Targeting a Hunter-Killer

Even as the SALT talks inch toward the elusive goal of limiting the arms race, weapons designers are creating ever newer generations of lethal hardware.

Last week Defense Secretary Harold Brown confirmed what defense experts have long suspected: the Soviets have developed a "hunter-killer" satellite, straight from Star Wars, that can track down orbiting U.S. spacecraft -- and wipe them out. Said Brown: "The Soviets have an operational capability" to destroy "some" American satellites and have thus raised at least the possibility of a Soviet-U.S. space war. Added Brown: "That is somewhat troublesome."

The trouble comes in the form of a beetle-shaped Soviet satellite about 10 ft. long and 3 ft. wide, equipped with very-high-frequency radio antennas and small, square infra-red scanners that work in tandem with radar to direct the killer toward its orbiting prey. The anti-satellite interceptor (ASAT) has a parabolic "dish" antenna that homes in on the target satellite and gets the ASAT -- actu ally a space bomb -- close to the target, where it detonates. The ASAT goes off like a super hand grenade, spraying the victim satellite with metal-piercing fragments. ASAT's main target would be the top U.S. spy satellite: "Big Bird," a 10-ton reconnaissance craft that is vulnerable to attack in low orbit (120 miles in space).

Though the U.S. was aware that the Soviets were nearing a breakthrough, Brown conceded that "we do not have an operational capability" to down other spacecraft. Oddly enough, the U.S. did have that capability in a limited form until 1975. The Pentagon had been developing a satellite inspector system (SAINT), but junked it before its first flight.

The U.S. now will emphasize efforts to design an American satellite killer to defend against the Soviet version. In September the Defense Department quietly awarded the $58.7 million contract for its own ASAT program to the Vought Corp. of Dallas. The U.S. plan is to leap frog the relatively crude Soviet ASAT technology and put into space by the mid-1980s hunter-killer satellites armed with lasers that could vaporize metal in 20 billionths of a second.

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