And Hypersonic Flight

that we are talking about today—spacechemical lasers, the ground-based lasers,the excimer and free electron lasers,the X-ray laser, neutral and chargedparticle beams, and all of these nonnuclear-killkinetic energy interceptorsthat are based on advanced sensorsand computers—none of themhad been really thought of at the timeof the most recent debate on strategicdefense in the United States, which wasonly 15 years ago. Everything that issubject to debate today has been inventedin just the last 15 years.The free electron laser has made ordersof magnitude of progress in justthe last one or two years. The neutralparticle beam, which is worked on atLos Alamos, has developed lately as apotential intercept platform and a discriminationplatform; that is, a way offinding out which objects are realweapons and which are just balloonsor surrogate targets, which has been aproblem of classical difficulty. The mostdifficult problem in strategic defensehas always been in eliminating nonserioustargets, so that you do not wasteyour interceptors.Tremendous strides have been madeon discrimination with particle beamsor impulse lasers. This also has happenedin just the last two years. Sincethe "Defensive Technology Study,"there are not only new technologiesbut also new insights on how to usethese new technologies to solve traditionalproblems.Question: How does this technologicalprogress reflect back to the economiceffects of an SDI program?I think you have to break the economiceffects down into two parts: thenear-term and the long-term issues.The near term has to do with research;the long term with a possible deployment,which is being discussed, but isnot now approved.The near-term discussion over theSDI budget is very intense, but theamounts involved are not significantfor a healthy economy. The budget ofa few billion dollars a year is large, butsmall compared to the defense budgetof the United States, and does not havea direct, significant impact on theAmerican economy.There is an indirect impact, and thatis probably positive. Historically, theDepartment of Defense has been a veryNisls Bohr Library/APSstuart K. LewisDr. Hans Bethe (left) no longer argues that SDI won't work, but that it might costtoo much. The research of Dr. Richard Carwin (right) demonstrates that hisarguments against the SDI are wrong.effective developer of technology, andit is to be anticipated that this wouldcontinue and that the developmentsof new types of lasers, of particle generators,and, in particular, of computers,would have an enormous positiveimpact on the commercial economy.As to the longer-term discussionabout deployment, were it positive, westill do not have a major economic impact.If you take figures of the size thatwe have been talking about, even thoseestimated by the adversaries of strategicdefense, you get numbers thatappear to be only a few tens ofhundreds of billions of dollars, whichare figures less than, or at least comparableto, what would be spent overthat period of a decade or so on alternativestrategic concepts.I don't think that the dominant issueis economic, as long as reasonable costgoals for the strategic defensive conceptsare met, as it now appears theycould be.Question: There are several argumentsbrought up against the SDI, such as thatit is immoral to build new weapons, orthat one should not invest in new weaponswhile people are starving on Earth.Do you think that some of these argumentsare valid?These are serious questions, butmost of them are not unique to theSDI. They have to do with any sort ofmilitary expenditures, and there are alwaysthose who argue that no moneyshould be spent on military technologiesas long as there is hunger in theworld. I would only point out that defenseand freedom are also importantvalues, as important in some ways asmaterial wants. And the point I stressfor Western democracies is that evenwith their expenditures for defense,they have a much smaller proportionof material wants than do the totalitarianstates from which they are attemptingto protect themselves.Sometimes these issues are amplifiedby connecting them with the issueof stability. There is a concern that thereis not just a basic investment in testingand trying to deploy strategic defense,but that there is a possibility that wewould get ourselves into an arms race,which would divert even further requirementsfrom the unfortunate ofour society. The numbers on the costestimates we went through earlier actuallyshow the contrary.It has been pretty clearly explainedby various spokesmen, perhaps mostprominently by U.S. ambassador PaulNitze, that if strategic defenses are costeffective—thatis, if it is more effectiveto develop defenses than to deployfurther offenses—then one does notget into an offensive or defensive armsrace. The net effect of the developmentand even the initial deploymentof strategic defenses will be to give apositive incentive to both sides to reducetheir offensive arms levels and,with them, their overall defense expenditures.. . .12 January-February 1986 FUSION Beam Technology Report