Scientist Scores Plan for Early ‘Star Wars’ Use

A physicist who worked for a “Star Wars” program contractor charged Thursday that the proposal for early deployment of an anti-missile defense system in space is “fatally flawed.”

“It would cost too much to put up and cost too little to shoot down,” said Dr. Richard D. Ruquist, speaking at a press conference sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group in the forefront of opposition to the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative, as the program is formally known.

Ruquist, who recently resigned his position at Sparta Inc., a Massachusetts SDI contractor, criticized the Pentagon’s recommendation for deployment in the next decade of a space-based system that would use conventional missiles to shoot down enemy missiles. In the long term, the program envisions using directed energy weapons like laser beams. Deployment plans for the SDI system are at the heart of the debate in Congress on the SDI budget for 1988.

Cost of Destruction

Ruquist, who has 20 years of experience in ballistic missile defense, said that the Soviet Union could destroy the early anti-missile defense at one-third to one-thirtieth the cost of the defense.

He said that he believes the Pentagon’s anti-missile system “probably would shoot down” Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles, at least in their boost phase of flight, as envisaged by its backers.

But he said the Soviets would find it easier to build decoys to deceive the Pentagon’s anti-missile system than the United States would in designing measures to make its system less vulnerable.

Ruquist declined to predict whether the long-term SDI program based on laser weapons would have the same drawbacks as the concept he criticized.