Mr. Chairman, the fact is that we have sat here through the Haig era, and I remember discussions with him about getting the START talks going, and how long it took to get that to move; also during the Adelman period, when he said to us that he was going to show that he was a true disciple of arms control, and the months went on and on and on, and nothing happened.

History will not treat this administration kindly. There has been no progress on arms control.

What are we talking about today? It is not a treaty of some sort, but a new development-extending the arms race into outer space. Historians do not care about great communicators. They care about results. I think history will be the final arbiter of this kind of policy, assuming there are any historians left to write it.

In the last decade, there used to be a great deal of discussion by sociologists as to whether there was any such thing as a bad boy. Here we are, in the 1980's, with strategic thinkers, some of whom believe there is no such thing as a bad weapon, that any weapon, no matter how ill-conceived, is something that we ought to pursue. I would like to ask the witnesses in advance to consider the two statements made by the two highest officials in this country. The President said that the "Star Wars" system would "render nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete." That is what he said. I want each witness to comment on whether indeed they share that view, specifically. The second statement is by Caspar Weinberger, who said that they were going to develop a system "thoroughly reliable and total."

I would like the same response to that statement as well.

This fantasy has been sold to the American public long before anybody had any idea as to its detail. I would like to hear, especially from our first witness, how this thing got conceived, who sold it to the President, and what advice did the President get during that period of time. I think history has a right to know that. In time, we will be fascinated by the process that we are talking about here today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator PRESSLER. Thank you very much.

Senator Glenn.

Senator GLENN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, but I have no opening statement.

Senator PRESSLER. Let me say that I think the world is on the verge of a new, major arms race which might be preventable if we did have talks with the Soviets. This is one area where the new Soviet leadership has indicated they would have talks. Whether or not that is sincere is something we should test.

In any event, we are fortunate today to receive testimony from a number of witnesses. Our first panel will consist of Dr. George A. Keyworth, the President's Science Adviser; Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson, the newly appointed head of the Strategic Defense Initiative Programs; and they will be accompanied by several DOD officials.

We will also hear from Ambassador Robert Buchheim, the U.S. ASAT negotiator in 1978-79; Dr. Sidney Drell, of Stanford University; and Prof. Albert Carnesale of Harvard University. Finally, the

Office of Technology Assessment will testify on its study of ballistic missile defense which was released yesterday.

I would ask that Dr. Keyworth testify first. He will be joined at the table by General Abrahamson and other DOD witnesses.

We would also ask that statements be limited to about 10 minutes duration, though, if needed, we will take as much time as necessary since this is such a serious subject. If you need more time, we will try to accommodate you. We will certainly insert all of your statements into the record.

Dr. Keyworth.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE A. KEYWORTH II, SCIENCE ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT

Dr. KEYWORTH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for inviting us to discuss the President's Strategic Defense Initiative and its relationship within our arms control efforts. I hope we can, together, clarify some of the doubts and concerns that you have raised.

I believe the Strategic Defense Initiative is, in fact, key to these efforts, and a means by which we can provide hope, not only to America and her allies, but to a world which is watching us as well.

This hope is one which the President challenged both the scientific and arms control communities to bring to fruition. I would remind this distinguished audience that he linked the two inexorably together in his oft misquoted March 23 speech of last year. I quote: "I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles. This could pave the way for arms control measures to eliminate the weapons themselves.'

It is, therefore, imperative that you understand from the onset that the Strategic Defense Initiative is not a search for a technical panacea. It is a search for a technical tool by which different peoples, with different political bonds and cultures, can find a common ground to negotiate a common peace.

With all the rhetoric that has passed back and forth over the last year, one might ask, "Is there much left to say?"

In fact, what has been said from various quarters has confused things more than clarified them.

But, as with any issue that touches on nuclear arms control, the prospect of strategic defense has produced strongly polarized camps. One side says that we can produce technological marvels that will make us safe from nuclear weapons-and today-at incredibly low prices. The other side rejects the technological ability to ever do anything which will substantively affect the outcome one way or another, and claims that the price of demonstrating that failure will cost perhaps trillions.

Now, I don't want to get into either extreme today, other than to reject both of them as exposing our real national capabilities to undue criticism.

Instead, I want to focus on the real question: where are we going with this program?

If I were forced to a single sentence answer, it would be: "We see the investigation of strategic defense options as an absolutely vital catalyst to real arms control."

To see why, I refer to the conclusions of the gentlemen most often identified with this effort. They are the President, who issued the challenge, and Dr. Jim Fletcher, who chaired the first response to that challenge. The Fletcher team's first formal conclusion sets the stage. It is, in my opinion, a most eloquent summation of our capabilities and objectives. I quote: "Powerful new technologies are becoming available that justify a major technology development effort to provide future technical options to implement a technical strategy.'

It is an authoritative conclusion, as much for what it does not say, as for what it does say. After 5 months reviewing our complete technology base, more than 50 nationally ranked scientists and engineers concluded that these capabilities are on the horizon.

No, they are not here now, especially if defense against longterm unconstrained Soviet threats and countermeasures is specified as our immediate goal. But even those defensive capabilities are coming, and are foreseeable, which is a major difference between the mid-1980's versus the mid- to late-1960's. They are coming. Whether we like it or not, those technical advances are occurring.

The advance of knowledge is one area in which national institutions have been singularly unsuccessful in attempting to repress or control. It has sometimes been slowed down, but history is replete with examples where such knowledge finally bursts through the seams and goes its way, inevitably favoring those who have had the foresight to accept change and mold it to their benefit.

This is especially true in the case of those technologies associated with defense. It is not so much that we deliberately tried to develop defensive capabilities. In fact, such specific development has been severely hampered by our own self-imposed restrictions. Rather, these capabilities are a natural byproduct of our civilian industries and universities, as they are to a somewhat lesser extent in the Soviet Union.

It has been the incredible leaps in data processing, as much as any single area, which has fueled this explosion. And it is not just that we no longer need mammoth warehouses to contain the radars and computers necessary to the ABM of the 1960's. The very existence of today's and tomorrow's ability to solve complex problems on incredibly small machines, and fast, has opened up the development of our entire national technical base.

What is more, the availability of these machines has made this capability accessible to hundreds of thousands of institutions, industries, small companies, and individuals.

It was data processing which overcame John von Neuman's skepticism of ever making the ICBM work in the first place. It was data processing at the heart of the move to MIRVing. It was data processing which tied ICBM fleets together for coordinated execution. It was data processing which has provided the ICBM accuracy necessary for preemptive strikes. And it is data processing which will be at the heart of any defense against ballistic missiles.

Therefore, whether he intends to or not, man is rapidly moving toward the technologies necessary for strategic defense. The movement is widespread, and pervades every aspect of even our daily life. "Powerful new technologies," I quote again, "are becoming available," as the Fletcher panel noted.

The plausibility of such technologies makes it imperative that we investigate the development of these defensive capabilities. It does not yet mean we must commit to their deployment.

Neither our technology nor our policy is sufficiently mature to immediately take such a step, and we have not advocated such a move. We need to answer vital questions on the survivability of any space-based assets we may find necessary.

We need to dramatically improve the performance of our directed-energy-lasers and particle beams-as well as conventional and other high velocity nonnuclear defensive technologies. We also need to further develop our surveillance/acquisition and tracking capabilities, and determine the levels of confidence we could place in such technologies.

In short, we need to know what our future technical options are. We also need to explore our policy options. There is no intent to suddenly shift our policy deterrent posture in relation to either our allies or our adversaries. We have neither the capabilities nor the information on which to base such a move. At the same time, to cast into concrete for all time the incredible scale of destruction now facing us is intolerable.

We seek a solution which eventually enables us to realistically discuss-not deep-but drastic cuts in the offensive nuclear arsenals. The decision to implement effective defenses as part of that solution will be that of our successors and will have to combine arms control and gradual shifts in offensive weapons types and postures on the part of ourselves, our allies, and the Soviets. Such decisions can only come as the result of informed consultation between the executive and legislative branches, and we cannot leave our successors informed choices if we do not move rapidly to develop these options.

We have had relatively few strategic options for more than a decade now. Ever since the early 1970's, both sides have concentrated on improving and increasing existing offensive technologies. At the same time, neither side has had much luck in negotiating meaningful arms control. I don't find this hard to understand at all. An unobstructed view down your adversary's gun barrel does tend to limit your vision.

I, therefore, have been desperately searching for a way, along with many others, to make a mutually verifiable build-down process really work. I say this because the Soviets' last 10 years of constant modernization have left them with an enviable legacy. Most of their systems are fairly up-to-date; conversely, most U.S. strategic systems are not. I say this because I do not believe any present or future nuclear power will ever voluntarily reduce their arsenals to zero, and it will take a verifiably near-zero arsenal, in the absence of effective defenses, to make a real difference in the hopelessness our children feel today.

At the same time, there is a vast difference in perception between the United States and the Soviet Union of what these arse

nals are for. The United States has built a balanced triad of forces, ICBM's, SLBM's, and bombers. We have structured this force since the 1960's on the basis of peacetime deterrence to prevent war.

The Soviets, on the other hand, have apparently structured their force almost exclusively as a war fighting machine in the event of war. Their reliance on otherwise vulnerable ballistic missiles, their massive investment in civil and military passive defenses, their posture statements, and their exercise data all point to an abiding belief that they must always be able to preemptively strike U.S. forces and thereby prevent their use. Because of the same balance in both force structure and vulnerability, however, both sides perceive the other as striving for a first-strike disarming capability. In light of this I am not surprised that we have had a very difficult time trying to find a common negotiating ground.

I am also not surprised that the Soviets have been working extremely hard on the very defensive technologies the President's critics have labeled "fantasy." Some have gone so far as to state the Soviets are far ahead of us in these areas. I believe, in fact, it is more the case of the tortoise and the hare. The Soviet tortoise, slow but sure, may have in fact passed the dozing U.S. hare in some areas, particularly in the large-scale demonstrations of directed energy and particle beam work. But the hare still owns the basic technological muscle of manufacturing and materials technology, high-energy, physics, aiming/point/and tracking—and that all-important area-data processing.

If only he will get up and move.

This is the President's greatest worry. In his March 23 speech of last year, he expressed his concern that defensive systems, coupled with offensive systems, could be perceived as aggressive in nature. He has elaborated on that theme several times since, in that regardless of the moral issues at stake, he recognizes an inevitability to the arrival of defensive technologies. They are becoming available, like it or not.

We can, therefore, take either an optimistic or a pessimistic view here. An optimist would have the United States leading the development of such defensive capabilities. This provides future options for future Presidents and the Congress.

Options to approach the Soviets and, if warranted, negotiate very carefully phased development of mutual defensive capabilities.

Options to begin disarming the perception, if not the fact, of each other's first-strike capability.

Options to begin reducing the arsenals which would then realistically have only retaliatory capability.

Options to step in and break the cycle which has produced a standoff in meaningful offensive arms negotiations for more than a decade.

The pessimist, on the other hand, would have the Soviets march inexorably ahead and produce the first series of demonstrable defensive capabilities. I personally have little doubt as to whether the Soviets would then offer us a similar set of options.

I do not offer this scenario lightly. Moving out from under the nuclear umbrella is a serious and most expensive prospect. Neither our military structure and organization, nor our technology is