X-Ray Weapon : Flaws Peril Pivotal ‘Star Wars’ Laser

“But is it a bomb?” Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger wanted to know one day walking through the halls of the Pentagon with his then-undersecretary, Richard D. Delauer. Weinberger was inquiring about the X-ray laser, a key weapon in President Reagan’s “Star Wars” program.

“I had to tell him,” Delauer recalled recently, “you’re going to have to detonate a nuclear bomb in space. That’s how you’re going to get the X-ray.”

But Weinberger repeated his question: “It’s not a bomb, is it?”

No, Delauer said tactfully, it would be a “nuclear event.”

Weinberger seemed satisfied and, as Delauer later told The Times, he concluded that the defense secretary “didn’t understand the technology. Most people don’t.”

As Weinberger’s “tell-me-it-ain’t-so” question indicates, the X-ray laser, initially expected to carry much of the load for President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), has turned out to be a seriously flawed defensive weapon.

It requires a substantial nuclear explosion to generate the laser, a fact now judged inconvenient in a program defined by the President as a “non-nuclear” effort to make nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.”

Critics of SDI have made much of the prospect of thousands of nuclear bombs circling in space set to launch their X-rays but--regrettably--also subject to other misfortunes.

“A bomb in space is a bomb in space,” said Abraham Szoke, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “and we wouldn’t be too happy if the Russians had them up there.”

‘Sitting Ducks’

Worse, the consensus among scientists is that the X-ray laser--if it ever really works--will be useful first as an anti-satellite weapon and then, much later, as a limited part of a defensive system. If it also is developed by the Soviets, it could be used to quickly eliminate what critics refer to as the “sitting ducks” of “Star Wars”--the huge mirrors, battle stations, spy satellites and sensors that would have to be deployed in space at a cost of billions of dollars as part of the President’s proposed shield against enemy missiles.

Thus, the weapon that more than anything else may have inspired the optimism of the President’s initial “Star Wars” speech is now treated as something of an embarrassment by the Administration.

The Administration is well aware of the political vulnerability of this weapon. George A. Keyworth II, the President’s science adviser, at one point all but dismissed the X-ray laser as a defensive weapon when he said: “I think it is unlikely that the American people will maintain full and enduring support for these (“Star Wars”) systems if they continue to rely upon nuclear weapons as defensive means, when there is no assurance that the defense weapon is not potentially as damaging as the threat that they confront.”

$100 Million a Year

But the Administration continues to fund the X-ray laser to the tune of an estimated $100 million a year and the tale of its persistence forms a curious and important part of the “Star Wars” story. As with much of the rest of the tale, it is difficult to tell without conjuring up the stooped, somewhat enfeebled but always feisty figure of physicist Edward Teller, ever alert to the problems of national security and their potential nuclear solutions.

A good place to begin is one day three years ago at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is funded by the Energy Department and nominally managed by the University of California regents. It was the scene of Teller’s past triumphs and is still one of only two places in this country where you can legally design a nuclear bomb.

Teller had come to mark the lab’s 30th birthday by speaking against the nuclear freeze and for construction of “a third generation” of nuclear weapons.

“The first generation,” Teller explained with mounting enthusiasm, “was the fission (atomic) one. The second was the fusion (hydrogen) bomb. The third, I would describe it as the kind of bomb that uses the nuclear explosion only as a starting point to accomplish something else.”

‘Star Wars’ Exotica

The something else was the X-ray laser--that well-publicized example of “Star Wars” exotica.

“What this laboratory can accomplish now,” Teller told his audience, “is more important than what we ever have accomplished before. The third-generation efforts give us every expectation of an effective nuclear defense,” he said. “And if defense by nuclear weapons is possible, we must have it.” He also warned that the Russians were at work on a defensive system and that if we didn’t build one, they would.

Seven months later, after much prodding by Teller, Reagan echoed those sentiments in his now-famous “Star Wars” speech.

Teller had been talking anti-ballistic missile defense with Reagan and many other politicians for decades. But this time he had brought something new to the table: persuasive talk of a bold new weapon--the X-ray laser--which, he claimed, for the first time made defense of the U.S. population feasible.

Initially dubbed the Excalibur, after King Arthur’s legendary sword, the X-ray laser is now called the Super Excalibur, indicating a progression of sorts. According to SDI’s proponents, an important step in that progression occurred last March 23, during the explosion of an experimental nuclear device at the government’s Nevada test site. The test’s code name was “Cottage.”

Results Leaked to Press

That the Cottage test involved the X-ray laser should have been a tightly guarded secret. But within a short time the press was flooded with leaks from pro-SDI sources proclaiming the experiment a success.

Civilians living near the Nevada test range are routinely warned about the size of impending tests, and on March 23 they were told to expect a blast in the 20-150 kiloton range. Thus, the fact that Cottage involved the X-ray laser is a critical bit of intelligence. It indicates that the explosion needed to pump the X-ray laser was not “small,” as leaked reports had claimed. It was at least 20 kilotons, possibly as large as 150 kilotons. The bomb that devastated Hiroshima was 13 kilotons.

Leaks about the Cottage test alarmed those charged with administering SDI. As a result, the FBI in May began a major investigation at Livermore to determine just how it all happened.

One possible leak occurred soon after the Cottage test in a speech Teller gave in April at UC Irvine. It was reported in the Orange County edition of The Times, but not picked up elsewhere.

In an upbeat report on “Star Wars” progress, Teller said the X-ray laser weapons “exist not on paper” but in reality. “Three weeks ago, I couldn’t have said that,” he said.

May Have Violated Rules

Teller’s statement apparently referred to the Cottage test, which had occurred two weeks earlier and, as such, the speech may have violated classification guidelines.

On his way home to Palo Alto, after giving the Irvine speech, Teller encountered another Times reporter at the San Jose airport. When told that the reporter was working on a “Star Wars” story and was on his way to see physicist Sidney D. Drell, deputy director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Teller told the reporter: “Make sure Drell tells you of the latest developments.”

Half an hour later, Drell, a cheerful Ed Asner look-alike, greeted the reporter with an impish smile and the words: “I know, you met Edward at the airport. He called me to make sure I knew of the latest test results so that I could tell you.”

Drell, a veteran of many defense science projects, who has been briefed extensively on SDI but remains critical, said he did not share Teller’s assessment of the results but felt bound by classification restrictions not to say anything further about the subject.

In fact, some critics suggest that proponents of SDI have misused classified data to present a far too promising picture of the work done on the X-ray laser, but that classification rules prevent their responding in kind.

Front-Page Article

The most disturbing example of that, they claim, was a front-page article in the New York Times a month after Teller’s Irvine speech. “What appears to be an important advance in developing an X-ray laser space weapon powered by a nuclear bomb,” the paper reported, “has been made by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.”

Article Cites ‘Focusing’

The article, by science writer William J. Broad, reported that, according to information supplied by “federal scientists,” the work at Livermore “has increased the brightness and thus the power of the X-ray device by focusing its rays.”

It is not clear who “federal scientists” refers to, but Broad has good sources at Livermore, where he spent time this last year preparing a forthcoming book on the scientists behind “Star Wars.”

The appearance of that story propelled the FBI into its investigation. Lab classification rules had even prevented use of the word “focusing” in the non-classified titles of talks or papers. The identification of the focusing process and a report of its success were more serious.

One White House science adviser said of the New York Times article that “it was a press release. The Livermore guys saw the President’s policy moving away from their favorite toy, so they began a counter campaign.”

Success Downplayed

This same adviser also would not comment on the test results because of classification, but he believed that the reports of its success were exaggerated.

“As a piece of basic research in physics, they have done some clever stuff, but to go from there to a weapons system is a tremendous leap.” He added that “the public is being whipped around by selective leaks of highly classified information.”

In Livermore, the New York Times article evoked a pithier response from physicist Ray E. Kidder, who has “worked on more different weapons projects than I can remember” during 29 years at the lab. Sitting in a Chinese restaurant, Kidder--a big, ruddy-faced, mustachioed man, dressed in blue jeans and a broad-checked, open-neck sports shirt--sucked on a Budweiser and concluded, “It’s just baloney.”

“The public is getting swindled by one side that has access to classified information and can say whatever it wants and not go to jail, whereas we (SDI’s critics with access to classified information) can’t say whatever we want; we would go to jail, that’s the difference.

“It’s so frustrating to me because nearly everybody around here (Livermore) agrees with what I’ve said except two guys who are the world’s biggest BSers, and they’re goddamn good at it, and that’s Teller and Wood.” (Lowell L. Wood is a Teller protege who has been instrumental in pushing the X-ray laser program at Livermore.)

‘That Salesman’

Kidder has worked with Teller, including consulting recently on a problem related to the X-ray laser, and he is at great pains to indicate respect for Teller as a physicist. It is a respect he does not extend to Wood, whom he refers to only as “that salesman.”

Most recently, Kidder, who ran the lab’s laser program for its first decade, has written scathingly critical internal technical memoranda on the lab’s nuclear-pumped X-ray laser.

“If the X-ray laser works, and it might,” Kidder wrote in a declassified version of his critique, “space-based weapons will become no more than provocative sitting ducks,” because the laser will be first and foremost an anti-satellite device.

In his speech at UC Irvine, Teller seemed to confirm Kidder’s charges about the X-ray laser’s uses. Teller said it “could be, and probably will be, used in destroying (Soviet) satellites.”

But, as opposed to Teller, Kidder thinks that that is its only use, and that it cannot fulfill the role it was expected to play in a “Star Wars” defense. This is because the X-rays themselves cannot penetrate deeply into the atmosphere.

“The atmosphere is equivalent to a wall of water 30 feet thick,” Kidder observed, “and X-rays can’t go through that wall of water no matter how desirable that may be to politicians.”

May Become Invulnerable

This is no minor limitation, because “Star Wars” proponents originally hoped to down Soviet missiles in the initial stage of their flight, in what is known as “boost phase.” But if the Soviets redesign their missiles to complete their boost phase within the atmosphere--as they’re now expected to do--they will be invulnerable to X-ray lasers.

A missile in the first stage of its flight can be likened to a huge bus carrying fuel, warheads and decoys disguised as warheads to fool the enemy. It is easier for satellites to detect at this stage because of the heat it emits on takeoff. And it is easier to destroy in this phase because the bus missile is made of more fragile material than the warheads that it will eventually release. Most important, if the missile is hit in boost phase, all of its warheads and decoys are destroyed with one shot. After boost phase, the warheads and decoys will disperse, and there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of targets to contend with.

For all of these reasons, it is widely assumed that the ability to knock out enemy missiles in their boost phase is essential to the success of SDI.

But four months after the President’s “Star Wars” speech in March, 1983, a panel commissioned by the Administration to look into SDI heard disquieting testimony from the Martin Marietta Corp., considered to be expert on rocketry. Company scientists estimated that it was a relatively simple matter for the Soviets to adopt a so-called “fast burn” that would cut their boost phase from five minutes to 50 seconds. The significance of this was twofold--the time in which the missiles could be hit would be prohibitively short, and their boost phase would be completed within the atmosphere, which would protect them from the X-rays.

Formerly, it was thought that the Soviets would be in boost phase for five minutes, permitting an X-ray laser bomb to be “popped” from the ground into space, where it would explode, directing its X-rays down at the Soviet missile. (“Pop up” was thought to be a politically acceptable alternative to leaving the X-ray bomb permanently in space.) It is generally accepted that the 50-second boost phase would be prohibitively short for interception by pop up.

‘Too Short a Time’

“You’re talking about something that might have to work in a minute. That’s just too short a time to make decisions to make something like this work,” said Paul S. Brown, Livermore’s assistant associate director for arms control.

Knowledge about the fast burn option came as a considerable shock to SDI proponents. According to Kidder: “Teller almost certainly didn’t know about fast burn when he pushed the X-ray laser on the President, and now he’s caught out on a very thin limb with a weapon that can’t do the job.”

Teller was not available for comment on this question, but Gerold Yonas, chief scientist of the SDI organization in Washington, confirmed that “X-rays cannot penetrate the atmosphere.”

Yonas stressed instead that the X-ray lasers might play a role in intercepting missiles in mid-course or at least in exploding balloons and other decoys unleashed by the Soviets along with their missiles to confuse the defense.

But George C. Smith, a Livermore expert on nuclear war fighting, discounts the efficacy of the X-ray laser as an intercept weapon, even in mid-course, because of another technical limitation. Because it is generated by a nuclear explosion, the whole weapon is destroyed quite suddenly and there is a limit to how many warheads, or balloons disguised to look like warheads, it can take out in that time.

“You only get one or, at best, a few shots off from the weapon,” Smith claimed, “before the thermal effects of the bomb’s explosion destroy the whole works. It would be very expensive to pop these things up to take out a few decoys.”

Expressions of Skepticism

No survey exists of what people at Livermore think about the Kidder-Wood controversy, but it is not difficult to encounter expressions of skepticism about some of the grander goals set for SDI. And on an off-the-record basis, it is often made quite clear that Teller and Wood are considered a bit wild in their optimism.

“I would characterize it slightly differently,” said George H. Miller, Livermore’s deputy associate director for nuclear design, when asked about Kidder’s assessment of the mood at the lab.

“I think that most of the people at the working levels are skeptical,” Miller said, “but they understand enough of technological innovation and that the potential for defense is so important that we should spend the effort trying to find out.”

Yonas, who is respected by the program’s boosters and critics for his sense of balance, falls squarely into that camp. In fact, while discussing the project’s hopes and potential pitfalls, he catalogued the obstacles in what sounded almost like an Hassidic chant of scientific ecstasy:

“We need tens of millions of elements . . . more sensors in a focal point arrangement that doesn’t exist. Can you do it? Yeah, I think you can do it. Have we done it? No, we haven’t done it. Optics, large optics, cheap large areas. Do we have it today? Now, we don’t have techniques for manufacturing optics. But if you say that the first light bulb and the 10-millionth light bulb are gonna be the same, I don’t agree with you.”

Infancy of Development

But when it comes to the X-ray laser, there is general agreement that the weapon is in the infancy of its development. The “success” of the Cottage test proved only that some slight focusing of the X-rays was possible. Proponents think this may be improved upon after years of further testing, but critics are doubtful. Both sides agree that at this point, neither the Soviet Union nor the United States is even close to deploying such a weapon.

Scientists Held ‘in Awe’

William Lowell Morgan, a Livermore physicist who is working on the X-ray laser, decries the failure of some of his colleagues to acknowledge the device’s real status and limitations: “The public holds scientists in awe and has implicit trust in them. Scientists, consequently, have an obligation to level with the public. To lie to the public because we know that the public doesn’t understand all this technical stuff brings us scientists down to the level of hawkers of snake oil, miracle cleaners and Veg-O-Matics.”

Critics and supporters of the X-ray laser also agree that neither the United States nor the Soviets could develop the weapon if a comprehensive test ban treaty or even one banning tests below the level of 10 kilotons were in force.

“To get an X-ray laser requires an awful lot of data,” Yonas said, “and when you have to get the data with underground tests that we don’t fire very often, it’s a long and tedious process.”

Miller and Brown of Livermore agree that even a low threshold test ban would stop the Soviet and American programs on the X-ray laser. But they claim that the lab opposes a test ban for other reasons, particularly that of maintaining the reliability of the stockpile of weapons.

Livermore physicist Hugh E. DeWitt insists that the lab’s objections to a test ban are largely motivated by the fact that government contracts for the third-generation nuclear weapons have given the lab “a new lease on life.”

Soon after the President’s “Star Wars” speech, Cornell University physicist Kurt Gottfried predicted that the desire to push ahead with anti-missile weapons was the real reason for the Administration’s resistance to a test ban treaty.

Limit Could Kill Program

After noting that “every President from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter has sought a comprehensive test ban,” Gottfried added, “the Reagan Administration surprised everyone with its refusal to follow through on this. Now we know why: A limit as low as 10 kilotons would kill the X-ray laser ABM program.”

The issue of a comprehensive test ban treaty, dormant since 1981 when the Reagan Administration pulled out of talks with the Soviets on the subject, has suddenly become a live one, and the fate of the X-ray laser might be determined by its resolution.

This summer, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev initiated a unilateral moratorium on testing until the end of the year. In a press conference at the beginning of August, Reagan implied that he might agree to a permanent moratorium on underground nuclear explosions, once the near-term American tests are completed.

But hours after that press conference, the White House issued a disclaimer, stating: “The President is not proposing any new initiative,” and added that a test ban would require “substantially improved verification capabilities, expanded confidence-building measures and maintenance of an effective deterrent.”

White House sources were quoted as citing the Midgetman missile and the X-ray laser as two weapons systems that required further testing.

Widespread Effect Seen

Livermore’s Miller went further, arguing that not just the X-ray laser but all SDI weapon deployment would have to be terminated if a test ban were agreed upon, because even the non-nuclear systems have to be developed to operate in a nuclear environment.

“Then the test ban presents a great opportunity,” responded Livermore physicist and SDI critic DeWitt, “to put the genie of this new arms race back in the bottle.”

Thus, the argument over the X-ray laser, like the “Star Wars” controversy itself, ends up being less over science or technology and more a disagreement about the value and possibility of arms control itself.

WILL THE X-RAY LASER WORK?

The Weapon

At the heart of the “Star Wars” advocates’ “new technology” is a weapon called the X-ray laser. No such weapon currently exists, but its proponents envision it working something like this: The energy of an exploding hydrogen bomb would be “focused” into destructive beams by a bundle of rods surrounding the device. These rods would survive the explosion just long enough to aim the X-ray beams toward rising enemy missiles.

Parts of the Weapon

Propulsion and guidance

Casing

Nuclear bomb

Laser rods

Tracking telescope

X-ray beam

The Threat

Boost Phase Intercontinental ballistic missile carrying nuclear warheads is launched out of Earth’s atmosphere. Duration: 1-5 minutes.

Post-Boost Phase Missile ejects warheads, thousands of decoys. 20-25 minutes.

Terminal Phase Warheads return to earth. Under 1 minute.

The Problems

Hardened Targets Launch vehicle could be defended against an X-ray lase relatively easily. A thin, lightweight shield could be sufficient to absorb the destructive beam.

Atmospheric Protection If the Soviets develop “fast burn” technology, the boost phase could be completed while the missile is still safe in the atmosphere, which blocks X-rays.

Reaction Time Because it is powered by a nuclear bomb, the X-ray laser probably wouldn’t be placed in permanent Earth orbit. Instead, the weapon would be launched--or “popped up” --into firing position by a submarine; the weapon would have only a few minutes in which to react to a sudden Soviet threat.

Firepower The weapon’s effectiveness against warheads mixed in with thousands of decoys is limited because it survives its nuclear detonation only long enough to fire several shots.

Hardened Targets Warheads themselves are already hardened to with stand heat of re-entry, making them even tougher targets.

Times researcher Nina Green contributed to this story.