Research and the Strategic Defense Initiative

Researchand the StrategicDefense Initiative I Gerold Initiative (SDI) is a research program initiated by the President with the objective of determining whether the threat of ballistic missiles can be eliminated using primarily nonnuclear techniques. The program’s emphasis and timing are set by the intention of providing the information required for an informed decision on Full Scale Engineering Development (FSED) by the early 1990s. Obviously, the main consideration in conducting the research program and the FSED that might follow is the safety and security of the United Statesand its allies. Here, however, we address primarily the benefits, generalized costs, and economic and social policy implications related to the current research program. For about the next five years, the SDI research program efforts will be concentrated in several areas of investigation: -Directed energy anti-weapons technology, to explore the feasibilityof lasers and particle beams; -Kinetic energy anti-weapons technology, to investigate interceptions using the lethality inherent in the kinetic energy of rockets and high-speed projectiles; -Technologies associated with launch detection, surveillance, acquisition, and tracking of attacking missiles and with battle assessment; -Technologies associated with the lethality of the intercept devices, their survivability if attacked, and other critical requirements such as low cost space transportation and materials properties; -Battle management and control techniques and system architecture issues; and -Technology associated with potential countermeasures intended to overwhelm or defeat future defenses. The objective of this research is to determine the fundamental technology and the technical and cost-scaling issues associated with system-level performance . It is in this phase of the program, where innovation and creativity are most needed, highly valued, and most likely to occur, that the greatest contribution to a broad base of technology is likely to occur. Gerold Yonas is Chief Scientist of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, U.S. Department of Defense. ~ ~~ International Security, Fall 1986 (Vol. 11, No 2) 185 lnternafionalSecurity 1 186 Funding in Fiscal Years 1985and 1986was $1.7 billion and $2.7 billion, in each case considerably less than the amounts requested by the Strategic Defense Initiative Office (SDIO)and recommended for a technology-limited program by the 1983 Defense Technologies Study Team. In FY 1987, the budget request is $4.7billion, and for the next several years, funding requests at the $5-7 billion level are anticipated, an amount equal to 2 percent or less of the overall defense budget. In keeping with the research nature of the program, about one-third of these funds will be spent to develop the technology base. A significant portion of the other two-thirds will result, indirectly , in further contributions to the technology base. At this point in the research program, estimates of possible deployment costs are very speculative. Even if the cost were to be several hundred billion dollars spent over decades, as some have estimated, the annual expenditure rate would be little different from that required for the current program to modernize our strategic offensive forces. Most concerns about the economic and social value of SDI and defense research are usually related to the following themes: that its value resides not in itself but in the hardware that stems from it; that it is not valuable to the civilian sector; that if there were no SDI, the resources allocated to it would go to the private "research" sector; and that a diffuse and less urgent approach would yield the same results. One important value of scientificresearch lies in the applications that stem from it. If civilian research leading to applications that create jobs and keep the United States economically competitive is important, so is the research applied to the defense of the society that permits such freedoms. Indeed, one can argue that the former is impossible without the latter. Additionally, one must consider a more stable aspect of defense research: that it could establish the basis for real progress in arms control and for moving towards a more stable strategic relationship-a transformation of considerable potential value. In these comments, we take for granted that there is great intellectual and personal satisfactionin research of any kind, and it is the free.dom to pursue such challenges that underlies the high level of creativityin civilian...