A Pentagon plan to test the first destruction of a space satellite with a ground-based laser is provoking a range of opposition both inside and outside the Clinton administration, which fears it could launch a new kind of star wars.
The US Army wants to deploy up to 3 million watts of power from Miracl (Mid-infrared Advanced Chemical laser) against a US Air Force research satellite, now in orbit 260 miles above earth, which has already exceeded its planned year-long life span.
The stuff of science fiction for decades, this would be the first ever known laser attack on a satellite. A Congressional ban on such tests was passed by a Democratic majority in 1990, but the Republicans deliberately allowed it to lapse last year. While not against the letter of any arms control treaties, the planned laser beam attack would severely test the spirit of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty of 1972, the keystone arms control agreement.
The $800 million Miracl laser, at White Sands missile base in New Mexico, generates energy from rocket engines, and uses mirrors to focus this power into a narrow beam of intense force. By the time the beam reaches the target, it would have spread to about 6 ft wide. Already successfully tested on ground targets and rockets, the army is confident that Miracl will successfully burn up the satellite, progressively destroying its sensors and lenses before burning the main body of the structure. But it needs to test the dispersion effects of the atmosphere on the beam and long-range accuracy.
The army does not plan a single high-energy burst of power to vaporise the satellite, but a steady build-up to monitor the precise amount of power needed.
Other countries with their own spy and research and communications satellites, which include Russia, China, Japan, Israel and European countries, will be monitoring instead the new American ability to blind the eyes and close the communications channels of all other powers.
"Shooting a satellite is shooting ourselves in the foot," warned Dr John Pike, of the Federation of American Scientists and a leading critic of the Star Wars programme on which over $440 billion has been spent since its launch by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.
"The US is extremely dependent on intelligence satellites that our adversaries, like Iraq, could shoot down. But Iraq does not have any satellites for us to shoot down."
The test would also serve as a warning to the booming new commercial market in private spy satellites. French and Russian agencies are selling on the open market satellite pictures with a fairly crude resolution, able to pick out ground structures 30 ft wide. These are already militarily useful, to monitor movements of warships, warplanes and tanks. And later this year, France plans to launch the first commercial satellite with resolution comparable to current military hardware.
Ironically, the company that built the $60 million MSTI satellite which is the planned target (it stands for Miniature Sensor Technology Integration) was hoping to sell its services commercially once the US Air Force had no more need for it. About 6 ft long and 3 ft in diameter, the 450 lb MSTI satellite was part of the Star Wars project in tracking missiles from space, and its imaging systems are still useful.
The final decision on the test will face President Clinton when he returns from his holiday this weekend. Without yet going public with their doubts, US diplomats note that the test could complicate hopes for the Russian Duma to proceed with the ratification of other strategic arms reduction treaties.
Although the US Star Wras programme has not been the kind of crash programme that produced the atom bomb in the 1940s, as President Reagan had planned, it has steadily advanced to the point at which the US now plans to be able to shoot down anything short of a full-scale Soviet missile attack at some point in the next decade.