Critics, and most recently the administration itself, have exposed the proposals as a thinly veiled cover for resurrecting improving conventional anti-ballistic missile stems. The more technologically outlandish Star Wars schemes that would be necessary to protect population centres — such as laser weapons and particle beam defence systems -have been described by scientists and defence analysts technologically impossible, dinarily costly, or easily defeated by counter-measures.
'The most blausible outcome of a Star Wars effort in the short run (the next 25 years) would be a system to protect US missile silos, not population centres. And in both the long and short run, SDI systems would be effective primarily against a Soviet retaliatory Pentagon's first-strike (ABM)
ipcoming talks.
celerated Soviet tiveness of 'defensive' systems.
ellnel extraorWing its technology race into the devastates Moscow tries to catch up.
Thus, Star Wars plays a central part effort to achieve capability against the USSR. Unless checked as a result of the Washington's latest ffort to achieve unquestioned nuclea superiority is bound to lead to an acbuild-up of strategic weapons in an effort to blunt the effecAnd Moscow will undoubtedly embark on a space defence programme of its own, adding a new dimension to the arms race. The Pentagon mav be bank superiority in highcomputers tracking systems — hoping to turn the Star Wars 'final conflict' that Soviet as Soviet But with estimates of space defence system costs reaching into the trillions of dollars, there's no guarantee the US will survive LOS precedented proposal. Two related initiatives are considered part of the SDI: the development of weapons to destroy satellites, and svstems eliminate missiles and warheads while they're in flight.
Balance Both the US and USSR make extensive use of satellites for the early detection of nuclear missile launches and for military communications. In ine current strategic balance, satellites play an important role in deterring a nuclear at tack by assuring the other side an ability to detect a launch and before being destroyed.
Weapons designed to satellites can be used for offensive purposes if they prevent an opponent from learning of an attack and coordinating a response. The US and USSR have both demonstrated ASATs, but in this aspect of the arms race the US has a clear and growing advantage. reason is a crucial technical difference in the way the US and Soviets deploy their satellites.
Most of Moscow's early-warning and communication satellites are in orbits that pass relatively close to Earth within 1000 miles or ground. In contrast, their US counterparts are deployed in very high orbits some 20,000 miles up, outside the range of current anti-satellite weapons.
The current state of the ASAT race is described in a June 1983 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists and a June 1984 article in Scientific American Donald Haffner Garwin et al point out that it is un- unlikely the USSR replace its low altitude satellites with high-orbit versions in the near future. The relatively large expense involved in launching a high-altitude satellite requires that the reliable. micro-electronics Pentagon satellites longevity that the Soviets can't yet approach:
The current generation of Soviet ASATs consist of heavy interceptors that must be launched from the ground by massive booster rockets — visible at only a few sites in the USSR. They can only hit satellites in orbits lower than 2000 miles which pass directly above the interceptors' launch sites.
The respond authors calculate that on the average, the Soviets would have to wait six hours destroy any particular would take about one week to destroy all US satellites in the system's reach, and the most strategicallv US satellites would be out of range.
Even US Air Force Chief of Staff, General Lew Allen, acknowledged in Senate testimony on July 11, 1979, 'We gIve (Soviet ASATs) a tionable operational few launches. In other words, it is a threat we are worried about, have not had a test program that would cause us to believe it is a very credible ot the threat.' ASAT tests since that testimony.
In fact the Soviet ASAT program is most likel whose satellites are in low orbit to Soviet launch sites.
The ASAT system that the US has tested and scheduled for deployment in will be able to the satellites.
Garwin equipment be very The substantial US lead in technology gives Presidential based Soviet satellites US ASATs, led Washington Scientific American article's satellite satelite. : deployment.
Another important anti-ballistic very quescapability I01 a Research but they In fact, There have been no Soviet directed at the Chinese, 1987 consists of lightweight homing missiles fired from F-18 jets. It over. comes most of the limitations plaguing estimates that if such a system was stationed at a number of US bases by the end of the decade, it would be able to destroy all low-orbit Soviet satellites within a matter of hours.
But this is only the beginning of the US anti-satellite. In keeping with the spirit of Reagan's 'Star Wars' scheme Science Advisor George Keyworth has proposed developing a generation ASATs: Spacehigh-powered lasers aimed at invulnerability to Soviet , coupled with the Pentagon's clear technological superiority and successtul current ASAT programme, has to ignore two drati treaties proposed by the USSR in 1981 and 1983 calling for a ban on antiweapons development and possible reason Washington is cool to an ASAT ban is that anti-satellite weapons technology is remarkably close to that required by missile (ABM) systems.
The ASAT program provides a serious loophole to the 1972 treaty on antiballistic missile systems.
research and testings of systems that would be banned by treaty can be performed under the guise of developing new anti-satellite systems.
the US ASAT homing missiles uses the same technology required for intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in mid-flight. A dramatic demonstration of this ABM
6115: 8и жи РНеНДААНИ / AVIH system • Boost-phase interception. refers to a space-based technology that could successfully detect Soviet missiles launches by watching for rocket haust from ICBM "boosters'.
would then aim and fire weapon to destroy the ICBM rocket shortly after take-off. Since ICMBs This system.
addition, a new generation chips based on crystal gallium arsenide would be 1000 times more resistant to The particle beams silicon chips.
Socialist Action 22 February 1985 of currently used scale Soviet ICBMs 'winning' a nuclear r war.
One of the main reasons the exotic weapons costly unfeasible is that they are charged with the mammoth task of countering a fullstrike of 1400 or more But consider the consequences