Mega Forces Page 9

  ACHIEVING MEGAWAR CAPABILITIES

  The United States and the Soviet Union each have the capacity to destroy much—if not all—of modern civilization. Yet, despite the SALT (arms limitation) talks of the 1960s and 1970s and the talks at Geneva, both superpowers continue to add to their arsenals of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Megawar weapons possessed by the two superpowers include strategic bomber aircraft, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, land-based ICBMs, and cruise missiles.

  During the 1970s, the Soviet Union embarked on a major campaign to build and deploy new strategic weapons while the United States strategic forces improved only marginally. As a result, the Soviets now appear to have a definite advantage over the United States and are alarmingly close to a first strike destruction capability. The Soviet Union developed three new types of ICBMs, two new sea-launched ballistic missile systems, a new long-range bomber, and three new classes of nuclear-equipped submarines. In contrast, during this same period the U.S. did not develop any new ICBM systems and deployed only one new type of sea-launched cruise missile and one submarine. Currently, the Soviet Union has more strategic systems under development.

  Department of Defense figures reveal that as of 1985, the Soviet ICBM force was comprised of 1,398 launchers carrying almost 6,000 warheads with a tonnage (throw weight) four times the U.S. ICBM force.

  In its FY 85 Report to Congress, the U.S. Air Force ominously concluded: “Using only a small portion of their ICBM force, the Soviets could destroy most of our current ICBMs in a first strike. Second, the Soviets have hardened their ICBM silos, command posts, and other significant military leadership facilities to the point that our current missiles have only limited capability against them.” 4

  Nuclear-tipped cruise missiles now being deployed are equipped with electronic cameras—eyes—programmed to view the terrain and the target ahead. These eyes lock in and guide the missile to the intended target.

  The accuracy of ICBM nuclear missiles is such that the newer missiles can be launched from Montana (or from Byelorussia in the Soviet Union) and travel thousands of miles around the world to strike a target the size of a football field. They can also be launched from submarines stealthily waiting in the oceans.

  COMMAND OF THE SKIES

  The armed services of the superpowers have big plans for future aircraft. These plans are intended to gain superiority in air combat and insure command of the skies. Each nation has under development new super fighters and improved transport aircraft. They are also infusing existing and future aircraft with robotic controls and sophisticated computer and electronic technologies. Also under way are research and production programs for more accurate air-to-air and air-to-ground tactical missiles equipped with laser and infrared sensors that lock onto and go after moving targets. New war helicopters are also under development—swift vehicles that launch rockets and armor-piercing shells that can easily destroy tanks and buildings.

  Today’s sleek jet aircraft, such as the United States’ F-15 and F-16, employ deadly accurate air-to-ground missiles that scream ahead at supersonic speeds toward a building many miles distant. These missiles can enter a specific window of the building selected. The pilot of the attacking aircraft makes his selection with the aid of a video screen, which receives its picture from the camera located on the nose of the missile.

  Doubters should consider the phenomenal success of the radar-guided Exocet missile during the Falklands crisis. An Exocet was fired by an Argentine pilot at the British destroyer Sheffield. Launched miles away, before the ultramodern ship was even in sight of the Argentine plane, the Exocet missile sank the Sheffield to the bottom of the sea. And newer missiles are more accurate—and more lethal—than the Exocet.

  At the conclusion of the last chapter we quoted Albert Einstein, who remarked that the real danger of atomic weaponry was not that the bomb itself is inherently evil, but that man has so much evil in his heart. Likewise, the technology that helps us create lasers, particle beams, and high-speed aircraft is not evil—but human beings without God are, and so we face the prospect of global war that not only features nuclear weapons but also weapons that were, not so long ago, the stuff of comic book writers. Comic books amuse, but the prospect of soldiers—or worse, civilians—being blinded by a sweeping laser beam is not amusing. Knowing that such weapons exist is a grim reminder of human sin. In spite of what the so-called progressives may say, human morals have not advanced much, though technology has. In fact, it appears that with the passing of centuries we have only learned new ways to be brutal.

  It should be mentioned here that this brutality is not something that awaits the ultimate showdown between the USSR and the United States. War goes on constantly around the globe and, regrettably, it seems to affect the poor Third World countries worse than the (supposedly) more advanced nations of Europe and America. As we will see in the beginning of the next chapter, hellish methods of war are already in wide use, often against the least technologically developed people. This should not surprise us, for human sin is certainly not going to wait until the battle of Armageddon to be unleashed.

  CHAPTER NINE: INVISIBLE AGENTS OF DEATH: CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE

  The H’mong hill people of the tiny village in Laos did not know at first what the airplane had dropped out of the sky. Whatever it was began to spray out pale yellow smoke, which sifted slowly throughout the village. A young girl sitting in a thatched hut told her mother that she could not see well—her vision was blurred. Then her nose began to bleed profusely, and she was overcome with a wave of nausea. She cried out to her mother for help, but by that time her mother had begun to feel the same symptoms. From outside and from the other primitive dwellings was heard the sound of people wailing and screaming in panic.

  This particular chemical attack left its victims with severe respiratory problems, diarrhea, bloody stool, and cramping. Many lost consciousness and some died. After death, their bodies turned blue-black and rapidly decomposed. U.S. scientists couldn’t find a clue as to what chemical caused such symptoms. The date: August 7, 1975.

  According to Dr. Gideon Regalado, head of the Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand, the appalling attack on the H’mong people was not unusual. Dr. Regalado, as of 1981, had examined thousands of Laotian refugees who had fled to neighboring Thailand. As reported later in the Wall Street Journal of October 15, 1982, Dr. Regalado reported to the United Nations his belief that “lethal chemical weapons have been used regularly on the H’mong communities in Laos.”

  Who was the perpetrator of this atrocity? According to the U.S. State Department and a host of other authorities, it was the Soviet Union. In his book Yellow Rain: A Journey Through the Terror of Chemical Warfare, Sterling Seagrave, a longtime foreign news correspondent, provides convincing evidence that the Soviet Union furnished the Communist government of Laos with the necessary chemical materials to carry out their pernicious assault on the H’mong, a people who opposed the Communist regime. 1

  In December 1980, an ABC news documentary also produced evidence of poisonous gas use in Laos. ABC had an independent laboratory analyze a sample of a yellowish powder dropped from an airplane by the Communists. The lab reported that the sample contained four highly poisonous mycotoxins.

  This death from above—Russian style—was also used on the courageous rebels in Afghanistan who opposed the Soviet assault on that nation, which borders the vital Middle East oil belt. The rebel bands and their families in countless villages were regularly the victims of Soviet air chemical barrages that left people vomiting blood, their skin burning. The U.S. State Department has repeatedly protested the USSR’s deadly use of chemicals as a violation of international law and agreements. Still, the carnage continues.

  In a news conference February 19, 1985, at Washington, D.C.’s Hilton Hotel hosted by the Committee for a Free Afghanistan, Brigadier Rahmatullah Safi, an Afghan freedom fighter, described the carnage inflicted on Afghanistan’s people by Soviet chemical and biological wa
rfare. He told of mycotoxins and “yellow rain” attacks, of the explosion of chemical incendiary bombs, and of the release into the air of poisonous spider venom weapons. The latter weapons were said to be hideous in their effects because a person’s flesh actually began to rot away after contact. Safi’s allegations have been verified by investigations of the U.S. State and Defense Departments as well as independent news sources.

  HOW MUCH A THREAT?

  Chemical and biological warfare looms ominously in humankind’s future. How widespread would such a conflict be? Would the superpowers hesitate to use lethal chemicals in war? Dixy Lee Ray, former head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, stated on CNN’s “Crossfire” (September 16, 1984), “Everyone is frightened of nuclear weapons, but the danger of chemical and biological weapons is infinitely worse... and few people know about it.”

  The tragedy at Bhopal, India, in 1984 when a cloud of poisonous gas was released after an accident at a chemical factory is evidence of what might happen in a future war. In a nightmare come true, over two thousand persons were left dead and one hundred thousand injured. Streets were strewn with human bodies and animal carcasses, and blinded persons roamed the alleys begging for medical attention. Yet the poisons released in Bhopal that horrible day would amount to only a tiny, almost insignificant amount when compared to the thousands of tons of chemical weapons now stored by military powers and awaiting use.

  In the following pages, we’ll examine a few of the dangerous chemical and biological weapons that have been developed and are now ready for use in armed conflict. But keep in mind that little I say can truly describe the magnitude of the horror that would result from a general war in which the adversaries go all-out to destroy their opponents with the use of such weapons. And as each day passes, more lethal and more revolting substances are invented.

  THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHEMICAL-BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

  Chemical weapons were first used in World War I with incredibly successful results. Opposing forces on the western front employed chemical weapons, and the death toll and human casualties swiftly mounted. The ugly scars and hideous effects of these weapons were held to be so terrible that Hitler, during World War II, refused to employ chemical gases against advancing Allied troops because he feared retaliation in kind.

  Chemical weapons should be distinguished from their biological counterparts. Chemical weapons include nerve gases, mustard gases, and other toxic substances. They are chemicals—similar to drugs—that perform the vile task of killing people. Often they attack human bodies the same way insecticides invade and destroy the bodies of flies and mosquitoes. A tiny drop of some nerve gases is sufficient to cause death. The affected person’s muscle system goes into a series of violent, involuntary contractions, and the respiratory system fails. The victim is thus asphyxiated to death as his body twitches and shakes—a very unpleasant and unsightly death.

  Biological agents, on the other hand, are even more insidious and terrifying. Here we include virulent bacteria and germs. These destructive microbes attack man by spreading infection and disease. Assault with such weapons is more commonly called germ warfare.

  INVISIBLE KILLERS

  Biological warfare agents can spread a vast array of debilitating sickness and disease. On the list are such diseases as anthrax, botulism, cholera, dengue fever, encephalitis, dysentery, bubonic plague, Q fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, influenza, smallpox, typhoid, typhus, and yellow fever—quite a rogue’s gallery.

  Both chemical and biological weapons can be delivered on an unsuspecting populace by canisters mounted on missiles, dropped from airplanes, or fired from long-range artillery. They can also be detonated by saboteurs or terrorist squads. The substances released are often odorless, colorless, and non-detectable. They can be ingested into the lungs or through the skin or eyes. Once contracted, there are few effective antidotes for many of these agents, and in any event, a severe incapacitating illness is virtually assured.

  Even if effective medical treatment and antidotes were available, if a massive attack occurred involving the entire United States landmass, available supplies of treatment drugs and antidotes would be quickly exhausted. And it may also be noted that both the U.S. and the USSR are reputed to have developed new strains of bacteria, resistant to any antidote or treatment known to exist.

  Could a nation such as the U.S. be overcome by chemical-biological onslaught? Yes, answers Maj. Gen. Marshall Stubbs, a former U.S. Army Chief Chemical Officer. According to Stubbs, biological agents can be disseminated in such a way as to totally blanket a large country or even a whole continent.

  A recent book by Jeremy Paxman and Robert Harris, A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Gas and Germ Warfare, also affirms the massive kill potential of these weapons, offering many poignant examples and facts. 2

  Furthermore, in February 1984, the National Security Council delivered a report to President Ronald Reagan warning of dramatic Russian breakthroughs in biological warfare. Based on classified CIA reports, the report flatly stated that the Soviets had the capability to incapacitate or destroy entire populations. The National Security Council warned that the Soviets “have developed gene-splicing techniques as ominous as the atom-splitting discoveries that led to the nuclear bomb.” The frightening Soviet achievement results from their work with genetic engineering techniques. One new biotech gas developed by Russia, a supervirus, can actually attack and destroy the human brain.

  At this moment, in laboratories in the Soviet Union and other major world powers, biotechnologists, chemists, and other scientists are studying new substances as potential weaponry for chemical and biological warfare. Many new agents have been discovered as byproducts of otherwise harmless research by drug manufacturers and university research centers. For example, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, is currently testing a revolutionary painkiller that, according to reports, may rival aspirin and related compounds and may even be as powerful as morphine.

  In working on this painkiller, scientists found that a natural compound called bradykinin is a substance that triggers pain in human nerve cells. Dr. Soloman Snyder, a professor at Johns Hopkins, says that bradykinin “is the most painful substance known to man. If you apply bradykinin you get severe and exquisite pain.” 3

  It is reasonable to assume that bradykinin and similar substances may be the focus of research by scientists working for their governments to develop new, more powerful warfare agents.

  THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE

  No one is safe from this invisible terror from the skies. In the case of biological attack, once the odious organisms are unleashed, common sense tells us that the diseases spawned could rapidly spread throughout the world, killing hundreds of millions of people. One has only to consider the spread of the black death (bubonic plague) in Europe in the fourteenth century, an epidemic that left over 100 million dead—nearly half the population of that day.

  The Soviet Union now has a large stockpile of biological weapons, and every year, new and more advanced agents are developed. The Soviets have expended great amounts of money to develop an arsenal of these grotesque tools of war. U.S. laboratories are also working on new biological agents, but under the restriction that their use be only to enable development of antidotes so that U.S. troops will be protected from enemy attack. However, it is only a short step from development to production, and few experts doubt that production will ensue once a war is initiated. U.S. research efforts have increased 54 percent since 1980.

  Some 8,500 U.S. armed forces civilian and military personnel work full-time on chemical and biological weapons research, development, production, and deployment. It is estimated that the Soviet Union now employs over 50,000 specialists and technicians in the chemical and biological warfare fields. Both superpowers are providing their military forces increased training in the use of protective gear and clothing, with the expectation that chemical-biological weapons will most certainly be employed in the future.


  THE SOVIET ADVANTAGE

  James Dunnigan estimates that the/U.S. now has forty thousand tons of chemical munitions; the Soviets have even more. 4 Other experts put the U.S. figure at twenty-eight thousand and the Soviet total at a staggering seven hundred thousand tons. China and France also have chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers several times from 1983 through 1986. It is not known what other nations have these weapons, although the technology for their development is easy to acquire.

  As with missiles and nuclear technology, the Soviet Union has forged far ahead of the United States in this arena of war preparedness. Richard L. Wagner, Assistant Secretary to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy, and Theodore S. Gold, the defense department’s top official for chemical matters, outlined a few years ago (Defense magazine, July 1982) the supremacy of the Soviet armed forces. They revealed that the Soviet army has nineteen chemical training battalions, the U.S. Army only one; the Soviets have stockpiled eleven types of chemical agents, the U.S. just four. Wagner and Gold concluded that “the Soviet Union today possesses a decisive military advantage... and thus, there would be an incentive for them to use chemical weapons in future conflicts.”

  The horrible truth is that in the last days warfare could result in grisly death and suffering for much of mankind. The combined specter of nuclear arms and chemical-biological weapons in the hands of evil world leaders is almost too appalling to contemplate.