Abstract
Five years ago, President Ronald Reagan, in his speech of 23 March 1983, revealed to the world his dream of a defence against strategic ballistic missiles which would ‘render nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.1 The problem and the solution were both clear in his mind: although deterrence of nuclear war by threat of retaliation had worked, the US and its allies deserved better than to base their security on the threat of destruction of another society. It was this dream that the President shared with the American people — a defence so perfect that not only would Soviet nuclear weapons be rendered impotent but our own would be rendered unnecessary.
This chapter is based on several of my previous writings on the SDI. I have incorporated the most recent developments till early June 1987. I am grateful to the publishers mentioned in the acknowledgements for their permission to use sections of my earlier publications. The views expressed in this chapter are my own and not those of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center or of Columbia University, New York.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See President Reagan’s 23 March 1983 ‘Speech on Defense Spending and Defensive Technology’, in Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Monday, 28 March 1983, Vol. 19, no. 12, pp. 423–66.
Arms Control Association, Star War Quotes ( Washington, DC: Arms Control Association, 1986 ).
For the early debate see Richard L. Garwin and Hans A. Bethe, ‘Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems’, Scientific American, Vol. 218, no. 3 (March 1968), pp. 21–31;
Abram Chayes and Jerome B. Wiesner (eds), ABM. An Evaluation of the Decision to Deploy an Antiballistic Missile System ( New York: Harper & Row, 1969 );
Ernest J. Yanarella, The Missile Defense Controversy. Strategy, Technology, and Politics 1955–1972 ( Lexington, Ky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1977 );
Johan J. Holst and William Schneider, Jr, Why ABM? Policy Issues in the Missile Defense Controversy ( New York: Pergamon, 1969 );
Ashton B. Carter and Davis N. Schwartz (eds), Ballistic Missile Defense ( Washinton, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1984 ).
See John B. Rhinelander, ‘Implications of US and Soviet BMD programmes for the ABM Treaty’, in Bhupendra Jasani (ed.), Space Weapons and International Security ( Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 ), pp. 145–61;
Rhinelander, ‘The ABM Treaty-Its Evolution, Interpretation and Grey Areas and an Official Attempt at Reinterpretation, in Hans Günter Brauch (ed.), Star Wars and European Defence, Implications for Europe — Perceptions and Assessments (London: Macmillan and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987 ) pp. 373–435.
Ted Greenwood, Making the MI RV: A Study of Defense Decision Making ( Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1975 );
Ronald L. Tammen, MIRV and the Arms Race ( New York-Washington-London: Praeger, 1973 ).
John Tirman (ed.), The Fallacy of Star Wars! Based on Studies Conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists ( New York: Vintage Books, 1984 ), pp. 18–23.
See Richard L. Garwin and John Pike, ‘History and current debate’, in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 40, no. 5 (May 1984), pp. 2S–9S (p. 6S).
Ballistic Missile Defenses and U.S. National Security (‘Hoffman Report’), in Steven E. Miller and Stephen Van Evera (eds), The Star Wars Controversy. An International Security Reader (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 273–90; ‘The Strategic Defense Initiative: Defense Technologies Study (‘Fletcher Report’)’, in Miller/van Evera (eds), The Star Wars Controversy, pp. 291–322.
John Tirman (ed.), The Militarization of High Technology ( Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1984.
James C. Fletcher, ‘The Technologies for Ballistic Missile Defense’, in Issues in Science and Technology, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1984 ), pp. 15–29.
See my chapter: ‘Enforcing BMD against a determined adversary’, in Bhupendra Jasani (ed.), Space Weapons and International Security (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 71–84 (here pp. 71f.); US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Ballistic Missile Defense Technology, OTA-ISC-254 ( Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, September 1985 ).
Hans A. Bethe, Richard L. Garwin, Kurt Gottfried, Henry W. Kendall, ‘Space-based Ballistic Missile Defense’, in Scientific American, Oct. 1984, p. 46.
E. Walbridge, in ‘Angle Constraint for Nuclear-pumped X-ray Laser Weapons’, Nature, 19 July 1984, and previous authors have noted that the super-radiant beam has a contribution to angular half-width by diffraction αd = 1.22λD, and by geometry (from skew rays in the wire) αg = D/L, with λ the X-ray wavelength (about 1.2 nm for 1 keV x-ray), D wire diameter, and L the wire length. For L = 2 m, the total angular beam spread is minimum at α = 1.5λL)1/2, or about 40 microradians, at a wire diameter D = (1.22λL)1/2, or some 55 µm.
Richard L. Garwin and Hans A. Bethe, ‘Anti-Ballistic-Missile Systems’, Scientific American, March 1968, pp. 21–31.
John Gardner, Edward Gerry, Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg, Frederick Seitz, Missile Defense in the 1990s ( Washington: George C. Marshall Institute, 1987 ), pp. 33–4.
Richard Garwin, ‘Letters to the Editor’, Physics Today, Vol. 39, no. 7 (July 1986), pp. 93–6.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Jastrow, and Max Kampelman, ‘Defense in Space Is Not “Star Wars”’, in New York Times Magazine (27 January 1985), pp. 28–51.
Abraham Sofaer, ‘The ABM Treaty and the Strategic Defense Initiative’, in Harvard Law Review, Vol. 99, no. 8 (June 1988), pp. 1972–85.
United States Department of State. The ABM Treaty. Part I: Treaty Language and Negotiating History (Washington DC: US Department of State, Office of the Legal Advisor, 11 May 1987).
US Department of State, The ABM Treaty. Part II: Ratification Process (Washington DC: US Department of State, Office of the Legal Advisor, 11 May 1987).
Thomas K. Longstreth, John E. Pike and John B. Rhinelander, The Impact of U.S. and Soviet Ballistic Missile Defense Programs on the ABM Treaty (Washington, DC, National Campaign to Save the ABM Treaty, March 1985) and the same authors in Hans Günter Brauch (ed.), Star Wars and European Defence, pp. 500–36.
Richard L. Garwin, ‘Boost-Phase Intercept Revisited’, in W. Thomas Wander, Richard A. Scribner, Kenneth N. Luongo (eds), Science and Security: The Future of Arms Control ( Washington, DC, American Association for the Advancement of Science, December 1986 ), pp. 53–7.
See, for example, Z. Brzezinski, R. Jastrow, and M. Kampelman ‘Defense in Space Is Not “Star Wars”,’ New York. Times Magazine (28 January 1985), pp. 28ff. Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Carter, Jastrow is professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth College, and Kampelman is the US negotiator at the strategic arms talks in Geneva. They propose a boost-phase layer consisting of 100 satellites carrying 150 interceptors each, plus 4 geosynchronous satellites and 10 low-orbit satellites for tracking, etc. A second terminal layer, including 5000 interceptors and 10 aircraft for tracking, would complete the two-tier defence. The price for the boost-phase layer, they estimate, would be $45 billion; for the terminal defense, an additional $15 billion.
Caspar Weinberger, Annual Report to the Congress, Fiscal Year 1988 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, January 1987), pp. 51–4, 281–8.
Richard L. Garwin, letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times, 24 October 1986.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1989 Hans Günter Brauch
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Garwin, R.L. (1989). SDI — A Sceptical Assessment by an American Physicist. In: Brauch, H.G. (eds) Military Technology, Armaments Dynamics and Disarmament. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10221-1_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10221-1_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-10223-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-10221-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)