536
PARTISAN REVIEW
of Space Policy for the Federation of American Scientists, in Wash–
ington, D.C.
JOHN PIKE: The question that most people usually ask about Stra–
tegic Defense Initiative is, "Will it work?" And that question can be
asked in at least three different ways . You can ask, "Will it work at
the gadget level? Can we build the individual devices that will go
into a ballistic missile defense system?" You can ask, "Will it work as
a system? Can we tie all of those gadgets together into a system that
will cohere, and can we make that system function in the face of what
the Soviets might do to degrade the effectiveness of the system." And
you can ask, "Will it work as a strategy, as a national security policy,
that makes sense militarily, and whether the advantages of pursuing
this policy outweigh the disadvantages and problems of pursuing the
policy." One of the problems in the debate over the SDI is that there
has been a tendency to equate workability at the gadget level with
workability as a strategy, to assume that if we demonstrate a rocket
that can intercept a warhead, or a laser that can shoot down a missile,
then Star Wars must necessarily be a good national security policy.
Will it work at the gadget level? Probably yes. A lot of gadgets
that have been debated over the last three years probably won't work,
probably don't make a great deal of sense. There's increasing con–
vergence between the SDI organization and the critics, that many of
the technologies we criticized early on don't look very attractive. You
used to hear a lot of talk about chemical lasers in space, or rail-guns
or imaging sensors, and you no longer hear very much about them
because the technical deficiencies the critics identified two and a half
years ago in recent months have been acknowledged by SDI. It's also
important to recognize that at the gadget level, there aren't any mir–
acle weapons. They obey the laws of physics, and these impose some
limitations on what the weapons can and cannot do. For instance,
many of these weapons perform fairly well in the vacuum of space,
but when they run into the atmosphere, they don't do so well. And
finally, when you're talking about a gadget that today is sort of in the
advanced-artist-concept stage, today's estimations about how long
it's going to take to build the first one, how much it's going to cost,
and how well it's going to work are understandably optimistic, be–
cause these things always take longer, cost more, and don't work
quite as well as the designer promised. But, I would stipulate that
the gadgets that would go into the SDI probably can be built. I think
it's clear we can hit a bullet with a bullet. The real question about
Star Wars , though, is not hitting a bullet with a bullet, it's stopping a
