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From: VLSI%DEC-MARLBORO@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: ASAT treaties
Message-ID: <1024@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-Jun-84 11:15:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1024
Posted: Tue Jun 19 11:15:00 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jun-84 06:50:03 EDT
Lines: 41

From:  John Redford 

As Dale.Amon points out, ASAT weapons are becoming easier and easier to
build.  As guidance technology improves it will take a very small and cheap
missile to take out a satellite.  Ultimately all you will need is a rock
with a chip and a thruster on it.  However, I can't agree with his conclusion
that ASAT treaties are therefore pointless.  

Whatever one can imagine for future ASAT technology, the fact is that present
American ASATs are unreliable because they are untested, and present Russian
ASATs are unreliable and inadequate.  Even if this situation is completely
different twenty years from now, we can still give ourselves twenty years of
respite by negotiating treaties now.  The treaties may fail in the long run,
but the long run is unpredictable anyhow.  And, as Keynes said, "In the long
run, gentlemen, we are all dead." 

Nor is it inevitable that ASAT weapons will be built.  In the course of the
nuclear arms race we have already seen systems that could have been built
but weren't.  Does anyone out there remember FOBS, the Fractional Orbital
Bombardment System?  This was a project in the sixties to lob bombs over the
South Pole instead of the North.  That way the Russians would have to aim
their early warning systems at every point of the compass.  It would not have
been all that hard to do, and it would have caused them substantial expense
and confusion, but it was ultimately decided that it did not really affect
the balance of terror.  Or how about the silo on the sea floor idea?  The
bottom of the ocean is a great place to put missile silos since they have 
a couple of miles of water shielding them from nuclear attack.  However
it was forbidden by the 1963 Test Ban Treaty and no one has thought it worth
while to pursue since.

Well,  ASATs would cause expense and confusion but like FOBS they would not
give a decisive advantage.  The bottom line is 

WE DON'T HAVE TO DO IT, SO LET'S NOT.  

At worst we can keep our satellites safe for another decade or two.  At
best we can keep space an arena of peaceful competition like Antarctica. 

John Redford
DEC-Hudson
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