Soviets Studying Space Defense Since ‘50s: U.S.

The Soviet Union has been secretly engaged in space-based defense systems since the early 1950s, with 10,000 scientists and engineers currently working on projects, and could have prototypes of a working system in this decade, Reagan Administration officials said today.

The information, handed out at a briefing for reporters, apparently was timed to counter the public efforts by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to win over Western Europeans to the Soviet view that the American Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars,” is a threat to peace.

The briefing, by Paul H. Nitze, President Reagan’s special arms control adviser, and Richard Perle, assistant secretary of defense for international security, said the Soviets are spending as much on strategic defensive weapons as they are spending on strategic offensive arms.

No exact figure was put on that, but the Defense Department, in a booklet, said that the Soviet laser weapon program alone would cost roughly $1 billion a year.

The Administration’s publication, called “Soviet Strategic Defense Programs,” said that the popular idea that the Soviets are involved in only unsophisticated, outdated methods is not accurate.

The Soviet laser program, the Administration book says, “is much larger than U.S. efforts and involves more than 10,000 scientists and engineers.

It said, “The Soviets could have prototypes for ground-based lasers for defense against ballistic missiles by the late 1980s, and could begin testing components for a large-scale deployment system in the early 1990s.”

Perle, asked if the Soviet anti-Star Wars program was only a device to move ahead with a clandestine missile defense system unmatched by any American program, responded, “You’ve got it.”

He said the Soviets want to return to the previous situation in which they were the only ones with such a program. Nitze said it is his view that the Soviet strategic doctrine is aimed at giving them a “first strike capability.”