‘Test Ranges’ in Space Considered for Anti-Missile Weapons

The Reagan Administration is examining a novel proposal for U.S. and Soviet “test ranges” in space, in which experiments with anti-missile defense weapons could be conducted without violating any treaty, a senior U.S. arms control expert said Thursday.

Paul H. Nitze, a special adviser to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, said the concept has not yet been relayed to the Soviets, in part because some details have not been worked out and in part because of some Administration officials remain opposed to the scheme.

Nitze’s comments, made during a breakfast meeting with reporters, also pointed up differences within the Administration over its willingness to sign a treaty limiting long-range nuclear missiles without at the same time signing a separate agreement on space defenses.

“No, I don’t think so,” Shultz said last week when asked about the possibility.

But on Sunday, Max M. Kampelman, his counselor and chief arms negotiator, said: “We are prepared to sign a START (strategic arms reduction talks) treaty without dealing with space and defense.”

Nitze echoed the Shultz position, saying that the Administration wanted “separate and simultaneous” agreements on the two issues.

Way to Move Ahead

Test ranges in space, Nitze said, are being considered by some Administration officials as a way to move ahead with President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which the Soviets have opposed vigorously. Defensive weapons in space are an important component of SDI, commonly known as “Star Wars,” and the Soviets have insisted that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty bans the testing of such weapons.

The test ranges, Nitze explained, would effectively be “narrow slots” of orbits in which the weapons being tested would be severely limited in number and perhaps in lifetime and capability as well.

The U.S. range should be an orbit where weapons would not threaten the Soviet Union, and vice versa, an official who asked not to be identified said later. Operational anti-missile systems would not work in such orbits.

One possibility for the U.S. range is an orbit over the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the Western United States in the Northern Hemisphere. Satellites in that orbit could see and “kill” test missiles fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California toward Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific, but they would then dip into the Southern Hemisphere far from the Soviet Union.

Might Pass Over Siberia

The Soviet range might pass over Siberia in the Northern Hemisphere, far from the United States.

In such orbits, the lifetime of the “killer” satellites would have to be very short so that the natural rotation of the Earth did not carry the U.S. weapons over Siberia and the Soviet satellites over U.S. missile fields in the Midwest.

The Defense Department generally supports the concept of test ranges, U.S. officials said. But elsewhere, many Administration officials are skeptical that compliance with the strict limits imposed on the weapons in the test ranges could be verified.

Outside the government, arms control advocates also have their doubts but for other reasons. Jack Mendelsohn, deputy director of the Arms Control Assn., said that the space range concept presumes that the Soviets would accept the Administration’s view that the ABM treaty permits some testing of defensive weapons.

Represents Reversal

The dispute between U.S. and Soviet officials over the timing of negotiations over long-range offensive missiles and space defenses represents a reversal from the two sides’ positions four years ago. Then, the United States wanted to negotiate only over offensive weapons, while the Soviets insisted on linking offensive and defensive weapons.

Now the Soviets have agreed to separate treaties on the two issues, while the United States appears to be linking them.

“There has been no (presidential) decision paper” on the question, one U.S. official said. The United States would still be prepared to sign a treaty cutting offensive weapons alone, he said, but “we now see value in a space defense agreement which would institutionalize SDI and remove the possibility of Congress putting more clamps on the SDI program.”

If the Soviets formally agreed in a treaty to permit SDI tests in space, officials argue, Congress would have less ground for opposing them.