Imperial Stars 1-The Stars at War (59 page)

It will also require time. We may not have that time. Military establishments, ours among them, have
always
been inefficient, and better organized for the last war than the next. If we wait for perfection, we may well wait forever.

Thus three facts stand out:

1. The Soviets have an enormous military establishment, and we are not going to match it tank for tank and gun for gun.

2. Our present course of buying some of this and some of that, more tanks here and more planes there, isn't an adequate, or indeed reasonable, response to the threat, and "reform of the Pentagon" and other efforts to "trim the fat and reduce waste" aren't likely to succeed very quickly, if at all.

3. We have to do
something
and soon.

This reasoning was the starting point for Lt. General Daniel O. Graham's strategic analysis. If what we're doing isn't going to work, and we have to do something, where can we go? Graham concluded that we needed a bold new approach, a strategic sidestep; that we had to stop competing with the Soviets in areas in which we can't win, and begin to compete where we have the advantage.

His analysis led him through high technology to space; to the High Frontier. As Dan Graham has repeatedly said, he didn't start with any prejudices toward space as a decisive frontier. All his training and experience pointed him elsewhere. It was the search for strategic initiatives which led him to his conclusions.

The above was written as the preface to General Daniel O. Graham's book
High Frontier
. That book presents, in detail, a bold new strategy for the defense of the United States and Western Civilization. The concepts of High Frontier are very new and different, but the plans suggested were realistic. Some of the nation's best engineers and development scientists have examined Project High Frontier. Many began their analysis convinced that High Frontier couldn't work, or would cost too much, or would take too long. As they became more involved, they changed their minds.

I know, because I was one of them. I am not any longer a professional scientist, but I stay in touch with the aerospace community. When I was first told of High Frontier, I searched among those I respected for engineers and scientists opposed to the plan, and introduced them to the team of equally respectable advisors assisting General Graham. In some cases I was privileged to sit in on the resulting debates.

Certain conclusions emerged. First, we do hold the advantages in space. Our technology is more advanced and more reliable, and the Soviet "brute force" approach to problems creates as many difficulties as it solves when applied to the space environment. We don't have everything our way in space, but we are clearly better off in a high technology competition than trying to match their conventional military establishment.

Secondly, High Frontier will work. There can be arguments over details, costs, and schedules. As with all strategic plans there will remain uncertainties: the first thing taught to career officers is the maxim "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy." But it will work, and those who all too predictably argue that High Frontier's supporters don't understand the laws of physics are cordially invited to present their case—not to Dan Graham, who
doesn't
understand the laws of physics, but to the prize-winning physicists aboard General Graham's team.

In
The Strategy of Technology
, Stefan Possony and I argued that the United States ought to abandon the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, sometimes known as MAD, in favor of a strategic doctrine of "Assured Survival"; that as a Western nation adhering to the Judeo-Christian tradition, we should be more concerned with preserving our nation than with assuring another's destruction.

I concluded that: Project High Frontier presents a practical way to achieve that goal.

In fact, we builded better than we knew. Part of the High Frontier analysis was a presentation to President Ronald Reagan. It must have been convincing, because on March 23, 1983, the President made his famous "Star Wars" speech, in which he asked the scientists and technologists of the United States to end the terrible fears of our strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction, and adopt a new strategy of Assured Survival.

I've discussed that in some detail in
Mutual Assured Survival
by Jerry Pournelle and Dean Ing (Baen Books).

In 1970 Stefan Possony and I published
The Strategy of Technology
. The most important point made in that book was that technology can be directed by a strategist; that
technological breakthroughs
can be created on demand if sufficient technological resources are focussed in a rational way on strategic problems.

The "Star Wars" speech proved that we were more right than we'd known. Once the technological community became focused on the problem of making the ICBM "impotent and obsolete," it turned out to be rather easier than we'd thought. The Manhattan Project turned up three ways to make atomic weapons; all worked.

Strategic Defense Initiative research turned up five ways. General James Abrahamson, SDI Director, has confessed to an
embarrass d' richess
. He has to choose among strongly competing alternatives, all of which will work.

One of the most important discoveries was that ground-based lasers are not only feasible, but a likely way to defend a nation. We speak here of
enormous
lasers; lasers built near, say, Hoover Dam, and capable of turning the enormous output of that dam into laser energy. This is combined with new techniques that unfocus the laser beam at the ground, so that the atmospheric distortions
refocus the beam
. The result is that the laser beam is perfectly focused when it gets above the atmosphere.

With lasers that large, and a mirror in orbit to redirect the energy, it's not necessary to "point and shoot"; you can
raster
the entire target area; sweep the beam in a deadly conical pattern to sterilize the whole ICBM corridor from the USSR to the U.S. For good measure these lasers can be used against submarine-launched missiles.

Finally, enormous lasers like these can launch ships from the ground. Arthur Kantrowitz invented that technique way back in the 60s; the ground-based laser provides the energy for a rapidly climbing rocket. It's almost as if the light beam pushes the ship to orbit. The result is that ships get to orbit for fuel costs alone.

There are other ways to destroy incoming ICBMs. As Professor Greg Benford said when I told him of some new breakthroughs: "Really, if you stop to think about it, if you can spend ten million bucks a shot, why is it surprising that you can shoot down a delicate little thing like an ICBM? Not much has to go wrong to keep the ICBM from working. . . ."

The technology is there. It isn't simple technology, and it isn't cheap; but it has already been demonstrated. We can build enormous lasers, on the ground or in space.

Note too that if we put them on the ground they can be extremely powerful; as I said above, you can put the laser next to a dam. The "planetary defenses" beloved of the old imperial-style science fiction have just become a reality. Planet-based laser beams can reach out as far as the moon to engage and destroy armored space ships.

The technology is there. It will be built. The only real question is, who will build it? If we delay long enough, there will be imperial stars all right: but they will be red stars.