The Geometry The Nucleus

Figure 7
SOVIET REACTIVE
CRISIS MONITORING
CAPABILITY
The Soviets can quickly
change the orbit of
photo reconnaissance
satellites to "linger"
over world hotspots, as
they did in late 1987 to
monitor the Persian Gulf
War.
Source: Nicholas Johnson, Teledyne
Brown Engineering.
prove and refine the lander. "It remains a shelf item that
they can pull off the shelf," he stated, "which has continued
to be updated avionics-wise, to be flown. If you added an
aeroshell, you could do a Mars landing with it," Vick told
the "Red Star 2000" conference.
Vick reports that years of hard work later, the Soviets had
a heavy-lift "pathfinder" vehicle (the precursor to Energia)
under development by 1983. It closely resembled Energia,
but had six rather than four strap-on liquid boosters, with
each booster apparently 10 meters higher than those on the
Energia. Vick also thinks it is likely that the Energia launch
was not the first use of liquid hydrogen in the Soviet program,
and that a liquid hydrogen upper stage was first tested
in 1985 on the medium-lift SL-16.
The Energia the world saw on television will be in production
for decades. It is currently configured with four
strap-on boosters, and can carry about 100 metric tons to
low-Earth orbit (the Saturn V had a payload capacity of 125
metric tons). Vick pointed out, however, that the addition
of more strap-ons and advanced upper stages could take
the Energia up to 250 metric tons of payload capability. (The
U.S. proposed heavy-lift vehicle, meanwhile, is enmired in
a budget fight.)
The new medium-lift SL-16, plus the Energia (SL-17), give
the Soviets a massive increase in payload-to-orbit capacity
(Figure 6). If the Soviets were merely planning to continue
their 100 launches per year with a similar mix of spacecraft
as today, would they need all of this additional launch capability?
But why should anyone assume that the Soviets are not
going to deploy the systems they have been developing for
decades, such as their Strategic Defense Command or spacebased
directed energy ASATs? Why spend years developing
them, if you are never going to use them? The watchword
here should be, "Think Soviet."
Quick Response Capability
A war-fighting capability means the battle-readiness of a
given system; it is not an abstract technological capability.
According to Vice Admiral William Ramsey, it takes the
Soviets a few hours to ready a military spacecraft and launch
it, while it takes the U.S. 90 days. The Soviets launch on
demand, he stated at the "Red Star 2000" conference, and
we "only launch on schedule."This severely limits our ability
to respond to any crisis.
As an example of this capability: Defense Daily reported
in fall 1987 that on Christmas Eve 1986, the Iranians had
launched a troop offensive in the Shatt Al-Arab waterway
toward an assault on the Iraqi city of Basra. Within 24 hours,
the Soviets launched Kosmos 1810, which stayed in a low
circular orbit for three days to observe the area, rather than
immediately moving into its planned operational orbit.
What about spacecraft already up there? At any one time,
the Soviets have about 150 satellites in orbit, and an estimated
70 percent are performing military missions. Another
20 percent or so perform both military and civilian functions,
and the remaining satellites are nonmilitary and scientific.
The argument is often made that since each one of the
U.S. reconnaissance, communications, and other satellites
is more technologically advanced than the Soviets', the fact
that they have so many more makes no difference. However,
our handful of satellites cannot be maneuvered quickly
to respond to a crisis. What the Soviets have done in this
regard is quite impressive.
Nicholas Johnson has carefully documented this quick-
50 May-June 1988 21st CENTURY