Aucbvax.1407
fa.arms-d
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!OTA@MIT-MC
Mon May 25 00:11:46 1981
zapsats
    Date: 24 MAY 1981 2022-PDT
    From: CAULKINS at USC-ECL

    Bill Vaughan (msg of 24 May 18:19 cdt) strongly advocates x-ray zapsats
    as an ultimate ICBM defense. He says they "are cheap to build and launch
    (low mass)..". How cheap ? How low is the mass ? It is difficult to
    present any reasonable argument without further details.

    Rejection of information just because it appears in a particular 
    publication does not project an aura of objectivity. Richard Garwin is 
    not without reputation as a strategic weapon analyst, and Aviation Week 
    is not completely without bias.

    Let us have more facts and fewer flames.

    Dave C
    -------

I heartily agree.  Unfortunately, in the defense field the shadow of
classification is always looming.  The furthur details and more facts will
invariably run into either classification problems or esitmates (guesses)
by people who are pushing the project.  But when have reliable details ever
been available for highly experimental, cutting edge of technology,
projects?

What I try and do is look at the over all scheme from a theoretical point
of view.  Ask yourself: what are the goals, what are the weaknesses of the
scheme and what are the strengths.  The details must be left for time and
experience and good engineers to work out.

As Bill pointed out Richard Garwin and Aviation Week were addressing two
very different types of laser systems.  They have vastly different strength
and different weeknesses.  The CW chemical lasers that Garwin was talking
about are big and relatively expensive and relatively slow.  They have to
sit in orbit.  They work at visible frequencies and so can penetrate the
atmosphere.  X-Ray laser systems are small relatively cheap and very fast.
They do not have to remain in orbit but can be launched when needed.

These properties are of course interrelated.  CW lasers are big because
they require large "fuel" tanks to keep them lasing.  They have large
optics to get good focusing at large distances.  This makes them expensive
to launch.  Also since they are slow you need more of them to get good
coverage of the planet.

The details of the X-Ray laser business are harder to come by.  This is
mostly because it has only recently been worked out.  The only source of
public information is the Aviation week article in the Feb 23 issue.  Dig
out that article if you are interested in details.

Whenever big money is involved politics plays an important role.
Realization of the political situation will improve your insight into the
"decision making" processes.  Note that the important X-Ray experiment was
done at LLL.  Much of the CW laser work is being done at LASL.  There is a
lot of infighting that goes on between these labs and technical merits are
not always the most important issue.  Also, the heavy lift space people are
pushing for the CW laser aproach because it will provide insentive to do
more space work.  NASA types presumably have job security interests in this
aproach.  Arms control types want to retain the status quo; anything that
radically changes the strategic picture is "dangerous".  General
conservatism also favors minimizing radical changes.  The X-Ray zapsats
seems to be fundamentally much more different than the CW lasers.

Note that the above contains many gross generalizations but should suffice
to point out that the technical issues are nearly lost in the noise.

Great huh?
Ted Anderson


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