United Press International March 23, 2001
Space-based shield years away
By FRANK SIETZEN, Jr.,Space-based weapons that can shoot down attacking missiles are still far from a reality eighteen years after President Ronald Reagan first announced his Strategic Defense Initiative. But while such hardware may not yet be ready for either on-orbit tests or deployment decisions, the idea can still stir up both supporters and detractors.
The concept, using advanced laser weapons or more exotic devices to attack missiles from platforms orbiting the Earth, received significant funding under the SDI program announced by Reagan on March 23, 1983. Additional research on space-based weaponry was continued under the presidency of George H.W. Bush but sharply reduced during the Clinton years. There have been other efforts to develop ground-based and sea-based missile defense systems.
Of the space-based systems proposed, the one surviving program, a Space Based Laser (SBL) technology demonstrator, is not currently scheduled for flight test until 2012 though there was a successful ground test of its systems last year. Even if the on-orbit test is successful, years of additional research will be needed to mature the concept sufficiently to begin designing an operational system.
"We would have been much further along had the Clinton administration not discontinued the research programs," said Frank Gaffney, executive director of the Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. "The Bush administration was planning a space weapon system, which might have been deployed by now."
The program under design during the first Bush administration was called Brilliant Pebbles, a system of hundreds of orbiting missiles that would have been used to home in and strike incoming ballistic missiles during their launch phases. The project was not pursued when Clinton took office.
Under the new Bush Administration the nation can expect to see increased research into some sort of missile defense. "To protect our own people, our allies and friends, we must develop and we must deploy effective missile defenses," Bush told Congress February 28 when he presented his budget.
Supporters of space weapons say such systems provide the ultimate defense against missile attacks because they orbit high above the launching sites of such missiles and would be able to detect attacks seconds after the missile's launch. An orbiting laser could in theory blast missiles out of the sky early in their flights.
But even as the tide turns again in favor of National Missile Defense, the technological challenges involved, say some experts, put deployment years and billions of dollars away into the future.
"Unfortunately, the American people do not comprehend the full scope of the planned Star Wars-2," said Charles P. Vick, acting director for Space Policy for the Federation of American Scientists. The Washington, D.C. group has been a critic of space weapons development and missile defense for decades. "This is a politically-driven effort that provides a very large umbrella for many previously rejected programs but some legitimate efforts that do need to be addressed," Vick explained adding that space-based laser weapons in particular were years from being proven to work. "The SBL is still an R&D system, yet to be perfected, that is far from being ready for deployment -- much less proven for combat," Vick said. But Vick did agree with space weapons advocates that continued research into such weapons should be allowed to proceed.
"These and other strategic defense technologies must continue to be researched and developed as a matter of national security policy," Vick said. "But until any one of these systems or technologies are proven to be combat ready, deployment would be a waste of the American people's funds," he said.
Under the SBL prototype research program, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and its prime contractor TRW did score a success late last year. The project, called SBL-Integrated Flight Experiment (IFX) conducted a six-second laser test Dec. 8 at TRW's Capistrano Calif., test facility.
In the test, the laser, called Alpha, generated what engineers called a "megawatt-class laser beam" that was fed through the beam's control system and into a four-meter wide telescope. The test confirmed the system's ability to focus a laser beam under space-like conditions. Both devices were simulating the vacuum of space. The devices all worked together to maintain the SBL's pointing and alignment during the laser's firing. The project is aimed at developing designs for a prototype space laser weapon that would lead to a 2012 orbital test flight.
"The test was a solid success," said Air Force Col. Neil McCasland, director of the SBL-IFX project. Lockheed Martin, who along with Boeing, is partnering with TRW on the space laser project, built both the telescope and the alignment system.
John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a research group in Washington, D.C. suggested that a space laser, even if developed successfully, would never be dependable enough for a U.S. president to use in a crisis. Pike also warned that if the U.S. were to field such weapons, countries like China might build more missiles for the laser to shoot down, overwhelming such devices. "Perversely, it will make us less secure rather than more secure," Pike said.
But some supporters of space-based missile defense systems say the devices might increase U.S. security. While ballistic missile technology proliferation increases, space weapons might prove more difficult to counter.
"As the ability to control missile proliferation through export controls and sanctions ramp down, the importance of deploying missile defense as insurance increases," wrote Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington. "This is especially true of global, space-based missile defenses since these systems do not involve the possible transfer of missile technology," Sokolski wrote last summer in the journal National Security Studies Quarterly.
But even the military's willingness to accept space weapons has been criticized. "The successor technologies to those that were leading technologies in the SDI program are being pursued by the Chinese, not the Pentagon and certainly not by the Air Force," said Henry Cooper, former director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. Speaking at a forum on space weapons in December, Cooper said that some in the military and space industry automatically dismissed any mention of space-based weapons before the results of the technology development programs were achieved. "This is evidence of the prejudice that exists within the (space) community against the SDI efforts," Cooper said. "Unfortunate, but I believe it's true".
Whether the result of the research is a workable, operational system or not, supporters say it's time to move missile defenses into high gear. "It is past time, in short, to stop debating and start acting," said Gaffney.
Copyright © 2001, United Press International
