Soviet Star Wars

Why not curtail the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as Star Wars, if that would mean a deal with the Soviet Union to reduce nuclear weapons? The Reagan Administration last week began a strenuous effort to explain why it is reluctant to do so: because the Soviets began missile- defense research long before the U.S. did, and may have a large lead.

In a major speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia and an interview with TIME, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger stressed that Moscow is "very far along" in missile-defense R. and D. President Reagan, in impromptu comments to the press on Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's criticism of SDI, ventured the surprising estimate that "the Soviet Union is about ten years ahead of us in developing a defensive system." To buttress such arguments, the Pentagon and State Department jointly released a 27-page pamphlet summing up what Washington knows about the Kremlin's version of Star Wars. Briefing journalists on the report, Defense Intelligence Agency Specialist James McCrery asserted that "for a long time" the Soviets "have been devoting very heavy resources" to developing all the technologies now involved in SDI.

Administration officials indicate that the Kremlin during the past decade has spent ten times as much as the U.S. on "strategic defense." But that estimate lumps in antisatellite weapons, an existing missile-defense system around Moscow, radar, and even programs such as air and civil defense that the U.S. has made little or no attempt to match.

Concerning the technologies specifically involved in Star Wars, the booklet concludes that the Soviet effort "represents a far greater investment of plant space, capital and manpower" than the American SDI. It provides only one partial budgetary comparison: Soviet efforts to develop laser beams as warhead-killing weapons "would cost roughly $1 billion per year (to duplicate) in the U.S." That would be about triple the $340 million the U.S. spent on SDI laser development in fiscal 1985. The booklet does present some tantalizing, and disturbing, tidbits of more specific information. Samples:

-- As early as 1978 the Soviets developed a prototype of the gigantic mirrors that would be needed to aim laser beams at missiles or warheads.

-- The U.S.S.R. has progressed so far on particle beams, another kind of potential missile-zapping ray, that "much" of what the U.S. knows "is based on Soviet work conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s." (The knowledge was gleaned not from espionage, Pentagon sources say, but from published reports of Soviet research.)

-- As early as the 1960s, Moscow had developed an experimental "gun" designed to shoot chunks of metal at speeds high enough to destroy missiles by sheer impact. The U.S. now has similar "rail guns," but they were not developed until the 1980s.

While few people doubt that the Soviets have an aggressive program comparable to SDI and have scored impressive advances in basic technology, some critics -- even within the Pentagon -- point out that translating those achievements into battle-ready equipment is a very long step. Air Force Secretary Verne Orr told Congress last spring that the Soviets have "no identifiable lead" in applying basic research in directed energy, such as laser and particle beams, to actual defensive weaponry.

The booklet estimates that several types of potential Soviet missile- killing weapons could be ready for deployment by the middle or late 1990s or after the year 2000. That does not differ greatly from the optimistic timetable for deploying comparable elements of an American Star Wars defense. The booklet also rather grudgingly concedes that in one vital area of Star Wars gear -- sensors to detect missiles and warheads across thousands of miles of space, as well as computers to aim lasers, particle beams or whatever -- "technologies . . . are currently more highly developed in the West than in the Soviet Union." But the Kremlin is trying to catch up, it warns, in part by illegally obtaining sophisticated American equipment.