Delay in Space-Based Defense Seen

Driven by “budget reality, the pace of technology and the treaty situation,” the Defense Department is nearing a recommendation to deploy a ground-based missile defense system but to delay space-based interceptors in the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” defense network until well into the next century, Pentagon sources said Thursday.

Barring an unexpected reversal, the sources said, Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci will recommend deployment of conventionally armed long-range interceptor missiles to help defend against accidental nuclear attack.

At the same time, probably in August, Carlucci is expected to propose stretching out research and development and delaying flight testing of the space-based system, originally conceived as part of the first-phase deployment of a strategic defense system.

For the foreseeable future, that would take the “Star Wars” aspect out of the Strategic Defense Initiative, as Reagan’s plan is formally known. Gone would be the space-based interceptors, being developed by Rockwell Corp. and Martin Marietta Corp., that are supposed to destroy Soviet missiles during their ascent and “post-boost” flight stages, far from the continental United States.

Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine has quoted industry sources as saying that the space-based interceptor project is “dead in the water” and may not survive the ongoing reevaluation.

Carlucci’s anticipated decision would be along the lines recommended to the Pentagon by an independent panel of scientists last month and now being reviewed by the Defense Acquisition Board.

But even if the Administration opts for a ground-based system to be deployed before the turn of the century, Pentagon sources said, the long-term objectives of a continental defense against sophisticated nuclear attack remain intact.

What Carlucci is most likely to recommend to President Reagan, the sources said, is deployment of defensive missiles in the Grand Forks, N.D., area in the 1990s.

Supporters of the plan are attracted to it because it avoids the long-running feud between Congress and the Reagan Administration over the meaning of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and U.S. compliance with it.

Also, if approved by Congress, a first-phase deployment, even on a scale far more modest than once envisioned, could be taken as an endorsement of the concept of strategic defense that would survive the Reagan Administration.

Although other sites along the northern tier of the Great Plains have not been ruled out, the interceptors probably would be deployed in the area where the United States began deployment of its now-abandoned Safeguard missile defense system.

Under the 1972 ABM Treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to limit defensive missile systems to two sites each, one protecting the national capital and the other defending an offensive missile installation.

Two years later, a treaty protocol limited each country to one site. But while the Soviets deployed defensive missiles around Moscow, the United States dismantled its defensive missiles and radars in North Dakota.

Under the treaty, the United States is still entitled to one defensive missile site, but if it planned to begin deployment before 1993, it apparently would have to notify the Soviets before Oct. 1.

The protocol sets “notification years” at five-year intervals, and 1988 is one of the years when word could be given of plans for construction or dismantling at a permitted missile site. Under the agreement, that year ends Sept. 30.

Sources said the U.S. deployment probably would be a modified version of the so-called Accidental Launch Protection System.

Some “Star Wars” critics, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), are favorably inclined to the ALPS system because it would not raise the issue of compliance with the ABM treaty.