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PARTISAN REVIEW
is not a one-man race, this is a two-man race . It is not productive to
ask whether we go whole hog and have everything, which we realis–
tically can't afford and which isn't perfect , or whether we turn our
backs on the whole subject, which also doesn't seem feasible given
the real world . Let me ask each of our discussants if they can ap–
proach it from the standpoint of what in their views are the feasible
realistic first-step procedures we should be exploring with a view to–
ward achieving the goal- the goal is safety, the goal is some kind of
international accommodation, the goal is not to win, but to keep from
losing. Would this be a fruitful line of discussion?
GEORGE CHAPLINE: You can discuss the perhaps too narrow
question from the point of view of whether a defense against ballistic
missiles is possible or not, and for that narrow question the Strategic
Defense Initiative
is
pursuing some promising technological avenues.
Th~
first thing I would say that can be done realistically is to develop
target tracking and acquisition systems for ballistic missiles. Those
are satellite-based systems that can look and see ballistic missiles dur–
ing their boost phase. There's actually a pinpoint where the rocket
sees the post-boost vehicles, that is, the buses that come off the
booster rocket before the warheads are deployed. And, then, to de–
velop systems which will try to pick out the
warh~ads
from the enor–
mous number of decoys that Mr. Pike alluded to. I'd say that we're
far along on developing feasible technologies for locating booster
rockets and post-boost vehicles. The problem of picking out the war–
head from the decoys is enormously difficult and a number of ideas
are being discussed, but in my view we're a long way from a good
solution to that problem. The best hope for SDI now lies with the
ground-based free-electron laser. There's absolutely no doubt that
lasers of sufficient power and brightness can be built within about
ten years which will be capable of reaching the Soviet rockets during
boost phase. The main problems with that in my opinion have to do
with the vulnerability and cost of the mirrors . I might mention , par–
enthetically, that the SDI response to this is not to try and protect
the mirrors so much as to try to hide them. The whole question of
vulnerability of space assets of course is something which the critics
have quite rightfully emphasized, and is a serious problem, but on
the other hand, a little reflection shows that you can't destroy some–
thing unless you can find it. There is the opportunity the SDr sees
for space-based defense systems. The second possibility for effectively
directed energy weapons is the x-ray laser. But it's not at all clear
