SDI CONCEPTS

Chairman HATFIELD. The hearing will come to order.

All right, General Abrahamson, will you please continue your presentation.

Senator JOHNSTON. May I ask you one thing about the slide you had up there?

General ABRAHAMSON. Sure.

Senator JOHNSTON. The neutral particle beam, what is it? What do you envision as the power source for that?

General ABRAHAMSON. There are several possible power sources. It will take a large amount of power. Right now we have an operating version of this called White Horse, but it is an experimental version that is in a laboratory.

It uses some very, very large radio frequency generators and electrical power that is available to the base. In a space application of such a weapon, we would have to be able to have probably an SP-100 or even a multimegawatt type of system.

Senator JOHNSTON. SP-100 is what?

General ABRAHAMSON. SP-100 is a nuclear reactor that we are developing jointly with the Department of Energy.

Senator JOHNSTON. How many megawatts?

General ABRAHAMSON. Well, we think it can burst-it is still a little unknown, but we are aiming for going up to 300 kilowatts, sir. That is enough to be able to have a high level of average power but it is not enough to conduct a [deleted].

Senator JOHNSTON. You need multimegawatts for that.

General ABRAHAMSON. You really need multimegawatts. So, since it can only be used for just a few minutes in any one particular orbit, you either store that energy mechanically, with capacitors, or some other device. If multimegawatt power comes along quickly, then we would like to be able to use that. But right now, multimegawatt power is downstream quite a ways. So we are looking at various energy storage devices to combine with the lower average power SP-100.

Senator JOHNSTON. Do you think the SP-100 would work with storage?

General ABRAHAMSON. Yes, sir; otherwise, I wouldn't be putting SDI money into it.

Senator JOHNSTON. How heavy would SP-100 be?

General ABRAHAMSON. For a 300-kilowatt SP-100 reactor, we are estimating a weight of 8,000 kilograms.

Senator JOHNSTON. It is a big thing, isn't it?

General ABRAHAMSON. Oh, yes, sir. At this point, our estimate is maybe two shuttle loads in terms of size and volume, not in weight, but it is a very large device.

I want to emphasize that these are things that are in the DOD budget or in the DOE budget; if they are in the DOD budget they are reimbursable and the money comes through that payback route to obtain the use of the very fine talent at Los Alamos.

Senator JOHNSTON. How about free electron laser? It takes the same order of magnitude of power of neutral particle beams, doesn't it?

General ABRAHAMSON. Yes, sir; it is a very high powered device. Senator JOHNSTON. There is no advantage in one over the other as far as power?

General ABRAHAMSON. They are very different, but not in terms of power.

Senator JOHNSTON. Electricity.

General ABRAHAMSON. It is significant. They are both fairly low efficiency devices. It is a little unknown how far it can come out, but perhaps less than 10-percent efficiency.

General ABRAHAMSON. Now in contrast to that, here are some of the programs at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Once again, you can see the various kinds of activities that are reimbursable or not reimbur sable.

Nuclear-directed energy research is an area, of course, that has become controversial. The x-ray laser, a third-generation nuclear weapon, was first seen in the Soviet literature quite early. Lt. Col. Rich Davis will give you some evidence of what we know about Soviet efforts in xray laser technology.

The concept of the x-ray laser is to use a nuclear explosion to get very hard radiation out quickly and then in just a few nanoseconds you cause a lasing material to lase when it is exposed to that radiation. It gives out a big pulse of laser energy that can be directed to boosters as they are coming out of the upper atmosphere. By the way, it can't penetrate the surface or the atmosphere at all.

Senator JOHNSTON. You have had experiments on this [deleted].
General ABRAHAMSON. [Deleted.]

Examples of some SDI reimbursable programs include the system analysis work done at Livermore, Sandia, and Los Alamos.

The free electron laser, which is the induction linac version, has made great progress. Based on its success, not only in an integrated experiment but also in components, we are going ahead with the groundbased free electron laser as the primary and what we believe will be the first of our large laser systems, or directed-energy systems, that might be useful for SDI in the future.

SDI FUNDING AT THE NATIONAL LABORATORIES

General ABRAHAMSON. To get an understanding of the order of magnitude of moneys. This is an estimate. If you would like to comment on it, please do, but I think it is a good estimate, but it varies slightly as you go through the year.

Here you can see the comparison in terms of the amount of reimbursable funding that we are putting back into those laboratories. Primarily, those three-Sandia, Livermore, and Los Alamos.

General ABRAHAMSON. This slide emphasizes the policy of doing nuclear research. I think it is a logical policy. It is the same policy that drives us, on the one hand, to build lasers, and on the other hand to experiment with laser armor. If it were quite clear that laser armor could be built and would not be effective, then it would be wrong for me or foolish for me to come forward with a recommendation that the laser would be the right weapon to destroy a ballistic missile.

The same thing here. If third-generation weapons are beginning to be effective or could be in the future, we need to see if they could use them against us for our space defense systems, for other space systems, or our strategic warning system, or could they be used against our strategic forces in a Soviet version of SDI?

Obviously, if you are examining that you just naturally take a look at it in terms of, can it be used for our system and would it be of some significant advantage?

That does not take away from the objective that the President has laid out. He has said, "Let's see if we can make this nonnuclear." The large majority of the money is going into trying to make it nonnuclear. However, obviously, we are not trying to do it in a closed mind fashion. We are trying to look at it to see if there are those advantages.

NUCLEAR-DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS

The only thing that I would like to say is that there are really several basic areas of tests. I talked to you briefly about the x-ray laser. [Deleted.]

The hypervelocity pellet is the one that I mentioned at Los Alamos which is in the same category, and then we are doing work in the microwaves, particle beams, and an optical laser [deleted].

That is the one that I would like to have Lieutenant Colonel Davis talk to you about. I think this, at least, gives you some understanding of a generalized schedule where we are trying to be able to be in a position to say, "Could they use these effectively against us?" or "Could we, or should we, employ them in an SDI system?"

Senator JOHNSTON. May I ask about the hypervelocity pellets?
General ABRAHAMSON. [Deleted.]

Senator JOHNSTON. Why would you use the nuclear weapon? [Deleted.]

General ABRAHAMSON. Yes, sir. [Deleted.]

Senator JOHNSTON. Then the dust looks kind of like the shotgun effect.

General ABRAHAMSON. Yes, sir; the right way to think about it is that it is a shotgun.

Senator JOHNSTON. So it covers a big area?

General ABRAHAMSON. That still depends on how effective we can make this. [Deleted.]

Senator JOHNSTON. Thank you.

Chairman HATFIELD. Does that complete your statement?

General ABRAHAMSON. I would like to introduce Lieutenant Colonel Davis. I would like him to give you at least what we know about the Soviet side of the equivalent of the programs which I think would be valuable.

SOVIET CAPABILITIES

Colonel DAVIS. Sir, at the request of General Abrahamson, a small intelligence working group was formed with representatives from the DOE national laboratories, the Defense Intelligence Agency, CIA, and the SDI Office. With the caveat that all intelligence [deleted].