Viewpoint Why Reagan's "Star Wars" Plan Won't Work

In Star Wars, one laser shot destroyed the evil Empire's Death Star. President Reagan apparently has a similar vision for resolving conflicts with the Soviets. He has proposed that the United States build space-based defensive weapons that could shoot down Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads. That, he said, would "free the world from the threat of nuclear war." An alluring script--but no script is further from reality.

Reagan's desire for an anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) system to shoot down incoming nuclear weapons is understandable. No world leader wants nuclear weapons reducing his or her country to smoldering radioactive rubble. Yet what is truly alarming is that apparently there is no one near the President able or willing to tell him the truth--that there is no practical ABM system.

Over the years, successive Administrations have looked to scientists and engineers to devise the perfect defensive system to protect U.S. cities from nuclear attack. Unfortunately, it has never been either technically or economically possible to build such an ABM system. That was true in the Sixties, when we spent billions on a useless one in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It is still true today.

Even the President's own Commission on Strategic Forces--the Scowcroft commission--advised against the kind of crash program suggested by Reagan, writing, "The commission believes that no ABM technologies appear to combine practicality, survivability, low cost and technical effectiveness sufficiently to justify proceeding beyond the stage of technology development."

Nuclear weapons are so awesomely destructive that each one can annihilate a city. Only a few have to slip through our ABM defenses to devastate the United States. If the U.S. could manage the incredible technical feat of putting in place around the earth a laser defense system that was 95 percent effective, that system would be able to shoot down 9500 out of 10,000 Russian warheads. Even though this high level of performance is technically unrealistic--what complex machine works with 95 percent reliability?--it would still let through 500 nuclear bombs that could destroy up to an equal number of cities in the United States. So unless an ABM system were 100 percent effective, all the Soviets would have to do to defeat it is increase the size of their already huge nuclear arsenal. That is what is so futile and dangerous about attempting to develop anti-ballistic-missile defenses: Since such defenses cannot be perfect, they induce the opponent to build more offensive weapons in order to be certain of penetrating them.

So the Russians will start building more nuclear weapons and will work on their own anti-ballistic-missile defenses for fear they may be perceived as inferior. Naturally, then, the U.S. will accelerate the deployment of its own new nuclear weapons that the present opposition--both public and Congressional--to the arms race has slowed down. The result would be a triple arms race: We would build more strategic nuclear warheads in excess of the 10,000 or so we now have; we would compete with the Russians in the development of grotesquely expensive space-based weapons that both nations would know from the start wouldn't work; and we would build anti-anti-missiles, to defeat the other side's ABM system, out of the fear that it may work better than expected.

Four types of ABMs have been mentioned in conjunction with Reagan's Star Wars speech: charged-particle-beam weapons, neutral-particle-beam weapons, laser weapons and guided-missile-carrying satellites. None of these futuristic weapons can work inside the atmosphere, so they would have to be deployed over the Soviet Union in outer space or launched upon warning of attack and made ready to attack Russian missiles as they rise from their silos and travel above the atmosphere; once their rocket motors shut off, they become difficult to find. In other words, these ABM weapons must either orbit the earth on large satellites that would be vulnerable to relatively inexpensive Soviet antisatellite weapons or be able to come within firing distance of the Soviet missiles within a few seconds after the warning. Since such U.S. ABM satellites would orbit the earth at speeds approaching five miles per second, any one of them would be over Soviet ballistic-missile silos no more than 20 minutes or so in each orbit. That means we would need 50 to 100 beam-weapons-carrying satellites lofted into outer space to keep the Soviet Union covered all the time. Waiting until the Soviets launched their missiles to deploy our defenses, on the other hand, would mean launching massive devices that must reach the vicinity of the Soviet Union in seconds, which is not feasible.

In truth, all four systems are flawed for one reason or another:

Charged-particle beams are streams of high-energy electrons or protons, the basic constituents of matter. Such beams can never work in the airless vacuum of outer space. Since similar charges repel one another, the charged particles of such a beam will spread out and fizzle--the beam will destroy itself before it destroys any Soviet missiles. In addition, the earth's magnetic field will bend a charged-particle beam in unpredictable ways, making it impossible to aim at a distant, fast-moving target.

Neutral particles are those without a charge, such as neutrons or hydrogen atoms. A neutral-particle beam that will not spread out uselessly after it leaves the beam accelerator is very difficult to generate. It would be virtually impossible to aim such a beam at large numbers of missiles traveling thousands of feet per second in a few minutes, and the Soviets could dissipate neutral-particle beams without too much trouble, rendering them useless, or they could easily confuse or blind the sensitive target-detection and tracking systems on the ABM satellites.

Guided missiles on satellites can be easily overwhelmed by a massive Soviet missile launch, even though one scheme proposed by a retired Air Force general requires a mere 456 satellites roving the earth. Many more U.S. satellites would be needed if this scheme were to have even a chance of offering some small amount of enduring protection. And like all anti-ballistic-missile systems requiring satellites, this remarkably expensive system would be a sitting duck for Soviet antisatellite weapons that are at least ten times as cheap as the satellites they destroy.

Laser-based systems are the most promising of the four proposed ABM systems. The only virtue of laser weapons is that they can, in principle, work. Lasers can melt holes in metals on the earth, and there is no law of physics that forbids their operation in outer space. But the lasers we have now are unsuitable for shooting down ballistic missiles. They would require enormous, rugged yet exquisitely maneuverable mirrors, plus staggering supplies of fuel: Half a ton would be needed for each shot fired against a missile. Several shots would be needed to destroy each missile, and the Soviets have more than 1000 missiles, so each laser weapon would need several thousand tons of fuel. With 50 to 100 laser-bearing satellite weapons in orbit around the earth, we would have to lift many hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel alone into space. Each shuttle trip can carry only 32 tons, so with four shuttles each making four trips a year, it would take several hundred years just to move the necessary fuel into space to power the weapons Reagan envisions.

Ten or 20 or 50 years from now, we may be able to invent effective lasers that will need much less fuel. But such a system could easily be defeated by the Soviets. As with all the other systems, the satellites carrying the lasers could be destroyed cheaply and without difficulty. Also, the countermeasures available to the Soviets are virtually endless. Lasers are merely concentrated beams of light directed toward their target by a movable mirror. The Soviets could, for starters, cover their missiles with a reflective coating similar to the laser's own mirror, which would harmlessly deflect the light, or they could develop a heat-resistant substance similar to the space shuttle's impressive tiles to protect their missiles.

The latest of the proposed science-fiction schemes involves putting a nuclear weapon on a satellite, exploding it and using the energy released to power a laser that produces a beam of X rays. Even though possible in principle, this scheme has two fatal flaws: The nuclear explosion not only will vaporize the satellite but will also incapacitate all satellites exposed to the explosion's radiation, whether or not those satellites are carrying X-ray lasers. So the system self-destructs with the first shot it fires. Also, the X-ray laser can be easily countermeasured: A protective coat of a quarter inch of foam rubber faced with a sheet of aluminum foil will effectively protect a missile from an X-ray laser.

All of these anti-ballistic-missile systems have a still more insurmountable problem. They have to be reliable. Since the proposed Star Wars defenses are predictably unworkable, what reasons could there be to proceed with them? Some of the fascination with these systems clearly stems from their high-tech "video-game" approach to defending the nation. Yet fascination with high technology does not adequately explain the desire for space-based ABM systems.

Some have blamed the military-industrial complex for the interest in space-based ABM systems. After all, an axiom of murder-mystery sleuthing is Cui bono? (Who benefits?). Production of such systems would benefit the aerospace industry, it is true. The International Herald Tribune reported on June 2, 1983, "These so-called Star Wars weapons offer the prospect of half a trillion dollars in potential business to the aerospace industry." With the Apollo project for putting a man on the moon and the space shuttle completed, the aerospace industry is in need of a new, major engineering initiative in outer space in order to continue making profits. So it would not be surprising, if it is true, that some large California aerospace companies are trying to stampede the National Security Council--which boasts no natural scientists among its members--into recommending to the President that the U.S. make a large-scale commitment to Star Wars weapons.

Another constituency that could benefit from a Star Wars approach to our national security would be the U.S. Air Force. This vast conglomerate of missions, commands and weapons is by no means a bureaucratic monolith about which one can make sweeping statements. As Thomas Karas has documented in his book The New High Ground, a cadre of middle-level Air Force officers aspire to be the Billy Mitchells of the 21st Century and spearhead the creation of a new Service, the Space Force. The top echelon of the Air Force leadership seems still preoccupied with the traditional missions, but one can see how it could become worried by several developing trends. First of all, we have the anti-nuclear movement, which has made life increasingly difficult for the strategic branch of the Air Force. In the past, it would come up with a new weapons system and on most occasions could sell it to Congress and the public with little trouble. But now, as the public has become wary of nuclear weapons and those weapons have more or less reached their ultimate performance capabilities and have grown to 10,000 in number, the Air Force has had trouble selling its programs to Congress.

Such a predicament would not be unlike the situation a large corporation would find itself in if its products and services were not selling well anymore, while the competition was increasingly successful at making inroads into its business. What would a competent manager do on such an occasion? He would most probably attempt to change the product line and move the corporation's activities into new business areas.

The unavoidable competition with the Soviet Union in space-based defenses would provide the rationale for an unlimited increase in U.S. offensive strategic weapons, the Air Force's current line of business. Outer space is the exclusive province of the Air Force; therefore, competition from other Services for missions there would be eliminated. The Air Force has already proposed, and the Navy has rejected, that all U.S. military activities in space be subsumed under an Air Force-dominated "unified space command." Also, space weapons are attractive on a number of counts. Since they do not threaten the public with immediate annihilation, they would be noncontroversial.

Most important, space weapons are attractive because of their glamor and their "magical" qualities. To judge by the fairy tales of yesteryear and their contemporary counterpart science fiction, people have always been fascinated with the concept of the little magical device that bestows almost supernatural powers on its owner: the good fairy's magic wand, Aladdin's lamp and, more recently, Flash Gordon's death ray, the phaser of Star Trek and the beam weapons of Star Wars. What Congressperson would dare not vote for funds for such magical weapons that in the public's mind could protect the country from the evil "Empire"?

For the aerospace industry and the Air Force, Star Wars weapons would be almost too good to be true. But are they good for the country? Many people will argue that certainly they are not bad. At worst, since they wouldn't work anyway, they would be a waste of money; besides, they might shift the arms race from the earth's surface to outer space, where no one would get hurt if things heated up.

Unfortunately, it's not going to happen that way. Any attempt at erecting ABM defenses either on the surface of the earth or in outer space will induce an intensification of the arms race in offensive nuclear weapons, and the money to be spent on space weapons will have to come out of somewhere. The military budget is large but not infinite. So if we enter into a precipitous large-scale effort to develop Star Wars gadgets, tremendous sums of money will have to be syphoned from other military programs or the civilian part of the budget, or additional taxes will have to be levied. Money for exotic weapons would have to come out of our conventional defenses, needed in Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and elsewhere; such a shift in funds allocation will not increase the security of the country.

A well-thought-out, well-paced program of research and development of large lasers might possibly be useful for the country in a number of ways, but a crash program to build laser weapons would certainly be ill advised. It would perpetuate one of the most damaging fallacies this country labors under--the fallacy of the technological fix. We have always wanted to believe that any problem, be it economic, political or diplomatic, can be solved if only we spend enough money and effort to find the right technological answer. Thus, technology has often been the enemy of negotiations when it comes to our problems with the Russians. Forty years of technological exertions, 40 years of arms racing, should have taught us that the only way to resolve our conflict with them is by negotiation and not by magical devices. "Magic" has never worked, not when it was multiple independent-re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), not when it was submarine-launched ballistic missiles and jet bombers and not when it was the first atomic bomb, almost 40 years ago.

Despite all its flaws, there is a good chance that Reagan's proposal for Star Wars defenses will go ahead unless the public and Congress oppose it vigorously. But Congress and the public are preoccupied with the MX, the nuclear freeze, the Start negotiations and the deployment of new nuclear missiles in Europe. By the time they understand why those weapons don't work, the space-weapons program may have slipped through Congress, gained momentum and elicited a response in kind from the Soviet Union. Then, of course, we'll hear that "we are falling behind the Russians" in Flash Gordon gadgets, a cry that no Congress has resisted. So a new arms race will be on while the old one is rekindled with a vengeance.