New death beam threatens arms balance

Press, 17 October 1978, Page 24

New death beam threatens arms balance

By

TONY GERAGHTY

in the

“Sunday Times,” London

The United States Government has ordered 38 eminent military and civilian scientists to co-ordinate research and feasibility studies on a revolutionary weapon potentially capable of knocking out inter continental missiles at almost the speed of lightThe decision has profound implications for the balance of terror between the superpowers, and some intelligence experts believe it has been taken because Russia is already years ahead of the United States in developing the weapon. This month the Pentagon would not confirm or deny a report that the new committee has been asked to have a five-year plan for further work on the weapon ready by December 1. Development of a United States prototype weapon, its spokesmen insist, is “many years away.” In principle, it is a beam of atomic or sub-atomic particles — electrons, protons or the heavier ions — which are charged with power equivalent to billions of volts of electricity and accelerated towards a target at about the speed of light

(186,000 miles per second), hittng it with extraordinary energy.

The Pentagon’s interest in the “charged particle” or “proton beam” weapon was discussed publicly in March last year by John Allen, a senior United States Government scientist. He told a Congressional committee: “Science fiction writers have been fascinated with the concept of a weapon that beams energy diretcly on to a target, obviating the need for bombs, missiles or projectiles. A weapon of this type now appears to be possible.” More recently his successor, Dr Ruth Davis, told the same committee: “On the one hand we have a weapon of considerable potential, but on the other hand it involves the solution to exceptionally difficult problems in science technology.” There is growing controversy in the United States about how many of tsese problems may have already been solved by the Russians. A basic technical problem is to generate the enormous amount of power needed to release a bolt of high-energy heavy particles at a target.

A Soviet laboratory suspected by the United States Air Force of housing such a device is 200 ft wide and 700 ft long with reinforced concrete walls 10ft thick. U.S.A.F. intelligence believes that the Russians use a controlled nuclear explosion to provide the atom-splitting power required. Putting such hardware into space to int3rcept missiles rising frm their silos would be a formidable task. The first operational systems are more likely to be ground-based proton or electron beams, which remain

fairly stable in the earth’s atmosphere. Used in this way the weapon could be trained on the narrow “windows” hundreds of miles above the earthl through which missiles must re-enter the atmosphere if they are not to be destroyed by friction. For almost 10 years the U.S.A.F. has watched and photographed developments at a big Soviet laboratory at Semipalitinsk, in Central Asia, and Major General George J. Keegan, head of U.S.A.F. Intelligence, concluded in 1975 that the Rus-

sians were developing a beam weapon there. But Keagan s report was rejected by the C.I.A. and its nuclear intelligence board, and Keegan subsequently retired. “Aviation Week” published a detailed article about the affair and commented: “The general attitude within the scientific community was that if the United States could not successfully produce the technology to have a beam weapon” — it had tried once, and failed — “then the Russians certainly could not.”

Keegan’s team had pre* dieted that Soviet scientists would be forced to vent gaseous hydrogen into the atmosphere carrying nuclear debris from the beam experiements. “Aviation Week” reported that satellites had detected seven tests after Keegan’s 1975 report which tended to confirm his theo* ties. Dr Willard Bennett, a member of the United States team which was obliged to abandon beam weapon work in 1972. said recently: “Keegan had a lot of intelligence information not available to me. But Icame to exactly the same conclusion he did. I think the Russians are getting ahead of us.” The Pentagon, while confirming the accuracv of much of the “Aviation Week” technical data, insists that that journal — and bv implication, General Keegaii — exaggerate the extent of Soviet progress, particularly in claiming that the Russians could have an operational beam weapon by 19W. One thing that is clear is that the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement, through which the superpowers agreed to deploy virtually no defence to each other’s ballistic missiles and to establish the “balance of terror,” is now being undermined in the laboratories of both nations.