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From: VLSI@DEC-MARLBORO@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: re: space marines as ASATs
Message-ID: <837@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Jun-84 10:43:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.837
Posted: Tue Jun 12 10:43:00 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Jun-84 02:19:35 EDT
Lines: 34

From:  John Redford 

Dale.Amon is not impressed by anti-ASAT advocates:
     
  "As I was reading a recent Scientific American article noting the benefits of
   halting ASAT testing before the high tech weapons have been tested, thus
   insuring that no one can feel certain about their abilities, I couldn't help
   but laugh at the lack of imagination the poor earthworm showed."

He suggests that space marines could just go out and shoot satellites if we
wanted to destroy them.  The article was co-written by Richard Garwin, an IBM
Fellow at the Watson Research Center.  He has been a key part of the debate
over the ABM, the cruise missile, and the Trident deployments.  He is not
someone I would describe as an unimaginative earthworm.

Destroying a satellite is an act of war.  If you are to derive any benefit
from it at all you have to destroy most of them at once.  The Russians are
not going to sit on their hands while you fly from one satellite to another
plugging them with your revolver.  They will move their satellites, destroy
your manned orbital base, or maybe just get down to the business of World
War III.  Destroying several hundred satellites within the course of a few
minutes is not something marines are likely to be able to do.  They won't 
have the time to get more than one apiece, and they won't have the manpower
to get them all at once.

This whole ASAT thing seems crazed to me.  We rely on satellites for a lot
of things, and yet by threatening the Russians we make certain that our own
will be threatened.  It's disastrous, of course, from an arms control point
of view, but it's bad even from a straight military point of view as well.
Someone at Space Command is out of control.

John Redford
DEC-Hudson
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