VLSI%DEC-MARLBORO@sri-unix.UUCP (06/19/84)
From: John Redford <VLSI at DEC-MARLBORO> As Dale.Amon points out, ASAT weapons are becoming easier and easier to build. As guidance technology improves it will take a very small and cheap missile to take out a satellite. Ultimately all you will need is a rock with a chip and a thruster on it. However, I can't agree with his conclusion that ASAT treaties are therefore pointless. Whatever one can imagine for future ASAT technology, the fact is that present American ASATs are unreliable because they are untested, and present Russian ASATs are unreliable and inadequate. Even if this situation is completely different twenty years from now, we can still give ourselves twenty years of respite by negotiating treaties now. The treaties may fail in the long run, but the long run is unpredictable anyhow. And, as Keynes said, "In the long run, gentlemen, we are all dead." Nor is it inevitable that ASAT weapons will be built. In the course of the nuclear arms race we have already seen systems that could have been built but weren't. Does anyone out there remember FOBS, the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System? This was a project in the sixties to lob bombs over the South Pole instead of the North. That way the Russians would have to aim their early warning systems at every point of the compass. It would not have been all that hard to do, and it would have caused them substantial expense and confusion, but it was ultimately decided that it did not really affect the balance of terror. Or how about the silo on the sea floor idea? The bottom of the ocean is a great place to put missile silos since they have a couple of miles of water shielding them from nuclear attack. However it was forbidden by the 1963 Test Ban Treaty and no one has thought it worth while to pursue since. Well, ASATs would cause expense and confusion but like FOBS they would not give a decisive advantage. The bottom line is WE DON'T HAVE TO DO IT, SO LET'S NOT. At worst we can keep our satellites safe for another decade or two. At best we can keep space an arena of peaceful competition like Antarctica. John Redford DEC-Hudson --------
els@pur-phy.UUCP (Eric Strobel) (06/26/84)
I beg to differ, but I recall that the Soviets actually tested a FOBS and were thought to have deployed some. We would have no way of telling which of their missiles are FOBS until they pass over head and rain warheads down on us!! And FOBS can DEFINITELY alter the balance of things. A seemingly innocent launch, satellite passes over head just as Soviets cut loose with everything, satellite breaks up into a bunch of RV's, a good number of blasts are done for EMP, SAC & NORAD & White House get hit, without effective command structure we just have to ride out the attack and see what happens! There are many holes in that scenario, but I'll bet most of them could be fixed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | "Things always look | A message from the mental maze that darkest just before | calls itself: they go totally black!!" | | -- Col. Hannibal Smith | ERIC STROBEL | --------------------------------| UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,harpo,allegra,inuxc,seismo,teklabs}!pur-ee!Physics:els INTERNET: els @ pur-phy.UUCP