Dr. Robert Bowman, former U.S. Air Force space development director: superiority with new offensive weapons'

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The following is an interview with Dr. Robert Bowman, president of the Institute for Space and Security Studies.

Culminating a 22-year Air Force career in 1978, Dr. Bowman was Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for what is now the Air Force Space Division. In that capacity he directed the "Star Wars" programs under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerry Ford. He is currently one of the most severe critics of the U.S. government's nuclear weapons and Star Wars programs.

The interview was conducted in San Francisco in early May by Socialist Action National Secretary Jeff Mackler.

Socialist Action: Two central questions both opponents and supporters of Star Wars (Strategic Defense Initiative) have asked are: Can it work and is there such a thing as a "peace shield?"

Dr. Robert Bowman: Most of the criticism of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) has centered on the idea that it won't work. I think this criticism is wrong and misguided. Chances are that given a reasonable amount of time and perhaps an unreasonable amount of money, it will work. And in so doing, it will make us more insecure-and make nuclear war more likely.

What the American people don't realize, largely because they've been lied to so massively, is that the argument over the technical feasibility of the defensive shield is irrelevant because Star Wars has nothing to do with defense. Star Wars is an attempt to regain absolute military superiority through the development of new offensive weapons disguised as defense.

You asked about a "peace shield." That's a very different question from "Will it work?" I don't know anybody who thinks it will work as a "peace shield." None of the proponents of the system-certainly nobody in the Pentagon working on Star Wars-believes that you can develop a system to make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. That is, you cannot create a defensive shield that would protect us from attack and make it unnecessary to threaten massive retaliation against the Soviet population.

That kind of program, the one promised by President Reagan, is a total fantasy and a cruel hoax. And that kind of a program isn't being worked on. There is no attempt being made to investigate technologies which even have a theoretical chance of providing such a system. What is being done in the SDI program is that technologies that we already know are absolutely unable to accomplish that objective are being built into weapons for other purposes.

In the first place, Star Wars is so incredibly vulnerable that it's useless in the hands of an innocent party. To avoid having the system disabled means that you have to shoot first. You have to have the element of surprise on your side—you have to be the aggressor. That gives you several other advantages at the same time, including the ability to destroy the majority of the other side's nuclear weapons in their silos before they're launched. That reduces the complexity of the problem significantly.

There are people who believe that given enough time and money you could get Star Wars weapons good enough to intercept a relatively small number of nuclear missiles such as might be fired at us in retaliation after we hit the Soviets with a massive first strike. But even in that much easier role, Star Wars would not be perfect. The proponents of the newer version of Star Wars estimate that if it worked as designed it would be able to intercept 10 to 20 percent of Soviet missiles fired against us—80 to 90 percent getting through.

Therefore, there would be some losses if the United States were the aggressor in a nuclear war. Even with a substantial superiority such as we already enjoy-increased by the continued deployment of MX, of Trident II, and the deployment of Star Wars-even if we engaged in nuclear war with the Soviets by shooting first and giving ourselves all the advantages of surprise, the proponents of such a scenario estimate that there would be about 20 million Americans dead.

Now, according to these proponents, this is a relatively small percentage of our population. A good bit of our industry, they add, would remain intact and we could therefore rebuild and we would win. This is not my definition of victory—it's theirs. This is one thing that you could possibly do with a Star Wars system. Its purpose would be to partially shield yourself you initiate a first strike.

S.A.: And the first strike would be initiated with the ICBMs, not the Star Wars?

Bowman: It would be initiated with a combination of MX, Trident II, and some of the Star Wars weapons that are potentially capable of destroying hardened military targets from space without warning. There are these space bombers on the drawing boards in the technology laboratories. If we're not very vigilant, they will be in space as a result of highly classified military programs, most of which even members of Congress don't even know about.

S.A.: Theoretically, the SDI program is designed to shoot down missiles that come into outer space before they reach their target. What about the technical possibility of a space-based weapons system being used to shoot through the atmosphere at targets on earth? Is that a possibility at this point?

Bowman: It is. There are essentially two classes of Star Wars weapons: the directed-energy weapons and the kineticenergy weapons. The directed-energy weapons are things like lasers and particle beams and X-rays that travel at or near the speed of light. The kinetic-energy "kill vehicles" are things that are rocket- or gun-powered. They're essentially bullets, "smart rocks," "precocious particles," "brilliant pebbles," etc.

There are specific weapons in each category capable of being used against targets on the surface of the earth. In the directed-energy weapons, the long wavelength lasers have the capability of going through the atmosphere without significant degradation, and that power can be deposited on the surface of the earth.

Studies done for the Department of Defense concluded that before a system of laser battle stations gets good enough to be really useful against ballistic missiles, it would be powerful enough to incinerate cities in minutes and cause the kind of firestorms that consumed Dresden, Hamburg, and Osaka in World War II.

Now if we go to the other category of Star Wars weapons, the kinetic-energy "kill vehicles," —the ones that are being developed in relative openness like "brilliant pebbles"— we do know that these are not being designed specifically to penetrate the atmosphere.

S.A.: What are "brilliant pebbles?"

Bowman: Well, they're rocket-powered interceptors that orbit the earth. When they spot a target they want to go after, they ignite and go after it and collide with it, destroying it. Of course what they're supposed to be designed to do is to collide with Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). It turns out that's a very difficult job because they have a very short time to intercept them.

Being rocket-powered instead of going at the speed of light, they can't go very far in a limited amount of time-so they can only cover quite a small area. It would take thousands and thousands of "brilliant pebbles" to intercept even a handful of ballistic missiles. But there are other things that they can do. For instance they can collide with satellites. That's a very easy job. So these things would make excellent anti-satellite weapons.

But there are alternate designs for these systems based on the same kinetic-energy principle that can be used against targets on the surface of the earth. What you do is you take out the sensors and the computers and all of the "smarts" and you just have a hunk of metal properly shaped, made of an appropriate material to survive re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. You fire it at the earth from space and it will impact like a meteorite, dig a crater, and at least in theory be capable of destroying hardened military targets like missile silos and command bunkers totally without warning S.A.: So Star Wars, together with missiles such as the Trident and the MX, could hypothetically be used as a cleanup operation to prevent retaliation? Theoretically, a first strike would wipe out most of the [Soviet] ICBMs and if there are enough left to retaliate, then a space-based system might effectively cut most of them out?

Bowman: That's right. Now, I must point out that that's not the only possible use for these things. There are other related missions that can be performed. There are people who do not talk in terms of a first strike, although what they're