Directed energy missile defense in spaceThis Background Paper describes and assesses current concepts for directed-energy ballistic missile defense in space. Its purpose is to provide Members of Congress, their staffs, and the public with a readable introduction to the so-called 'Star Wars'technologies that some suggest might form the basis of a future nationwide defense against Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles. Since these technologies are a relatively new focus for U.S. missile defense efforts, little information about them has been readily available outside the expert community. Directed-energy or 'beam' weapons comprise chemical lasers, excimer and free electron lasers, nuclear bomb-powered x-ray lasers, neutral and charged particle beams, kinetic energy weapons, and microwave weapons. In addition to describing these devices, this Background Paper assesses he prospects for fashioning from such weapons robust and reliable wartime defense system resistant to Soviet countermeasures. The assessment distinguishes the prospects for perfect or ear-perfect protection of U.S. cities and population from the prospects that technology will achieve a modest, less-than-perfect level of performance that will nonetheless be seen by some experts as having strategic value. Though the focus is technical, the Paper also discusses, but oes not assess in detail, the strategic and arms control implications of a major U.S. move to develop and deploy ballistic missile defense (BMD). |
Common terms and phrases
AAAAA AAAAA AAAAA ABM interceptor missiles ABM radars ABM system deployment ABM Treaty absentee ratio arms control ASAT assessment atmosphere atoms attack Background Paper Ballistic Missile Defense BMD deployment BMD system boost boost-phase intercept burn capability chemical laser components concept constellation countermeasures coverage defense system DEFENSIVE GOALS deployed directed energy weapon directed-energy weapons divergence angle effects excimer excimer lasers fense Figure forces free electron lasers ground-based hardened HF laser High Frontier hypothetical ICBM silos infrared intercept mirror interceptor kinetic energy km altitude laser beam launch lethal microradian microwave midcourse MWIR MX-like needed neutral particle beam nuclear weapons orbits penetration perfect defense phase intercept plume reentry decoys require rocket satellites schemes seconds Section sensors SLBMs Soviet BMD Soviet boosters Soviet Union space space-based system deployment area target technical tegic tion trajectory U.S. BMD U.S. defense U.S. lasers United viet warheads wavelength x-ray laser
Popular passages
Page 95 - Interim Agreement on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms...
Page 88 - The Governments of the United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, hereinafter referred to as the "Original Parties", Proclaiming as their principal aim the speediest possible achievement of an agreement on general and complete disarmament under strict international control in accordance with the objectives of the United Nations which would put an end to the armaments race and eliminate the incentive...
Page 91 - Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.
Page 91 - May 26, 1972, in two copies, each in the English and Russian languages, both texts being equally authentic.
Page 88 - Proceeding from the premise that the limitation of anti-ballistic missile systems, as well as certain agreed measures with respect to the limitation of strategic offensive arms, would contribute to the creation of more favorable conditions for further negotiations on limiting strategic arms...
Page 92 - The Parties understand that the center of the ABM system deployment area centered on the national capital and the center of the ABM system deployment area containing ICBM silo launchers for each Party shall be separated by no less than thirteen hundred kilometers.
Page 91 - ... provide on a voluntary basis such information as either Party considers necessary to assure confidence in compliance with the obligations assumed...
Page 85 - What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant US retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?
Page 90 - ABM systems or their components in excess of the numbers or outside the areas specified in this Treaty, as well as ABM systems or their components prohibited by this Treaty, shall be destroyed or dismantled under agreed procedures within the shortest possible agreed period of time.
Page 92 - Agreed Statements, Common Understandings, and Unilateral Statements Regarding the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missiles 1.