^Historian writes on war rationale Nuclear war, even the limited use 3 f tactical nuclear weapons, is no longer considered rational by a growing number of policymakers and analysts, says Dr. Roger Beau- nont. The reality of the situation is that he superpowers are two gun- fighters in a telephone booth,” said Beaumont, military historian at Texas A&M University. “Even if one only has a .22 and the other has .45, they’ll both be dead if they shoot it out.’ This picture of looming global catastrophe, and the reasons behind it, is the subject of an article by Beaumont appearing in the Feb ruary issue of “Futures, a journal of forecasting and planning published in the United Kingdom and the United States. n «. c infe? ween (Yank the nifestd! as lumpli now le mi a at actiiL rg of why ;d to rer to sou re nalw the b ; and en tk icir rij very endeau he mtB ly e Amen the cau| / suit . Chisti etter he battalion JESDAY, MARCH 8, 1977 Page 3 In “Nuclear Warfare: The Illusion of Accurate Prediction” he charts the drift of nuclear weapons away from usefulness. Beaumont notes that nuclear war theory was born at the end of World War II and has become snarled in jargon and equations which have made it hard for the public to understand. Such specialized terms, Beau mont says, sugar-coat and obscure the fact that not much could survive a general thermonuclear war (GTE). At present, there are in the United States and Soviet arsenals about 3,000 intercontinental ballis tic missiles, 1,500 submarine- launched missiles and 14,000 strategic warheads, in addition to several thousand tactical nuclear weapons. “With these systems come built- in errors, no matter to whom they belong,” Beaumont said. “The mis sile types have in some cases never been field tested; many have in ex cess of a quarter-million parts, and the environment in which they would operate in a nuclear war would be far harsher than any test situation.” “Some estimate that the overall effectiveness would be 40 per cent or less,” he added. “That figm'e re lates to accuracy. The weapons that do not hit their targets accurately would not vanish. They would im pact somewhere and many would detonate somewhere. It is those weapons which seem to get easily lost in GTE scenarios.” “There is the natural tendency of those with vested interests to de fend systems against critiques of their utility and the gap between expectations and performance in military field operations,” he said. “Cavalrymen dreamed of charges in the face of massed artillery, the machine gun and airpower, and kept their beloved arm in the field half a century beyond its utility,” Beaumont pointed out. “The air mobile concept of the U.S. Army has only been blunted and did not founder on the loss of some 8,000 helicopters in Vietnam.” This same type prejudice is being built into official views and concepts of a general nuclear war he ob served. Some planners, he said, have developed a habit of “. . . ac cepting theory as reasonable as sumption.” “A nuclear war will develop along lines unanticipated by planners and controllers of the system,” he said. “Remember that in American nu clear testing, weapons yielded two to five times the explosive power expected by the experimenters.” Beaumont has assembled a catalog of events that might well be set off by errant missiles which have been generally ignored and which cannot be tested. CLASSES ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 7:30 p.m. Wednesday EPISCOPAL STUDENT CENTER 902 Jersey (southside of campus) 846-1726 Everyone Welcome Fr. James Moore, Chaplain COLOR LAB Now you don’t have to send your color processing to an out-of-town lab. You save RSS^I on time, handling, cost and convenience. We offer ektachrome processing, color KSgi printing, slide duplicating and copy work. Rush service is available. onal e truth In ;t me ass coverajt | ter of 11 ate, but' i ket asm r motive w is anil lion was or his it ugh I id not go: ticular ( [ioned am interests - moreal >u migl