Lockheed Wins Pact for ‘Star Wars’ Missile

The Pentagon, pushing forward on the development of a space-based missile defense system, said Thursday that it has chosen Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. of Sunnyvale, Calif., to build a test-model interceptor missile, paving the way for final negotiations on what could be a major, five-year “Star Wars” contract.

The value of the contract awarded to the unit of Burbank-based Lockheed has not been determined. However, Hugh DeWitt, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said that the full contract is likely to cost “many tens of millions” of dollars.

Defense Department officials maintained Thursday that the project falls within the boundaries of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which limits testing and deployment of defensive weapons intended to protect the United States and the Soviet Union from missile attacks.

But Dewitt, the Livermore physicist, said in a telephone interview that, “when they get to the point of having to test it in space, it would be a clear violation of the ABM treaty.”

The interceptor would be intended to approach a warhead above the atmosphere, spread a metal rim or other expanding device and destroy the attacking weapon by the impact of the collision rather than by an explosion.

The missile defense project, known officially as the Strategic Defense Initiative, is in the midst of an initial research phase on which the Reagan Administration wants to spend $26 billion over five years.

“It’s the first system I’ve heard of that is likely to be turned into a prototype weapon,” DeWitt said. He added that the non-nuclear devices appeared “to be right in the center of the focus” of “Star Wars” research.

A Pentagon spokesman said the new project would be “fully compliant” with the ABM treaty because the “anti-missile missile” that it would produce would be incapable of launching more than one missile, could not be reloaded rapidly--and thus could not deliver more than one warhead.

Lockheed was chosen as the prime contractor for the design, fabrication and testing of what is known as a test-bed interceptor for the Exoatmospheric Reentry Vehicle Interceptor Subsystem, or ERIS, project.

The project, which grew out of a successful experiment conducted in June, 1984, is intended to develop a system to intercept warheads beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, when the warheads would be in the middle of an estimated 30-minute intercontinental flight.

In the 1984 test, a missile-like vehicle, carrying an on-board optical sensor and data processors, hit and destroyed a target warhead at an altitude of more than 100 miles over the Pacific.

The Pentagon said the new project, using more sophisticated hardware and technology, “is pursuing research in this same area, investigating lightweight, low-cost technologies for non-nuclear defensive interceptors.”

“These characteristics would be essential to the feasibility of any ultimate interceptor” operating in the mid-course portion of a strategic defense system, the Pentagon announcement said.