Systems Analyses and Battle Management:

This program has been divided into two technology projects. The Battle Management/Command, Control, and Communications technology project will develop the technologies necessary to allow eventual implementation of a highly responsive, ultra reliable, survivable, endurable and cost effective BM/C3 system for a lowleakage defense system. This BM/C3 system is expected to be quite complex and must operate reliably even in the presence of disturbances caused by nuclear effects or direct enemy attacks. This program seeks to (1) develop the tools, methods, and components necessary for development of the BM/C3 system, and (2) quantify the risk and cost of achieving such a BM/C3 system to control the complex, multi-tiered SDI system. The systems analyses project will provide overall SDI systems guidance to weapons, sensors, C3, and supporting technologies. Tasks include threat

analyses, mission analyses, concept formulation, system conceptual design, and subsystem requirements definition, system evaluation, and technology

assessment for all levels of a multi-tiered, lowleakage system.

Support Programs:

This program element funds a collection of essential efforts designed to provide timely answers to a variety of critical SDI support related questions. The Defensive Technologies Study (the report of the Fletcher panel) identified two areas that should receive priority attention in the SDI program. First, for each weapon concept under

consideration, we must develop the ability to scientifically predict the minimum energy that will be required, in a variety of engagement scenarios, to kill unhardened, retrofit hardened, and responsively hardened Soviet systems. These data will have a large effect on our choice of candidate system concepts. The feasibility of SDI may well hinge on the results of these efforts. The Lethality and Target Hardening project of the Support Programs effort is structured to provide these data.

Second, the ability of any deployed ballistic missile defense system to survive in the face of dedicated attack and to continue to function effectively must be established. The concepts,

technologies and tactics necessary to insure continued

system effectiveness will be defined and developed under the Survivability element of Support Programs. The output from this effort will be fed into all other elements of the SDI--particularly into the Systems Concepts and Analyses efforts.

Additionally, support programs will fund

development of the technologies necessary for improved space logistics capabilities. These include the advanced orbital transfer vehicle capabilities that SDI will likely require. We will also evaluate the technical feasibility and cost effectiveness of using extraterrestrial materials for certain SDI applications.

The

Many SDI system elements (weapons, sensors, etc.) will require large amounts of electrical power. Power and Power Conversion element of support programs will fund concept definition and technology development for multimegawatt power systems. This effort will fully exploit the technologies being developed in the joint NASA, DOE, DARPA SP-100 program. Both nuclear and non-nuclear systems and technologies will be

considered.

Question: It is my understanding that the Administration is characterizing the SDI program as a research program and that at the end of this five-year research program a decision would be made to deploy the strategic defense system.

If this is the case, how do you explain the 1984-88 five year Defense Guidance signed by Defense Secretary Weinberger which states U.S. plans to pursue

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It seems the decision has already been made by Defense Secretary Weinberger to proceed full scale ahead with this program.

Please comment on this apparent contradiction.

Answer: Since the initiation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in January of 1984, it has been structured as a research program to provide the information necessary for a future President and Congress to make formal decision on whether or not to proceed. There has been no change in the goals or objectives of the SDI.

APPENDIX 38

RESPONSES BY LIEUTENANT GENERAL ABRAHAMSON, STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE ORGANIZATION, TO ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MINORITY MEMBERS OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND SCIENTIFIC AFFAIRS

Question: What do you believe to be the major "illnesses" of the OTA study?

Answer: The OTA background paper by Dr. Ashton Carter provides a reasonably complete discussion of how some of the technologies being explored under the SDI work. It unfortunately is seriously flawed in several important ways:

The

1. Although Dr. Carter has told me that the report does not deal with the SDI, it has been inappropriately used by some to ascribe a negative verdict to the possibilities of strategic defense. report is misleading in that most readers would assume that that the "star wars" defenses which the report concludes are "so remote" are indeed the substance of the SDI. The SDI is a research program mandated by the President to develop future options for "increasing the contribution of defensive systems to U.S. and allied security". The SDI is most emphatically not "star wars."

2. Throughout Dr. Carter's report he repeatedly sited the requirement for more data to answer key uncertainties. Yet, he does not acknowledge the need for a research program, which is what SDI is, to provide this data and answer those uncertainties.

3. Our most serious objection is a technical one. Dr. Carter has presented an example "systems analysis" which is technically flawed and misleading. This analysis takes as its starting point inadequate technology levels. Proper defensive systems analyses do not presume specific technology levels, rather they have as their results the identification of the technology levels needed in order for defenses to become feasible. The latter approach was the basis of the Fletcher Study and is the basis of the SDI research program. Dr. Carter compounded this error in objective with mathematically incorrect analysis. His analytical error, which is unambiguously documented in a Los Alamos National Lab technical report, is akin to hiring a group of guards for a ten story building and placing them all on and confining them to the fifth · floor. Clearly, you will buy very little more protection by continuously adding guards to only one floor. The combination of these two errors misleads readers to believe that an unrealistically large number of systems is needed to perform any level of effective defense.

Question: To what extent did the OTA report overstate the number of space-based laser weapons needed · to destroy Soviet ballistic missiles?

Answer: Dr. Carter's analysis of the required number of laser battle stations was incorrect from two standpoints. First, he chose an unacceptably low performance level for the proposed laser "system." In general there is more to gain by having a smaller laser spot on the target than by putting more power into the laser beam. Dr. Carter's baseline choice had many suboptimum aspects. He shows that he understands this requirement where in his table 3.1 he points out that with a suitably brighter laser only 20-30 laser battle stations would be needed to do the job of several hundred to several thousand less capable lasers. technical difficulties of developing such brighter lasers are not terribly worse than the less optimum systems. Indeed, the SDI has as its technical requirements goal these higher brightness levels. Carter chooses to highlight the inadequate technology laser system in his hypothetical system architecture in section 7.

The

Yet

Dr. Carter's analysis is also flawed from a second standpoint. He first made the unrealistic assumption that all of the Soviet ICBMS would be in the same place. This drives the number of systems required up considerably. Secondly, he has used mathematically incorrect calculation of "absentee" ratio. This is the ratio of the total number of laser battle stations to the number needed over the Soviet Union at the moment of a simultaneous launch. The Los Alamos mathematical analysis of Carter's paper shows that he made an error of factor of 2.5 in number of satellites needed in his analysis in Section 7 of his paper.

Question: To what extent are OTA charges against the X-Ray laser concept flawed?

Answer:

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