U.S. chases Soviet killer-satellite lead

Press, 21 February 1978, Page 17

U.S. chases Soviet killer-satellite lead

By RICHARD LYONS of the New York Times News Service (through NZPA) Washington While the attention of the world was glued on flights to the Moon and the orbital handshake between Soviet and American astronauts, a less pulicised but more important competition was accelerating — an arms race in space. One result of this competition was the Soviet spy satellite that accidently re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over Canada. It was one of several classes of military space vehicles that have and are still being constructed by Russian space engineers. The Russians have also developed hunter-killer satellites, have experimented with orbital bombardment vehicles, and are believed to be

conducting tests of laser weapons in space. In recent years the defence department has mounted a crash programme to catch up with and overtake the Soviet lead in some areas of military space research and development, investing billions of dollars in projects to build even more sophisticated hunter-killers and laser weapons. The importance of the American effort has been underscored during the past year through statements of concern about the Soviet exploitation of space for military purposes by President Carter and the American Defence Secretary (Mr Harold Brown).

Although the development of antisatellite weapons has been going on for 15 vears, for example, Mr Carter became the first President to publicly acknowledge their existence when he told a news conference in April that United States and Soviet diplomats had agreed to discuss “a commitment not to destroy* one another’s satellites.” Mr Brown also went out of his way last October to volunteer the information that the Soviet Union had the ‘‘operational capability” to destroy some American satellites.

“I find that somewhat troublesome,” he said. “I hope that we can keep space from becoming an area of active hostilities.” Other officials have said privately that the Defence Secretary is understating the case. American officials fear that the hunter-killers, which the Defence Department dubs Asats, can knock out the Pentagon’s ability to communicate with and give orders to ships, planes, submarines, missile silos, and ground forces around the world. This is of crucial strategic importance in the event that a nuclear wa- erupts because the disruption of defence communications could prevent the United States from ordering a retaliatory strike if America were attacked.

Major-General George Keegan, who retired last year as chief of Air Force

intelligence, characterized the threats posed by hunter-killers as "grim.”

General Keegan said American strategists were “startled” two years ago when the Soviets launched a more sophisticated version of their Asat.

“It was the genius of American technology that put all of our strategic reconnaissance, our early missile warning systems, our principal weather forecasting, our precise navigation systems and virtually all of our strategic communications in space,” he said in an interview.

General Keegan added that the United States “has reached the point at which it can neither deploy nor employ strategic or conventional forces on any scale anywhere in the world except through space communications, and our satellites are extremely vulnerable."