Strategic Defenses: Two Reports by the Office of Technology Assessment

by Office of the Technology Assessment

Overview

To contribute to the worldwide debate on President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, here are two important studies, Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies and Anti-Satellite Weapons, Countermeasures. and Arms Control.

Originally published in 1986.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691611174
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #110
Pages:	494
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.80(h) x 1.20(d)

Read an Excerpt

Strategic Defenses

Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies Anti-Satellite Weapons, Countermeasures, and Arms Control

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By Princeton University Press

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1986 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07711-6

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CHAPTER 1

Executive Summary

THE PRESIDENTIAL CHALLENGE

President Reagan's speech of March 23, 1983, renewed a national debate that had been intense in the late 1960s but much subdued since 1972. Wouldn't the United States be more secure attempting to defend its national territory against ballistic missiles while the Soviet Union did the same? Or would it be more secure attempting to keep such defenses largely banned by agreement with the Soviet Union?

The President posed the question,

What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?

Calling upon the U.S. scientific community "... to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete," he announced that he was

... directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles. This could pave the way for arms control measures to eliminate the weapons themselves.

After that speech the President ordered studies to explore further the promise of ballistic missile defense, and in 1984 the Department of Defense established an organization to expand and accelerate research in ballistic missile defense technologies. This research program was called the "Strategic Defense Initiative" (SDI).

If there were a national consensus on the role, if any, ballistic missile defense (BMD) should play in our national strategy, assessing the likelihood of attaining the necessary capabilities at an acceptable cost would be difficult enough. There is extensive controversy over the potential of various BMD technologies and the possibilities for applying them in affordable weapons systems that would be effective against a Soviet offensive threat which includes countermeasures to our defenses. But there is also extensive controversy over whether various levels of ballistic missile defense capability, if attainable, would be desirable. A fair assessment of the technological possibilities must weigh them against a range of strategic criteria which are themselves matters of controversy.

This report is intended to illuminate, rather than adjudicate, the BMD debate. It provides more questions than answers. But the questions will remain relevant in the years to come, because their answers will affect national policies with or without ballistic missile defense. For the short term, the important questions have to do with what kind of research the United States should conduct on BMD and with how future BMD technical possibilities affect current offensive force planning and diplomatic activities. For the longer term, the important questions have to do with what kind of BMD we could reasonably expect to deploy, whether we would want to, and what the consequences might be.

THE BMD R&D DEBATE

The near-term debate over BMD research and development (as opposed to deployment) has focused on the following issues in particular:

1. What are (or should be) the central goals of the U.S. BMD research and development program;

2. The feasibility of reaching those goals;

3. The relationship between this research and arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union.

Participants in the debate over ballistic missile defense hold differing views on:

• Soviet motivations, intentions, and capabilities;

• Whether current U.S. nuclear strategy and nuclear forces are now, and will continue to be, adequate to deter Soviet threats and aggression;

• The past role and future prospects of arms control in contributing to U.S. national security;

• How optimistic or pessimistic one should be about the technical feasibility of rendering nuclear ballistic missiles "impotent and obsolete."

These differing views have shaped the debates both about BMD research and about BMD deployment.

Goals

Strategic Defense Initiative Goals

Few are comfortable with a situation in which U.S. security depends heavily on our threatening mass destruction with nuclear weapons. Fewer still are comfortable with the vulnerability of the U.S. population to Soviet nuclear attack. President Reagan's speech appeared to offer a way of eventually escaping this condition. Although some people have interpreted some of President Reagan's statements to mean that he envisions development of a virtually perfect defense of the U.S. population against all types of nuclear attack, pursuit of defenses able to protect the U.S. population and that of its allies in the face of a determined Soviet effort to overcome them does not appear to be a goal of the Strategic Defense Initiative program.

Rather, some of the President's language and many subsequent policy statements indicate that the Administration envisions a more complex scenario that might eventually lead to deep reductions in the nuclear arsenals with which the United States and the Soviet Union now threaten one another. The steps in this scenario Eire:

1. A research program to seek ballistic missile defenses that would be cheaper to deploy than the offensive weapons needed to penetrate them.

2. A decision in the early or mid-1990s to develop such defenses for deployment near the end of the century.

3. Negotiations with the Soviet Union for agreed mutual deployment of defenses coupled with reductions in offensive weapons. In this transition stage, the threat of nuclear retaliation would play a still important, but presumably declining, role in deterring Soviet threats and aggression.

4 An ultimate stage in which ballistic missile defenses, air defenses, and negotiated reductions of offensive weapons to extremely low levels have eliminated the ability of the United States and the Soviet Union to destroy one another's societies with nuclear weapons.

Administration officials have stated, however, that negotiating with the Soviets does not mean giving the Soviets a veto over a U.S. decision to deploy BMD. In their view, if defenses become cheaper than the weapons they must intercept, the Soviets ought to see the rationality of the U.S. negotiating scenario. But if the Soviets refuse to negotiate, U.S. security would increase anyway because (a) Soviet ballistic missiles would be less capable of achieving military objectives than they had been in the past; and (b) if the Soviets and the United States spent equal amounts on strategic forces, the assumed cost advantage of the defense would lead to a continuing decline in ability of the Soviet offensive forces to penetrate U.S. defenses.

Although the pursuit of this scenario appears to be the central purpose of the Strategic Defense Initiative, other goals have also been ascribed to it. These include:

• maintaining an ability to deploy U.S. ballistic missile defenses promptly in case the Soviets should "break out" of the ABM Treaty;

• hedging against Soviet unilateral development and deployment of advanced ballistic missile defense technologies by gaining an understanding of what is feasible (U.S. responses could include comparable defenses, more offensive weapons, offensive countermeasures, or all three);

• developing new technologies which may or may not be applied ultimately to BMD, but which could have other military and civilian applications.

Other Perspectives on Goals

The differing views of BMD debate participants cited above lead to support for differing research goals or different placements of research emphasis. Some approve of the SDI long-term goals but believe that there should be greater emphasis on moving toward near-term deployment of land-based and space-based BMD systems. Others question the SDI goals on strategic or technical grounds. They suggest that the United States should emphasize technology development and hedging against Soviet BMD potentials and that moving toward a deployment decision in the foreseeable future should not be a goal. Those who stress maintaining a base for quickly deploying BMD to deter or respond to a Soviet ABM Treaty break-out tend to favor research emphasis on "terminal" defenses, designed primarily (or, in some cases, exclusively) to protect U.S. ICBM silos and probably using nuclear warheads. A description of how various BMD research goals might present congressional choices for alternate research and development programs is presented in a later section.

Technical Feasibility

A second major focus of the debate over BMD is technical feasibility — the likelihood that the research will lead to the development of BMD systems that could achieve Administration goals. There are at least two layers of technical issues involved in this part of the debate. One is whether particular technology performance levels (for example, those of sensors, pointing and tracking systems, computers, chemical lasers or electromagnetic rail guns) could be scaled up and integrated into effective weapons systems. The second layer of technical issues is whether the weapons systems could operate effectively against determined Soviet efforts to counter them. Proponents of the SDI believe that the technologies are sufficiently promising to be worth intensive research. In addition, they point out that for many years the Soviets have been conducting research in advanced BMD-related technologies (such as lasers) and that the SDI as a research program would be justified if on no other grounds than hedging against possible Soviet progress in these areas.

Skeptics argue that offensive nuclear weapons are so likely — unless offenses are tightly constrained in number and quality — to continue to dominate defensive weapons that pursuing the SDI goals is not justifiable. They question whether Soviet research into advanced BMD-related technologies is likely to lead to actual defensive systems that U.S. missiles could not penetrate. They believe that the best hedge against such Soviet programs is continuing or accelerating work on U.S. offensive penetration aids. They may support continued U.S. research on BMD, but they are concerned about the potential consequences of certain SDI demonstration experiments.

Arms Control

Most BMD systems based on advanced technologies could not be developed, tested, or deployed under the ABM Treaty regime. One issue is whether or not our program of BMD research will be compatible with the ABM Treaty. A more fundamental issue, however, is whether or not the ABM Treaty continues to be compatible with our national interest.

Differing views on the nature of the United States-Soviet strategic relationship come to the fore most strongly in debates over the interplay between the Strategic Defense Initiative and arms control.

Supporters of the SDI tend to argue from the following perspective:

• The Soviet Union has been relentless — and at least partly successful — in its pursuit of strategic nuclear superiority over the United States. In particular, the Soviets have obtained a "first strike" capability against U.S. land-based ICBMs. In the future, the Soviets might conceivably find means of detecting and destroying U.S. missile-launching submarines as well. The Soviets can be expected to exploit such advantages by attempting to intimidate the United States and its allies.

• Past arms control agreements have not successfully limited the Soviet offensive buildup. In particular, the ABM Treaty and the companion Interim Offensive Agreement, contrary to U.S. hopes, led to no significant Soviet offensive restraint. Instead, behaving as if nuclear war would be like other wars, only bigger, the Soviets have deployed far more weapons than they need for deterrence.

• The SDI has already caused the Soviets to return to arms control negotiations which they had previously walked out of. The best prospect for future arms control agreements lies in persuading the Soviets that their "first strike" ICBMs will become obsolete in the face of U.S. defenses, and that the most promising way of adding to Soviet security is negotiating the reduction of both U.S. and Soviet offensive weapons while both sides emphasize defenses. Failing such persuasion, a competition in which defensive weapons had an economic advantage over offensive weapons would be more in the U.S. interest than the current situation because in the long run it should reduce net Soviet offensive capabilities.

• Given the asymmetries between the societies and the strategic objectives of the United States and Soviet Union, the arms control process as it has been conducted to date may never be to the net benefit of the United States. On the other hand, BMD may permit pursuit of a common interest in the "assured survival" of each society.

Many critics of the SDI have another perspective:

• Given the continuing mutual abilities of the United States and the Soviet Union to destroy one another's societies with several kinds of nuclear delivery vehicle (ICBM, SLBM, cruise missile, bomber), the Soviets do not have and cannot reasonably hope to obtain an exploitable strategic nuclear advantage. Even the narrower possibility of destroying most U.S. land-based ICBMs in their silos is so fraught with uncertainties that the Soviets would be irrational to try it. Moreover, there are other potential means, such as mobile basing, to increase the survivability of the ICBM leg of the nuclear triad.

• While certain issues of Soviet compliance with past arms control agreements need to be resolved, by and large those agreements have kept Soviet offenses below the levels they might otherwise have reached. The ABM Treaty successfully limited Soviet deployment of anti-ballistic missile launchers and spared the United States the need to build countering offensive and defensive weapons. Abandonment of the Treaty could lead to a more costly and more dangerous arms race.

• Rather than having driven the Soviets back to the negotiating table, the SDI might instead have merely provided them a face-saving way to reverse their previous decision — which they now regret — to stay out of arms control talks until newly deployed nuclear weapons were removed from Europe. Even though negotiations have resumed, we should believe the Soviets when they say that U.S. BMD research and deployment would lead them to seek and deploy more offensive weapons and countermeasures rather than to agree to offensive reductions. Negotiations offer a better chance of reducing the net Soviet offensive threat to the United States than does ballistic missile defense. Whatever value SDI does have in encouraging arms control can best be realized if we agree to constraints on BMD technology development, for example by clarifying or extending provisions in the ABM Treaty, in exchange for Soviet agreement to deep cuts in offensive forces.

• Over the longer term, the best hope for avoiding nuclear war lies not in new kinds of military strategy or technology, but rather in maintaining a stable balance of invulnerable retaliatory forces until the political relationship between the two superpowers can be considerably improved.

ALTERNATIVE BMD RESEARCH PROGRAMS

The issues facing Congress in the near term concern the U.S. research program on technologies for strategic defense. There is general agreement that these technologies merit investigation. Support for BMD research, however, does not necessarily imply support for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Possible BMD research programs can differ greatly from the SDI in emphasis, direction, and level of effort. Moreover, research programs having different perceived and intended purposes — even if they have similar technical content — can have very different consequences.

Decisions to be made by Congress this year and in the years to come will have a major impact in either ratifying or re-directing major changes which have been initiated in the U.S. BMD research program and in U.S. arms control policy by President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative:

Urgency. — Research under the SDI is intended to proceed at a "technology-limited" pace to permit a decision to be made at the earliest possible date on whether to enter full-scale engineering development; entering such development would clearly be inconsistent with ABM Treaty constraints. The pre-SDI program had no such mandate for an early decision on maintaining or abandoning the ABM Treaty.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Strategic Defenses by Princeton University Press. Copyright © 1986 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Foreword, pg. viii
• Contents, pg. ix
• Office of Technology Assessment, pg. x
• Chapter 1. Executive Summary, pg. 1
• Chapter 2. Introduction, pg. 37
• Chapter 3. Ballistic Missile Defense Then and Now, pg. 43
• Chapter 4. Deterrence, U.S. Nuclear Strategy, and BMD, pg. 65
• Chapter 5. BMD Capabilities and the Strategic Balance, pg. 91
• Chapter 6. Crisis Stability, Arms Race Stability, and Arms Control Issues, pg. 117
• Chapter 7. Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies, pg. 137
• Chapter 8. Feasibility, pg. 195
• Chapter 9. Alternative Future Scenarios, pg. 219
• Chapter 10. Alternative R&D Programs, pg. 237
• Appendix A. Ballistic Missile Defense and the ABM Treaty, pg. 263
• Appendix B. Texts of the 1972 ABM Treaty, Its Agreed Interpretations, and Its 1976 Protocol, pg. 272
• Appendix C. Effects of BMD Deployment on Existing Arms Control Treaties, pg. 283
• Appendix D. Defense Requirements for Assured Survival, pg. 285
• Appendix E. Defense Capability Levels and U.S. Strategy Choices, pg. 290
• Appendix F. BMD and the Military R&D Budget, pg. 292
• Appendix G. Studies of the High Frontier Global Ballistic Missile Defense I, pg. 294
• Appendix H. Excerpts From Statements on BMD by Reagan Administration Officials, pg. 297
• Appendix I. List of Reagan Administration Statements on BMD, pg. 308
• Appendix J. Articles by Critics of the Strategic Defense Initiative, pg. 310
• Appendix K. Excerpts From Soviet Statements on BMD, pg. 312
• Appendix L. References on Strategic Nuclear Policy, pg. 316
• Appendix M. References on Soviet Strategic Policy, pg. 320
• Appendix N. Glossary of Acronyms and Terms, pg. 321
• Front matter 2, pg. i
• Foreword, pg. iii
• Glossary of Acronyms and Terms, pg. iv
• Contents, pg. x
• Chapter 1. Executive Summary, pg. 1
• Chapter 2. Introduction, pg. 23
• Chapter 3. MILSATs, ASATs, and National Security, pg. 31
• Chapter 4. ASAT Capabilities and Countermeasures, pg. 47
• Chapter 5. ASAT Arms Control: History, pg. 89
• Chapter 6. ASAT Arms Control: Options, pg. 103
• Chapter 7. Comparative Evaluation of ASAT Policy Options, pg. 123
• Appendix A. Soviet Draft Treaty on the Prohibition of the Use of Force in Outer Space and From Space Against the Earth, pg. 143