Wagons Hitched to Star Wars

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Star Wars? Just another lame-brained American idea that probably won't work. If it does work, it might be dangerous to Western Europe. And either way, it is likely to disrupt arms-control negotiations with the Soviets. All the same, we can't afford to stay out of it.

Contradictory though that sounds, it is a fair summation of European reaction to President Reagan's suggestion, repeated at this month's Bonn economic summit, that U.S. allies join the $26 billion research program to develop a space-based defense against Soviet missiles. Britain and Italy have both indicated a desire to help out; West Germany will send a mission to Washington to explore what role it could play in the Strategic Defense Initiative, as Star Wars is formally named. Even French President Francois Mitterrand, while loudly refusing to have anything to do with SDI on a government level, has said he would not prevent French companies from signing Star Wars research contracts.

This interest is more than a bit paradoxical. Europeans remain as dubious as ever that an effective missile defense can be built at all, and fear that it would endanger rather than protect them if it could be. The reasoning: the system could zap Soviet missiles headed for the U.S. but not those aimed at Western Europe, because flight times to targets there are so short. In addition, if the U.S. had a defensive shell, it might be less likely to go on | viewing its security and that of Western Europe as inextricably linked. Europe's safety can be guaranteed only by a continued U.S. threat to retaliate against any Soviet attack; hence, a potential American shift from a strategy of deterrence to one of defense is frightening. Another fear is that the U.S. will spurn any Soviet offer to scrap significant numbers of missiles in the talks now under way in Geneva if the Soviets continue to insist that a halt to Star Wars research be included in any arms-control package. Such an impasse, warns one British official, could trigger "NATO's worst postwar crisis."

But whether or not the Star Wars program leads to a working missile defense, it may produce scientific breakthroughs that will have important civilian applications. European allies fear that if they do not share in those discoveries, they could be left in a technological backwater. They hope too that if they become partners in the research, they will gain a voice in Washington's decisions on whether to deploy a Star Wars defense and how to treat SDI in negotiations with the Soviets. Says Horst Teltschik, senior security adviser to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl: "Maybe in joining SDI we can enhance our own influence."

Just what role Washington wants the Europeans to play, however, is not at all clear. "Subcontractors!" exclaimed Mitterrand (in English) after listening to Reagan's pitch at the Bonn summit. "That was the word I heard. It confirmed my intuitions." Other government leaders insist that their countries want to be treated as full partners who will be kept apprised of major research developments and get to share in the technology. But a Pentagon briefing last week left officials of the British Defense Ministry with the impression that the U.K. would be . . . well, a subcontractor.

The research that both lures and alarms U.S. allies is still in a very early stage. Congress might slow the timetable too. The House Armed Services Committee voted early this month to reduce the Star Wars research appropriation for fiscal 1986, which starts Oct. 1, to $2.5 billion, a cut of one-third from the Administration's request of $3.7 billion. That, however, still marks a huge increase over the $1.4 billion appropriated for the current fiscal year.

Meanwhile, some intriguing hints about the far-out nature of the research are emerging. For example, computers of a speed and complexity almost unimaginable today will be essential to direct a missile-killing system. Even before so- called fifth-generation computers are ready, the Innovative Science and Technology Office, part of the Star Wars effort, is attempting to leapfrog to sixth-generation computers powered by light beams rather than electricity. Such computers, says IST Physicist Dwight Duston, "will be much smaller, much lighter, faster and almost immune from natural and man-made radiation." Some of those features would make a sixth-generation computer valuable in commercial uses too.

Another project with potential civilian application is research into particle beams -- streams of atoms or subatomic particles with great penetrating power that could theoretically kill warheads. Says Duston: "If we can improve the focusing and control the beam strength, we could use beams for nontraumatic surgery in areas (of the body) currently inaccessible to the knife."

Oddly, on the weapons front the most recent research development may actually be something of an embarrassment to the Administration. Reagan has laid great stress on developing a "nonnuclear" defense, but the strongest laser beams that might eventually be used to destroy missiles are X-ray laser beams -- and they are produced by detonating atom bombs. In underground tests of an atomic device in Nevada, researchers are said to have considerably increased the brightness of X-ray laser beams, which would greatly extend their potential missile-killing range. Research into X-ray laser beams at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California goes by the name of Project Excalibur; some enthusiasts now call it Super Excalibur.

Even Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe, a vehement skeptic about SDI, has called X- ray lasers "the one and only proposal that makes any sense." He cautions, however, that the obstacles to developing an actual weapon are "fantastic," and repeated last week his view that SDI threatens "a big new escalation" in the arms race. For good measure, he took a swipe at Edward Teller, his colleague from the World War II atom-bomb project who is now a promoter of Star Wars in general and X-ray lasers in particular. Teller, said Bethe, was the scientist "who brought us the H-bomb with the statement that it will end war."

A major question hanging over SDI is how to test its parts without violating the 1972 treaty with the Soviets that bans development of antiballistic missile systems. The Pentagon plans to test on the ground some gear intended for use in space and break up trials of SDI "components" into tests of + "subcomponents." The treaty forbids space tests and allows only very limited testing of antimissile components, but it says nothing about subcomponents. Thus in Washington's interpretation subcomponent tests are permitted, though the Pentagon concedes this is a "gray area." In addition, the U.S. argues that the Soviets have repeatedly violated the treaty, notably by building a giant radar installation near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.

What the Soviets are doing, in fact, is a major U.S. justification for the whole Star Wars effort. The Administration insists that the Soviets are pushing hard a Star Wars program of their own. Washington asserts that the U.S.S.R. has 10,000 scientists working on laser research alone (the number of American scientists similarly engaged is believed to be considerably lower) and has actually spent as much on defensive as on offensive missile development for more than 20 years. A recent Pentagon publication goes so far as to claim that "with high priority and some significant risk of failure, the Soviets could skip some testing steps and be ready to deploy a ground- based laser BMD (ballistic missile defense) by the early-to-mid-1990s." That seems alarmist; the Pentagon itself describes the Soviets as being about equal to the U.S. in laser technology.

It is widely conceded, however, that the U.S. must continue SDI research, if only to guard against a Soviet breakthrough. Even the European allies that are most dubious about the possibility or desirability of missile defense endorse that view. They add a strictly pragmatic justification: the U.S. is going ahead with or without their participation -- and if European allies are to stay abreast of the latest technology and retain their political influence over American decisions, they had better ante up and get into the game.

With reporting by Jay Branegan/Washington and Frank Melville/ London