Dr. Robert Jastrow
Author, How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete

FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 1986

The United States and the USSR both have large arsenals of strategic weapons. When the ABM and SALT Treaties were signed in 1972, the U.S. had about 3000 and the Soviet Union had about 1500. Those treaties were designed to tamp down further growth of the arsenals, but they were not successful. Today, both sides have about 10,000 strategic weapons.

The equal number of weapons on both sides conceals an asymmetry in the nature of the two arsenals, which is important to the discussion of SDI and the current negotiations.

First-Strike Capability
The essence of first strike is the thought that you will attack, surprise, and cripple the adversary's retaliatory power. We do not have enough accurate warheads to put more than a dent in the top Soviet list of targets. The Soviets have enough to take out all the important military sights in the American installation. Therefore, on paper, they have a first-strike capability.

Of our warheads, about 3000 are carried by air-breaching vehicles - bombs, bombers, cruise missiles - and take six to 12 hours to reach their target. There is no element of surprise when the adversary has 12 hours of warning.

The bulk of our arsenal is in submarine missiles. They are fast to respond, but inaccurate because a submerged submarine does not know exactly where it is in the ocean, or the universe. If you don't know where the missile is when it goes up, you don't know exactly where it will be when it comes down. The result is to degrade the accuracy from a couple of hundred yards to 400 to 600 yards. This factor of two inaccuracy diminishes the first-strike potential and diminishes the effective destructive power by a factor of eight.

Fourth-Generation Missiles
Most of the Soviet arsenal was built in the 1970s, after the SALT Treaty was signed, and are fourth-generation Soviet missiles.

We have not put a new missile in the field since 1970. In that time, the Soviet Union has put into the field 13 new missiles and modifications of existing missiles. They have long since passed the limit necessary to deter the United States from attacking the Soviet Union in an unprovoked nuclear assault.

The SS-25 is a small missile about the size of the Minuteman; the SS-24 is the same size as our MX; the SS-26, still in development and testing, is bigger than the biggest missile in the world; the SS-27 is somewhat larger than the MX; the SS-28 is an improved SS-20. We have nothing like the SS-20 in the European, Japanese, or Middle-Eastern theaters.

Mobile Missiles
The SS-24 and 25 are mobile missiles. The SS-25 can be carried on the back of a truck, the SS-24 can be carried in a railway car.

The mobility of these missiles makes a mockery of any arms control proposal. The language of arms control proposals is based on the assumption that missiles sit in silos. And silos can be counted - you can't move them. But a mobile missile can be hidden, moved around the country. It is impossible to verify an arms control proposal of a regime in which the mobile missile is an important element of its weaponry.

Soviet Military Spending
The Soviets spend about one-tenth of their military budget on strategic weapons - $30 billion to $40 billion per year. They also spend one-tenth on strategic defense, which includes civil, air, and missile defense. Given that civil and air defense are important to blunt a retaliatory blow, the SDI part of that $40 billion is roughly $25 billion per year. That is 10 times what our Congress has chosen to give General Abrahamson for managing the SDI program.

People in this country talk as if the option to pass from offensive to defensive deterrence is one that rests on the scientists and the managers of this country; that is not so. Either we proceed with SDI, at full vigor and move toward deployment by the mid-1990s, or the Soviets will have an effective missile defense program in the 1990s, and we will have none. That would be a perilous circumstance for this nation to be in.

From Defense to Offense
The Soviet Union, by the terms of the ABM Treaty, is allowed 100 interceptors around Moscow. They recently upgraded that system to a two-layer defense with high speed and high acceleration rockets and new radars. According to the CIA, the production line can easily be used to turn out the ingredients of a nationwide ABM defense for the Soviet Union which could be in place in the early 1990s.

The Soviets have built six huge radars that are roughly four times the area and 100 times the power of our early warning radars that are of the same general technical type.

Radar that powerful and that large has one clear use: battle management of a system for shooting down attacking missiles. And they are almost certainly battle management radars for a to-be-deployed Soviet ABM system.

The Soviets have also been observed to experiment with, and successfully use, air defense missiles - they have a capability for shooting down tactical and strategic ballistic missiles.

Smart Bullets and Puff Motors
When Reagan came into office, his technical advisor told him we can do things today to defend against missiles that we could not do 15 or 20 years ago when the ABM Treaty was under discussion.

The difference is the computer. You CAN now put computer brains into a chunk of metal to make what is called a "smart bullet" which has a heat-seeking sensor or radar detector that tells it where the incoming missile is. The brains fire tiny puff-motors - little rockets on the side of this thing - and steer it into the course of the missile.

That concept was tested with 100 percent effectiveness and success in June, 1984, using a Lockheed-built interceptor by the Army and the Air Force. A simulated Soviet warhead at a height of 100 miles was shot down by a smart bullet launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base in a bulls-eye collision that pulverized both objects.

Thus, you don't need nuclear weapons for interception. You don't even need TNT. All you have to do is hit it. And this is possible with a computer brain inside the smart bullet. This is a defense we could go to work on now and have in place fairly soon.

Thus, the smart bullet is of the here and now. We could begin deployment in the early 1990s. We could have limited capability in the mid-1990s, full operational capability in the late 1990s. That would give us 90 percent effective defense in two layers: one in space over the Soviet Union, the other over our own territory to catch warheads that have leaked through the first layer.

One Hundred Percent Protection
But what good is 90 percent effectiveness if one Soviet warhead could destroy New York or San Francisco?

If the Soviet General knows 90 percent of his warheads will fail to reach their targets, he knows he cannot hope to cripple U.S. retaliatory power. He knows that within 60 minutes after he issues the attack order, the United States will respond, and his own homeland will lie in smoking ruins.

He will not order an attack under those circumstances. The combination of effective retaliation and a fairly effective defense is an invulnerable deterrent. And so it turns out that 90 percent effective defense, contrary to opinions you hear expressed, gives 100 percent protection to the American people. The president's concern is to retire the nuclear menace; we cannot solve all the problems but we can try using the new technology to rid us of the nuclear menace that threatens us and the world.

The administration has stated clearly that there is no intent to gain military superiority. When we have an effective defense system in place on both sides - phased in incrementally, in a carefully timed, parallel, and simultaneous deployment, and regulated by tight treaties on defensive arms, then nuclear weapons will be obsolete. They will be too expensive to build.

Then we can say "thank you" to those who first created the nuclear weapon, and through technical advances, have given us the means for deliverance from it.

Answers to Written Questions from the Floor:

Q. Given the fact that one of our most important priorities should be defense of our country, why hasn't the military and the public chosen to focus on this as was done when the Russians were first into space with Sputnik?

A. There has not been a clear perception of the threat to the security of this nation posed by the asymmetry of arsenals I've described. There is little knowledge that the Soviet Union is in the middle of a massive program of ballistic missile, civil, and air defense. Because the threat is not apparent, congressmen and their constituents are not worried.

Q. Since most experts agree the 1972 ABM Treaty has been the most important agreement in controlling the nuclear arms race, and since SDI must necessarily abrogate the Treaty, is not SDI destabilizing?

A. If this nation had the means for research and deployment of a defense against an adversary's missiles unilaterally, one could say, theoretically, it's a destabilizing proposition. I say theoretically because that requires the U.S. being capable of launching an unprovoked nuclear attack on the Soviet Union; I do not believe that is possible in our political system. Since the Soviet Union is in the midst of a massive program of building its own defenses and Star Wars research, I do not think it is destabilizing.

Q. How far along is the Soviet Union in building an SDI system?

A. The Soviets are farther along in laser weaponry. They have a massive laser in place in south central Siberia with the capability of frying our satellites. In computer technology, we may be somewhat ahead of them, but not very much.

Q. There are 40-pound nuclear devices that could easily be delivered to this country in a backpack. We have open borders and an essentially undefended coastline. Oughtn't this vulnerability be addressed before the more sophisticated and debatable Star Wars program?

A. This is Carl Sagan's favorite "bomb-in-a-bail-of-marijuana" hypothesis. The most stressing danger the U.S. confronts today resides in Soviet warheads that can reach this country in 30 minutes, each one with the power of half a million tons of TNT. When we have licked that problem, and our technologists are well on the way of doing it, we can turn to sealing up our borders.

Q. How can satellite battle stations be made safe from external attack? If they are vulnerable, does that not negate the entire SDI idea?

A. Five methods of defense are available for protection of these satellites: 1) armor or shielding; 2) guns designed to shoot down potential threats including missiles; 3) decoys; 4) proliferation of silent spares to take over if a satellite is damaged; 5) maneuverability which enables the satellite to step aside if it sees an intercepting missile heading in its direction.

Q. Computer software for SDI will be larger and more complex than anything yet produced. Large software systems in operation today have chronic problems because of software bugs even after years of testing and use. The software for SDI can never be fully tested and must work correctly the first time it is needed. How do you respond to this fundamental, technical obstacle?

A. The AT&T system is considerably longer and more complex. And if you say answering the telephone is different from shooting down a missile, I say not so, not to the software. It will be built like the human brain - redundant, decentralized, and the system itself will never crash. That will cost 20 percent in effectiveness and in dollars, but in return you gain near invulnerability.

Q. Moscow has in place an anti-ballistic missile system which is apparently in compliance with SALT. Why don't we?

A. We dismantled our system during the Nixon administration. It was felt then that it wasn't worth the trouble because it was too vulnerable and too ineffective. Whatever the technical situation was at that time.