HPM%SU-AI@sri-unix.UUCP (11/07/83)
From: Hans Moravec <HPM@SU-AI>
By CHARLES MOHR
n005 0617 05 Nov 83
c. 1983 N.Y. Times News Service
WASHINGTON - A group of experts has urged President Reagan to order
an increase in long-range research on relatively exotic technologies
to defend against a nuclear attack.
Government officials said the president was expected to follow that
advice by the Pentagon-appointed panel of technologists and give
priority to still remote technology, rather than undertaking a crash
program to deploy actual defensive weapons quickly. Some members of
Congress have recommended a deployment program.
Many scientists outside government have expressed doubt that any
combination of technologies would provide a workable defense against
nuclear missiles. But the technologists' panel, called the Defensive
Technologies Study Team, is more optimistic about the long-term
prospects, officials said.
The recent recommendations to the president would substantially
increase an already ambitious spending plan that was under
consideration before Reagan called for study of a high-technology
antimissile system in his so-called ''Star Wars'' speech March 23,
the officials added.
Although some of the proposed systems might be based in space and
might use directed energy such as lasers or particle beams, officials
said the study team did not confine itself to space-based methods in
its report to the Defense Department and the White House.
Perhaps the greatest significance of the emerging White House policy
does not concern the technological details of proposed devices.
Instead, administration sources say, it may be the president's clear
determination that the United States should shift from a policy of
nuclear deterrence based solely on offensive weapons and seek to
devise a workable defense against nuclear attack after it has begun.
Nevertheless, in terms of military research and development, the
study team's advice to the president takes a middle course. It
rejects pressures from those who believe a defense can be built
quickly from available technology. But it also rejects a larger body
of strategic and scientific thinking that nuclear defense is not a
wise goal and that only moderate research efforts should be continued
to avoid a technological surprise by the Soviet Union.
Some prominent scientists outside administration policy-making
circles said they were very skeptical of the technical feasibility of
such systems and even more dubious about the strategic and political
wisdom of seeking to build them.
One such scientist, Dr. Sidney Drell, a physicist who is deputy
director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, commented, ''This
is a crucial period for strategic doctrine.''
Dr. Hans Bethe of Cornell, a Nobel laureate who was director of
theoretical physics for the Manhattan Project in World War II, said,
''My opinion is that it is still totally science fiction.''
Reagan argues that such a system could render a ''system of horrible
weapons obsolete,'' a reference to offensive intercontinental
missiles. His critics among scientists argue that such a defense
would only spur the Soviet Union to increase its stock of nuclear
missiles and to undertake complex countermeasures that could render
the United States even more vulnerable and make peace more fragile.
''No matter how bad things are now, they can get worse,'' said one
critic, Dr. Henry Kendall, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology who is chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
On the other hand, the practicability and desirability of
antimissile systems have been strongly championed by such figures as
Dr. Edward Teller, leader of the team that developed the hydrogen
bomb, and Dr. Lowell Wood, a prominent scientist at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.
''I am not telling you that we have complete plans,'' said Teller.
''If we did, we would argue for deployment rather than more
research.'' He added that one could not work on military research
without a ''positive attitude.''
Some news reports last month indicated that the president had been
advised to develop and deploy such a weapon system, but officials now
say such reports were incorrect.
The scientists on the Defensive Technologies Study Team did not
recommend actual development and deployment of the weapons, officials
stressed. Instead, the panel urged a strong, prolonged research
effort punctuated by periodic demonstrations of technology
feasibility. The team was headed by James C. Fletcher, former
administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Robert S. Cooper, director of the Defense Department's Advanced
Research Projects Agency, said the Fletcher panel had been charged by
the administration with giving greater consideration to advanced
technologies that were unlikely to be available any time soon and
that could lead to workable weapons ''by the late 1990s.''
In all, there were three committees reporting to the president on
strategic defense. Besides the Fletcher panel, there was the Future
Security Strategy Study, headed by Fred S. Hoffman, a military and
research analyst. An interagency group, coordinated by William P.
Clark, then the national security adviser, urged that the United
States make clear its resolve and ability to overcome the problems of
a workable defense against nuclear weapons.
Several officials said many of the technologies being considered
were so ''immature'' that it was difficult to estimate what
production might cost. Several officials said the Fletcher panel's
recommendations might lead to an increase of $500 million to $1
billion in research spending for the 1985 fiscal year, which starts
next Oct. 1. Expenditures of $18 billion to $27 billion over five
years are being discussed.
To some policy makers, the increased expenditures now being
considered, while large, do not seem enormous. According to Defense
Department officials, nearly $2 billion was put in the early budget
draft for this type of research for 1985 even before Reagan's March
speech. Early planning for the next five-year military budget
discussed spending $10 billion to $20 billion on strategic defense.
But Dr. Kurt Gottfried, a Cornell physicist who is an officer of the
Union of Concerned Scientists, called the proposed expenditures ''a
prodigious amount of money.'' He and other critics like Kendall said
they doubted that such sums could be efficiently spent in pure
research.
Another potential controversy involves the probable effectiveness of
any defense against nuclear missiles. Reagan's speech put forth a
vision of a highly effective screen that might almost eliminate
civilian casualties. Many government experts and some members of the
Fletcher panel think that, under the best circumstances, many
civilians would be killed or injured.
Asked about this, Cooper of the Defense Department gave what is
increasingly a standard administration response. ''Even if only 50
percent of all incoming missiles were stopped,'' he said, ''the
Soviets could then have no confidence in the success of a first
strike, and war would be more remote.''
Teller argued that if the Russians were forced to increase
expenditures greatly to assure their missiles got through, ''we would
have accomplished something.''
Because the technologies and strategic doctrines under discussion
are complex, so is the debate about their technical feasibililty and
military wisdom. Some examples illustrate this.
The Fletcher panel reportedly recommended research leading to a
three-tier system that would be able to attack Soviet missiles first
as rocket motors were lifting them through the atmosphere. This would
be followed by interception in midcourse as the re-entry vehicles
coasted above the atmosphere, and then by final defense as the
re-entry vehicles plunged back into the atmosphere over the United
States.
Bethe argued that midcourse interception would be made difficult by
the deployment of many decoys for each actual warhead.
Also, because the missile boosters are much more vulnerable to
damage from lasers or other technology than the heat-resistant and
hardened warheads, interception in the boost phase is regarded as
especially desirable.
Laser ''battle stations'' could be placed in relatively low orbit,
and with foreseeable rocket technology this would be the most
plausible course, experts say.
But the earth's rotation would make it necessary to have more than
100 stations orbiting in order to keep a number of lasers over Soviet
territory, according to Bethe and others. The expense would then be
very great. Moreover, critics argue, all defensive systems would need
to be defended themselves against possible pre-emptive attacks, and
this is harder to do in lower orbits.
An alternative would be to place directed-energy stations so they
would hover over Soviet territory in an orbit that would keep them
22,300 miles directly above points on the earth.
To put heavy battle stations in such high orbits, however, would
require very powerful rockets, Bethe said. Moreover, he said,
releasing X-ray lasers at such altitudes would require the detonation
of a nuclear device of ''at least one megaton.'' Radiation from the
nuclear explosive would cause material in a bundle of rods orbiting
some distance away to emit a powerful beam of X-ray energy.
The Fletcher panel report placed great emphasis on X-ray lasers as
perhaps the most promising future technology to block hostile
missiles.
But critics such as Bethe, Drell and Gottfried argue that the
enormous distance to the Soviet missiles would complicate the
daunting problem of accurate pointing and tracking of laser beams.
Because of such problems, a great deal of attention has been given
to an alternative concept in which the antimissile systems would be
kept on the ground but prepared for immediate launching into space.
In one such ''pop-up'' plan, the rockets would be kept ready for
instant launching; in another, large mirrors for focusing laser beams
would be sent into space, where they would gather and point energy
from ground-based lasers.
The problems that must be overcome to make pop-up weapons effective
are staggering, critics say. In a modern intercontinental missile
like the American MX, booster rockets burn for only about three
minutes. After early-warning sensor satellites flashed word that a
Soviet launching had begun, the pop-up weapons or mirrors would have
to be sent aloft almost instantaneously.
Moreover, according to Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a noted scientist who
is a Defense Department consultant, and others, the rockets would
have to move at tremendous speed to lift the defensive devices to
altitudes of 1,000 miles or more in less than three minutes so they
could attack the Soviet boosters.
Gottfried and Drell said the aerodynamic and physical stresses would
be difficult for the laser stations to withstand. Gottfried added
that the whole system would require supercomputers for control. ''I
doubt there could be any human intervention,'' he said. He and other
scientists worry about an ''automatic'' initiation of war in space,
leading to war on the ground.
Further, the skeptical scientists say there is an almost unlimited
range of possible Soviet countermeasures. One would be to increase
the number of submarines with nuclear missiles, deploy them closer to
the United States and then fire them in low trajectories. This would
greatly reduce the time available for interception.
Wood of the Livermore Laboratory said that the critics were almost
all physicists, not systems engineers, military planners or
industrialists, and that most of their objections were not in their
field of expertise. He said the ''problem of short time-lines of
three minutes or less have been considered in great detail for years,
and by the Fletcher panel, and satisfactory answers given.'' One
example, he indicated, was the possibility of ''forward basing'' in a
country such as Britain, permitting the pop-up weapons to attack
rising Soviet missiles sooner.
The critics contend that many of the individual components of
various defensive systems under discussion seem to be technically
feasible but that putting them together in a workable system will be
very difficult.
Teller said the objections of the critics, some of whom are his
longtime foes in the policy arena, ''do not show that all that we are
doing is useless, but only that we are not completely successful as
yet and that further improvements are highly desirable.''
Drell and others contend that Reagan is trying to convince the
public that there is a technological solution to the nuclear ''sword
of Damocles.'' Only arms control treaties, not technology, can
provide a solution, Drell said.
Editors note: Art en route to picture clients for the above
story. +
nyt-11-05-83 0941est
***************els@pur-phy.UUCP (Eric Strobel) (11/14/83)
In answer to the question about SLBM's and cruise's, SLBM's would get
picked up in the boost phase and cruise's can be detected in the infrared
from a satellite. The ABM system can get the SLBM's and the Air Force (or
Air National Guard) can presumably get the cruise's.
els[Eric Strobel]
pur-ee!Physics:elsfair@dual.UUCP (11/16/83)
If memory serves, the vast majority (70+%) of Soviet ICBMs are land-based,
in the USSR, and the kind of defensive weapons discussed in the article
would (presumably) be effective against that.
But what about SLBMs and perhaps even a Soviet equivalent to the Cruise
missile?
wondering,
Erik E. Fair {ucbvax,amd70,zehntel,unisoft}!dual!fair
Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, Californiahenry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (11/17/83)
Eric Strobel observes, in connection with intercepting SLBMs and
cruise missiles:
...and the Air Force (or Air National Guard) can presumably
get the cruise's.
Surely you jest. The USAF long ago gave up any serious capability to
defend the continental US against air attack. The resources allocated
to strategic air defence are adequate to keep snooping reconnaissance
planes out and that's about it.
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henryspeaker@umcp-cs.UUCP (11/19/83)
Something the unwashed masses don't seem to understand is why we don't have ABMs and why they were abolished. Anti-ballistic missles seem like a great idea don't they? Purely defensive weapons used to protect the country from a first strike rather than initiate a nuclear exchange (actually Moscow still has some). Simple, huh? Turns out, however, that with ABMs there's more of a likelyhood of a world leader saying to himself, "Well, I'm protected by MY ABMs so I'll try to cream my opponent with a first strike." Without ABMs everyone lives under the threat of anhialation... and supposedly with this arrangment no one will attempt to start a nuclear war. In other words, we give everyone very very sharp swords and no shields. But then there's this talk of a winnable nuclear war... -- - Speaker-To-Stuffed-Animals speaker@umcp-cs speaker.umcp-cs@CSnet-Relay