ustxtxb_obs_1973_04_27_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

HORSE BACK It 4 RIDING GOLF, BUN, FUN, Phoenix, ARIZONA The west’s most scenic spot where the sun spbnds the winter. Golf, swim, horseback ride, cook-outs in resort splendor. Season: Mid-December to May Write for rates. okake Inn 6000 E. Camelback Road “Down there [home] we are very conscious of the needs of the military. If Sanguine is in the national interest, we would welcome it.” The arguments about Sanguine differ in at least one major respect from the usual keep-the-military-out, no, let-em-in fights: there is no economic boom to be anticipated from the installation of Sanguine. According to the Navy, despite the billion-dollar price tag on it, Sanguine, when completed, will employ fewer than 300 people, most of them technicians. The kind of beneficial economic fallout that makes many useless military installations so popular with the locals \(dare we name a this case. The June, 1972 issue of Scientific American lists some of ecologists’ fears about the project, including the danger of having such a large amount of currency in the earth, the possibility of the 10 The Texas Observer #rfluiz’ Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto 477-4171 electrification of rural fences and railroad tracks, interference with telephone lines and the effects of electric and magnetic fields on biological systems. On the other hand, it seems that something really does need to be done about the military communications system. According to a recent column by Jack Anderson, we have a lousy communications system despite the fact that we’ve spent $40 billion on it since World War II. Not only is it vulnerable to both sabotage and attack, but it also does not work. According to Anderson, in 1967 the U.S.S. Liberty was sent five messages instructing it to move away from the Israeli and Egyptian coasts. All were sent between three and a half and 13 hours before the ship was attacked. Two of them were missent to the Pacific, and when one of those was redirected it went to Fort Meade, Md. Another was lost by a relay station and a fourth was transmitted nine hours after the Israelis had attacked the ship \(under the impression that it was U.S.S. Pueblo also had communications problems which resulted in that unpleasant contretemps with North Korea. The question is, can Sanguine solve this kind of problem? For surface ships, no. The whole point of having a low-frequency grid is that low frequency penetrates water better. In the end-of-the-world war games the Pentagon plays, nuclear submarines are increasingly important since they pre-empt pre-emptive strikes. If the Russkies should wipe out the whole continental U.S., plus Alaska and Hawaii, see, we can still blast them to oblivion with the missiles from our subs. Which will do everybody a lot of good at that point. The further question is, will Sanguine even do the job it’s supposed to do? Not according to people who should know. According to a Sept., 1971, article in Environment magazine, a publication of the Committee for Environmental Information and of the Scientists’ Institute for Public Information, the efficiency outlook for Sanguine is not hopeful. Michael McClintock, senior scientist at the Space Science and Engineering Center, Paul Rissman, a graduate student in electrical engineering, and Alwynn Scott, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, concluded that Project Sanguine would be unreliable as a last line of defense in our military communications network. “As we shall demonstrate, the system is too slow and therefore subject to from an enemy to be useful in a nuclear age. Our calculations show further that even if the amount of electrical power needed to make Sanguine work were increased to the equivalent of three large-scale nuclear power plants for its exclusive use, at greatly increased additional costs, transmission time would still be long enough to make the system easily susceptible to jamming.” In another section of their report, the three said, “In our calculations, the benefit of every doubt has been given to Sanguine. Yet a conservative estimate indicates that at least 100 seconds would be required to transmit a single bit of information \(a bit, or binary digit, is the binary unit of information capable of expressing such quantities or concepts as ‘0,”1,”yes,”no,’ needed to transmit a simple twelve-letter message.” Such as “Hit the big one.” In the Northern Environmental Council Report #5 of Sept., 1970, Prof. A. W. Biggs and D. L. Marier seriously question the Sanguine concept on the basis of the inherent inefficiency of buried antennas at low frequency. According to the Biggs studies, the slow transmission rate of the Sanguine system makes it susceptible to jamming by another nation. A long above-ground transmitting antenna for jamming an easily available power line, for example would require far less power than Sanguine and could easily make Sanguine ineffective. During the debate on the project in Wisconsin, both pro and opposition forces reached happy heights of nonsense. Some environmentalists claimed that Sanguine would turn northern Wisconsin into an electric chair, while gung-ho types questioned the patriotism of anyone who raised questions about the project. The Navy \(remember “Selling of the campaign going in Wisconsin. They sent their engineers, equipped with charts, graphs, slides and all kinds of reassuring words about how much research had been done on the project, out to talk to civic groups. The Navy has already spent $50 million on Sanguine and everybody agrees that more testing is necessary. The furor in Wisconsin caused the Navy to commission an environmental impact study by the Hazelton Laboratories of Falls Church, Va., but environmentalists claim that the lab is too dependent on government contracts to offer an objective opinion. At present, the Navy’s 1973 request for Sanguine is for a $12 million “validation” grant which means only the continuation of research_ and development on the thing, not actual construction. Construction is supposed to begin sometime around 1975 and according to Robert Frosch, assistant secretary of the Navy, the non-classified information about Sanguine will be made widely available to the scientific community so that more technical debate can take place. The site for Sanguine has not been “finalized,” as they say, but most of the indications are that Texas is about to draw the black bean. Environmentalists in this state are not a dynamite force and, with all due respect to the dangers of generalization, Texas is still prone to the kind of jingoistic, gung-ho, super-pate thinking that lets the military get away with whatever it says it needs. M.I.