LIMITATIONS ON ASAT

Turning to ASAT, it is important to recognize that ASAT is a much simpler problem than ABM defenses that operate above the atmosphere (exoatmospheric ABM). This is because the ASAT targets are much fewer and generally more vulnerable and easier to discriminate than are those that must be destroyed by a strategic defense. Moreover they are predictable both in their position and time, they are not easily replaced, and they have communication and control links up and back from earth that can be attacked. Thus any exoatmospheric ABM will have an ASAT capability.

The significance of ASAT for strategic defense lies in the threat it poses against the space platforms of the ABM, in particular against the warning, acquisition and battle management sensors. On the other hand, the significance of the strategic defense initiative for ASAT is that it will spur technical developments that, inevitably, will be threatening to the critical communication and early warning satellite links on which a ballistic missile defense must rely. This presents an unavoidable dilemma: ASAT threatens ABM, but ABM developments contribute to ASAT. Furthermore it will be difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish R&D component testing and technology demonstrations for ABM from similar activities for ASAT. Thus it is very likely to prove to be impractical to negotiate ASAT limitations with the Soviet Union if the strategic defense initiative proceeds.

I strongly disagree with the Administration's conclusion 5 that it would not be "productive to engage in formal international negotiations" on ASAT arms control at this time, and I support Senate efforts calling for the United States to return to the negotiating table on ASAT. The negotiations will be tough, and U.S. concerns about verification and the potential for treaty breakout raise serious and important issues. But as Senator Pressler said on January 30, 1984 in his remarks to the "Workshop on Arms Control in Space" organized by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, "The ASAT problem is . . . only the forward edge of a potentially ominous trend in the military uses of space." This makes it all the more urgent to pursue serious negotiations in a timely fashion.

The Administration position emphasizes the potential vulnerability of the highvalue U.S. satellite platforms to ASAT activities that the Soviets might undertake in violation of treaty provisions. From a technical point of view, that is hardly the place for the United States to give primary emphasis to its concerns. There are appropriate actions that the United States should initiate to enhance security of our satellites against the threat of hostile action, and to improve the ability to monitor compliance with ASAT restraints. However, it is generally much more difficult and expensive to go after satellite platforms in space rather than to destroy, damage, or otherwise interfere with the few large and relatively vulnerable ground stations. The electromagnetic links of the satellites to ground are also much more vulnerable to disruption-except in the case of the most advanced technology.

Given the operational difficulties and the high energy requirements, it will be years before a practical and reliable ASAT that depends on intercept and destruction of space platforms will exist, capable of competing with the alternative means available to the Soviet Union for destroying the effectiveness of these systems as mentioned above. In making this statement I include the currently existing and very modest Soviet orbital intercept capability. Now is the time-before it is too late-to start and pursue with urgency the negotiating effort to head off such threats that would be counter to U.S. interests. It is also the time to redress potential near-term threats by improving the survivability of our satellite ground stations and by making our communication links to space more jam-proof.

I believe it is strongly in the national security interest of the United States to enter into prompt and vigorous negotiations for balanced and verifiable ASAT limits. U.S. satellites for early warning, intelligence, and military communications are of great importance to our security and to reducing the risk of war-especially in view of the nature of the United States as a sea power with extensive, vital overseas interests and commitments, and in view of the tightly closed character of the society of our principal military adversary, the Soviet Union. We should therefore seek ASAT Treaty restraints that improve their survivability. A very useful and practical first step, en route to more comprehensive restraints that may be more difficult to achieve, would be to negotiate a ban on testing. I support Senate Joint Resolution 129 declaring “an immediate mutual and verifiable moratorium of limit

4 Initially against satellites in low-earth orbits at altitudes below 1,000 kilometers, and eventually up to synchronous orbit altitudes of 40,000 kilometers.

5 In its Report to the Congress on U.S. Policy on ASAT Arms Control (Mar. 31, 1984).

ed duration on the testing in space of antisatellite_weapons," and calling for immediate resumption of negotiations toward a comprehensive verifiable treaty limiting ASAT.

CONCLUSION

I see no prospect today of finding a technological fix to our perilous strategic situation with nuclear weapons. The path to a more secure world must be paved, at its start and for a long distance en route, with constructive efforts at understanding and negotiating toward reducing their threat. This makes it all the more important for us to pursue effective arms control with the Soviet Union, while simultaneously maintaining stable and secure deterrent forces. The absence of Soviet space-based and space-directed weapons-both ABM and ASAT-does a lot more for our deterrence and strategic stability than would the existence of such U.S. weapons.

While working toward a long-term goal of making nuclear weapons obsolete, a goal of considerable merit, we must also use a mixture of diplomatic and defense measures to work to ensure that the nuclear weapons are never used. For the present, I believe this calls for reaffirming the basic concepts of the United StatesSoviet strategic relationship as reflected in the ABM Treaty. It also calls for us to make a determined effort-through sensible program restraints as well as through negotiations—to keep space from being one more dimension of unnecessary weapons competition between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Senator PRESSLER. Thank you.

Dr. Carnesale.

STATEMENT OF ALBERT CARNESALE, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY AND ACADEMIC DEAN, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (Re

sumed)

Mr. CARNESALE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this opportunity to express my views on the implications of ASAT weapons and the Strategic Defense Initiative. I would like to focus on the relationship between the two.

Strategic defense is not a new idea. Invulnerability has always been preferred to vulnerability, and all the more so in the nuclear age. So President Reagan's speech of March 23, 1983, understandably appeals to all of us. The problem is that we have no idea of how to achieve the goal of invulnerability, or anything close to it. And that has been the situation for a long time.

So what is new in the area of strategic weapons? I will focus particularly on the question of defense against ballistic missiles.

One of the things that is new is the acronym. We have gone from ABM to BMD to ĎABM to SDI. But it is not only the acronym that has changed. There have been some changes, as Professor Drell pointed out, in the technology of conventional systems using radars and interceptors and launchers for them. Those things can not be built much smaller, more capable, and with much better data processing capability.

Exotic systems, the systems using things like lasers or particle beams or other forms of directed energy, were long gleams in the defense scientists' eyes. They still are largely gleams in those eyes, although the gleams are coming a bit more sharply into focus.

There is some exciting science, but as I indicated earlier, some frightening engineering from the point of view of actually trying to make a workable weapons system. What we have found are some sexier new ways to shoot down a single reentry vehicle or a single missile. We have known how to do that for decades. The problem was not whether you could shoot down a bullet with a bullet. We

knew how to do that. The question was whether you could shoot down thousands of bullets simultaneously. Some of the bullets look like bullets, some do not, some you might not be able to see at all, and some might be maneuvering bullets. That remains the tough part of the defense problem.

The problem was and is with numbers and with countermeasures. It is not a question of whether we have a new, cute way to destroy a reentry vehicle or a missile in flight.

There have also been advances in the threat facing ballistic missile defenses. I get concerned when people get excited about a potential defense that would have worked against the Soviet missile force of 1970. The question is whether the United States will develop a defense that could deal with the Soviet threat that we will face when the defense is ready.

What is this ballistic missile defense supposed to do? This too has changed with time, although the changes seem to be taking place more rapidly recently. When the idea was first thought of, people had in mind a thick nationwide defense of the population. That wasn't achievable, so people talked about a thin defense of the Nation.

Then even that did not look so promising, so we switched to a defense against Chinese ICBM's, which was a little easier because they did not have any. That was a distinct advantage.

Then came the MX. We started to think about a defense only of those ballistic missiles in their Densepack configuration. With the President's speech, we returned to something which certainly sounded like a thick, nationwide defense. Now we seem to be talking about a thin defense that just makes the other side's attack more complicated.

So as to the question of what is the mission of a ballistic missile defense system, the answer seems to depend not only upon who is answering, but when.

Again I would mention the threat. When the United States had its ABM debate last time, the threat was less than 2,000 Soviet reentry vehicles. It is now 7,500 or so, and we are talking about a defense that would not be in place until beyond the year 2000.

When we talk about defenses, we should not be talking about last year's threat or even today's threat; it should be the future threat.

On the political side, we have moved from a cold war, to a period of détente, to a period of disappointment, and back to a cold war. We moved from Vietnam, through the post-Vietnam phase, to what might be the post-Grenada phase. These changes affect our thinking about strategic defense. And the Strategic Defense Initiative is the President's initiative, and that makes it different than any other kind of initiative.

By far the most important change since the last debate over ABM is the existence of the ABM Treaty. While I will not go through all the provisions of the ABM Treaty-that is not necessary-it is worth reminding ourselves of a few that are particularly relevant to the Strategic Defense Initiative.

First, the ABM Treaty makes clear that there is to be no nationwide defense. That is simply prohibited. This principle appears in the first article of the treaty.

Second, the treaty defines an ABM system in terms of capabilities. An ABM system is a system for countering strategic ballistic missiles or their elements in flight trajectory. An ABM system is anything that can do that, regardless of what you call it, whether star wars or gizelstops or wizzledus. If it can counter strategic ballistic missiles, or their elements in flight trajectory, it is an ABM system and it is covered by the treaty.

Third, the treaty prohibits development, testing, or deployment of any strategic ballistic missile defense systems or components other than fixed land-based ones. It says that explicitly, there are to be no space-based systems or components.

Finally, with regard to systems based on lasers or particle beams or other exotic technologies, there is to be no deployment of them at all, not even on the ground, not at all. To permit deployment of such systems would require amendment of the treaty.

I will now discuss briefly some relationships between ballistic missile defense and ASAT. Professor Drell covered much of what I would have mentioned.

The capabilities required for boost phase ballistic missile defense overlap greatly with those required for antisatellite warfare. And again, we should not focus solely on cute technologies. As one of my colleagues at MIT, Jack Ruina, is prone to remind us, we have long known how to destroy a ballistic missile in early boost phase. You could do it with rocks, or with a machinegun. The problem is countermeasures. The Soviets are not likely to allow us to have a machinegun standing in front of each of their launch silos. But if we could do that, we could destroy those missiles.

So the problem is not how do you destroy one, the problem is how do you destroy one against a noncooperative adversary? Almost all of the concepts being discussed require either space basing or something like a popup system. They also require directed energy, or something else that moves at the speed of light.

Such systems are clearly prohibited by the ABM Treaty. You cannot even devlop such a system yet alone test it or deploy it. And, as was mentioned earlier, such a system would likely be vulnerable to ASAT.

Midcourse ballistic missile defense also has a great deal of overlap with ASAT. Indeed, the miniature vehicle that sits astride the F-15 aircraft as part of our advanced ASAT system was developed as part of a midcourse ballistic missile defense system.

Terminal ballistic missile defense overlaps least with ASAT. It is interesting to note, however, that the current controversy with the Soviet Union over the radar in central Siberia may stem from this overlap. The United States maintains that the radar looks an awful lot like an ABM radar or an early warning radar. The Soviets maintain it is a space track radar. Á space track radar could have very useful antisatellite capabilities. Even at the terminal defense level, ABM and ASAT capabilities overlap.

The ABM Treaty inhibits, but certainly does not preclude, antisatellite capabilities. The ASAT task is the simpler one. So even if you do away with ABM completely, you may not be able to constrain ASAT completely. Arms control agreements governing ASAT would serve to reinforce the ABM Treaty.

Without any ABM Treaty or similar constraints on ABM systems, ASAT would be unlimited completely. That bodes ill for any strategic defense system to be deployed in space.

In response to Senator Tsongas' earlier question about the connections between star wars and stability, I used this example: Suppose we and the Soviets both had star wars systems deployed in space. The incentive to strike first against the other fellow's star wars satellites would be great because you could simultaneously accomplish two goals. One, you render his homeland vulnerable to your offensive forces, and two, you keep your homeland invulnerable to his offensive forces. You can hardly beat that. If you do not go first, and he does, the situation would be reversed. The effect on stability would be likely to be catastrophic.

Finally, I offer some thoughts on what to do. First among the things to do is to avoid the fallacy of the last move. Do not even think in terms of the United States alone having a strategic defense. Such a situation clearly would be desirable. We would all like it. It is not a realistic alternative, despite the fact that it may be preferable. Either both sides are going to have strategic defenses or neither side is going to have them. If both sides have them, we have all the problems of penetrating a Soviet defense that does not now exist and is prohibitted by the ABM Treaty.

There is another aspect of the fallacy of the last move. We must recognize that any defense would face a reactive threat. A defense system to be deployed 30 years from now that could deal effectively with the SS-18 of 1984 is not very comforting.

Second under what to do relates to Soviet ballistic missile defense. If we are worried about Soviet ballistic missiles defense, then we should be strengthening the ABM Treaty with limitations on ASAT, on antitactical ballistic missiles, and on large phased array radars. We should be developing far more actively penetration aids for our offensive missiles, and perhaps deploying some, and we should be working harder on shortening the leadtime for deployment of conventional ballistic missile defense to maintain Soviet interest in the ABM Treaty.

Third, if we are concerned about Soviet antisatellite capability, we should be taking appropriate countermeasures, such as hardening our satellites, making them able to maneuver, providing spares, or as I indicated, negotiating arms control agreements to reduce that threat. Star wars does not reduce the vulnerability of American satellites.

Fourth, we should examine BMD systems, with the emphasis on "systems," and try to identify any fatal flaws they might have. I would pursue a strategic defense initiative that is a research program consistent with the ABM Treaty. Its objectives would be to hedge against Soviet accomplishments in this area, and second, to move toward the possible but unlikely goal of eventually achieving a world that is dominated by defenses rather than offense.

Fifth, I would continue our antisatellite programs unless and until an ASAT arms control agreement were reached. But I would beware not to undercut the ABM Treaty.

In closing, I note again that invulnerability is attractive, but not available. Deterrence as we know it now is a fragile shield, but it is the only one we have. A safer world would be more desirable, but