SUCCESSFUL SUMMIT STILL NON"START"ER

Evil Empire? "No, " says President Reagan, "That was another time, another era. " Those words alone made the Moscow Summit a success (and probably caused anguish among the arch-Conservatives of the Radical Right). For tens of millions of Americans to see inside the Kremlin night after night and hear the President speak those words made the Summit a triumph of realism over blind fear and virulent anti-Communist ideology.

In addition, real progress was made on Human Rights issues, especially the exposure to both sides of the failings of their systems. Some progress was made on Arms Control, and agreements on cultural exchange and cooperation were made or extended. In spite of a few misstatements on Native Americans, the performance of the President is to be applauded. He took his warmth and sincerity to Moscow and seemed to win the hearts of the people.

Yet the hate-and-fear-mongers of the Right can take comfort in the fact that their President did not foreclose their drive for military superiority. He remains a true believer in SDI. In his end-of-Summit press conference, he said about SDI: "The whole thing was my idea. SDI should be accompanied by the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Then it can be made available to everyone. There is nothing offensive about it. " The President seems to have been totally taken in by those pushing a program which has nothing to do with his lofty goals.

If only the President would read, in its entirety, the National Review article justifying SDI. Better yet, he could read it and the rebuttal to it starting on page 7. Then the President would understand why his friend Mikhail is so afraid of it, and why it continues to be an obstacle to the START Treaty and nuclear disarmament he seeks.

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Tired of trivia and sensationalism? Voters still confused about where the candidates stand on the most important issues can get the answers on pgs 18-19.

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President Reagan: "There is nothing offensive about it." Lt. Gen. Colin Powell, National Security Advisor: "SDI has no offensive capability whatsoever."

These post-Summit quotes illustrate the Institute's greatest success -- we have succeeded in redefining the SDI issue away from the bogus and irrelevant "Will it work?" to the critical "What is its purpose?" "What could it really do?" and "What would be its effect on the strategic balance, stability, and war prevention?"

As yet, these crucial questions are not being seriously addressed by our government, merely dismissed with ridiculous denials. But the media have awakened to what the real questions are. Now congressional and presidential candidates will have to come up with answers for the American people.

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INSIDE THIS DOUBLE ISSUE

Readers' Retort (Letters)……………………………….2

Myth of Soviet Conventional Superiority……………….6

The Truth About "Star Wars"…………………………..7

SHALOM Global Interfaith P&J Network…………….17

Religious Leaders Speak on Peace…………………..17

The Church Questions the Candidates………………..18

Lenten Sermon by Dr. Bowman.........…………………20

International Space & Security News....………………24

Military Strategy for General War…………………..32

Space Policy Speech Never Given.…………………34

New Ideas from Elizabeth E. Baker………………….37

ISSS Activities & Outreach......………………………37

Cooperation in the Peace Movement…………………37

Achievable Objectives/Visions of Shalom…………...38

US-Soviet Cooperation in Space.……………………38

Educational Materials Available……………………..39

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Starting on page 7 of this issue is an article of extreme importance -- a rebuttal of the new Conservative rationale for SDI.

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Read it cover to cover, then decide. Our continued operation depends on your generous donations. Please send us your contribution today, for what it's worth!

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by Lt. Col. Robert M. Bowman, PhD, USAF, ret.

A Rebuttal to the April 1, 1988 National Review Article

In the April 1, 1988 issue of National Review, the Radical Right enunciated the new justification for the SDI program. On the cover of the magazine, the article was advertised as "Everything you always wanted to know about Star Wars ... the Definitive Questionnaire on SDI." The orientation of the article is made clear even before you open the magazine. The cover is dominated by the head of Darth Vader ... with the hammer and sickle on his helmet. The article itself, of course, proceeds from the assumption that the Soviet Union is indeed the Evil Empire.

The article itself appears on page 36 under the title "SDI: Making America Secure." A more appropriate title would be "SDI: Making America Superior" or perhaps "SDI: Making America Cinders."

In the article, National Review played straight man to the George C. Marshall Institute in a carefully orchestrated "questionnaire." Together, these bastions of the Right set forth the new apologia for "Star Wars" in a desperate attempt to rescue this centerpiece of the Conservative Agenda, breathe new life into the drive for absolute military superiority, and drive a golden spike through the heart of the ABM Treaty.

This important and remarkable article is here quoted in its entirety with comments and responses by Dr. Bowman (in bold print). The key to who is saying what is as follows:

NR = National Review

MI = the Marshall Institute

RB = Robert Bowman

NR: People say the doctrine of nuclear deterrence has kept the peace since World War II. If that's true, what' s so important about SDI?

MI: A little history is useful in answering this key question. In 1956, Khrushchev threatened to intervene in the Suez crisis. In 1973, Soviet leaders prepared to send troops into the Middle East. In both cases, the United States was able to stand off the Soviets with threats of nuclear reprisal.

But in 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. no longer dared to respond with a nuclear alert. President Carter withdrew from the Olympics instead. By that time, U.S. nuclear forces had been checkmated by the Soviet missile buildup.

RB: Bingo! They are finally acknowledging what I've been saying for years. What galls them is that our nuclear weapons are no longer effective means of coercion. They are useless as military weapons. Host strategists have long acknowledged this. What's more, they're-also useless as instruments of political coercion. We can't threaten to nuke the Russians unless they get out of Afghanistan. It's an empty threat because they have nukes too. Since using them is suicidal, threatening to do so is ineffective. And, of course, the same is true on the Soviet side. They can't threaten us to try to get us out of Grenada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Turkey, Pakistan, Korea, the Philippines, ... wherever. Their nukes are just as useless as ours. Nuclear weapons TODAY are impotent and obsolete. The great irony is that the real purpose of "Star Wars" is to make nuclear weapons useful again. When you clear away all the rhetoric, all the smokescreen, all the disinformation, that is at the root of it. THE REAL PURPOSE OF "STAR WARS" IS TO HAKE NUCLEAR WEAPONS USEFUL AGAIN -- of course, OUR nuclear weapons. Look again at this remarkable statement of the fundamental rationale for Star Wars:

MI: - A little history is useful in answering this key question. In 1956, Khrushchev threatened to intervene in the Suez crisis. In 1973, Soviet leaders prepared to send troops into the Middle East. In both cases, the United States was able to stand off the Soviets with threats of nuclear reprisal.

But in 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. no longer dared to respond with a nuclear alert. President Carter withdrew from the Olympics instead. By that time, U.S. nuclear forces had been checkmated by the Soviet missile buildup. Technical advances in weapons further eroded the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

RB: Wow! Look at that last sentence. It carries the concept of deterrence beyond anything heretofore publicly acknowledged. Note that it is not a nuclear attack upon us that we seek to deter. It is not even a conventional attack upon Western Europe. (That concept of "extended deterrence" has long been U.S.-NATO policy.) Here, MI extends the concept of deterrence even further. They want to deter the Soviets from any action we disapprove of. They even want to deter them from refusing to carry out actions we choose to dictate to them. With such ambitious goals, no wonder they want to deploy every weapon technology will allow (and some it probably won't).

MI: Several factors contributed to that erosion.

First, and most important, during the 1970s, the Soviets built up their ICBM force to massive proportions. It is now an effective first-strike force, with both the numbers and the accuracy needed to take out all key U.S. military sites, including nuclear command and control centers. If these are knocked out, our nuclear forces will be decapitated and useless, even if the nuclear weapons are still intact.

In 1973 the Soviets had only a few hundred nuclear weapons capable of destroying a hardened military site. But by 1979, the Soviets had more than three thousand such first-strike weapons, suitable for use in a surprise attack against the United States. Today they have some six thousand warheads with this capacity. The U.S. has nine hundred warheads of comparable accuracy and destructive power.

The number of Soviet first-strike warheads is still increasing rapidly. The CIA estimates that by the 1990s the USSR may have more than 12,000 accurate warheads capable of destroying U.S. forces in a surprise attack.

Second, nuclear warheads are getting more accurate. One of the newest warheads is accurate within 120 meters. This unprecedented accuracy means that the hundred-odd most important targets in the U.S. -- the command and control centers -could be destroyed in the future with relatively small nuclear weapons.

The consequences of this development for U.S. security are potentially catastrophic. Zbigniew Brzezinski points out that while very large nuclear weapons make a first strike "messy and unpredictable, " small, accurate weapons "make the dreaded first strike a viable option. "

RB: Here it is: THE BIG LIE. In psychological circles, this is called "projection" -- you project upon your enemy all the dark and sinister things which dwell in your own heart and mind, but which you can't bear to acknowledge.

We have been striving for years for an effective first-strike capability against the Soviet Union. But we can't admit it, even to ourselves. It's too horrible. So we rationalize our actions as a response to a mythical first-strike threat against us. The truth is that the Soviets have never had, do not now have, and have no prospect of achieving anything remotely approaching a first-strike capability against the United States.

MI talks about the Soviets having "built up their ICBM force to massive proportions. But we have about 3,000 more strategic nuclear weapons in our arsenal than they do. If theirs is "massive," what's ours? Such words are used for only one purpose -- to create an emotional response called "fear."

They say "nuclear warheads are getting more accurate." And indeed they are. That's one reason why the world would be a safer place if we joined the Soviet unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. That way the new generation of small, accurate warheads could not be developed. What they DON'T tell you is that these accurate warheads are in the U.S. arsenal. Current U.S. missiles are more accurate than the ones the Soviets hope to develop in their NEXT generation!

Now look at their claim that "by 1979, the Soviets had more than three thousand such first-strike weapons, suitable for use in a surprise attack against the United Slates." The truth is that they had zero, none, zilch! And today, a decade later, how many do they have? 6,000 as MI claims? No. 3080, of which only 924 are on alert at any one time. And these SS-18s are so inaccurate (850 ft CEP) that their hard-target capability is only marginal. What's more, they are liquid-fueled and must be refueled before they can be launched. Their gyros have to be spun up and their inertial guidance systems initialized. WE CAN DETECT THESE ACTIVITIES FROM OUR EAVESDROPPING SYSTEMS IN SPACE, GIVING US AS MUCH AS THREE DAYS WARNING OF SOVIET LAUNCHESI These are capable of a "surprise attack" on us??

Even assuming they could take us by surprise, and assuming 100% reliability for their attacking missiles, they would destroy 416 of our missile silos -- 15 MXs containing 150 warheads and 401 of our Minuteman IIIs containing 1203 warheads. They would thus have reduced our retaliatory capability from 13,494 strategic nuclear warheads to 12,141. This is a disarming first strike? And, of course, if we didn't want to lose even those few warheads, we could exercise the option to launch under attack, so that the Soviet missiles would be destroying empty silos. (This, by the way, is an option the Soviets do NOT have. Their missiles take too long to prepare for launch.)

MI: Third, the Soviets have assembled elements of a nationwide defense against U.S. missiles. They are nearly ready for a breakout from the ABM Treaty. The main missing link is the network of nine huge battle- management radars, which should be completed around 1992.

RB: Surely the MI authors must know that the prospect of a Soviet breakout from the ABM Treaty has been specifically rejected by U.S. military and intelligence agencies. This is worse than irresponsible fear-mongering. It is deliberate deception. The Soviets don't have ANY of the elements of a nationwide missile defense. Take the "huge" (notice their use of emotion-provoking adjectives like "massive," and "huge" battle-management radars, which "should be completed around 1992. They don't exist. Even the Reagan Administration has only accused the Soviets of building one battle-management radar in possible violation of the ABM Treaty. But it is NOT a battle-management radar, and we have known it for years. In 1987 a Congressional delegation visited the Krasnoyarsk radar and brought home incontrovertible proof that it is not a battle-management radar. It (if it were ever completed) could not function in such a role because it would operate at the wrong frequency and with the wrong coverage. More importantly, it has none of the survivability characteristics essential to a battle- management radar. What's more, the Soviets have halted construction. It seems highly unlikely that the Krasnoyarsk radar will ever be completed -- much less by 1992.

What about the other eight "huge" radars in this network? They don't exist. Oh, there are eight Large Phased Array Radars (LPARs) either in operation or under construction, but they are Early Warning radars, not battle-management radars, and they are located in strict compliance with the ABM Treaty.

The obvious question is why MI would say something so patently untrue. Again, it seems to be a case of projection. Under the direction of the Star Warriors, the U.S. has not only prepared for a breakout of the ABM Treaty, but, in the view of many observers, has broken out already. The government can't admit it, of course, because it would be an impeachible offense. But (as becomes clear toward the end of the NR article) the whole point of the NR piece is to go over the heads of Congress and plead with the American people to allow them to openly disavow and abrogate the ABM Treaty, instead of having to continue circumventing and surreptitiously violating it.

In the matter of radars, for example, the U.S. has two "huge" radars far more in technical violation of the ABM Treaty than the Krasnoyarsk Radar could ever be. These are the radars at Thule, Greenland and Flyingdales, England. By no stretch of the imagination could they be considered on the periphery of our national territory and oriented outward as required by the Treaty. Yet, like the Krasnoyarsk, these U.S. radars are in compliance with the SPIRIT of the Treaty, since they cannot provide battle-management coverage of the populated areas of the United States. We do, however, have other LPARs which are technically "early warning" radars, but which have exploited a loophole in the ABM Treaty. These radars are located more or less as prescribed by the Treaty, and are oriented outward. But they have been given such a wide field of view (about three times that of Soviet radars) that they can see BEHIND themselves. This allows them to provide battle-management coverage over almost the entire populated area of the United States -- exactly what the Treaty clause was trying to prevent.

Indeed, the whole SDI program is an attempt to break out of the ABM Treaty, and few of its proponents will even try to deny it. They consider the ABM Treaty to have been a mistake from the start. Inasmuch as the Treaty makes it impossible for either side to have absolute military superiority over the other, their attitude is understandable. The point is that it is the United States which is preparing to abandon the ABM Treaty, not the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Soviets have been trying to shore up the Treaty. Protecting it from abrogation by the Reagan Administration has been one of their foremost and most formidable objectives for the last several years.

MI: The Soviet nationwide ABM defense will be effective enough to block a ragged U.S. nuclear response with diminished forces -- all the U.S. would be able to launch after a Soviet first strike.

RB: Here, they revert to the BIG LIE again -- the Soviet first strike. If the Soviets tried such a thing today, they could expect around 12,000 strategic nuclear warheads raining down on them in response. Even if the Soviets had TEN TIMES as many nuclear weapons as they have today, and even if they were modern weapons like ours, capable of being launched on a moment's notice, even then, we could ride out a "massive," surprise attack and still have 6,000 to 7,000 surviving strategic nuclear weapons with which to retaliate -- enough to destroy the entire Soviet Union about 20 times over! This is hardly a "ragged response." The mythical Soviet nationwide ABM defense could do nothing to prevent their annihilation (even if it existed). The Soviets have no prospect of achieving an effective first-strike capability against the United States, and they know it. Besides, I doubt that they have any interest in nuking us, even if they could. Where would they get their wheat, their computer technology, their Big Macs, their Pepsi?

MI: Once the Soviets' nationwide ABM system is completed, the U.S. will not be able to place at risk those targets on which Soviet leaders place the highest value: the Soviet military forces and the lives of the political leadership.

RB: This sentence about the Soviet mythical ABM system is very interesting. It is a tacit admission that U.S. retaliation would wipe out cities and other "soft" targets. But it suggests that Soviet leaders, knowing that their civilization would be destroyed, would congregate in their hardened bunkers and order a first strike against the United States, counting on their ABM system to save their skins so that they could (after a few weeks for the radiation to die down) emerge as masters of the irradiated ruin and gleefully count the surviving hardened silos in their arsenal. Do the MI authors really believe that Mr. Gorbachev and his friends on the Central Committee are really such inhuman monsters? Do they really believe that they would willingly sacrifice 200 million of their countrymen, to say nothing of their theaters, museums, ancient historical shrines, the very culture of Mother Russia for ... what?

MI: To be sure, the U.S. will always have a few warheads left, after a Soviet first strike, to target on Soviet cities. However, it would be foolish for the President to order a strike on Soviet cities, because that would generate a reprisal against U.S. cities. Contrary to general belief, Mutual Assured Destruction has not been U.S. policy for many years. Our strategy is not to attack Soviet cities. It is to retaliate against a Soviet attack by destroying the Soviet military as an effective fighting force, thus preventing Soviet leaders from accomplishing whatever aims of conquest motivated their attack.

RB: We'd have A FEW warheads left? Quite a few! Enough to destroy ALL Soviet targets, military AND civilian. The above ridiculous and unlikely scenario has been the justification for the MX and the Trident II U.S. first strike weapons. It is said that we must have missiles capable of killing hard targets like missile silos, so that we can destroy the missiles the Soviets held back in reserve when they launched their first strike. But surely if the Soviets were ever to try such a strike, they would prepare their reserve missiles for launch, so that if we DID shoot at them, they could launch them in the 30 minutes before our retaliatory strike got there. If used for a second strike, our silo-busting missiles would only destroy empty holes. No, the only situation in which MX and Trident II would be of any use to us would be if they were used FIRST, when we would have the element of surprise on our side.

The above scenario, in which MI sees the Soviets launching the massive disarming strike against our land-based missile silos, while leaving our cities alone in the hope that we would not retaliate, is ridiculous for at least the following reasons: (1) The fallout and collateral damage from such an attack, according to an Office of Technology Assessment study, would kill around 20 million Americans. Could the Soviets count on us not retaliating after that? (2) Due to the inaccuracy and lack of reliability of the Soviet arsenal, and because of the ability of U.S. missiles to be launched during an attack, the likelihood of the Soviets destroying more than a small portion of our ICBM fleet is extremely remote. (3) Even if the Soviets thought such an attack could succeed, what would they gain by it? The U.S. would be left with about 7,000 surviving strategic weapons on bombers and submarines, as well as thousands more nuclear weapons based in Europe and Asia capable of hitting the Soviet homeland. Such an attack on us would be like hunting lion with a BB gun.

NR: How do these changes affect U.S. security?

MI: The doctrine of nuclear deterrence is collapsing. In five to seven years, the U.S. will be vulnerable to nuclear blackmail -- if it is not already vulnerable. When that happens -- that is, when U.S. vulnerability to a massive Soviet nuclear attack becomes apparent to the world -- the Soviets will be seen to have gained "an historic military advantage," according to Robert Gates, Deputy Director of the CIA.

RB: Such scare talk is not new. Listen to Edward Teller: "Within a few years the Russians may have a good defense against nuclear missiles. The Russians are ahead of us not only in space but in practically every vital area. Russia is indeed the number one military power and the rest of us are likely within a few years to continue to exist only by Russian permissions." Teller made these remarks in an address quoted in Astronautics and Aeronautics in their June 1971 issue. That's right, 1971 -- seventeen years ago! It was preposterous then, and it's just as preposterous now.

When you translate this garbage, what they are really saying is that the utility of our nuclear arsenal as an instrument of coercion is collapsing. It has nothing to do with deterrence.

NR: How widely shared is this alarming view of the Soviet threat?

MI: Last summer the Joint Chiefs of Staff "validated" -- that is, put their stamp of approval on -- an evaluation of the Soviet threat for the 1990s put together by the entire intelligence community, including the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and intelligence organizations attached to the three separate armed services.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff judged the erosion of our deterrent -- that is, the threat to our retaliatory capability -- to be so serious as to warrant moving SDI from the research stage into the development stage. This move from research into development means that the SDI Organization can now begin to test and develop these weapons. This is "Milestone 1" in the weapons-acquisition procedures of the Defense Department.

The basis for that important move by the Joint Chiefs is the intelligence community's assessment that our nuclear deterrent has been placed at risk by the Soviets.

RB: Hogwash! The basis for that move was intense political pressure upon the Joint Chiefs from the White House, and MI knows it (because they were a large part of it). Desperate to get SDI past "Milestone launching its proponents in the Reagan Administration pressured the JCS until they reversed their position that SDI wasn't needed. No program can proceed without an officially validated military "requirement." General Toomay used to say many of them were really "desirements." In this case, it wasn't even that. The Joint Chiefs had opposed the SDI program from the beginning, and until days before the Defense Acquisition Board review, maintained that nothing beyond research was needed. Finally, the JCS yielded to the pressure and returned a rather noncommittal requirement for protection of the nation's strategic military assets. That action, in the nick of time, barely fulfilled the minimum legal requirement and allowed SDI to be considered for "Milestone1." It came in spite of the findings of the intelligence community, not because of them.

Another roadblock to "Milestone launching for SDI was the Defense Science Board. This important DoD body provides guidance to the Defense Acquisition Board when it considers programs-for milestone approval. The DSB found significant gaps in the case for SDI and recommended that it NOT EVEN BE CONSIDERED for Milestone 1" for "the next year or two." This would have prevented the Reagan Administration from locking SDI into hardware contracts in its attempt to make it impossible for the next administration to kill. Once more, political pressure was brought to bear, and the chairman of the Defense Science Board removed this recommendation. SDI got its approval to move from research into development.

MI nays that this means that SDIO can now begin to test and develop these weapons. What it also means is that the Administration has abandoned all pretense of abiding by the Defense Authorization Bill, which requires adherence to the traditional interpretation of the ABM Treaty, which specifically forbids development and testing. It also means that the Administration has expressed its intention of violating the ABM Treaty. Since the U.S. Constitution says that Treaty law is the "highest law of the land," this is an impeachible offense. Of course, nobody really expects to find anybody beyond lower-level appointees to take the blame.

The point is, there is no threat to our retaliatory capability. But there IS a threat to the SDI program, to the billions in profits it represents, and to the military superiority which it seems to promise. And that's what this is really all about.

NR: How about the alternatives to SDI? Would mobile missiles allow the U.S. to evade a Soviet first strike?

MI: Mobile missiles are less vulnerable to a first strike. The accuracy of warheads does not matter if the target has been moved a few miles down the road. The Soviets have come to this conclusion and have developed a new line of ICBMs (SS-24s and SS-25s) that can be deployed on trains and trucks.

However, even if the U.S. follows suit and deploys its own mobile missiles, that will not eliminate the vulnerability of U.S. nuclear command and control centers.

Moreover, residents of rural areas in the U.S. are certain to object violently to the idea of missiles with nuclear warheads rolling along their roads and highways. The U.S. missiles, mobile or not, will end up staying inside the fence on military reservations, where they will remain vulnerable to a Soviet barrage attack.

RB: It's interesting that MI and the Administration have made much of the new mobile Soviet missiles. They don't seem to understand the basic inference to be drawn from the fact that the Soviets are developing and perhaps beginning to deploy mobile missiles. It means they are indeed very worried about U.S. first strike capability. It's not just propaganda.

NR: What about deterring the Soviets by building a first-strike force to match theirs?

MI: A buildup of the MX missile force might do this. The MX has a warhead accurate enough to place at risk the Soviet command posts, bunkers for the top Soviet political leadership, and other high-value targets. However, the force of one hundred MX missiles proposed by the current Administration would not be large enough to balance the Soviet threat. With ten warheads per missile, a hundred new MX missiles would place only one thousand warheads in the field, not enough to make an appreciable dent in top-priority Soviet military targets. But five hundred MX missiles, carrying five thousand warheads, might do the job. That would be a first-strike force nearly matching the Soviet force, and as menacing a threat to the Soviets as their ICBMs are to us.

The result would be a Mexican standoff between two adversaries, each armed to the teeth, and each capable of delivering a knockout blow if it could get in the first punch. This would indeed be a balance of sorts, but it would be unstable.

RB: The last paragraph of MI's answer is correct. You don't deter first strike with a first strike capability. You do it with a SECOND strike capability. The problem is with the question. It assumes the existence of a Soviet first-strike force. As we've explained earlier, that is the basic underlying myth supporting not only SDI but the entire arms race.

NR: Then how can we restore American security?

RB: Another bogus question. What they mean is, how can we restore American SUPERIORITY? How-can we restore our ability to dictate Soviet behavior by threatening them with nuclear attack? But let's see what MI's answer is.

MI: There is another way: Protect critical U.S. military sites -- nuclear command centers, and the like -- from a Soviet first strike by-shooting down the oncoming Soviet missiles and warheads with intercepting missiles. In other words, protect key sites with an ABM defense. That preserves our capability for effective retaliation, and deters the Soviets from attacking.

RB: What other answer could we expect? This- is the guts of the new rationale-for "Star Wars." The American masses will still be fed the old "peace shield" rhetoric, but the "establishment" is getting this new, more sophisticated line. Whereas President Reagan talked about doing away with the need to threaten retaliation against Russian-children, MI says SDI can INCREASE our ability to retaliate (and, I guess, kill even more Russian children). Whereas-President Reagan talked about protecting people and making nuclear weapons obsolete, now MI talks about protecting nuclear weapons (and making people obsolete?).

Of course, this new rationale has no more to do with reality than the last one. MI has replaced a mission which can't be done with one that doesn't need doing. It's an unworkable solution to a nonexistent problem. The reality is that SDI has nothing to do with protecting either people OR weapons from a mythical Soviet first strike. It is a program to regain absolute military superiority through the development of new OFFENSIVE weapons, disguised as defense.

NR: Why didn't the U.S. build an ABM defense in the 1970s when the Soviet missile buildup began to look ominous?

MI: The problem is that in the 1970s, such a defense would have had to be located on the ground, shooting up at the Soviet warheads as they descended. But such a "ground-based" defense is readily overwhelmed, either by firing so many warheads at it that its inventory of interceptors is used up, or by so-called "structured attacks, " such as "laddering down."

"Laddering down" means exploding a string of nuclear weapons over a target, one after the other, at progressively lower altitudes. The first explosion creates a fireball that disables our intercepting warheads and clears the way for the second warhead. That warhead descends through the fireball and explodes at a lower altitude, clearing the way for the third warhead, which is coming right behind it. By the time the third or fourth warhead explodes, the "ladder" has reached the ground, and the target is destroyed.

The bottom line is that by means of "laddering down, " the Soviets can usually count on three or four warheads to destroy any site, no matter how many interceptors are available to defend it.

Another weak link in the 1970s defense was the-network of critically important radars to track oncoming warheads. These radars would also have been located at fixed sites on the ground, easily targeted by the Soviets and vulnerable to destruction in a surprise attack.

RB: MI correctly points out the futility of ground-based missile defenses. This shows just how disingenuous they were in their answer to the first question when they pointed with horror to the prospect of-a Soviet nationwide
missile defense ... one which doesn't exist, but which, even in the imaginings of MI, would be entirely ground-based and dependent on just such vulnerable radars.

But again Nit's question is misleading. The U.S. DID build an ABM defense, and we deployed it in the Dakotas to protect our Minuteman missile silos. But in 1975, largely because of the problems with ground-based defense pointed out by MI above, and also because of the lack of any real threat (which hasn't changed), we moth-balled the system. It simply wasn't worth the money to maintain the system. That was a correct military judgment then, and it still is today.

NR: If ground-based defenses against missile attack can be readily overwhelmed why is the government pursuing SDI?

RB: Don't you love these setup questions? Here comes "Star Wars," the space-based part of SDI.

MI: A new technical situation has developed in the last five years, which permits us to get our defenses off the ground and up into space, in orbiting satellites. The development of these "space-based" defenses eliminates the vulnerability of U.S. defenses to "laddering down" and other kinds of structured attacks. In other words, a defense based in space cannot be readily overwhelmed. That means a new ball-game.

Space-based defenses are now possible through a marriage of the technologies of the computer, the satellite, and the heat-seeking "eye" (used so effectively in the Stinger and other air-defense missiles). Tests in space and in the atmosphere have shown that a miniaturized computer, working with a heat-seeking "eye" on a small missile, can steer the missile into the path of an oncoming warhead or ICBM. This combination of the heat-seeking eye and the computer brain produces the so-called "smart bullet. "

The new technologies also make the defense less dependent on large, vulnerable radars. A warhead can be tracked quite well without radar, by a combination of a lightweight heat detector, which finds the direction to the warhead by picking up its warmth against the cold of space, and a low-powered laser range-finder, which measures the distance to it with great accuracy. This equipment is sufficiently small and light to be flown in aircraft or on satellites, less vulnerable to attack than fixed radars on the ground.

RB: On the contrary, satellites are in many ways even more vulnerable than fixed installations in the U.S. Even Edward Teller, a staunch proponent of SDI, has said that it would be foolish to put defenses in space because they would be so costly to put up and so easy to shoot down. Host of the technical details in MI's answer to this question are correct. But don't get distracted by these details. Focus on the larger issues. In the April Atlantic Monthly, Charles Bennett quotes Dr. Robert Sproull, a member of the SDI Advisory Committee, who warned Congress that the SDIO "tries to keep the discussion on technical details. They go straight from the President's vision to specifics of engineering. They avoid the questions of survivability and cost.

MI: Confronted with smart bullets based in space, the Soviets cannot count on the kind of carefully timed attack needed for "laddering down." Laddering down requires very precise timing. The warheads, after a long flight over the Pole or the ocean, must appear over the target, one by one, at just the right time, and with just the right spacing from one warhead to the next.

RB: Does this sound like something the Soviets could do, even in the ABSENCE of defenses? Remember, the reliability of Soviet missiles in tests has only been about 40%. That is, 60% of them get "shot down by their own defects. And they (like us) have NEVER fired one over the poles.

MI: Even if the Soviet commander assigns special missiles to take out our key military sites by laddering down, he will be uncertain of success, because our space-based defenses may shoot down the very missiles he has assigned to these key targets. That means he cannot count on destroying critical military installations -- especially the command centers for U.S. nuclear forces.

RB: True! How true, even without defenses!

MI: The key to a truly effective defense against Soviet attack turns out to be a combination of the space-based defense and the ground-based defense. The space-based defense breaks up the timing of the Soviet attack. For example, in a laddering-down attack, it takes rungs out of the "ladders"; if a "ladder" loses even one rung, its usefulness is gone.

RB: True again. If a Soviet missile in that "ladder" " blows up in its silo or wanders off toward Kiev, the Soviet attack has no chance of "success." And this is much more likely than is running into a "smart bullet."

MI: Then the ground-based defense mops up the remaining warheads. If the U.S. has "eyes in the sky" to see what gets through the first or space-based layer, we can even pick out the warheads that are headed for the most important targets, and concentrate on stopping those. This one-two punch is devastatingly effective in blocking a nuclear attack.

RB: That is, if the Soviets haven't put out our "eyes in the sky" with antisatellite weapons -- something orders of magnitude easier to do than "laddering down." MI is trying to convince us that the Soviets have the tremendous technical sophistication and foolproof exotic weaponry required for executing "laddering down" and all the other complex surgical attacks which make up a first strike; but at the same time that they are too dumb to be able to disable any one of the highly vulnerable satellites which provide critical functions for a "Star Wars" system. How stupid do they think the AMERICAN people are?

NR: How widely accepted is the view that the Soviet threat must be countered by a space-based defense?

MI: The "architecture" of a space-based defense backed up by a ground-based defense was presented by the head of SDI to the Defense Acquisition Board, which approved the plan for a two-layer defense using smart bullets. The Defense Acquisition Board controls actual weapons purchases in the Department of Defense. Its approval constitutes recognition by the defense establishment that an urgent military requirement exists for a defense against Soviet missiles, and that this requirement can be met by space-based defenses.

RB: It means nothing of the kind. It means that the appointees of the Reagan Administration still maintain control of the machinery of the Department of Defense and that White House pressure to get SDI into hardware is intense. Actually, the opposition to this foolishness within the military and the Congress is so great that, since the NR article was published, there has been considerable discussion within DoD about dropping the space-based part.

NR: Isn't it destabilizing for the U.S. to build a defense against Soviet missiles? Won't the Soviets feel threatened?

RB: Of course. But that's the whole point. MI and the other architects of SDI, MX, Trident II, etc. WANT the Soviets to feel threatened. In their very opening paragraph they pointed out that it was our present inability-to threaten the Soviets that constituted-the problem. But let's see how MI answers the question.

MI: The Soviets might feel threatened if a situation developed in which the U.S. had an effective defense against Soviet missiles and the Soviets had no defense against U.S. missiles. But that is not the situation that will confront the Soviets in the 1990s. They have been working on missile defense for 15 years and have a larger SDI program than we do.

RB: This is deliberate deception. MI makes no distinction between "Star Wars" and purely ground-based "strategic defense." The Soviets have nothing comparable to our SDI program because their "strategic defense" program is entirely ground-based. It consists of the ground-based ABM system around Moscow, fighter-interceptors, SAM missiles, antiaircraft batteries, and civil defense bunkers. The Soviets are not threatened so much by "defenses" as by weapons in space, weapons with potentially decisive offensive capabilities.

MI: Secretary Gorbachev said about the soviet SDI in a television interview just before the December Summit, "The Soviet Union is doing everything the U.S. is doing."

RB: That is a misuse of that quote out of context. Gorbachev was talking there about laboratory research. It was meant to convince us that they knew as much about the technology as we did and could counter anything we did. Gorbachev was exaggerating -- something his predecessors did quite often. Our "SDI" technology program predates theirs, and the DoD has determined that we have about a ten year lead on the Soviets in the technology. But Gorbachev went on to say that they would not develop, test, or deploy weapons as a result of their research. They would find other, cheaper ways of countering our deployments. Moreover, the Soviets have not tested bits and pieces of such a system in space, the way we have in the last few years.

Even if it were true (which it isn't), justifying dangerous and aggressive behavior on the basis that "He's doing it too," is childish at best.

MI: The options available to the U.S. are: Either we go ahead full speed with SDI, in which case each side will have a defense against the other side's missiles in the l990s; or we fail to deploy SDI, in which case the Soviet Union will have a defense against our missiles, but we will have none against theirs.

That would be destabilizing.

RB: No, it would not. It would be discomforting to us, because it would give the Soviets a measure of superiority which they could use to dictate our behavior. If combined with enormous advances in their offensive capability, it might also give them the capability to destroy us. They would then have to consider whether or not to use this power, balancing it against the disadvantages of destroying their best source of wheat, Pepsi, computer technology, and designer jeans. But it would not be as destabilizing as if BOTH sides had ballistic missile defenses, each side knowing it might be able to accomplish a first strike and get away with it, and simultaneously knowing that the other side was in a similar position and also considering such an option. In such circumstances, magnanimity, delay, or indecision could be disastrous, so there would be an immediate race to see who could pull it off first.

But all this is irrelevant, because we're not talking about defenses. We're talking about weapon systems most useful against similar systems of the other aide. The minute both sides had "Star Wars" weapons in space, whoever shoots first could disable the system of the other aide at the speed of light, clearing the way for their missiles in an unopposed first strike, but retaining their own "shield" to protect them from retaliation. Weapons in space so reward whoever shoots first, that their deployment by both sides would probably make nuclear war inevitable and immediate. Now, THAT is destabilizing.

In addition, of course, the MI argument is irrelevant because the Soviets do not have a "Star Wars" program, like we do. The only threat of the deployment of such space weaponry comes from the United States, not the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviets have already agreed to prelaunch inspection of everything put into space, to make sure that nobody ever puts weapons into space disguised as something else.

Since the Reagan Administration has been willing to sacrifice the ABM Treaty, the arms control process, our fiscal stability, the support of our NATO allies, and everything else necessary to have this system of space weapons with awesome offensive potential, the Soviets have every right to feel threatened.

NR: Will the Soviets launch a preemptive attack if we start to deploy defenses in space?

MI: In the near term, they won't attack for the same reason they don't attack the United States at this very moment -- namely, because we have an effective deterrent in our ballistic-missile submarines. But by 1995, the Soviets will have completed deployment of their fifth-generation ICBM arsenal, and will also have completed their nationwide ABM defense. At that time, they will have clear military superiority, because they will have the ability to disarm the U.S. by destroying the command and control network for our nuclear forces, while sustaining tolerable or no damage to their own military and industrial base.

If the U.S. has not deployed a space-based defense by that time, the Soviets will be in a position to prevent us from deployment by going on a "yellow alert" and threatening a nuclear attack, as Nixon did in 1973 when Brezhnev started to move Soviet troops into the Middle East. An actual Soviet attack will be unnecessary, since its disastrous consequences for the American nation, and our inability to retaliate effectively, will be so apparent to U.S. leadership.

RB: Sounds just like what Edward Teller said, only it was supposed to happen by 1975, not 1995. MI is trying to convince us that there is an imminent danger of the Soviets attacking us for no apparent reason, but that in 1995 if we're on the verge of deploying systems that would seal their doom, they would refrain from any hostile act; they would sit back, twiddling their thumbs, watching us deploy those ultimate weapons, because they wouldn't be quite ready to take us on. If they're so cautious and rational, why are we so afraid of them? And if we're so secure now, and it's only after 1995 that they could threaten us, why not end the arms race now? Why not have the nuclear freeze that they have agreed to for 6 years? Why not lock ourselves into a position of security and relative superiority? The answer, of course, is that MI and other proponents of the arms race don't want security. We have that now. They want ABSOLUTE military superiority, and they can't have that without "Star Wars."

By the way, notice the subtle fear-mongering in their description of Soviet "fifth-generation" ICBMs. The inference is that the Soviets are way ahead of us in ICBMs. I've heard Caspar Weinberger, when he was Secretary of Defense, testify that the Soviets were several "generations" ahead of us, which is why we needed the MX. Then, the very same day, he testified to the very same committee on SDI. When asked if Soviet "fast-burn boosters" couldn't make our weapons useless as a defense, he replied, "Oh, it would take them well into the next century to do that. They don't even have solid-fuel boosters like our Minuteman. THEY'RE 25 YEARS BEHIND US IN ICBM TECHNOLOGY." Incredible! I wonder how many senators noticed the inconsistency.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we purpose to deceive."

NR: Some American scientists say a space-based defense against missiles won't work. Why are you confident that these "smart-bullet" defenses will work in space?

MI: Smart bullets have been tested with considerable success both in space and in the atmosphere. Two tests of space-based smart bullets were carried out recently. In the first, a satellite equipped with "smart-bullet" capabilities successfully tracked a missile in space, and then homed in on it and destroyed it. This test showed that smart bullets can locate a missile even when the missile is completely enveloped and obscured by the plume of its own rocket.

The most recent test, in February 1988, showed that "smart bullets" can track a "bus" (the vital section of an ICBM that carries all the warheads) even after the missile itself has burned out and fallen away. This capability means that the U.S. defenses can catch Soviet ICBMs with many of their eggs still in one basket -- i.e., with a number of warheads still on board.

That vital success in tracking a bus means an end to the era of the MIRVed missile, a particularly fearsome weapon of destruction that carries a whole cluster of nuclear warheads. If an ICBM can be caught and destroyed right after it is launched, and before it has deployed all its warheads, there is little gain from MIRVing.

RB: These were not tests as much as they were publicity stunts. They were painstakingly rigged for success. Such "cheating" on weapons tests is commonplace. To get a missile with an optical sensor to find its target, you paint the target bright red. To enable a radar-guided missile to find its target, you put aluminum reflectors on the target to give it an unmistakable radar return. To enable a "smart bullet" to find its target, you use a strong heat source. And you, of course, conspire to have the systems on as near to a collision course as possible to begin with. Finally, you "help" the interceptor with large ground-based radars and every tracking device at your disposal.

Still, no one disputes the possibility of hitting ONE missile or bus with ONE "smart bullet" providing it comes far enough out of the atmosphere and the "smart bullet" is in the right place at the right time. Getting TWO is another matter. Interference between target signals, coordination between interceptors, battle management become problems. What happens when there are thousands of targets? Nonetheless, given enough interceptors, they could at least theoretically do a thinning-out job on a launch of SS-18s. But that's only because the antiquated liquid-fueled SS-18 burns for 5 full minutes, and is above the atmosphere, where-it is potentially vulnerable, for about half of that time. A modern missile like the MX burns for only 2 minutes and only spends a few seconds of that above the atmosphere where it can be attacked. A fast-burn booster, such as has been proposed for our Miagetman, would make "smart bullets," no matter how advanced, no matter how numerous, no matter how fast ... totally useless.

By the way, that "fearsome weapon of destruction," the HIRV was an American innovation, introduced against the advice of many military strategists. We had a chance to ban them in 1972, and we passed it up.

NR: Do Soviet scientists believe SDI will work?

MI: Last fall, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze yanked the rug out from under the American scientists who say space-based defenses won't work. "If you want me to speak frankly, " Mr. Shevardnadze told reporters, "I do believe that the SDI is a feasible program. "His comment was not surprising, since the Soviets are reported to have ten thousand scientists working on laser defenses -more that three times the size of our SDI effort in this area.

RB: Of course the Soviets think SDI will work ... but NOT as a defense. They are afraid it will work as an offense, and they have every right to be concerned. As to those ten thousand laser scientists -they probably don't exist. The Soviets do have a big laser program, but not that big. More importantly, most of the Soviet laser program is devoted to types of lasers which don't work in space -- it's against the laws of physics. According to all intelligence estimates, what the Soviets appear to be doing is attempting to develop GROUND-BASED directed-energy weapons for the purpose of shooting down our "Star Wars" battle stations if we ever put them up. As for American scientists who say SDI "won't work," they are looking at it, naively perhaps, as a defensive shield. They're not wrong. They're just working the wrong problem. I've been saying that for years.

NR: Aren't the computer programs for SDI impossibly complicated?

RB: Only if you try to use it as a defense. The software requirements for an offensive SDI are challenging but far from impossible. But let's let MI answer.

MI: The software requirements were originally estimated to be ten million lines of code, but they have now been worked out in detail and turn out to be four to six million lines. This is a large program, but not exceptional. For purposes of comparison, the code for a recent and very complicated SDI test in space totaled one million lines of code. That code was written in six months and worked perfectly on the first try.

RB: Their answer is extremely misleading. How can you work out software requirements "in detail" when you have no idea what type of weapons you'll be using, how many layers you'll have, and what the targets will be like? SDI is supposed to be a RESEARCH program. How can you do software for an operational system? My guess is that the software for a "defensive shield" would require more like 100 million lines of code. But size is not the real problem. Not knowing what a Soviet attack would look like (because we've never seen one) is one problem. The fact that the-Soviets could change it is another. Testing-is a third. Vulnerability of the software to worms and viruses yet another. Software experts predict that the software for a "defensive shield" would have about 10,000 "bugs" that could never be detected by testing and never eliminated. Some might merely "degrade" system performance. Others might be catastrophic. But all this is irrelevant because the proponents don't have any intention of building a "defensive shield' anyway. And the software requirements for what they REALLY want are far from impossible.

NR: How can you test the effectiveness of the SDI software properly, short of trying it in a nuclear war?

MI: The one aspect of SDI that can be tested fully is the software. When signals are fed into the front end of the program, they look exactly the same to it regardless of whether they have been produced by a Soviet missile leaving its silo or by a piece of equipment that generates signals imitating the real thing. In fact, modern equipment can create realistic "battles" that test the program more fully than a real attack. It can hurl more "missiles, " "warheads, " and "decoys" at us than the Soviets could ever build. And it can "launch" them more quickly than the Soviets could ever launch their missiles in an actual attack.

RB: And the "test" would be designed by the same people who wrote the software. If they "forgot" to take something into account in writing the software, they will also forget to test for it. Then, of course, all the Soviets would have to do is dream up one tiny countermeasure that the software designers didn't account for. Simulations don't prove anything if your model is wrong.

NR: How can we guard against a catastrophic failure caused be a computer breakdown or an error in SDI software?

MI: No lengthy computer program can be error-free. The approach used by SDI is to build the system so that it is heavily redundant and will perform its mission even if some computing errors are present.

Several steps are necessary for the achievement of this goal. First, software and hardware errors can be deliberately inserted into the program, and the system can then be tested and refined until it is "error-tolerant. " That is, it can be designed to carry out its tasks even with coding errors or badly damaged hardware in it, just as the brain continues to function after some damage to brain tissue. Second, the software is redundant; every important decision is made in several ways by independent lines of computer reasoning. Third, all the computer hardware is heavily redundant. That is, the electronic parts are duplicated. Fourth, the programs are compartmentalized -- broken up into boxes. If a box fails, the program works around it; the whole system never crashes. Finally, the communications links that connect the different parts of the system are also heavily redundant.

This redundancy follows the pattern used by nature in the design of the human brain to minimize the chance of a catastrophic failure. Enough redundancy is being built into SDI software and hardware to reduce the probability of catastrophic failure essentially to zero.

RB: And if they achieve all that, their system, like the human brain, will never suffer catastrophic failure, and never fail to successfully accomplish its assigned task.

NR: What about the false alarm -- a computer error that activates the U.S. defense when we haven't been attacked?

MI: There is a vital difference in this regard between the existing policy of deterrence by the threat of retaliation, and the new policy of deterrence by defense.

RB: There is no such thing as deterrence by defense. No one is ever deterred by the fear of failure, only by the fear of the CONSEQUENCES of failure -- retaliation in this case. SDI, even if it WERE a defensive shield, would not change that.

MI: Under deterrence by the threat of retaliation, a false alarm could trigger the launch of ballistic missiles carrying hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons. Once launched, these missiles cannot be recalled.

RB: Now here's something that CAN be changed. Experts in the U.S. and Soviet Union have worked out means of providing destruct mechanisms so that either country could blow up its own missiles if they were launched accidentally or without authorization or in response to a false alarm. This system provides means for assuring that neither side could blow up the other side's missiles in order to prevent retaliation.

MI: Soviet retaliation is certain to follow. This is the existing U.S. policy. Under it, the consequences of a false alarm are catastrophic for both superpowers.

But under the new system of deterrence by defense, if a computer error triggers the firing of "smart bullets" in a false alarm, the consequences are not the detonation of thousands of megatons of nuclear explosives, visiting untold destruction upon the territories and peoples of both nations. In fact, very little happens, for the smart bullets fired by the defense are non-nuclear and probably contain no explosives of any kind. A good number will escape from the earth, and the remainder will not destroy a single building, because they lack the heat shielding necessary to penetrate the earth's atmosphere without burning up.

RB: Other types of Kinetic Energy Kill Vehicles are being designed which CAN penetrate the atmosphere and destroy targets on earth. But that's another story. The current situation on false alarms is that many of them occur, but because warning times are long (about 30 minutes), human intelligence can intervene and overrule the computers. If both sides had some sort of space-based SDI system, a false alarm would have far more serious consequences. These systems are extremely vulnerable, particularly to each other. Warning times would be fractions of a second, at best. Computers would have to be in complete control. If one system got hit by a meteorite or a piece of space debris, for example, and thought it was under attack, it would order retaliation against the other side's system. Almost instantly, the early-warning satellites and command and control systems of both sides would be disabled. Both sides would be deaf, blind, and crippled, but still armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. Not a very encouraging scenario.

NR: How effective will the smart-bullet defense be?

MI: The first stage of the l990s defense, with a layer of smart bullets in space and another layer on the ground, will have an effectiveness of about 50 per cent. The fully deployed l990s defense, with many more smart bullets in space and a total of three layers, will have an effectiveness of better than 90 per cent. That is, nine out of ten Soviet warheads will be destroyed.

RB: More like NONE out of ten! A Senate study estimated that it "would have an effectiveness against Soviet ballistic missile warheads of no more than 16%." If the Soviets vent to modern solid-fueled missiles, like the MX the effectiveness of the "smart bullet- system would be ZERO. Appendix F of my book, Star Wars: Defense or Death Star? explains why this is so.

Yet the "smart bullet" system would be VERY effective in its real missions: (1) get hard ware contracts out to industry for something, anything, so that the SDI program becomes unstoppable, like the B-1. (2} shoot down the ABM Treaty once and for all, killing the arms control process and perpetuating the lucrative arms race and the drive for military superiority. (3) get weapons into space good enough to shoot down opposing satellites and seize military control of the "new high ground. (4) hold the fort until more advanced versions can be deployed which are capable of destroying hardened military targets, such as command bunkers and missile silos, from space without warning (such weapons have been under -development in the U.S. "black" programs for-years, and were a for testing from the shuttle, before being put on hold by the Challenger explosion).

NR: What good is a 50 per cent or 90 per cent defense when one warhead can blow up a city?

MI: Even a 50 per cent defense is sufficient to create a paralyzing uncertainty in the mind of the would-be attacker. Soviet leaders are aware that starting a nuclear war would risk the very survival of their own state. If a Soviet commander knows only half his warheads will get through to their targets -- this is what a "50 per cent defense" means -- he knows he cannot hope to "ladder down" and wipe out the bulk of our retaliatory forces in a surprise attack. He knows that a large fraction of our nuclear arsenal and command and control network will remain intact after the first strike, and that, less than sixty minutes after he gives the order to launch, his own nation's military forces and industry will lie in ruins. To attack the United States under those circumstances would seem to Soviet leaders to be suicidally irrational. But the Soviet leadership is rational.

RB: Here it is in black and white, the rationale which has been used behind the scenes for years: the mission of SDI is to "create uncertainty" in the mind of a Soviet planner contemplating a first-strike on the United States. At the present time, there is no uncertainty. Any Soviet planner contemplating such a thing would have ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY THAT HE WOULD FAIL. That would still be the case if they had ten times as many nuclear weapons as they have now, and even if they were modern nuclear weapons like ours. The deficiencies of their own arsenal create far more "uncertainty" for the Soviets than we could ever create with "smart bullets."

By the way, it's amusing to see that MI has so much confidence in the rationality of Soviet leadership. Sometimes I'm not quite so confident about OURS.

NR: How much will this defense cost?

MI: The first installment of the defense will cost between $50 and $70 billion. This is about the same as the cost of five hundred Midgetman missiles or a new type of Air Force fighter -- two weapons systems the U.S. Government is already planning to buy. For the fully deployed, three-layer smart-bullet defense, independent estimates have arrived at a cost of about $120 to $130 billion.

The estimate of $130 billion comes from a rule of thumb given by former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown: to get the cost of a fully deployed weapons system, multiply the cost for research and development by ten. The R&D cost of the smart-bullet defense in SDI's five-year program totals approximately $13 billion. Applying the Brown rule gives $130 billion as the cost for the system.

This result is in close agreement with a figure of $121 billion arrived at by a different method by the Marshall Institute panel on missile defenses. The panel made a detailed examination of the costs of all the pieces in the three-layer defense -- satellites, smart bullets, and so on -- and added up the separate items to arrive at a total.

There is no evidence to support the widely quoted cost estimates -- frequently offered by former defense officials and Soviet spokesmen -- of a trillion dollars or more for a space-based defense.

RB: On the contrary, there's a great deal of evidence, including testimony by Reagan Administration officials themselves. Still, cost is not the most important consideration. As a military man, if I thought the system would add to our security, I wouldn't let the cost bother me. But as it is, I believe that any attempt to deploy "Star War" weapons enormously increases the likelihood of nuclear war, and therefore destroys our security. I wouldn't want "Star Wars" if it was free.

NR: Couldn't the Soviets blow a hole in the U.S. defense planned for the l990s by knocking out our satellites before they launch their first strike?

MI: U.S. satellites will not be as easily destroyed as some American scientists have suggested. Satellites have been vulnerable in the past because no one has been shooting at them, just as airplanes were vulnerable at the start of World War I. Once the enemy started to shoot at these early aircraft, they put on armor, mounted guns and cannons to shoot back, and became highly maneuverable to dodge attack. Later, military aircraft developed electronic countermeasures, metal decoys to confuse radars, heat flares to confuse heat-seeking missiles, and so on.

The satellites being developed for America's space-based defenses are using all these stratagems of defense, including armor, "shoot-back, " maneuverability, heat-generating decoys, and a bag of electronic tricks. No single stratagem gives 100 per cent protection, but these stratagems together can make it very difficult and costly to kill a constellation of satellites. The secret of survivability for U.S. satellites is to make the cost of killing them so great that the Soviets are unable or unwilling to risk the attempt.

RB. It must be pointed out that, with all their armor, maneuverability, electronic gear, armament, etc., airplanes still get shot down. Satellites, however, have special survivability problems not faced by airplanes. In the first place, armor has never done airplanes much good. The most important survivability asset of the airplane is its great maneuverability. It appears overhead by surprise, does its job, and then "jinks" evasively as it leaves. Still, to the pilot, the seconds he spends over the target, within range of enemy fire, seem like an eternity. A satellite spends months or years "over the target." It has little maneuverability. For the most part, it follows fixed orbits, so you always know in advance exactly where it's going to be at any given time. For it to change its course requires the expenditure of fuel, which greatly limits the lifetime of the satellite.

It is true, however, that if you knew ahead of time just when your satellites would have to do their job, then they could change their orbit, put out decoys, and use other survivability measures that would make them difficult to destroy for a limited period of time. But such a procedure is only available to an aggressor, with the element of surprise on his side. You can't "jink" and deploy decoys continuously for months or years. The satellites making up a "defensive shield" in the hands of an innocent party would be useless.

Further, it must be pointed out that if an adversary wants to destroy a "Star Wars" system, he doesn't have to destroy all its parts. You don't have to shoot down thousands of laser battle stations or garages for "smart bullets." You don't have to destroy hundreds of mirrors orbiting over your territory. All you have to do is disable any one critical function. A "Star Wars" system is a complex organism, something like the human body. In addition to the lasers or "smart bullets" or whatever that make up the fists, you have to have arms, eyes, ears, nose, brain, spinal cord, and central nervous system. An adversary could blind the eyes of the system -- the surveillance satellites -- with a ground-based laser. Or he could scramble the computer brain with a nuclear explosion hundreds or even thousands of miles away. (Nuclear explosions in space give off radiation and Electro-Magnetic Pulse, EMP, which wipe out computer chips at great distances.) He could sever the spinal cord by destroying a communications relay satellite with a space mine or a bucket of nails. Any action he took which disabled any one critical organ in the body would leave the rest just a couple of trillion dollars worth of dead meat. To quote Edward Teller again, "To destroy space objects is relatively easy."

Still, these enormous survivability problems might be overcome ... but only by an aggressor with the element of surprise on his side.

NR: What about missiles launched on low trajectories from submarines near our shores? Wouldn't these Soviet missiles reach their targets -- say, Washington -- too quickly for our defenses to work against them?

MI: Our ability to track and destroy "flat-trajectory" missiles will not be impaired by their short flight time. First, because they fly low and stay in the atmosphere, flat-trajectory missiles cannot deploy decoys. Second, because they fly lower and slower than ICBMs, they are easier to track, intercept, and destroy. Finally, some ground-based "smart bullets " -- the HEDI and the FLAGE are examples -- are specially designed to intercept and destroy low-flying, submarine-launched missiles. As a consequence, it doesn't matter appreciably to the effectiveness of our defenses whether the flight time is five minutes or twenty minutes.

RB: Their answer obscures the fact that the space-based "smart bullets," are TOTALLY USELESS against such "flat-trajectory" missiles. That puts you back to reliance on ground-based systems, with all the disadvantages pointed out so eloquently by MI earlier in the article.

I'm certainly not saying that submarine-launched missiles are the ultimate weapon. I'm not saying that there is no defense against them. I AM saying that they are an effective end run around the kind of Maginot Line in the sky that MI are proposing that we build.

NR: What about fast-burn boosters? Some critics of SDI say they could be a highly effective Soviet countermeasure.

MI: The fast-burn booster is a high-acceleration ICBM that burns out in one or two minutes, in contrast to three to five minutes for current Soviet missiles. (Rockets are sometimes called boosters because they boost a payload into space.)

U.S. plans for a space-based missile defense assume that the smart bullets in space will get a good shot at the Soviet ICBMs before the ICBMs burn out. But shortening the burn time of Soviet ICBMs will make it more difficult for the U.S. to destroy them in the critical early phase of their flight, because fewer "smart bullets (with heat-sensitive detectors) will catch up to their targets while they can still see them. (The heat detector responds to the flame of the rocket; after the rocket burns out, the smart bullet may not be able to see it.)

How valuable these fast-burn boosters will be to the Soviets depends on how quickly they can build them. Time is of the essence, from the Soviet point of view, because the U.S. smart-bullet defense is planned to tide us over a period of strategic vulnerability that peaks in the 1990s. But by the turn of the century, or the first years of the next century, our government hopes to-have some laser defenses in orbit to augment the smart-bullet defense. The laser beams, or "light bullets," used in these more advanced defenses travel at 186,000 miles per second -- thousands of times faster than a "smart bullet." A laser beam will have no trouble catching up to an ICBM, even if the ICBM burns out quickly.

RB: Their answer is, "Yes, the fast-burn booster would render our 3-layer system useless, but not to worry, we've got more layers coming (costing additional hundreds of billions) that would work against them ... maybe."

MI: The intelligence community recently took a careful look at the question of how quickly the Soviets could build fast-burn boosters and put them into the field. The intelligence experts concluded that it would take at least 15 years to do this. That means the Soviets could not deploy a fast-burn arsenal until the beginning of the next century. But that would be too late, because the U.S. expects to have an effective laser defense by that time.

RB: Oh, really? Most experts believe it will be at least that long before we would even know whether or not laser battle stations could be built ... much less have them in orbit. One of the difficulties with the laser system is the amount of fuel required. Depending on the assumptions you make about the size and nature of the Soviet threat, it would take our shuttle fleet between 50 and 2,000 years just to put the FUEL for the system into orbit!

Theoretically, a laser weapon at the right frequency (like the deuterium-fluoride laser, which operates at around 4 microns, where there is an "atmospheric window") can reach down into the atmosphere to destroy fast-burn boosters. But that doesn't mean that a fast-burn booster is not an effective countermeasure against lasers. The shorter the burn time, the fewer boosters can be destroyed by each battle station in the short time available. A 25 Megawatt laser (the most powerful being considered) could kill (in theory, anyway) a missile every second or so. An HX-type missile is vulnerable for about 50 seconds, so each battle station could kill up to 50 missiles. But a fast-burn booster can be designed to be vulnerable for only a few seconds, so that each battle station could only kill a couple of missiles. We would then need almost as many battle stations over the missile fields as the other side had missiles. And for every battle station over the missile fields there are at least 15 more, elsewhere in their orbits, that can't be used. That means every time the Russians spent $6 million to $20 million for another missile, we'd have to put up another half dozen or so battle stations at an estimated cost of 2 to 4 billion dollars apiece! For what it cost us to shoot down one missile, the Soviets could build and deploy a thousand more. That's hardly what you'd call cost-effective at the margin.

MI wants us to spend over a hundred billion dollars putting up weapons we KNOW won't work against fast-burn boosters, hoping that later we could put up more weapons which we only SUSPECT won't work against them. Don't you get the idea that they really have some other purpose for those weapons???

MI: Why did the intelligence community decide the Soviet Union could not build a fast-burn booster quickly? The fast-burn booster would be an entirely new rocket, requiring a new engine, a new rocket body to counter the stresses of acceleration, and a new mechanism for keeping the ICBM from toppling over and breaking up in flight. And if the fast-burn ICBMs carried more than one warhead each, they would also need new buses to deploy their string of warheads quickly. (Existing buses take twenty to thirty seconds per warhead, or as much as five minutes for a string of ten warheads, and are vulnerable to smart bullets during this long deployment time. Furthermore, recent tests show that the buses can be seen clearly by the heat-seeking "eyes" on U.S. satellites while they are deploying their warheads, even though the rocket flame of the bus is not as bright as the flame of the booster itself.)

All these new features add up to a different ICBM. For several decades, it has taken the Soviets 12 to 15 years to design and put into the field each new generation of ICBMs. They are just now deploying their latest ICBMs -- the fifth-generation SS-24s and SS-25s. Adding 12 to 15 years would bring the Soviets to the end of the century -- and to the advent of U.S. laser weapons, which would negate the usefulness of their trillion-dollar investment in a new arsenal.

RB: A trillion dollars? Come now. For us to replace our current arsenal with 1,400 MXs would cost (including R&D) about $75 billion. Surely the Soviets could replace their arsenal for a similar amount, in any event an amount much smaller than our investment in lasers would be.

While we're checking arithmetic, let's try one more. Let's see, if the Soviets are now deploying their fifth generation of missiles, and it has taken them 12 to 15 years to develop each one, that means they started their first generation somewhere between 1914 and 1928. I'm convinced.

MI: Faced with that prospect, Soviet leaders may rethink their policy, and stop building new ICBMs.

RB: Oh, is that what we want them to do? Then why didn't we take them up on their offer to do just that if we would do the same?

NR: Suppose the attacker tries to confuse the defense by launching thousands of decoys along with the real warheads. How can our defense handle that problem?

MI: A decoy is a lightweight object built to present the appearance of a warhead to an enemy satellite. If the decoy weighs one-twentieth as much as a real warhead, a massive attack by ten thousand Soviet warheads could be accompanied by two hundred thousand decoys. SDI critics say U.S. defenses would be swamped.

But decoys pose no problem for the space-based layer of the defense, which aims to catch and destroy the Soviet missiles shortly after they have been launched. At that time, decoys and warheads alike are still packed away in the missile. Since a space defense destroys the decoys before they can be deployed, it does not matter how many decoys the missile carries.

Decoys also pose no problem for the "terminal" layer of the defense, which catches the Soviet warheads toward the end of their flight, as they descend through the upper atmosphere and approach their targets. Since a decoy is always considerably lighter than a real warhead, the resistance of the atmosphere slows down the decoys more that it slows down the warheads. (If a decoy were as heavy as a warhead, the attacker might as well replace it with a warhead.) To tell the warheads from the decoys, the defense has only to observe which objects lag behind as the flock of apparent warheads enters the atmosphere. Ignoring the lagging objects, which are the decoys, the defense goes after the others, which are the real McCoy.

However, decoys do create potential difficulties for the U.S. defense in the so-called midcourse layer. This layer -which lies between the space-based layer and the terminal layer -- tries to destroy the warheads as they arc through space over the Pole or the ocean.

Decoys can be a serious problem in midcourse because, when the warheads and the decoys are traveling through space, there is no appreciable atmospheric resistance to separate them. Technical opinion is divided on whether other techniques can be found for distinguishing warheads from decoys in this region. Very elegant methods have been suggested -- for example, tapping each of a flock of objects with a pulse of laser light to see how they recoil; the ones that recoil the most rapidly are the lightweight decoys, and the others are the warheads -- but these methods have not been tested yet.

Decoy designers are optimistic about their product. They say convincing decoys can be built, which will withstand scrutiny by the best "eyes in the sky" we can put in orbit in the mid-1990s. But no one has yet built one of these sophisticated decoys. They are a gleam in the eye of the decoy designers.

On the other side, the designers of instruments for our eye-in-the-sky satellites say their instruments will be doing a very good job of decoy discrimination by the mid-1990s -- but they also have some distance to travel before they reach that goal.

While we wait for this technical wrangle between the decoy designers and the eye-in-the-sky instrument designers to be resolved, the value of the midcourse layer remains in doubt. The best way to handle the decoy problem for the present is to build a space-based defense that destroys the missiles before their decoys have been deployed, and cuts down the number of decoys at the outset.

RB: Agreed. Which is one more reason why a fast-burn booster and a bus which deploys warheads and decoys as it is exiting the atmosphere and before smart-bullets and most other kill mechanisms can attack them is such a potentially powerful countermeasure to the use of "Star Wars" weapons in a defensive role.

NR: If our defense destroys soviet nuclear warheads, won't that cause nuclear explosions in space?

MI: There can be nuclear explosions in space if the Soviet warheads are "salvage fused" to explode on approach of the intercepting missile or smart bullet. However, these explosions will cause no clouds of radioactive dust and no damage on the ground, provided the interception occurs above fifty thousand feet. Our interceptions will always be above that height.

RB: A nuclear explosion high in the atmosphere can do other damage ... to electric circuits, to sensors, to communications, to the ozone layer, and to soft targets (like people). And whether or not the destroyed missile explodes, all its radioactive material or fission products will be dumped in the vicinity of its target. If a destroyed missile burns up in the atmosphere, it could actually kill more people than by exploding on its target. Plutonium is the deadliest substance known. The plutonium from the warheads of one ICBM, if distributed evenly in the air we breathe, would be enough to kill every person on earth. The only way to prevent a great tragedy is to mate sure the missiles are never fired. Most of us in the military understand that the only way we can accomplish our military mission of protecting the people of the United States is by PREVENTING a nuclear war, not causing one and then trying to shield ourselves from its effects.

NR: How about getting started now on deploying missile defenses, by building a limited defense against accidental launches? Senator Nunn and several others have proposed this recently. Isn't it a good idea?

MI: Protection against accidental launches is badly needed. However, gaining this insurance will require U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty. Withdrawing from the ABM treaty is a good idea, because, as matters have worked out since the treaty was signed, it now leaves America vulnerable to nuclear destruction.

RB: Of course it does. It leaves the Soviet Union vulnerable, too. That was the whole idea. If both sides recognize and accept their vulnerability, then neither side is going to start anything.

MI: Why does the modest objective of accidental-launch protection require withdrawal from the ABM treaty? First, even if the defense only uses ground-based smart bullets (a type of smart bullet called the ERIS, developed by Lockheed, is the most suitable), the area that can be covered by the ERIS smart bullet is limited. To get protection for the whole country (we do not want to protect the population of Los Angeles, say, and abandon New York, or vice versa), the U.S. must use the ERIS in combination with the full suite of early-warning radars spread across the North from Alaska to Greenland.

These early-warning radars were set up by the U.S. to give warning of air and missile attacks. The ABM treaty forbids using them for ABM defense.

RB: This argument is an admission that the U.S. has cleverly exploited loopholes in the ABM Treaty, allowing us to build our "early-warning" radars in such a way that they have the capability, should we wish to use it, to be ABM battle-management radars as well. This is something the Soviets have not been able to do, even with their Krasnoyarsk radar.

MI: Second, even with the radars, we would still not have protection against missiles launched from submarines off the coast unless ground-based smart bullets were placed in several locations near both coasts, as well as in the interior of the United States. But the ABM treaty forbids the placement of interceptors at several different locations. It allows them at one site only.

RB: It's interesting to see such deference to the ABM Treaty coming from the-same people that have spent several years trying to "reinterpret" it away. The ABM Treaty explicitly forbids the development and testing of even components for a space-based-ABM system. Yet they have pursued "Star Wars" for years, while claiming to not be in violation of the Treaty. Now, they are changing-their tactics. They are saying we can't do ANYTHING without abrogating the Treaty. The reason for this change of tune is that they have decided to make one last gigantic push to destroy the Treaty before they lose control of the White House in January 1989. They want the American people to overrule Congress and demand that the U.S. withdraw from the ABM Treaty. They will come up with all sorts of high-sounding reasons (like protection from accidental launch), but their real reason for wanting out of the Treaty is that it prevents them from achieving true superiority and it guarantees that nuclear war cannot be won.

MI: Third, a very large number of interceptors would be needed. An accidental launch is usually thought of as one or two missiles, but an accidental launch from one Soviet submarine could mean twenty missiles and 180 warheads headed for the United States. An accidental launch from one centrally commanded SS-18 field (SS-18s are based in clusters of fifty) could mean as many as five hundred warheads streaking toward the United States. Consequently, at least a thousand, and possibly several thousand, ground-based interceptors would have to be deployed to protect us even against "accidental " launches. The ABM Treaty also forbids that. It allows only one hundred interceptors.

RB: The quotation marks around "accidental" is their subtle way of planting the suspicion that the Soviets might attack us and claim that it was an accident. The command destruct system discussed earlier not only would provide protection against the extremely unlikely event of an accidental launch. It would also make it impossible for either side to allow missiles to continue to their targets and claim it was an accident. But the arms race lives on fear. If MI and the other arms racers can dream up anything for the American people to be afraid of, they will push it.

MI: All these actions -- using early-warning radars for an ABM purpose, putting ABM interceptors at sites around the country, and deploying at least a thousand interceptors -- add up to more than a "modest amendment" to the ABM treaty, the phrase used by some advocates of accidental-launch protection.

In fact, accidental launch protection amounts to building a robust, nationwide defense against ballistic-missile attacks. Article I -- the cardinal clause of the ABM treaty -- forbids a nationwide defense against missile attacks. It does not distinguish between attacks launched by accident and attacks launched with intent to destroy a nation. If the U.S. wants to prevent the possibility of American cities being devastated by an accidental launch, it has to give up the ABM treaty.

RB: There it is, the new right-wing apologia for "Star Wars" and for an end to the ABM Treaty. Of course, there is another way -- (1) end the arms race in its tracks by halting nuclear testing and the testing of new delivery systems, (2) continue to abide by the ABM Treaty, and strengthen it by agreeing to a total ban on space weapons of any kind, (3) get the military from both sides together to work on ways to prevent accidental and unauthorized launch and to enhance common security, (4) proceed along the path of true disarmament, with the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and offensive conventional weapons (tanks, fighter-bombers, etc.) as rapidly as possible, (5) rein in the CIA and KGB, taking away their authority to conduct covert wars and to interfere in the internal affairs of third parties, (6) encourage trade, cultural exchange, and growing interdependence, and (7) put the weapons industries of both nations back to work building things of use to people.

Will these alternatives be easy? No, but they won't be nearly as difficult as people might think. The Soviets have already agreed to nearly all of the above measures. We don't need to trust them in order to sit down with them and test their sincerity. In any event, pursuing this course will be far safer than pursuing military superiority. And succeeding will be far easier than building a "defensive" shield. And it would last much longer.

U.S.- defense policy for too long has been based upon myths -- the myth of Soviet superiority, the myth of a Soviet first-strike threat, the myth of a Soviet breakout from the ABM Treaty, the myth of a "peace shield," and most importantly the myth that we seek neither superiority nor political advantage. It's time we trusted the American people with the TRUTH.

The authors of the National Review article were the members of the Technical Panel on Missile Defense of the George C. Marshall Institute: John Gardner, Edward T. Gerry, Robert Jastrow, William A. Nierenberg, Frederick Seitz, Lt. Col. Simon P. Worden, and James J. Frelk.

extracts from a November 1977 Air War College Research Report

by Lt. Col. Robert M Bowman, USAF

(now retired and President of ISSS, 7833 the St, Chesapeake Beach, MD 20732)

General War is armed conflict between major powers in which the total resources of the belligerents are employed and the national survival of a major belligerent is in jeopardy.

It doesn't seem necessary to worry about borderline cases -- they are unlikely to exist. If nuclear strategic weapons are used, someone's survival is threatened; and if a nation's survival is threatened, no limitations of means will be observed by that nation.

According to former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (and there seems little argument over his statement), the basic objectives of United States general war strategy are:

(1) credible deterrence, and
(2) continued strategic stability.

That our objectives exclude victory is reasonable in light of our belief that in any future general war there will be no "winner." -- only losers.

In 1975 the Soviets had about 7 times as many interceptors as we had, about 75 times as many defense radars, 64 ABMs to none for us, and about 2000 SAMs to none for the United States. This disparity in forces reflects a conscious decision on our part to avoid expensive and destabilizing defensive forces. This philosophy is consistent with our emphasis on forces for deterrence of a war, rather than for fighting or winning one.

In essence then, we have chosen to do without strategic defense, putting available resources instead into strengthening our retaliatory offensive forces upon which deterrence rests.

Does that mean that we can shut down Cheyenne Mountain and disband the Aerospace Defense Command (ADCOM/NORAD)? Absolutely not. They perform an absolutely vital mission which underlies our entire strategy: warning.

It may not be immediately obvious what the value of warning is if we don't have any means of defense. The answer is basically that warning is necessary to the survival of certain elements of our strategic system, including manned bombers, tankers, communications aircraft, and the National Command Authority (NCA) including the President.

The kind of warning referred to above is measured in minutes and might be best called "tactical warning" (of a strategic attack). There is another kind of warning, measured in days, which can be called "strategic warning."

An analysis by us News and World Report concluded that we would have several days strategic warning preceding any Soviet massive nuclear attack. This conclusion was based on our strategic warning systems being capable of detecting the following activities:

1. Deployment of missile submarines to their stations (they keep a much smaller percentage routinely on station than we do).

2. Elevation of bombers to alert status and/or deployment of bombers and tankers to forward bases (they do not normally employ ground alert as we do).

3. Crank-up of guidance gyroscopes for ICBMs (theirs are incapable of the continuous operation which we employ).

Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), has been quoted as saying:

With modern intelligence, it is not possible to make a surprise attack from a world situation that is perfectly calm. We are not going to look up suddenly and see all those weapons falling on Washington.

A visibly survivable second-strike capability is assured through the synergism of hardened ICBMs, currently invulnerable SLBMs, and recallable manned bombers dependent on warning.

All currently envisioned scenarios result in the survival of nearly all of one of the land-based legs and at least some of the other [as well, of course, as all of our submarines at sea].

Russian SLBMs, like ours, do not possess silo-killing capability. Thus, a surprise (or minimum warning) attack might hope to catch our bombers on the ground, but ICBMs launched simultaneously would arrive about twenty minutes after the SLBMs and would therefore be too late to catch our ICBMs, which would be launched in retaliation shortly after the arrival of the first SLBM.

If, on the other hand, the Russians chose to launch their ICBMs and SLBMs so as to arrive simultaneously, targeted for both our ICBMs and bombers, the relatively long flight time of the ICBMs would give all our bombers plenty of time to get airborne. It is anticipated that at least some of our ICBMs would also survive.

In either of the above scenarios, the surviving land-based leg of the triad, in combination with our SLBMs provides sufficient second-strike capability for our assured destruction strategy of deterrence and, at the same time, provides for flexible response to limited attacks.

Another possible response would be to adopt a policy of launching our ICBMs from under attack. Former Secretary Rumsfeld made it clear that this option has not been foreclosed, even though present policy is to ride out the first wave. So long as there is no serious threat to the other legs of the triad, our policy is unlikely to change.

Technology is producing an evolutionary change in the elements of the strategic triad -- mainly through improved accuracy. An even more serious challenge, however, is being thrust upon us. Technology is producing revolutionary changes in the makeup of the triad -creating new elements and threatening to make old ones obsolete.

The cruise missile is advertised as weapon augmenting the manned bomber, not replacing it. In truth, however, it is the beginning of a long, gradual process which will inevitably end in the disappearance of the manned bomber as we know it. This change seems to be to our advantage, for it probably will render obsolete a large part of the Soviet strategic air defenses.

Of even greater impact is that entirely new class of systems -- the space-based directed energy weapons. Besides providing the possibility of a new and devastating offensive weapon, this technology might lead to defenses. The absolute superiority which sole possession of such a weapon would impart to a nation is comparable to that the United States enjoyed in the late 1940s. The attempt to deploy such a system could well result in war.

Were the Soviets to succeed in first deploying such a weapon, particularly in space, we would be left with forces unable to carry out our strategy or gain our basic objectives. To meet this threat we must do the following:

(1) Maintain the effectiveness of our present triad.

(2) Attempt to negotiate a freeze on ICBM technology.

(3) Attempt to negotiate a ban on the testing or deployment of directed energy weapons.

(4) Be prepared, if necessary, to protect our warning and communications systems and prevent deployment of Soviet post-nuclear weapons.

(5) Pursue an aggressive research program.

(6) Develop a strategy and doctrine for space.

(7) Organize our forces to centralize decision-making with regard to space, either in a Space Command within the Air Force or in a separate national Space Force.

The above was written by Lt. Col. Robert M. Bowman in 1977 at the same time as he was directing the "Star Wars" programs. It reflected the policies of that time. Col. Bowman and our government agreed on the following: (1) "Limited" nuclear war between the superpowers is extremely unlikely. (2) Achievable U.S. objectives exclude victory in general war. (3) Defenses are expensive and destabilizing and to be avoided. (4) Strategic military forces are for war prevention, not war fighting. (5) There is no possibility of the U.S. being taken by surprise, and no chance of it being disarmed in a "first striker. (6) There is not even a serious threat against the bomber and submarine legs of the triad. (7) New technology could degrade our deterrent and therefore a "freeze" is desirable. (8) The testing and deployment of laser weapons (already banned for ABM purposes) should be banned altogether. (9) U.S. security depends on critical early-warning and communications satellites not being threatened by weapons in space. (1O) "Star Wars" weapons "might" turn out to be capable of shooting down ballistic missiles in the boost phase, giving their possessor absolute military superiority; but their pure offensive potential is obvious and "devastating." (11) Attempts to deploy them could lead to war. The military realities of 1977 didn't change. The technologies didn't change. The judgments of Col. Bowman didn't change. Our government changed.

An interesting footnote to the above is the one change Col. Bowman called for in our 1977 policy -- the creation of a Space Force. This has recently been accomplished with the emergence of Space Commands in the three services and the creation of the U.S. Space Command. What Col. Bowman objects to is that command being assigned a mission of developing and deploying space weapons. There is considerable quiet support for Col. Bowman's views in the Space Command. When our government changes again, once more recognizing the military realities outlined above, the U.S. Space Command will enthusiastically support a policy of maintaining peace without weapons in space.