Soviets persist with killer-satellite tests

Press, 2 June 1977, Page 6

Soviets persist with killer-satellite tests

NZPA Washington The Soviet Union apparently tried unsuccessfully last week to test a killer satellite designed to intercept and perhaps destroy other objects in orbit, Defence Department officials said on Tuesday. A Pentagon spokesman, Mr Thomas Ross, said that the test involved two Cosmos satellites. One launched on May 20 into an orbit normally used for space targets, the other three days later in what appeared to be an intercept that failed. Mr Ross said that the target, Cosmos 909, is still in orbit. He said that the second satellite, Cosmos 910, dropped out of orbit after the unsuccessful interception and plunged into the Pacific Ocean.

It was the fifth Soviet space test in slightly more than a year identified by the Pentagon as an attempt to perfect killer satellites. United States analysts have listed two of the five as almost certain failures and the other three as possible failures.

The latest test started when the Russians launched Cosmos 909 from Plesetsk, in the northern Soviet Union, into a flight path at a

66-degree angle to the equator and ranging 984 km to 2000 km (615 to 1248 miles) above the Earth.

Pentagon officials said that the first two tests last year, in February and April, produced no space debris. On those tests, officials said, "the question of success or failure involves what the intent was. If large-scale destruction was the goal, they were failures. If it was close approach, they were' successes.”

In London, the commander of allied air forces in central Europe (U.S. General Richard Ellis) has said that Soviet military power far exceeds purely defensive needs and could be used to attack Western Europe with little or no warning.

“There can be no doubt about the Soviets’ offensive capability, particularly in the air,” said General Ellis, in a paper presented on Tuesday to the fifteenth annual Anglo-American aeronautical conference.

“Any reasonable assessment of Soviet capability clearly indicates that without apparent preparation the Warsaw Pact could launch a surprise attack with little or no warning. In these circumstances, the peacetime deployment of N.A.T.O. (North Atlantic Treaty Or-

|ganisation) land forces does not permit an immediate effective counter to a surprise attack.”

But General Ellis said that N.A.T.O. is at present reorganising its air forces in the central region of Europe to enable it to retaliate at once.

“Air forces are not so inhibited as land forces during peace time,” General [Ellis said. “With the aim of improving the effectiveness and flexibility of air power in N.A.T.O.’s central region, a reorganisation has been initiated which progressively will permit central region air resources to be concentrated where and when they are most needed.”

He said that the aim was to place them in a high state of readiness, "postured to meet the surprise attack situation.”

General Ellis estimated Warsaw Pact air strength on the central front at more than 3000 tactical combat aircraft in the forward area plus another 1000 in the western Soviet Union and about 500 medium bombers, j Without disclosing any figures of Western air [strength, he said that the [Warsaw Pact now had “a two-to-one advantage in aircraft.”