Blinded by Science
Gahr, Evan
p hysicist Richard Garwin is a naysayer. Ever since President Reagan unveiled his Strategic Defense Initiative on March 23, 1983, Garwin has been its leading critic, proclaiming it too costly,...
...Though only an expanded research and development program, 32 No v e m b e r ~ o o o _9 The American Spectator...
...Today there are several operational hit-to-kill systems...
...Satellites with infrared detectors could track and discriminate among missiles and their warheads sooner and better than the groundbased radars...
...When it comes to hard scientific facts, however, Garwin and his colleagues have an almost unbroken track record of being wrong...
...Almost from day one, however, Garwin and the UCS began revising the numbers down: 2,400 satellite battle stations soon became 2,263, then 965, 8o0, and finally 3oo--an almost 9 ~ percent drop, ironically dubbed the "Garwin curve" in Pentagon circles...
...Pike even stands by his estimate in 1985 that SDI's cost would be equivalent to paying for a "new Navy...
...Asked whose "plausible estimates" they were, Pike claimed the one trillion dol]ar figure came from "internal Strategic Defense Initiative Organization [SDIO] estimates...
...They insisted that pursuing the technology was a huge waste of time and resources...
...Interceptor rockets, equipped with infrared guidance and microprocessors, were now accurate enough to preclude nuclear explosives from the defense rockets...
...The stage was thus well set for Ronald Reagan's announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in March 1983...
...In July, the Federation of American Scientists released a letter drafted by Hans Bethe and signed by 50 Nobel Laureates (one in economics incidentally, the rest hard science) opposing a National Missile Defense system: "The system would offer little protection and would do grave harm to this nation's core security interests...
...Wrong again...
...Ever since President Reagan unveiled his Strategic Defense Initiative on March 23, 1983, Garwin has been its leading critic, proclaiming it too costly, technologically impossible, and likely to fuel an accelerated arms race...
...By then, new technologies were available...
...They range from the American Patriot PAC- 3 missile, to the Israeli Arrow a (which is not only operational but already deployed in Israel)-all of which operate at the low altitudes the UCS thought impossible...
...Though Bethe could not recall the specific numbers that UCS touted about SDI, he did suggest that most were formulated by Dick Garwin...
...William Graham, Reagan's science adviser, recalls that SDI critics said in 1984 and 1985 that SDI would need "1o million lines of computer code and [so] could not possibly be written in a way that makes it functional...
...Though most of the arguments against missile defense are disappearing, the same cannot be said of its critics...
...Technical feasibility is clearly not a significant impediment to hit-to-kill defenses...
...Which begs the question: If these scientists can't even get their science right, why should we take them seriously on matters vital to our nation's defense...
...The Soviets also kept building their offensive forces...
...Early this June, however, the jointly developed U.S.-Israeli Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) tracked and destroyed a live Katyusha rocket...
...Take chemical lasers, 30 November 2000 _9 The American Spectator for example...
...Other longtime critics are even less nuanced in their estimations...
...The UCS was equally skeptical of the hit-to-kill technology-commonly referred to as "hitting a bullet with a bullet"-by which rockets are designed to intercept and destroy oncoming enemy missiles...
...The popular trillion-dollar figure had always been anti-SDI nonsense...
...Nobel Prize-winning physicist Hans Bethe, who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II, concedes that some advancement has been made since the z98o's-"We have shown in the Gulf War it is possible to hit designated targets from far away'--but still insists an overall missile defense is not feasible...
...Yet today, says Graham, "much bigger codes are now routinely used in everyday applications...
...Garwin and the UCS argued chemical lasers would require too much fuel and would be subject to too much atmospheric distortion to ever be workable...
...Moreover, no longer did we have to wait for the warheads to detach themselves from their missiles but could more efficiently attack the missiles themselves by means of laser weapons in orbit...
...airborne-laser program, told the Wall Street Journal in September: "Hey, we're here, we've done it...
...Garwin and company complained that a hitto-kill defense was unworkable because, among other things, it "can function only in very high altitudes...
...Ellen Pawlikowski, who is overseeing tile U.S...
...A more recent test, in late August, had the laser successfully take down two rockets in rapid succession...
...Moreover, Gen...
...EVAN GAHR, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, writes often for TAS...
...The American Spectator - .November 2ooo 31 employ about 65 million lines of code...
...Even in the 196o's and early 7o's, American know-how could have deployed a missile defense system...
...Indeed, a typical office computer can handle about loo million lines of code, and software programs like Microsoft Office Arrow missiles for Israel, but nothing for us...
...As Air Force Col...
...So while the Soviets quickly built up to and beyond the limits allowed for in the ABM treaty, the U.S...
...John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), for example, remains adamant that SDI is impracticable...
...There was, however, never any trillion-dollar estimate-internal or external-touted by the SDIO...
...Indeed the New York Times recently hailed Garwin as the "renowned physicist" who is "known for being politically independent and outspoken...
...Told that Garwin stands by all his calculations, Bethe said "I firmly believe also" that the figures were correct...
...In letters to President Clinton, congressional testimony, and in "scientific" reports about missile defense, they offer much the same pseudo-scientific arguments as they did against Star Wars...
...They said it couldn't be done THEL chemical laser shoots down two Russian Katyusha rockets in rapid succession in the desert...
...That argument," says Graham, "has gone away...
...Garwin's trillion-dollar figure became an instant "fact" in the Democratic and media campaign to kill "Star Wars...
...By the 198o's , the most threatening category of Soviet warheads had grown twenty-fold, and &nerican interest in missile defense was revived...
...For those who value partisanship over scientific integrity, that is no doubt true...
...Asked today whether his original critiques of SDI were a mistake, however, Garwin emphatically answers "no," claiming the controversy over SDI hasn't hurt his reputation one bit...
...As Hans Bethe admitted to the Wail Street Journal in 1984 , the "dispute isn't primarily scientific" but turns on political and strategic matters...
...When asked if technological developments have led him to even slightly rethink his critique of SDI, Pike responded with a simple "no...
...The errors of the UCS are long forgotten, but they shouldn't be...
...At the time," he explains, "there were plausible estimates for [a] total system cost [of] about a trillion dollars...
...Another big problem, said UCS, was programming: SDI supposedly needed way too many "lines of computer code" to program all the necessary computer functions...
...N I t seems the anti-anti-missile-defense crowd has become as permanent a part of our political landscape as the anti-antiCommunists - a n d just as impervious to facts...
...Testiffing on April 24, 1984, before Congress on behalf of the Union of Goncerned Scientists (UCS), Garwin argued that Reagan's plan to build a space-based defense against Soviet missile attacks would require 2,400 satellite battle stations--at an estimated cost of a trillion dollars...
...scrapped missile defenses altogether...
...They remain a lesson to all those Americans concerned about ehe dangers of rogue missiles or terrorist attacks--in part, because the enemies of an American missile shield continue to invoke the names of these critics...
...Given the technology of the time, however, the only way to knock down incoming warheads was to send a nuclear-tipped missile up and explode it in the general vicinity of the enemy warhead...
...Malcolm O'Neill, who worked with the SDIO in the 198o's , says their actual estimate for the total cost of implementation was around $too billion...
...In fact, the Nlti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, signed in 197 z, specifically allowed for the limited construction of such systems...
...Clearly science isn't the main issue here...
...VVtfile a nuclear explosion high in the stratosphere was far better then one at, say, Empire State Building level, the advantages of exploding nuclear weapons an)where above our cities was an understandably hard sell in a democracy...
Vol. 33 • November 2000 • No. 9
