Starry Blueprint

The idea is certainly appealing. All of the murderous megatonnage of those fearsome intercontinental ballistic missiles would be rendered useless. The Soviet Union launches a surprise nuclear attack? Zap! U.S. laser beams from outer space blast the enemy booster rockets out of Soviet skies before they can dispatch their multiple warheads on long lethal flights to the U.S.

When President Reagan gave that comforting concept vast publicity and his ardent support in his Star Wars speech last March, many scientists complained that the President was far too optimistic about the state of their wondrous arts. Arms-control experts warned that holding out such panaceas diverted attention from the painful chore of negotiating agreements to reduce nuclear weapons. The development of defensive systems, they said, could touch off another arms race, this one in space, and possibly even entice an enemy to attack before the weapons were fully operational.

But in the Government Reagan heads, his endorsement had a galvanizing effect. Two separate groups of experts went to work to examine the feasibility of such futuristic antimissile systems. Last week their recommendations to proceed were put together by an interagency task force bearing the endorsement of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and out going National Security Adviser William Clark. The proposals then went to the Oval Office and became public, apparently even before the President had read them.

Aviation Week & Space Technology Military Editor Clarence Robinson compiled a summary of the report, which in essence is a blueprint for development of advanced ballistic-missile defense systems. It estimates that a comprehensive system with various components based both in space and on the ground could be deployed some time after the year 2000 at a cost of about $95 billion. The defensive net would employ lasers, particle beams and shotgun-like pellets to destroy, in theory at least, Soviet ICBMS any time between their launch and their re-entry into the atmosphere. The enemy missile attack would be detected by a mix of land-and space-based electronic surveillance systems.

The Weinberger-Clark report stresses the desirability of at least a demonstration of U.S. capability in advanced antimissile expertise to "alter the Star Wars fantasy, establish the credibility and then the reality of defensive technologies."

The report sketches a timetable under which various tests could begin "by the early 1990s," thereby showing the Soviet leaders that the U.S. is serious about such plans. It suggests that spending should be included in the fiscal 1985 budget, now in preparation by the Administration, and would require $27 billion from 1985 through 1989. Development of a less complete system could begin in 1985 at a five-year cost of $18 billion. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.