, and they were,for the most part, maintained during theharsh European religious conflicts ofthe time.

Like the taboos against incest, canni-balism and other widely reviled acts,the taboo against poison weapons wassometimes violated. But the frequencyof such violations may have been mini-mized because of their castigation as a“defalcation of proper principles,” inthe words of the 18th- and 19th-centu-ry English jurist Robert P. Ward. Underthe law of nations, Ward wrote, “Noth-ing is more expressly forbidden thanthe use of poisoned arms” (emphasis inoriginal).

Historian John Ellis van CourtlandMoon, now professor emeritus at Fitch-burg State College in Massachusetts,contends that growing nationalism inthe 18th century weakened the disincli-nations about poison weapons. As a re-

sult of what Moon calls “the national-ization of ethics,” military necessity be-gan to displace moral considerations instate policies; nations were more likelyto employ any means possible to attaintheir aims in warfare.

In the mid-19th century, a few mili-tary leaders proposed that toxic weap-ons be employed, although none actu-ally were. Nevertheless, gas was used inWorld War I. The experience of large-scale chemical warfare was so horrify-ing that it led to the 1925 Geneva Pro-tocol, which forbids the use of chemicaland bacteriological agents in war. Im-ages of victims gasping, frothing andchoking to death had a profound im-pact. The text of the protocol reflects theglobal sense of abhorrence. It affirmedthat these weapons had been “justlycondemned by the general opinion ofthe civilized world.”

Chemical and biological weaponswere used in almost none of the hun-dreds of wars and skirmishes in subse-quent decades—until Iraq’s extensivechemical attacks during the Iran-Iraqwar. Regrettably, the international re-sponse to Iraqi behavior was muted orineffective. From 1983 until the warended in 1988, Iraq was permitted toget away with chemical murder. Fear ofan Iranian victory stifled serious outcriesagainst a form of weaponry that hadbeen universally condemned.

The consequences of silence aboutIraq’s behavior, though unfortunate,were not surprising. Iraqi ability to usechemical weapons with impunity, andtheir apparent effectiveness against Iran,

Potential Biological Agents

Bacillus anthracis. Causes anthrax. If bacteria are inhaled, symptoms may develop in two to three days. Initial symptoms re-sembling common respiratory infection are followed by high fever, vomiting, joint ache and labored breathing, and internaland external bleeding lesions. Exposure may be fatal. Vaccine and antibiotics provide protection unless exposure is very high.

Botulinum toxin. Cause of botulism, produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria. Symptoms appear 12 to 72 hours after in-gestion or inhalation. Initial symptoms are nausea and diarrhea, followed by weakness, dizziness and respiratory paralysis, of-ten leading to death. Antitoxin can sometimes arrest the process.

Yersinia pestis. Causes bubonic plague, the Black Death of the Middle Ages. If bacteria reach the lungs, symptoms—includingfever and delirium—may appear in three or four days. Untreated cases are nearly always fatal. Vaccines can offer immunity,and antibiotics are usually effective if administered promptly.

Ebola virus. Highly contagious and lethal. May not be desirable as a biological agent because of uncertain stability outside ofanimal host. Symptoms, appearing two or three days after exposure, include high fever, delirium, severe joint pain, bleedingfrom body orifices, and convulsions, followed by death. No known treatment.


prompted more countries to arm them-selves with chemical and biologicalweapons. Ironically, in 1991 many ofthe countries that had been silent aboutthe Iraqi chemical attacks had to face achemically and biologically equippedIraq on the battlefield.

To its credit, since the Persian GulfWar, much of the international commu-nity has pressed Iraq about its uncon-ventional weapons programs by main-taining sanctions through the U.N. Se-curity Council. Council resolutionsrequire elimination of Iraq’s biologicalweapons (and other weapons of massdestruction), as well as informationabout past programs to develop them.Iraq has been only partially forthcom-ing, and U.N. inspectors continue toseek full disclosure.

But even now, U.N. reports are com-monly dry recitations. Expressions ofoutrage are rare. Any country or groupthat develops these weapons deservesforceful condemnation. We need con-tinuing reminders that civilized peopledo not traffic in, or use, such weapon-ry. The agreement by the U.S. and Rus-sia to destroy their chemical stockpileswithin a decade should help.

Words of outrage alone, obviously,are not enough. Intelligence is impor-tant, as are controls over domestic andinternational shipments of pathogensand enhanced global surveillance of dis-ease outbreaks. Moreover, institutionsthat reinforce positive behavior and val-ues are essential.

The highest priority of the moment inthis regard is implementation of theChemical Weapons Convention, whichoutlaws the possession of chemicalweapons. It lists chemicals that signato-ry nations must declare to have in theirpossession. Unlike the Biological Weap-ons Convention, the chemical treaty hasextensive provisions to verify compli-ance, including short-notice inspectionsof suspected violations. It also providesadded inducements to join through in-formation exchanges and commercial

privileges among the signatories.In 1993 the chemical treaty was

opened for signature. By October 1996,the pact had been signed by 160 coun-tries and ratified by 64, one less than thenumber required for the agreement toenter into force. One disappointing hold-out is the U.S. In part because of dis-agreements over the treaty’s verificationprovisions, the U.S. Senate recently de-layed a vote on the pact.

Implementing this chemical weaponstreaty should add momentum to thecurrent negotiations over strengtheningthe Biological Weapons Convention.Conversely, failure of the ChemicalWeapons Convention to fulfill expecta-tions will dampen prospects for a verifi-cation regime for the biological treaty.The most likely consequence would bethe continued proliferation of chemicaland biological arsenals around theworld. The longer these weapons per-sist, the more their sense of illegitimacy

erodes, and the more likely they will beused—by armies and by terrorists.

As analysts have noted, subnationalgroups commonly use the types of weap-ons that are in national arsenals. Theabsence of biological and chemical weap-ons from national military inventoriesmay diminish their attractiveness to ter-rorists. According to terrorism expertBrian M. Jenkins, leaders of Aum Shin-rikyo indicated that their interest inchemical weapons was inspired by Iraq’suse of chemicals during its war with Iran.

Treaties, verification regimes, globalsurveillance, controlled exchanges ofpathogens—all are the muscle of armscontrol. Their effectiveness ultimatelydepends on the moral backbone thatsupports them and the will to enforcethem rigorously.

By underscoring the moral sense be-hind the formal exclusion of biologicalweapons, sustaining their prohibitionbecomes more likely.

Defenses against Biological Weapons

Respirator or gas mask. Filters, usually made of activated charcoal, must blockparticles larger than one micron. Overgarments are also advisable to protectagainst contact with open wounds or otherwise broken skin.

Protective shelter. Best if a closed room, ideally insulated with plastic or some oth-er nonpermeable material and ventilated with filtered air.

Decontamination. Such traditional disinfectants as formaldehyde are effective forsterilizing surfaces.

Vaccination. Must be for specific agent. Some agents require several inoculationsover an extended period before immunity is conferred. For many agents, no vac-cine is available.

Antibiotics. Effective against some but not all bacterial agents (and not effectiveagainst viruses). For some susceptible bacteria, antibiotic therapy must begin with-in a few hours of exposure—before symptoms appear.

Detection systems. Only rudimentary field units currently available for a few spe-cific agents. Research is under way to expand the number of agents that can be de-tected in battlefield situations or elsewhere.

The Author

LEONARD A. COLE is an adjunct professor of political sci-ence and an associate in the program in science, technologyand society at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. He is an au-thority in the area of science and public policy, with special ex-pertise in policy concerning biological and chemical warfare,radon and various health issues. He received a B.A. in politicalscience from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961 anda Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1970.

Further Reading

Clouds of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ Warfare Tests over Popu-lated Areas. Leonard A. Cole. Rowman and Littlefield, 1990.

Biological Weapons: Weapons of the Future? Edited by BradRoberts. Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1993.

Biological Warfare in the 21st Century. Malcolm Dando. Mac-millan, 1994.

The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and ChemicalWarfare. Leonard A. Cole. W. H. Freeman and Company, 1996.


George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower and Colin Powellall came to Fort Leavenworth on the Kansas bluffsoverlooking the Missouri River to learn about the tac-

tics and weaponry they would need in battle. This past May anew generation of military leaders peered into Sun worksta-tions at this former Indian-fighting post to discern the futureof warfare. On their screens, a North Korean force rolledacross the demilitarized zone; short-range ballistic missilescarrying chemical weapons hit their mark in South Koreancities. U.S. and South Korean army divisions, with supportfrom U.S. Marines and a French and a British brigade, slowlydrove the invading troops back.

One of the U.S. units, a division called a mobilestrike force, pretended to mimic the digital fightingforce of the future. Pictures of the battlefield, sup-plied by ground, airborne and satellite sensors, pro-vided a field commander with a sweeping view of thedisputed territory, even at night. This “God’s-eye”battlefield perspective helped to cement a victory.

The hostilities were what is known in Departmentof Defense parlance as a “Desert Storm equivalent”—a standoff against a “rogue state,” an Iran or an Iraqor a North Korea. For the Pentagon, rogues are themost likely new enemy, the nuclear pretenders thatpose the real menace in the post-cold-war world. Ac-cording to the Clinton administration’s 1993 “bot-tom-up review,” the document that assesses the cur-rent military force structure, the U.S. should be pre-pared to fight two Desert Storm equivalents almostsimultaneously.

But the young officers may be getting the wrongperspective from the images on those color screens.The classic rogue power relying on heavy-handed,Soviet-style fighting techniques may be an endan-gered species. Policy experts, technical gurus and de-fense contractors have begun to study a range of oth-er potential threats, from a newly hatched superpow-er to a regional power with dramatically alteredfighting tactics, to legions of mercenary hackers thatbring down banks and stock exchanges with com-puter viruses and other malevolent software. Thevast array of scenarios is a measure of the speculativeturn that has gripped the military-planning establish-ment. Without the tangible presence of a superpower,

new menaces can emerge from any quarter. At the same time,the most pressing drain on military resources is created by theBosnias and the Haitis, the smaller-scale conflicts and crisesthat often turn contemporary soldiering into glorified policework.

The American military’s high-tech expertise was honedover decades of cold war with the Soviet Union. During the1980s, the Soviets put forward the notion that military forcesshould be able to detect an enemy and destroy it from a dis-tance. As radar-laden surveillance aircraft and intelligent anti-tank missiles became more pivotal in the contest, however,the U.S. acquired a clear advantage. “If the key to future war-

Fighting Future WarsU.S. military planners hope to rely on improved versionsof the technologies tested in the Gulf War to help fight the nextSaddam Hussein. They may be preparing for the wrong conflictby Gary Stix, staff writer

BATTLEGROUND CIRCA 2020 may replace massed troopsand armor with networks of intelligent mines and unpiloteddrones that can perform reconnaissance and launch or plantweapons. Highly dispersed special forces may scout for targetsand evaluate battle damage. Remotely fired missiles may be-come the main instrument for destroying enemy targets.

22 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE

Originally Published in theDecember 1996 IssueTRENDS IN DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY


fare would be the rapid processing of electronically acquiredinformation, how could a society that was virtually incapableof manufacturing a simple personal computer keep up in thetechnological race?” writes Eliot A. Cohen of the Paul H.Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at JohnsHopkins University.

Replaying Desert Storm

World War III never came, but the Gulf War did. TheU.S. armed forces held up the victory over Iraq as proof

of the validity of their technophilic approach to fighting, in-volving intelligence from air and space and the use of stealthfighters and laser-guided bombs. (No matter that, notwith-standing the domination of the air, the coalition forces misseddestroying installations involved in the Iraqi nuclear weaponsprogram and mobile missile launchers.) Much of the subse-quent effort of military leaders has gone toward burnishingthe accomplishments of the Gulf. The army’s war games, suchas the exercise at Fort Leavenworth, have been oriented to-ward improving the digital layout of the battlefield—inessence, fighting a more efficient Gulf War.

A coterie of defense analysts, both inside and outside thePentagon, have nonetheless begun to explore concepts of

high-tech war that move beyond a replay of Desert Storm.The inspiration for some of this soul-searching comes fromthe Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, a future-orientedplanning office headed by Andrew Marshall, a former cold-war strategist.

One reason for a reassessment is that, within a few decades,the threat to the U.S. may come not from a small rogue re-gional power but instead from what has come to be known asa “peer competitor”: in essence, a new superpower, such asChina, a resurgent Russia or perhaps even India. In any fu-ture conflict, the U.S. and its allies may not have a monopoly, or even a strategic advantage, in the arena of ad-vanced technology. Furthermore, regional powers havelearned their own lessons from the Gulf War and are lookingfor ways to use and counter precision-guided weapons, com-puters and space-based communications.

Andrew F. Krepenevich, Jr., a former army colonel who col-laborated with Marshall, now directs the Defense BudgetProject, a think tank in Washington, D.C., that continues toexamine radical changes in the character of warfare. Hepoints to articles in Third World technical journals that talkabout the Gulf War as the example of what to avoid whenconfronting an “extraregional superpower,” a code phrase forthe U.S. or any large industrial state. In a paper published af-

BA

RR

Y R

OS

S

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE 23Copyright 2002 Scientific American, Inc.

ter the Gulf conflict, V. K. Nair, a retiredIndian military officer, outlined how adeveloping nation could have countered“ill-conceived adventurism” by the U.S.by crippling naval forces with land- orsubmarine-based nonnuclear missiles.“The possibility of the loss of one ormore aircraft carriers would be a totallyunacceptable risk in terms of economicand personnel losses for the UnitedStates,” he wrote.

In world arms markets, an advancedweapons stockpile is available virtuallyfor the asking. Short-range ballistic mis-siles and, in particular, information tech-nologies have become commodities. Un-like nuclear weapons systems that oftenarose from secret work at national labo-ratories, Krepenevich points out that in-formation systems have come fromcommercial companies. Although theU.S. and the Soviet Union largely suc-ceeded in preventing access to the tech-nologies needed to fabricate nuclearweapons, they would now be incapableof doing so for the memory chips or mi-croprocessors that are the brains of“smart” weaponry.

A Real No-Man’s-Land

Think tanks and strategists have be-gun to ponder what it will mean to

fight in the 21st century. Many of theirspeculations on what is often called a“revolution in military affairs” seek away to fight another large power with-out resorting to nuclear weapons or tofind the means to stay far enough awayfrom an adversary to avoid a nuclearmenace or chemical or biological arma-ments. Future war, in fact, may let for-mer nuclear war planners retread a fewof the scenarios conceived for a face-offwith the Soviets. It might rely on nucle-ar-weapons delivery vehicles—cruise orother long-range missiles—armed withconventional warheads.

The lethality and precision of theweaponry, and the ability to detect anenemy virtually anywhere, suggest it willbecome all quiet on every front—theidea of close engagement, still a fixtureof the Gulf War, will fade. Michael Ma-zaar of the Center for Strategic and In-ternational Studies describes “disen-gaged” conflict, a war fought from a dis-tance that proceeds without a massingof troops and weapons. Missiles firedfrom hundreds or thousands of miles

away, or even from the continental U.S.,might converge on a single location orseveral strategic targets at once.

In this long-term scenario, aircraftcarriers, tanks, fighters and bombersmay cease to have a primary role in thepostmodern theater of war. Most U.S.forces might be stationed at home. Dur-ing the first stages of a conflict, long-range missiles would destroy air defens-es or other key infrastructure. Later, in-expensive staging platforms would beneeded to field large numbers of mis-siles, weapons systems far less expensivethan the submarines and aircraft carri-ers now used. Some analysts have eventoyed with the notion of a missile-ladenBoeing 747 or a subsurface tug carryinga barge crammed with projectiles.

The navy, in fact, has begun to con-sider building an arsenal ship, whichmight be a tankerlike vessel loaded withhundreds of vertically launched cruisemissiles or other projectiles. The arsenalship, which would be partially sub-merged to avoid detection, is estimatedto cost less than a fifth of the purchaseprice of a $4.5-billion aircraft carrier.Instead of a crew numbering in thethousands, it might need fewer than 50people.

Big changes would occur in land war-fare as well. At least in the early stagesof a conflict, in a step toward the sci-ence-fiction fantasy of robotic warfare,most human soldiers might be kept wellaway from the battlefield. The recon-naissance and targeting role will in-creasingly be taken over by unpilotedaircraft, highly novel versions of thoseflown during Desert Storm and in Bos-nia. Tiny, low-cost sensors in the air oron the ground might be deployed by thehundreds or thousands, forming a net-work that could beam a composite im-age of an unfolding skirmish.

Electronic intelligence today dependsheavily on large aircraft filled with sen-

sors—the air force’s advanced warningand control system (AWACS) or thearmy’s joint surveillance target-attackradar system (JSTARS). Precisely be-cause the battle view supplied wouldbecome ever more crucial, an AWACSor a JSTARS would be increasingly vul-nerable: if shot down, it could cause anelectronically illuminated battlefield togo dark. Safety in numbers may be theanswer. A research group at the Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology’s Lin-coln Laboratory has contemplatedbuilding drones smaller than a modelairplane. Eventually, large numbers ofthese minute craft could collectively actas battle surveyors. Sikorsky Aircrafthas fashioned a flying-saucerlike vehi-cle, powered by rotary motors, thatcould act as a scout or drop mines orsensors. “If you have 1,000 unmannedaerial vehicles, you can afford to lose100,” says Martin C. Libicki of the Na-tional Defense University.

At least in theory, land-based weap-ons could also become smart, numerousand relatively cheap. Lethal robots maylook less like the Terminator than like amine. Military contractor Textron Sys-tems Division, for example, already hasa “wide area mine” that uses sensors todetect a tank or helicopter and thenlaunches projectiles at it.

The few manned units sent to the bat-tlefield would consist of dispersed spe-cial operations units that could performreconnaissance missions or determinebattle damage. Contingents spread outover the landscape might ride instealthy attack helicopters or commer-cially purchased Jeeps, the chassis onlylightly armed but crammed full of sen-sors and communications and jamminggear. Toward the latter stages of a con-flict, more conventional armored andinfantry forces would arrive; combatmight still end by occupying territory.

Future war might become a contest

ARSENAL SHIP, with a design perhaps basedon that of commercial tankers, could carryhundreds of missiles. The semisubmersible ves-sel might one day play a strategic role—de-ploying weapons to their targets—that now isfilled by the airplanes on a carrier.

BA

RR

Y R

OS

S


for domination of space, as both sidestry to deploy and preserve communica-tions and surveillance satellites. Con-cocting lasers or weapons that employthe kinetic energy of a high-impact colli-sion to kill satellites might give agingStrategic Defense Initiative scientists achance to dust off old research papers.Single-stage-to-orbit launch vehiclesmight be needed to place a network ofsatellites over a battle area.

The most important changes may re-late not to the technology but to the waythese systems transform military organi-zation—and the pace at which decisionsare made. “The real innovation may bethe ability to integrate sensors andweapons to coordinate forces effective-ly,” says Andrew Marshall of the Officeof Net Assessment. In the year 2020 thepanoramic image of battle that emergesfrom the mesh of sensors may make mil-itary commanders more into split-sec-ond air-traffic controllers than delibera-tive strategists and tacticians. The samecommander may order weapons strikesfrom air, land or sea—or maybe evenspace. In some cases, targeting informa-tion may be beamed directly from a sat-ellite or an unmanned aerial vehicle to asoldier in the field.

War by Wire

Debate on high-tech fighting culmi-nates in the question of whether in-

formation technologies—a computervirus, for one—could make convention-al military hardware obsolete and wheth-er they would make possible a virtualinvasion of the continental U.S. A battleof the bits would be fought by destroy-ing an enemy’s information assets, itsfinancial, electrical, telecommunicationsand air-traffic-control networks. Directstrikes at the military would not beruled out: cracking a government com-puter is already a not infrequent hackerrite of passage. In addition, more than95 percent of military communicationstravel over public networks.

Daniel T. Kuehl is a professor of mili-tary strategy at the National DefenseUniversity, who earlier in his careerworked for the Strategic Air Commandplanning where to aim nuclear weaponsat the Soviet Union. He now teaches atthe School of Information Warfare andStrategy, established two years ago atthis graduate military school. The pro-gram offers courses in cyber-war similarto those that have recently sproutedthroughout the military. It joins a num-ber of offices in the Pentagon and thevarious services that bear the name “in-formation warfare.”

Kuehl’s students will return to the

armed forces and other governmentposts to help defend against attacks oninformation resources. “How do youknow you’re under attack and who didit?” Kuehl asks his classes. Other pointsfor discussion: Does the military haveany responsibility for defending thestock market against malicious attack?Should a nation declare war when amajor financial system is brought downthrough electronic means? Should it re-spond with conventional or nuclearweapons? When is victory achieved insuch a conflict? Should the U.S. engagein offensive information maneuvers todestroy or muddle databases an enemyuses to choose targets?

Tofflerian Wave Theory

These questions often get mixed witha large helping of popular sociolo-

gy. The School of Information Warfareand Strategy may be the first graduateprogram to frame a course of studyaround the ideas of mass-market au-thors Alvin and Heidi Toffler, perhapsbest known these days as consultants toSpeaker of the House Newt Gingrich.The Tofflers have had a pervasive influ-ence on the military. In a monographentitled “Envisioning Future Warfare,”recently retired army Chief of Staff Gen-eral Gordon Sullivan cites Alvin Tofflerin 10 of 38 references.

At the school of information warfare,the world becomes segmented by theTofflers’ “wave” theory, the notion thatsociety—and war itself—is passing intoa postindustrial information age thatfollows a “second wave” industrial eracharacterized by the use of tanks andbombers and a “first wave” agrarianeconomy that employed muskets andspears. “As the Third Wave war-formtakes shape, a new breed of ‘knowledgewarriors’ has begun to emerge—intel-lectuals in and out of uniform dedicatedto the idea that knowledge can win, orprevent, wars,” the Tofflers write ear-

nestly in War and Anti-War.Elite corps of knowledge warrior-

hackers may not be able completely toreplace conventional divisions of 20,000armed grunts. John I. Alger, dean of theinformation warfare school, lapses into

Tofflerese to explain why. “Most of theworld still has second-wave armies, andwe still have to concern ourselves withphysical destruction as a threat to theU.S.,” he says.

This vision of wars to come mayemerge from reading too many futuris-tic treatises. Not everyone in the defenseestablishment warms to embracing thenew fighting methods so quickly. Themilitary still treasures its aircraft carri-ers and fighter planes. Reticence mayalso stem from a fear that the new tech-nologies may not work as expected.Two sides lobbing missiles at each othermay revive an apocalyptic form oftrench warfare in which each sidebloodies the other but fails to achievevictory. “It may be a long-range equiva-lent of 1914,” says Daniel Gouré of theCenter for Strategic and InternationalStudies in reference to the World War Istalemate.

And flooding more information tosoldiers may not give them a bettergrasp of an unfolding battle. The U.S.military has wrestled with the travails ofthe information age since the VietnamWar. Instead of streamlining the man-agement of war, the expanding commu-nications infrastructure in SoutheastAsia led to a burgeoning of support per-sonnel. Five percent of all troops there—aunit larger than a division—handledcommunications. In his 1985 book,Command in War, historian Martin vanCreveld of the Hebrew University in Is-rael notes that “the communications es-tablishment made possible by the rev-olution in technology, and necessary inorder to deal with the consequences ofspecialization and complexity, had itselfturned into a major source of both spe-cialization and complexity. The cure waspart of the disease.”

Things have not necessarily changed.The U.S. Army has stated its intentionof using high technology to decrease thesize of its forces. But this past August, ina war game that deployed armoredunits to test digital communications sys-tems, soldiers found they had morework—time spent putting informationinto computers or connecting one sys-tem to another, according to a report inthe independent newsletter Inside theArmy. After the exercise, an officer of-fered the opinion that the targeting effi-ciency of a new tank, the M1A2, mightimprove fighting capability more thanadvanced digital communications could.

In another war game in 1994, a digi-tal battalion became confused when a nonautomated opponent lit fires tofool, or “spoof,” infrared sensors de-ployed by the high-tech forces. What ismore, the digital soldiers performed no

Debate on high-tech fighting culminates in the question of whetherinformation technologies a computer

virus, for one—could make conventional military hardware

obsolete and whether they would makepossible a virtual invasion of the

continental U.S.


better than other units that had foughtthe same opponent without advancedequipment.

Issues of cost and technical feasibilityalso pervade the debate over the navalarsenal ship. The new vessel might notbe such a bargain. It has to travel withother ships for protection. An electronicmessage posted on the Internet lam-pooned the idea: “One low-tech incom-ing, and we could double the nationaldebt,” a suggestion of what might hap-pen to an arsenal ship if targeted by aninexpensive missile.

Low-Intensity Conflict

If the military is looking for the natureof war in the next century, it may be

looking in the wrong place. By some ac-counts, the generals have yet to learnthe lessons—or adapt their war-fightingmethods—to the type of conflict thathas predominated since World War II.This argument represents a broadsideon the school of military thinking asso-ciated with Carl von Clausewitz, thePrussian army officer whose writings onwar are often distilled to the cliché thatwar is a continuation of politics by oth-er means. This intersecting notion ofpolitics and armed conflict can be linked

to the idea that the modern state and itsarmies are the only legitimate purveyorof organized violence. Anyone else tak-ing up arms is either an outlaw or abandit.

A number of military historians havedeclared the Clausewitzian world ofstates fighting states to be effectivelydead. In his book The Transformationof War—published, in a grim irony, onthe day the ground offensive of the GulfWar was launched in 1991—van Crev-eld argues that the terms of modernwarfare and the costs of advanced weap-ons systems are making traditional com-bat ever less likely. In a nuclear era, allsides must exercise restraint or risk mu-tual annihilation. This measure of self-control, van Creveld believes, also ex-tends to the use of chemical and biolog-ical arms. Few nations would dare tounleash them against an enemy, for fearthat the retaliation, by the attacked stateor one of its more powerful allies, mightbe a nuclear strike. (Unfortunately,chemical and biological weapons mightstill become the inexpensive weapons ofchoice among terrorists, who would notbe constrained by this vulnerability.)

In a world populated by nuclear weap-ons and their cousins, war has not goneaway but simply shifted to another are-

na. Van Creveld maintains that mostconflicts—Somalia, Rwanda and evenBosnia—do not involve state againststate and that these wars take placelargely without deploying advancedweaponry. Of the 100 or so wars foughtsince World War II, more than 80 havebeen characterized as low-intensity con-flicts, many of which are civil wars orethnic hostilities. They are often engen-dered over scarcity of resources [see“Environmental Change and ViolentConflict,” by Thomas F. Homer-Dixon,Jeffrey H. Boutwell and George W.Rathjens; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN,February 1993]. Low-level struggles,despite the modest sound of the name,often attain genocidal levels of blood-shed. The Nigerian civil war claimed thelives of more than one million peoplefrom 1967 to 1970, and turmoil be-tween Hindus and Muslims in Indiatook a toll of one million from 1947 to1949. The neat categorizations on thenature of warfare set out in the Clause-witzian universe have been completelylost in the strife.

Peacekeeping has therefore becomethe order of the day. Unfortunately, thatorder flummoxes many in a militaryelite that has spent decades preparing tostop waves of Soviet tanks from rolling

�efense budgets have dropped somewhat in inflation-adjusted dollars from their cold-war average of $300

billion. Nevertheless, with expenditures totaling about $260billion for the current fiscal year, the U.S. spends more ondefense than every prospective enemy and neutral countrycombined. “We could probably cut defense spending by$35 billion and still remain the world’s preeminent militarypower,” notes Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Brook-ings Institution and a former assistant secretary of defensein the Reagan administration. (The chart below conveys anidea of the magnitude of U.S. spending for 1993.)

A war that emphasizes precision-guided missiles andcommercially procured information and transport technolo-gies might cost less to fightthan one that relies on largeweapons systems, a Seawolfsubmarine and an F-22 fight-er. Moreover, readying militaryforces to fight two almost si-multaneous Desert Storm–like conflicts may prove anunnecessary extravagance inan era of budget tightening.The Defense Budget Project,an independent research or-ganization, has recommend-ed that preparing to fight onlyone regional conflict may bea means to free up funding to

experiment with new technologies—an arsenal ship ornetworks of unmanned aerial vehicles.

But the track record on embracing wholly new types ofwarfare is not particularly good. In 1978, more than a de-cade before the end of the cold war, physicist Philip Morri-son and political scientist Paul F. Walker wrote a book onmilitary spending that suggested that a relatively inexpen-sive national defense could be built around precision mu-nitions, thereby forgoing vulnerable weapons platformssuch as the aircraft carrier. Budgets, they asserted, could becut by 40 percent. Their ideas, of course, have remainedno more than academic treatise. “We want to say warfare ischanging, but not ours,” Morrison remarks today.

Scenarios for future wars, infact, could simply become ameans of preserving the sta-tus quo. “Is the Pentagon’sRevolution in Military Affairs ascam?” writes Steven After-good of the Federation ofAmerican Scientists. “Could itbe just another, more seduc-tive way of packaging militaryprograms to help sustain de-fense budgets at a time whenthe long-standing military jus-tification for existing struc-tures and programs has di-minished sharply?”

A Faster, Cheaper, Smaller Military?

SOURCE: Defense Planning for the Late 1990s, by Michael O'Hanlon (Brookings Institution, 1995)

GLOBAL MILITARY EXPENDITURES IN 1993U.S.

Other NATO countriesRussia

Middle EastJapan

People’s Republic of ChinaEast Asia

Africa, India and Latin AmericaNonaligned Europe

Australia/New ZealandOther former Warsaw Pact countries

Other republics of the former U.S.S.R.North Korea

0 10 20 30 40PERCENT OF TOTAL

$275 BILLION


across across the West German border.These officers, too, still experience lin-gering effects of a post-Vietnam syn-drome, that soldiers should leave thebarracks only to protect clear-cutthreats to the national interest. In a1993 U.S. Army manual this type ofquasi-police activity is relegated to achapter with the Orwellian title “Oper-ations Other Than War.”

The various service branches do trainfor what is reduced to the inevitableacronym “OOTW.” The army, for one,has set up a peacekeeping institute at itsArmy War College in Carlisle, Pa. Butthe military and Congress have a decid-edly ambivalent relationship to thesetypes of conflicts. Chairman of the JointChiefs of Staff General John Sha-likashvili commented last year: “Myfear is we’re becoming mesmerized byoperations other than war, and we’lltake our mind off what we’re all about,[which is] to fight and win our nation’swars.”

Nevertheless, the military has devotedsome effort to devising weapons andtactics more appropriate to the next So-malia than the B-2 bomber and the Tri-dent submarine are. The army, the De-partment of Energy, the Advanced Re-search Projects Agency and otherresearch institutes have labored on tech-nologies that would minimize thebloodshed, or at least the public-rela-tions sting, of these nasty and brutishaffairs.

Lawrence Livermore National Labo-ratory has devised an infrared sensingsystem, called Lifeguard, that could beused by peacekeepers or even police todetect the precise location from which asniper’s bullets originate. The AdvancedResearch Projects Agency has equippedU.S. soldiers on a peacekeeping missionin Macedonia with a combination res-cue-radio and satellite-location receiverthat beeps when a soldier or vehicle getswithin 500 meters of the Serbian bor-der. (Crossing the border inadvertentlycould cause an international incident.)

A set of unusual technologies has be-gun to contribute to peacekeeping. “Non-lethal” weapons are intended to stun orimmobilize but spare their victims. Achemical that makes a street slippery orsticky, rendering it impassable to trafficand passersby, may deflect public con-demnation. “Rather than shooting a 14-year-old boy, you stop him withsticky glue,” says Andrew J. Bacevich ofthe Nitze School at Johns Hopkins.“You can do an operation without hav-ing the media lambaste you for inhu-mane and cruel treatment.”

U.S. marines dispersed a mix of stickyfoam, concertina wire and small, point-

ed objects that look like jacks to holdoff crowds of Somalis during the with-drawal of U.N. peacekeeping troops inearly March, says Charles S. Heal, themarine officer who coordinated the useof these weapons. The troops had afive-minute respite before the Somalisput down planks and used a number ofother ploys that enabled them to tra-verse the barrier.

Threats of force were perhaps as ef-fective in Mogadishu. Training a visiblelaser used to illuminate targets on tres-passers who made their way onto a run-way kept loyalists to warlord Moham-med Farah Aidid outside the airportperimeter. “The guys had seen enoughSchwarzenegger movies to know itworked,” says Anthony Fainberg of therecently disbanded Office of Technolo-gy Assessment.

The nonlethals are subject to thesame dynamics as other weapons tech-nologies—any armament engenderscountermeasures. “Sand spread on thestickum-coated pavement would pre-sumably stick (what else?) and providea sandpaper surface on which one couldwalk or drive,” writes Richard L. Gar-win, an IBM fellow and a longtime ad-viser on defense technologies and armscontrol. “Before sand could be spread,attaching a pad of newspaper on thesole. . .would allow one step per page—enough to cross a small region of stick-um-covered pavement at high speed.”

Nonlethals also bear a taint of deadli-ness and may prove inhumane. “Thegrime from hell,” as Garwin calls onehypothetical weapon, a thin layer ofpaint that can be sprayed onto an ag-gressor’s windshield to obscure vision,could certainly cause a fatal loss of vehi-cle control. An international ban wasrecently approved on lasers that perma-nently blind victims, a type of weaponclassified as nonlethal.

Low-Tech Retaliation

Soldiers armed with weapons that donot kill face a fundamental dilemma

in fighting a war. “To paraphraseClausewitz,” van Creveld says, “thosewho think war can be waged withoutbloodshed should be wary of an oppo-nent coming along and cutting off theirheads.” While the West concocts kinderand gentler weapons, determined irreg-ular fighters in the Third World (or else-where) may fail to observe a protocolthat avoids deaths. The quintessentialpostindustrial war machine is a Somali“technical,” a pickup truck with an au-tomatic weapon mounted in the back.

Moreover, a Somali warlord or his ilkmay not have to gain an ultimate stra-

tegic advantage to win. He may indulgein the subtleties of information warfareand global public relations by manipu-lating the power of satellite news broad-casting to influence an event without re-course to superior weaponry. The im-pact of television imagery of a dead U.S.soldier being dragged through thestreets of Mogadishu most likely con-tributed to the U.S. decision to call off ahunt to track down Aidid and to set adate for a withdrawal of its troops.

A tribal leader, meanwhile, may con-duct information warfare with technol-ogies that predate Thomas Edison. Ai-did’s followers in Somalia reportedlycommunicated U.S. troop activity at theSomali airport to their peers by beatingwooden sticks on oil barrels. To avoiddetection, Aidid shunned use of the tele-phone altogether.

Messages encoded as drumbeats willleave suites of infrared sensors undis-turbed. Technological sophistication, aprerequisite for strategic dominance in aregional theater of war, may thusfounder in the chaos of a Saigon or aMogadishu. “We’re getting a lot of clev-er ideas about how to fight a Gulf Warmore efficiently,” remarks Libicki of theNational Defense University. “But werarely get anything about how to fight aVietnam more efficiently.”

The disparity between war as a tech-nological tour de force and the realitiesof low-level conflict have yet to be rec-onciled by the leaders of large standingarmies. Precision bombing may achievesome success in Bosnia. But decisions toproceed with air strikes become mud-died when U.N. troops are chained ashostages to Serb military targets. War ata distance—the vision put forth by theseers of future conflict—may quicklyerode in the ambiguities of OOTW.Peacekeeping may confound the com-plex stratagems of nuclear planners,who have defined the nature of warfarefor the past half century. The fragilecold-war balance of power has givenway to a fog of peacetime.

Further Reading

THE TRANSFORMATION OF WAR. Martinvan Creveld. Free Press, 1991.

MONITORING EMERGING MILITARYTECHNOLOGIES. Steven Aftergood in Federa-tion of American Scientists Public Interest Re-port, Vol. 48, No. 1, pages 1–14; January–Febru-ary 1995.

THE MESH AND THE NET: SPECULATIONSON ARMED CONFLICT IN A TIME OF FREESILICON. Martin C. Libicki. Available on theWorld Wide Web at http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/inss/macnair/mcnair28/m028cont.html


Traveling inside drag-cutting bubbles,


Originally Published in theMay 2001 Issue


secret torpedoes and other subsea naval systems can move hundreds of miles per hour

BY STEVEN ASHLEY


Edmond Pope was arrested in Moscow on charges of es-pionage, it was said that he had been trying to buy theplans for an ultrahigh-speed torpedo. Although the de-tails surrounding both the tragic naval accident and thecelebrated spy case remain unsettled, evidence does sug-gest that both incidents revolved around an amazing andlittle-reported technology that allows naval weaponsand vessels to travel submerged at hundreds of miles perhour—in some cases, faster than the speed of sound inwater. The swiftest traditional undersea technologies, incontrast, are limited to a maximum of about 80 mph.

Of late, it has become increasingly apparent that theworld’s major naval powers are developing the meansto build entire arsenals of innovative underwater

weapons and armadas of undersea watercraft able tooperate at unprecedented speeds. This high-velocity ca-pability—a kind of “warp drive” for water—is based onthe physical phenomenon of supercavitation. This flu-id-mechanical effect occurs when bubbles of water va-por form in the lee of bodies submerged in fast-mov-ing water flows. The trick is to surround an object orvessel with a renewable envelope of gas so that the liq-uid wets very little of the body’s surface, thereby dras-tically reducing the viscous drag. Supercavitating sys-tems could mean a quantum leap in naval warfare thatis analogous in some ways to the move from propplanes to jets or even to rockets and missiles.

Although current funding levels for supercavitationresearch are said to be modest (around $50 million inthe U.S., for example), the list of potential supercavi-tating weapons and naval vessels is extensive and al-together startling. It includes high-speed underwaterbullets aimed at mines, homing torpedoes, boats—evenlow-flying aircraft and helicopters—from submergedgun-pods that look like the turrets on World WarII–era aerial bombers. Other possibilities include high-velocity antiship and antitorpedo torpedoes and“midrange unguided engagement breakers,” which arelarger weapons intended to force an end to a conflictbetween two submarines. Also envisioned are small,superfast surface craft as well as nuclear-capable sub-sea missiles designed to neutralize entire aircraft-carri-er battle groups.

Some naval experts believe that supercavitating sys-tems could alter the nature of undersea warfare, chang-ing stealthy cat-and-mouse stalking contests betweenlarge submarines into something resembling aerialcombat, featuring noisy high-speed dogfights amongsmall, short-range “subfighters” shooting underwaterbullets at one another after having been launched fromgiant “subcarriers.”

■ The world’s major navies are developing arsenals of innovativehigh-speed undersea weapons and vessels based on thephenomenon of supercavitation, which allows them to reducehydrodynamic drag by traveling inside self-generated bubblesof water vapor and gas.

■ The Russian navy has already deployed a rocket-poweredsupercavitating torpedo—the Shkval (Squall)—that is said to go230 miles per hour. Cash-strapped Russia is looking to sell animproved version of the weapon to other countries. The Shkvalhas already turned up in France, China and Iran.

■ The extensive list of potential supercavitating naval weaponsincludes short-range underwater projectiles to destroy minesand incoming torpedoes, high-velocity torpedoes, large subseamissiles for destroying entire battle groups, small ultrahigh-speed surface ships, and perhaps even supercavitatingsubmarines. A long-range, multistage strategic torpedo/missiletipped with nuclear warheads that could possibly defeat “StarWars” defenses has also been envisioned.

When the Russian submarine K-141 Kursk sank last August, rumors rapidly arose that the

mysterious blasts that sent the big boat to the bottom of the Barents Sea were connected to the

testing of an ultrahigh-speed torpedo. Several months earlier, when American businessman

Overview/Swift Subsea Weapons

PH

ILIP

HO

WE

(p

rece

din

g p

ag

e)


Other experts point to the possibility of fielding long-dis-tance, multistage supercavitating torpedoes/ missiles fitted withnuclear warheads (“long-range guided preemptive weapons”)that could prove to be a relatively cheap and effective counterto future “Star Wars” missile defense systems. These devicescould dash in from many miles out at sea entirely underwater,pop out of coastal waters close to their targets, and drop theirlethal payloads before any aerial or space-based defenses couldreact.

Surprisingly, we now know of at least one supercavitatingweapon that has existed for many years. In 1977, after morethan a decade of research and development, the Soviet navy se-cretly introduced a rocket-powered torpedo called the Shkval(Squall) that can “fly” through water at 100 meters per second(about 230 miles per hour) or more inside a self-generated gascavity. Although this nuclear-tipped underwater missile is insome ways a bit crude and less than entirely effective, news ofit in the early 1990s forced the Western military powers to takenotice of supercavitating technology.

There’s no doubt that many significant challenges beyondthe merely technical would have to be addressed before any ofthese next-generation technologies achieves reality. Environ-mental concerns as well as navigation issues would have to beconsidered, for instance. Probably the biggest barrier to ad-vancement would be finding sufficient capital to develop andbuild supercavitating marine systems. Nevertheless, historyshows that military technology often finds financial supportwhen money for other purposes is scarce.

“Since very few of these things have been built so far, inmany ways we’re at a stage similar to that of the airplane rightafter the Wright brothers first flew,” says Robert Kuklinski, anengineer and hydrodynamics research scientist at the NavalUndersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport inRhode Island, the lead U.S. Navy laboratory investigating su-percavitating systems. “But unlike then, we know a lot moreabout the underlying physics and technology than those earlyaerial pioneers did.”

Propelling a body through water takes considerable effort, asevery swimmer knows. Speeding up the pace makes the taskeven harder because skin friction rises with increased velocity.Swimming laps entirely underwater is even more difficult, aswater produces 1,000 times more drag resistance than air does.

Supercavitation Fundamentalsnaval architects and marine engineers vie constant-

ly with these age-old problems when they streamline the shapesof their hull designs to minimize the frictional drag of waterand fit their ships with powerful engines to drive them throughthe waves. It can come as a shock, therefore, to find out thatscientists and engineers have come up with a new way to over-come viscous drag resistance and to move through water athigh velocities. In general, the idea is to minimize the amountof wetted surface on the body by enclosing it in a low-densitygas bubble.

“When a fluid moves rapidly around a body, the pressurein the flow drops, particularly at trailing edges of the body,”explains Marshall P. Tulin, director of the Ocean EngineeringLaboratory at the University of California at Santa Barbara anda pioneer in the theory of supercavitating flows. “As velocityincreases, a point is reached at which the pressure in the flowequals the vapor pressure of water, whereupon the fluid un-dergoes a phase change and becomes a gas: water vapor.” Inother words, with insufficient pressure to hold them together,the liquid water molecules dissociate into a gas.

“Under certain circumstances, especially at sharp edges, theflow can include attached cavities of approximately constantpressure filled with water vapor and air trailing behind. Thisis what we call natural cavitation,” Tulin says. “The cavitytakes on the shape necessary to conserve the constant pressurecondition on its boundary and is determined by the body cre-ating it, the cavity pressure and the force of gravity,” he ex-plains. Naval architects and marine engineers typically try toavoid cavitation because it can distort water flow to robpumps, turbines, hydrofoils and propellers of operational effi-

WATER FLOWING RAPIDLY around an object causes the fluid pressure to fall. At speeds beyond about 50 meters per second, the pressure dropssufficiently to allow the water to dissociate into water vapor, forming a gas bubble behind the object (cavitation). When the gas bubble fullyencloses the object, it is called supercavitation. Slender axisymmetric bodies, such as the high-speed Russian Shkval torpedo (above) create longellipsoidal supercavities. High-velocity fluid flow (from the right) produces supercavitation above the top surface.

SUPERCAVITY

SHKVAL TORPEDOGUIDANCE WIRE

How Supercavitation Works


PH

ILIP

HO

WE

ciency. It can also lead to violent shock waves (fromrapid bubble collapse), which cause pitting and erosionof metal surfaces.

Supercavitation is an extreme version of cavitationin which a single bubble is formed that envelops themoving object almost completely. At velocities overabout 50 meters per second, (typically) blunt-nosed cav-itators and prow-mounted gas-injection systems pro-duce these low-density gas pockets (what specialists callsupercavities). With slender, axisymmetric bodies, su-percavities take the shape of elongated ellipsoids begin-ning at the forebody and trailing behind, with the lengthdependent on the speed of the body.

The resulting elliptically shaped cavities soon closeup under the pressure of the surrounding water, anarea characterized by complex, unsteady flows. Mostof the difficulties in mathematically modeling super-cavitating flows arise when considering what Tulincalls “the mess at the rear” of cavities, known as the col-lapse or closure region. In reality, the pressures insidegas cavities are not constant, which leads to many ofthe analysis problems, he says.

However they’re modeled, as long as the watertouches only the cavitator, supercavitating devices canscoot along the interiors of the lengthy gas bubbleswith minimal drag.

U.S. Supercavitation Effortsalthough supercavitation research in thiscountry focused on high-speed propeller and hydrofoildevelopment in the 1950s, the U.S. Navy subsequent-ly opted to pursue other underwater technologies, par-ticularly those related to stealth operations, rather thanhigh-velocity capabilities. As a result, experts say, theU.S. Navy currently has no supercavitating weaponsand is now trying to catch up with the Russian navy.

Supercavitating weapons work in the U.S. is beingdirected by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Ar-

lington, Va. In general, the ONR’s efforts are aimed atdeveloping two classes of supercavitating technologies:projectiles and torpedoes.

The first class of weapons is represented by RAMICS(for Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System), a soon-to-be-requisitioned helicopter-borne weapon that de-stroys surface and near-surface marine mines by firingsupercavitating rounds at them. The 20-millimeter flat-nosed projectiles, which are designed to travel stablythrough both air and water, are shot from a modifiedrapid-fire gun with advanced targeting assistance. (Thefielded RAMICS projectiles are expected to be enlargedto 30-millimeter caliber.) Raytheon Naval & MaritimeIntegrated Systems in Portsmouth, R.I., is the chief con-tractor for RAMICS, and engineers at C Tech DefenseCorporation in Port Angeles, Wash., developed theprojectiles [see box on page 35]. The U.S. Navy is alsoconsidering deploying a surface ship–borne, deck-mounted RAMICS-type close-in weapons system thatcould destroy deadly wake-following torpedoes.

The next step in supercavitating projectile technol-ogy will be an entirely subsurface gun system usingAdaptable High-Speed Undersea Munitions (AHSUM).These would take the form of supercavitating “kinet-ic-kill” bullets that are fired from guns in streamlinedturrets fitted to the submerged hulls of submarines, sur-face ships or towed mine-countermeasure sleds. Thesonar-directed AHSUM system is hoped to be the un-derwater equivalent of the U.S. Navy’s Phalanxweapons system, a radar-controlled rapid-fire gun thatprotects surface vessels from incoming cruise missiles.

The other supercavitating technology of interest tothe ONR is a torpedo with a maximum velocity ofabout 200 knots. Substantial technical and systemchallenges stand in the way of the desired torpedo inthe areas of launching, hydrodynamics, acoustics,guidance and control, and propulsion, to name a few,according to ONR program manager Kam Ng. NUWC

CAVITY VENTILATION DUCTS

CANTED-NOSE CAVITATOR

SPRING-OUT SKIDROCKET MOTOR STARTER MOTOR

WARHEAD

ENGINE SYSTEMS

ROCKET FUELGUIDANCE-

WIRE SPOOLROCKET NOZZLE

RUSSIAN SQUALLThe Russian Shkval

torpedo (in cutaway)is thought to feature a

flat disk cavitator atthe nose to create apartial cavity that is

expanded into a super-cavity by gases in-

jected from forward-mounted vents. Small

starter rockets get theweapon moving until a

cavity is formed,whereupon the large

central rocket kicks in.

CAVITATORSDifferent nose

geometries can beused to create super-cavities—flat disks,

cones, “gear-shaped”plates and cones(top and middle),

faceted concavitiesand cavitators with

inscribed cones thatmove in and out likethe tips of ballpoint

pens (bottom).


PH

ILIP

HO

WE

Newport is doing the applied research and some of thebasic research work as well. The effort is supported bythe Applied Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania StateUniversity (ARL/Penn State), the University of Flori-da, Anteon Corporation and Lockheed Martin.

With regard to the computational fluid dynamics(CFD) work on the torpedo being done at ARL/PennState, “we’re trying to simulate the conditions in whichthe torpedo would operate, which is the so-called two-phase flow regime where there’s both water and gas,”Ng says. “We want to know what the water is doing,what the gas cavity is like, and how we make sure thegas cavity encloses the body at all times. Remember,once the cavity is disrupted, the wetted surface increas-es and the speed is going to drop off very quickly.

“So far the CFD is doing a fairly good job, but it’snot yet to the point that we’re happy with it,” he con-tinues. “It’s both a matter of computational issues andour fundamental understanding of the physics. This isnot a Newtonian fluid we’re working with here; it’smuch more complex than a single-phase flow.”

Profile of a Supercavitating Torpedoas the foremost existing example of a supercavi-tating device, the Russian Shkval underwater missile isideal for the purpose of illuminating the basic parts ofa first-generation design. The torpedo, which is re-portedly 27 feet long and weighs 5,940 pounds, is “re-ally a big projectile with a rocket on the end,” jokesYuriy N. Savchenko, who directs the research groupat the Ukrainian Institute of Hydromechanics in Kiev,where most of the fundamentals of supercavitating

weapons technology were first developed.In general, the weapon consists of a large cylindri-

cal hull containing a solid-rocket motor that tapers toa cone enclosing the warhead. The wide aperture of arocket nozzle protrudes from the center of the aft endencircled by eight small cylinders, which are said to besmall starter rockets. These get the Shkval moving upto supercavitation speed, whereupon the main enginecuts in. Nestled between two of the starter motor noz-zles is thought to be a spool of guidance wire that un-ravels as the torpedo makes its way through the water.The wire would allow submarine personnel to controlthe weapon’s operation and warhead detonation.

Up front, things get a bit more speculative. Expertsbelieve that the nose of the torpedo features what is like-ly to be a flat disk with a circular or perhaps ellipticalshape. This is the all-important cavitator, which createsthe gas cavity in which the craft moves. The cavitatordisk will be tilted forward at the top, providing an “an-gle of attack” to generate the lift needed to support theforebody of the device. The cavitator’s edge is apt tobe sharp, which hydrodynamicists say creates the clean-est or least turbulent gas/water boundary, what theycall a “glassy” cavity. Just aft of the cavitator sit sever-al rings of ventilation ducts that inject rocket exhaustand steam into the cavitation bubble to enlarge it.About two thirds of the way back from the nose arefour spring-out cylinders angled toward the stern. Al-though they loosely resemble fins, these spring-ten-sioned skids actually support the aft end of the torpedoby allowing it to bounce off the inner cavity surface.Western experts believe that the Shkval actually “pre-

The U.S. Navy opted to pursue stealth rather than HIGH VELOCITY. With no supercavitating weapons, the U.S. Navy is now trying to CATCH UP with the Russian navy.

PROTOTYPE WEAPONA futuresupercavitatingtorpedo based on U.S. Navy designconcepts couldfeature a range ofinnovative cavitator,sensing, control and propulsiontechnologies.

SONAR ARRAY

CAVITY VENTILATIONGAS BOTTLE

MEMS-BASED CAVITYCONTACT SENSOR

SYSTEM WATER RAMJETPROPULSION SYSTEM

PNEUMATIC HOVER-SKIRT

SYSTEM

THRUST-VECTORING

NOZZLE

FOLDOUT FINS

CONICAL CAVITATORWITH PITCH-YAW

CONTROL


cesses” slowly around the cavity’s circumference, re-peatedly ricocheting off the walls as it makes its waythrough the water.

The Shkval is considered to be somewhat unrefinedbecause it can travel only along a straight trajectory,but future supercavitating vehicles are being designedto maneuver through the water. Steering is possiblethrough the use of cavity-piercing control surfaces suchas fins, and thrust-vectoring systems, which are direc-tional nozzles for jet exhaust. Extreme care must betaken to keep the body inside the cavity during turns,however, because should it stray from the cavity, theforce of slamming into the surrounding wall of waterwould abruptly turn it into “a crushed Coke can,” ac-cording to Ivan Kirschner, an engineer at Anteon’s En-gineering Technology Center in Mystic, Conn.

“Three-dimensional pitch and yaw maneuverscould also be accomplished by moving or rotating thenose cavitator in two planes simultaneously,” Kirsch-ner continues, “although such devices would be morecomplicated.” Researchers have also considered usingforward-actuated canards.

Supercavitating vehicles could be highly agile if thecontrol surfaces were coordinated correctly, saysNUWC’s Kuklinsky. The idea is to skew the cavity toone side to create the desired side forces with an artic-ulated nose cavitator or with control surfaces and thentrack the vehicle in it. If the fore and aft control systemsoperate in phase so that the “back end keeps up with

what the front is doing, very fast turns can be accom-plished,” he notes.

Part of the solution to the control problem is to in-stall a reliable, real-time feedback control loop that cankeep abreast of cavity conditions in the rear of the craftand make the appropriate response to measuredchanges. As supercavitating systems travel unsupport-ed inside low-density gas bubbles, their afterbodies of-ten bang off the inside wall of cavities. Specialists callthis the “tail-slap” phenomenon, which is regularly ob-served in high-speed test photography of supercavitat-ing devices. The ONR has sponsored the developmentof a “tail-slap” sensor—a monitoring system based onmicroelectromechanical components that will track in-termittent afterbody contact with the cavity.

Advanced Propulsion Systemsan important point regarding future super-

cavitating vehicles is the fact that transitions from nor-mal underwater travel into the supercavitating regimeand back out again can be accomplished by artificiallyventilating a partial cavity to maintain and expand itthrough the velocity transitions. Thus, a small naturalcavity formed at the nose (at lower speeds) can be“blown up” into a large one that fully encloses the en-tire body. Conversely, braking maneuvers can be easedby augmenting the bubble with injection gases to main-tain and then slowly reduce its size so as to graduallyscrub speed.

RUSSIA:AlthoughRussia leads theworld in super-cavitating weap-

ons technology based on its ear-ly and extensive work in the field,it is unclear exactly how muchprogress that country has madein recent years. A significant clas-sified program on supercavitatingweapons is reportedly ongoing atTsAGI, the renowned CentralAerohydrodynamic Institute inZhukovsky, which is thought tohave done much of the engineer-ing work on the Shkval under-water missile. Western expertsbelieve that Russian researcherswere the first to attain fully submerged supersonic speedsthrough water. Some say that

TsAGI engineers are investigatingthe possibility of developing su-percavitating submarines as well.

UKRAINE: Muchof the funda-mental technol-ogy that under-

lies the Russian Shkval torpedocame out of the Ukrainian Instituteof Hydromechanics in Kiev, whichin Soviet times was directed byacademician Georgy Logvinovich,one of the pioneers of supercavita-tion theory. That facility contains asophisticated water-tank testingsystem in which wire-riding mod-els are catapulted or jet-propelledthrough water while under closeobservation. Researchers at the In-stitute of Hydromechanics, who

are known for their successfulsemianalytic mathematical ap-proach and extensive testing work,have been trading informationabout supercavitating technologywith their American counterpartssince the fall of the Soviet Union.

FRANCE: In thepast decade, un-der the supervi-sion of the Direc-

torate of Research, Studies andTechniques (DRET), France hassupported a program called Ac-tion Concertée Cavitation. Reliablesources report that the govern-ment is strongly, if covertly, pur-suing supercavitating weaponry.For example, France has reported-ly purchased several Shkvals from

the Russians for evaluation. Testsof prototype air-launched anti-mine supercavitating projectilesare being performed at theFrench-German Research Insti-tute of Saint-Louis.

GERMANY: TheGerman Feder-al Office for De-fense Technol-

ogy and Procurement in Koblenzis cooperating with U.S. Navy re-searchers in a joint developmentprogram on new cavitator designsand the modeling of homing sys-tems for torpedoes. Engineershave also completed initial devel-opment of a supercavitating tor-pedo prototype that is expectedto begin trials soon in the U.S.

SUBSEA GUNSThe U.S. Navy is

developing under-water launchers forrotating gun turretsthat would be fittedbelow the waterlineto fire “kinetic-kill”

projectiles at mines,obstacles, surface

craft, homing torpe-does—even low-

flying airplanes andhelicopters.

International Supercavitation Research

PH

ILIP

HO

WE


Most existing and anticipated autonomous supercav-itating vehicles rely on rocket-type motors to generatethe required thrust. But conventional rockets entailsome serious drawbacks—limited range and decliningthrust performance with the rise of pressure as depthincreases. The first of these problems is being addressedwith a new kind of high-energy-density power-planttechnology; the second problem may be circumvent-ed by using a special kind of supercavitating propellerscrew technology.

“Getting up to supercavitation speeds requires a lotof power,” says researcher Savchenko. “For maximumrange with rockets, you need to burn high-energy-den-sity fuels that provide the maximum specific impulse.”He estimates that a typical solid-rocket motor canachieve a maximum range of several tens of kilometersand a top speed of perhaps 200 meters per second. Af-ter considering propulsion systems based on diesel en-gines, electric motors, atomic power plants, high-speeddiesels, and gas turbines, Savchenko concluded that“only high-efficiency gas turbines and jet propulsionsystems burning metal fuels (aluminum, magnesium orlithium) and using outboard water as both the fuel ox-idizer and coolant of the combustion products have

real potential for propelling supercavitating vehicles tohigh velocities.”

Aluminum, which is relatively cheap, is the mostenergetic of these metal fuels, producing a reactiontemperature of up to 10,600 degrees Celsius. “One canaccelerate the reaction by fluidizing [melting] the met-al and using water vapor,” Savchenko explains. In onecandidate power-plant design, the heat from the com-bustion chamber would be used to melt stored alu-minum sheets at about 675 degrees C and to vaporizeseawater as well. The resulting combustion productsturn turbine-driven propeller screws.

This type of system has already been developed inRussia, according to media reports there. The U.S. alsohas experience with these kinds of systems. Researchersat Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory are oper-ating an aluminum-burning “water ramjet” system,which was developed as an auxiliary power source fora naval surface ship.

In the novel American design, powdered aluminumfeeds into a whirlpool of seawater occurring in what iscalled a vortex combustor. The rapid rotation scrapesthe particles together, grinding off the inert aluminumoxide film that covers them, which initiates an intense

ANTIMINEPROJECTILE

Supercavitatingprojectiles shot from

above the oceansurface must fly

stably in both air andwater—a difficultengineering task.The RAMICS round( partially visible)was developed by

C Tech DefenseCorporation.

EVERYONE HAS SEEN action-movie heroes avoid fusilladesof bullets by diving several feet underwater. The bullets rico-chet away or expend their energy surprisingly rapidly as a re-sult of drag and lateral hydrodynamic forces.

When the Office of Naval Research was asked to find acost-effective way to stop thousand-dollar surface minesfrom damaging or destroying multimillion-dollar ships, theyturned to supercavitating projectiles. The result was RAMICS—

the Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System, which is being

developed for the U.S. Navy by a team led by Raytheon Naval& Maritime Integrated Systems in Portsmouth, R.I. Operatingfrom helicopters, RAMICS will locate subsurface sea mineswith an imaging blue-green lidar (light detection and ranging)system, calculate their exact position despite the bending oflight by water refraction, and then shoot them with super-cavitating rounds that travel stably in both air and water. Thespecial projectiles contain charges that cause the deflagra-tion, or moderated burning, of the mine’s explosives.

Neutralizing Mines

PROJECTILE TRAJECTORY ANTISHIP MINE

LIDAR

PH

ILIP

HO

WE


U.S

. N

AVY/

NU

WC

exothermic reaction as the aluminum oxidizes. High-pressure steam from this combustion process expandsout a rocket nozzle or drives a turbine that turns a pro-peller screw.

Tests have shown that prop screws offer the poten-tial to boost thrust by 20 percent compared with that ofrockets, although in theory it may be possible for screwsto double available thrust, Savchenko says. Designs fora turbo-rotor propeller system with a single supercavi-tating “hull propeller,” or a pair of counterrotating hullprops that encircle the outer surface of the craft so theycan reach the gas/water boundary, have been tested. Heemphasizes, however, that “considerable work remainsto be done on how the propeller and cavity must inter-act” before real progress can be made.

Fears for the Futurewhatever the years ahead may hold for super-cavitating weapons, they have already exerted a stronginfluence on military and intelligence communitiesaround the world. Indeed, they seem to have spurredsome reevaluation of naval strategy.

For example, when news of the Shkval’s existenceemerged, a debate soon ensued regarding its purpose.Some Western intelligence sources say that the Shkvalhad been developed to allow the noisy, low-tech dieselsubs of the then Soviet Union to respond if suddenlyfired on by ultraquiet American submarines lurkingnearby. On hearing the screws of the incoming con-ventional torpedo, the Shkval would be launched toforce an attacker to evade and thereby perhaps to cutthe incoming torpedo’s guidance wire. In effect, theysay, the Shkval is a sub killer, particularly if it is fittedwith a tactical nuclear warhead.

Other informed sources claim that the missile is infact an offensive weapon designed to explode a higher-yield nuclear charge amid a carrier battle group, therebytaking out the entire armada. During a nuclear war, itcould even be directed at a port or coastal land target.

“As there are no known countermeasures to such aweapon,” states David Miller’s April 1995 article “Su-percavitation: Going to War in a Bubble,” in Jane’s In-telligence Review, “its deployment could have a signif-icant effect on future maritime operations, both surfaceand subsurface, and could put Western naval forces ata considerable disadvantage.”

In recent years, cash-strapped Russia has openly of-fered the Shkval for sale at international arms shows inAbu Dhabi and Athens, a development that causesgrave concern in the Pentagon. Well-placed sources say

that several Shkvals have been sold to Iran, for example.Of equal worry is an August 1998 report that Chi-

na purchased around 40 Shkval torpedoes from Ka-zakhstan, raising the possibility that Beijing couldthreaten American naval forces in a future confronta-tion in the Taiwan Strait. News from China (reported-ly confirmed by U.S. Navy sources) that a Chinese sub-marine officer was on board the sunken Kursk has al-so raised alarms. He was there, they say, to observe thetest of a new version of the Shkval.

U.S. intelligence has received several indicationsthat the Russians were working on an advanced, muchlonger-range Shkval. For example, Russia’s Itar-Tassnews agency reported in February 1998 that tests of a“modernized” Shkval were scheduled by Russia’s Pa-cific Fleet for that spring.

The Kursk incident, the Pope trial and the ambigui-ty surrounding both reinforce the fact that the end of thecold war has in no way halted the clandestine arms com-petition to secure an edge in any future conflict. Clearly,the secret storm over the Shkval rages on.

As there are NO KNOWN COUNTERMEASURES, to such a weapon, its deployment could have a significant effect on future maritime operations.

SUPERSONIC BULLET In 1997 a research team at the NavalUndersea Warfare Center Division Newport in Rhode Island

demonstrated the fully submerged launch of a supercavitatingprojectile with a muzzle velocity of 1,549 meters per second,

which exceeds the speed of sound in water.

www.onr.navy.milwww.nuwc.navy.mil www.raytheon.com/es/esproducts/dssrmcs/dssrmcs.htm www.ctechdefense.comwww.arl.psu.eduwww.deepangel.comAcknowledgment: NATO RTO AVT/VKI Special Course on Supercavitating

Flows, February 2001, von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics,

Rhode-Saint-Genèse, BelgiumMO

RE

TOE

XP

LO

RE

UNDERSEAMISSILES

The U.S. Navy isconsidering designconcepts for large,

extended-rangesupercavitatingweapons. On the

left is a “midrangeunguided engage-ment breaker”; onthe right is a “long-range guided pre-emptive weapon.”
