Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!drutx!houxe!hogpc!houti!ariel!vax135!floyd!cmcl2!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!VLSI@DEC-MARLBORO 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 RedfordDale.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 --------