Senator Sam Nunn gave his 20-second sound bit for the evening television news a few days ago. SDI, he said, “is a technology, not a theology.”
Nunn has it backwards. SDI is indeed a theology – more precisely an ideology – not just a technology. SDI, Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, is the concept that defense against strategic missiles is moral, essential, and must replace the contrary concept of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) on which our strategy has been based for the last 20 years.
The ideology of SDI can be fulfilled by whatever technology American scientists and engineers can produce, and tomorrow always has something more advanced than yesterday. The ideology of SDI also requires that we build a defense now, not wait for the “perfect” technology because progress never stops unfolding.
The good news about SDI is that technology is advancing so rapidly that opponents can no longer use cost as an argument against it. Brilliant engineering breakthroughs and design revisions have cut the costs of space-based anti-missile interceptors by two-thirds and reduced the overall cost of SDI Phase I deployment by half.
Undersecretary of Defense for acquisition Robert B. Costello said that the estimated cost of Phase I of SDI has dropped from $145.7 billion last year, to $115.4 billion last June, to $69 billion today. That figure is even less than the estimated costs of other weapons systems such as the B-2 bomber, the new Seawolf submarine, and the Midgetman.
SDI Chief Lt. General James Abrahamson announced that the cost of sensors for the space-born kinetic energy system has fallen from $1 billion to $36 million, and that the cost of guidance gyros has fallen from $100,000 each to $5,000 each. He said that a comprehensive, highly effective SDI system is now “most assuredly” feasible.
SDI is a less expensive way to maintain a deterrent to nuclear war than “modernization” of our present offense-only deterrent. The cost of upgrading our “sitting-duck” (unprotected) nuclear forces are mind-boggling: $200 million per Midgetman, $350 million per MX, $350-450 per strategic bomber, and even more per deployed Trident missile.
SDI is also the most cost-efficient way to maintain our only advantage over the Soviets, technology. The indispensable U.S. advantage, superior technology, will grow if SDI is fully funded.
The Business Communications Corporation of Stamford, Connecticut, estimates that sales from SDI-related technologies could range from $5-$20 trillion, and says that “the potential for spin-ff commercialization is staggering.” Research on sensor technology alone, and the corporation says, could spin off $190 billion in sales.
As SDI’s cost reductions make the strategic defense system more economically feasible, they also make it more politically possible. Pentagon officials told Congress before it adjourned that they were pressing ahead with both ground-based and space-based missile interceptors.
General Daniel Graham, the father of SDI ideology, suggests finding the $69 billion needed for SDI by forgoing the road-mobile Midgetman missile, which he calls “outrageously expensive in terms of cost-per-retaliatory warhead deliverable.” Current plans are to build 500 of the single-warhead Midgetman and drive them around on expensive launch vehicles, at a cost of $60-$100 billion for the system, according to the General Accounting Office.
The White House Blue Ribbon Panel of scientists convened by President Reagan recommended in September that we go forward with the deployment of a ground-based limited protection system (LPS) at one, two or three sites, using currently available sensor systems. The panel expressed no doubt that SDI is technically feasible and reported “solid technical progress in just about every facet of SDI.”
Then in November, the SDI Task Force of the White House Science Council recommended that President Reagan propose deployment of a LPS that could later be expanded into a more comprehensive strategic defense system. It advocated that Reagan add the necessary funds to the final budget proposal he will send to Congress in January.
Now that the cost is removed as an argument, no reasonable excuse remains for not deploying SDI in order to protect America from attack. Ronald Reagan’s final gift to America should be the deployment of his most innovative and lasting proposal, his Strategic Defense Initiative.
