Anti-Satellite Test Political, Critics Say

As the United States once again reschedules its first anti-satellite weapons test against a target in space, critics contend that its main purpose will be political: to impress the Soviets with U.S. space weaponry before the November summit meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev and to preclude a new arms control agreement.

Announcement of the controversial test--a milestone in the $4-billion program, when and if it occurs later this month--coincided with a fresh burst of hard-line anti-Soviet rhetoric by the White House in the waning days of summer.

Taken together, these acts have revived fears among the Reagan Administration’s critics that the White House may be returning to its previous attitude toward Moscow as an “evil empire.” That, in turn, has rekindled these critics’ suspicions about the Administration’s arms control and summit strategies.

“The ASAT test will have no technical significance,” California Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), a leading congressional opponent of the program, charged last week. “It will have only psychological significance in its impact on the Soviets. And if it is flaunted, the Soviets will say it proves the United States is not interested in arms control.”

In fact, the Soviets have already announced that if the test occurs, they will feel free to end the moratorium on testing and deployment of their own anti-satellite weapon--raising in earnest the specter of a new arms race in space. Gorbachev himself expressed “disappointment and concern” over what he called a renewed American “campaign of hatred . . . a scenario of pressure” against the Soviet Union.

Administration officials heatedly deny any intention to scuttle the summit meeting or to prevent success in arms control negotiations through an anti-Soviet campaign. In the view of one senior official, a successful anti-satellite test could even allow Reagan to conclude that the United States has caught up to the Soviets in this area--and he thus might offer a deal banning further testing of both U.S. and Soviet anti-satellite systems.

However, Kenneth L. Adelman, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, acknowledged a change in the tone of U.S. statements, arguing that “overall Administration behavior in recent weeks has sought to reduce the great expectations for the summit that are building toward fever pitch.”

In an interview, Adelman said: “We have always been concerned that the summit would become a runaway wagon, with high public expectations that cannot be met, and (that it) would create alarm and despair when they are not met. So we have every interest in compensating for an anticipated list in the boat by leaning in advance to the opposite side.”

The hasty and improvised changes in the anti-satellite test schedule were announced by the White House on Aug. 20, sandwiched between a hard-line speech on U.S.-Soviet relations by national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane the day before and White House charges the following day that the Soviets were using a chemical “spy dust” to track American diplomats in Moscow.

McFarlane, who specifically addressed prospects for the summit, said that Reagan was prepared to go halfway toward resolving outstanding issues. But he devoted the rest of the speech to cataloguing U.S. objections to Soviet actions and calling for fundamental changes in Soviet military and political policies.

McFarlane likened Soviet ideology to a “mental prison” whose walls should fall, and he branded Moscow’s call for a ban on space defense research a “masterpiece of chutzpah.”

Meanwhile, the charges concerning “spy dust,” a material that allegedly has carcinogenic potential, seemed to some observers to unnecessarily involve the White House in a bit of Soviet-bashing.

Even U.S. diplomats most incensed about the Soviet activity conceded that the State Department could have denounced Moscow without bringing in the White House--thereby avoiding a rancorous exchange at the top levels of both countries two months before the summit meeting.

Embarrassing Error

But most attention was focused on the forthcoming space weapons test, and the Administration immediately embarrassed itself by miscounting the 15 days required between its announcement and the actual test--producing yet another delay in the eight-year program.

The coming test, originally scheduled to occur last year, had most recently been set for June, but a specially instrumented target vehicle developed serious difficulties. That target, which would have inflated to a huge balloon in orbit, will not be ready until November at the earliest.

Instead of waiting, the Administration on Aug. 20 announced that the two-stage ASAT weapon, slung beneath an F-15 fighter plane, would be fired against a real U.S. satellite nearing the end of its operational lifetime. The ASAT warhead, a small cylinder 13 inches in diameter and 12 inches long, is to home in on heat waves from the target and destroy it by collision over the Pacific, near California.

The President’s message announcing the test came during a congressional recess, and the test was scheduled for last week, before both houses of Congress had returned.

On the one hand, Reagan claimed that the Administration was talking “in good faith” with the Soviets about ASAT limitations--but on the other, it said that an anti-satellite test ban was “not possible or in our national security interests.”

Brown, the California congressman, called the message “a pious fraud,” while the Arms Control Assn., a private group financed by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, attacked it as a mockery of congressional restrictions on the ASAT program.

Spurgeon Keeney, head of the arms association and a former government arms expert, said that the shot against a real satellite will also “substantially diminish the value of the test.” Without the instruments of the special target vehicle to monitor events, highly important data will be lost, he said, including such measurements as the “miss distance” if the test fails.

Lack of Coordination

Miscounting the 15 days that a congressional resolution required to expire between the announcement and the shot has been particularly humiliating.

White House lawyers specializing in security matters told the Air Force before the announcement that it should be made Aug. 19 to permit the test to occur the afternoon of Sept. 4, according to sources--but military lawyers insisted that the statement could be delayed until Aug. 20. Only after the announcement on Aug. 20 was it recognized that the 15-day deadline would legally stretch until midnight Sept. 4--and the shot was postponed.

Brown, who has long campaigned to kill the program, said he found in the Administration’s ineptitude both more time and new arguments to persuade congressional colleagues this week to vote against any further anti-satellite weapons tests.

Why the Administration originally chose to accelerate the test is not precisely known. At least two specific reasons were advanced, however.

First, Congress had authorized three anti-satellite tests against a target in space for the 1985 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. It was considered likely, but not certain, that Congress would give similar authorization for next year. But the Pentagon did not want to risk a ban on new tests after Oct. 1, and the instrumented target would not be ready until at least November.

Political Considerations

In addition, ASAT supporters feared for political reasons that if the test did not occur before November, it might never occur. In this view, it could not take place in November, virtually on the eve of the summit meeting, without seeming to be a “thumb in the Soviet eye,” as one official put it. And unless the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting turned out to be a disaster, an ASAT test in the months following a summit with positive results would appear to be aimed at destroying the outcome.

Such constraints, coupled with the unilateral Soviet ASAT moratorium on testing for the past two years, raised fears that the United States would be locked into a mutual, if de facto, test ban on ASATs next year.

Surprisingly, both the State and Defense departments endorsed the speedup, although for different reasons, sources said. The Pentagon sought to “lance the boil”--to conduct the first and most newsworthy test against a real target in space before a de facto moratorium could be set in place.

The State Department, meanwhile, believes that the test will not damage prospects for a friendly summit meeting or for progress in arms control talks but may, paradoxically, have the opposite effect, these sources said.

Neither department expects the Soviets to mount a major new anti-satellite effort despite their harsh language, the sources added, although ASAT critics anticipate the opposite.