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A former partner
in a top-10 global management consulting firm,
Joe Buff is a seasoned risk analyst and professional
writer on national security and defense preparedness.
He is also a novelist of tales of near-future
warfare featuring nuclear submariners and
Navy SEALs in action at their bravest and
best. Two of Joe's non-fiction articles on
future submarine technology and tactics, which
appeared in The Submarine Review, received
literary awards from the Naval Submarine League.
His recent novel Crush
Depth made the Military Book Club's
Top 20 Bestseller List after being selected
as a Featured Alternate of the Club in late
2002. Tidal
Rip was released from Wm. Morrow in
hardcover in November, 2003, and quickly made
the Amazon.com Top 100 General Thrillers Bestseller
List (paperback edition due in October, 2004).
Joe's next book, Straits
of Power, is scheduled for hardcover
publication in November, '04.
Joe is a member of the Society for Risk Analysis,
a non-partisan international scholarly body
headquartered in McLean, VA. He is a Life
Member of the following organizations: U.S.
Naval Institute, the Navy League of the
United States, the Fellows of the Naval War
College, CEC/Seabees Historical Foundation,
and the Naval Submarine League. Joe's father
was an enlisted man in the Navy (Seabees in
the Pacific Theater) from 1946 through 1951,
and his uncle was a merchant mariner on the
North Atlantic convoys late in World War II,
before being drafted into the U.S. Army to
serve in the Occupation of Nazi Germany. In
August, 2004, Joe was made an Honorary Life
Associate Member of the Navy Seabee Veterans
of America, partly in recognition of his pro
bono work for Operation
Seabees Knowledge.
Joe
Buff Article & Column Archive
Joe Buff Contact Info:
readermail@joebuff.com
http://www.JoeBuff.com
Joe Buff Books:
Straits
of Power
Tidal
Rip
Crush
Depth
Thunder
in the Deep
Deep
Sound Channel
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[Have an opinion on this column? Sound off in Military.com
at the Frontlines.]
Isolating a bunker in order to render it ineffective is by no means as easy as it sounds. The access points down into the bunker -- for soldiers, technicians, and cargoes -- can be provided in large numbers for any single buried facility, via dispersed tunnels stretching long distances from the central bunker area. These access points, also called adits, can furthermore be superbly well camouflaged, and placed in terrain conditions (large granite overhangs, steep-sided narrow ravines) so that their exteriors are protected from high-velocity non-nuclear penetrator rounds -- long, thin, heavy dart-like projectiles that follow straight glide-paths and gather kinetic energy from gravity free-fall or a rocket engine booster, or both. One proof of this unfortunate fact of adit low vulnerability, and of how very successful even primitive approaches to protecting bunker adits can be, is to be found in the amazing history of the Tunnels of Cu Chi during the conflict in Vietnam. Simple trapdoors, hidden in the jungle or hiding in plain sight, eluded American detection, sometimes for years -- even when it was known that enemy troops and/or guerrillas were persistently active in the neighborhood.
In a similar way, given enough advance time to plan and adequate funding to construct, an important enough hardened underground facility can be given a large number of disguised, retractable antennas. The minus-side to the fast-growing world of wireless communications is that even one tiny antenna, sticking intact out of the earth somewhere above or near the bunker, can allow almost unbroken and jamming-resistant contact in and out, at high baud rates, in the face of concerted attack by U.S. conventional weapons -- such as cluster bomblets, napalm, or MOABs. These antennas can easily be designed to withdraw behind unobtrusive armored shutters when not in use or when an assault appears imminent. The problem with any sort of antenna suppression via American air raids (manned or unmanned) is that the blackout periods are always sporadic and short.
These ideas and observations are meant to demonstrate that the only way to count for sure on an enemy's very deep hardened bunker being rendered hors de combat is to destroy its actual contents -- the people and the materiel. Because the most advanced non-nuclear ground penetrator rounds now in existence or under development can't reach below a few hundred feet, a "zone of immunity" exists starting at somewhere around one thousand feet of depth, depending on local geology. For the sake of America's and other peace-loving countries' safety this zone of immunity cannot be permitted to continue to exist. It appears to me that the only way to decisively eliminate this threat is by obtaining, and retaining, the option to unleash low-yield (sub-kiloton?) tactical nuclear earth penetrator bombs.
Specific rules of engagement for RNEPs, and broader policy for where and when they could ever be rationally used -- including attention to post-hostilities medical aid and environmental cleanup in the target area -- call for urgent discussion side by side with R&D on the weapons themselves. To fail to follow through on these urgent studies and initiatives is to leave a dangerous gap in our nation's arsenal, between high-explosive munitions of limited capabilities, and thermonuclear doomsday devices which I hope to God never get used.
Maintaining this gap as a way to somehow unilaterally inspire global nuclear non-proliferation is at best a red herring, a poisonous one: The recent unmasking of so many long-term conspiracies (e.g., Pakistan's Dr. Khan), and violations of treaties and agreements abroad (e.g., North Korea), during the very strict and high profile post-Cold War moratorium on U.S. tactical nuclear
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weapons development, proves that if America does try to set a "good example" of pacifist intent, evil-doers won't heed our example but will instead opportunistically exploit our position as weak. To avoid owning modernized tactical nuclear weapons altogether, on the premise that by the very reason of their low yield and contained fallout they're much more likely to be fired in anger some day, ignores the irrefutable determination of terrorist groups to lay their hands on, and use against us, any nuclear arms that they can find. To repeat for emphasis, flexible deterrence and the option to retaliate in kind across the entire spectrum of conceivable weapon yields must become and remain strong pillars of our national security posture in this violent new millennium, where the bad guys are constantly burrowing ever deeper underground.
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© 2004 Joe Buff. All opinions expressed
in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect
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