Setback For Star Wars

By BRUCE VAN VOORST WASHINGTON

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee since 1972, antiwar Democrat Ron Dellums of California has voted against nearly every new weapons system the Pentagon has proposed. As chairman of that powerful body since 1984, Democrat Les Aspin of Wisconsin has backed most of the Defense Department's plans for costly missiles, airplanes and ships. Now the staggering federal deficit and a diminishing Soviet military threat have Dellums and Aspin seeing almost eye to eye on cuts in military spending. Following their lead last week, the committee slashed $24 billion from the Bush Administration's $307 billion defense budget.

In a flurry of budget whacking, the committee canceled future production of the B-2 Stealth bomber (1991 cost cut: $1.9 billion), put both the MX and Midgetman mobile missiles on hold (1991 saving: $2.5 billion) and ordered a cutback of 129,500 service personnel, three times what the Pentagon proposed. The Senate completed floor action on its version of a military-spending bill and agreed on an $18 billion cut, including the Milstar satellite communications system (1991 price tag: $1.6 billion) and the C-17 transport (1991 saving: $1.4 billion) but salvaging a pair of the controversial B-2s. Clearly distressed, President Bush called for an orderly funding cutback, "not a fire sale."

The Senate action left open the possibility that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney could save the two B-2s in negotiations between the two chambers. And despite Cheney's urgings, re-election-minded House members reluctant to shut down production lines in their districts have refused to pull the plug on such high-priced weapons as the F-15 fighter, M-1 tank and V-22 transport plane. But the overall impact of last week's cuts was clear: some of the most cherished items on Cheney's wish list have been slam-dunked.

The most spectacular setback was a House reduction in spending for the Strategic Defense Initiative to $3 billion, almost $2 billion less than the Administration requested. Furthermore, the Senate, on Saturday, passed historic legislation making it all but impossible to decide on space-based deployment by 1993. Over the past seven years, Congress has appropriated $20.2 billion for the program. But critics on both sides of the aisle have become disillusioned by the Pentagon's relentless drive to put some version of Star Wars into space before it is killed outright. In their haste, the skeptics say, SDI's managers are skimping on tests that could determine whether the system will actually work.

Since February, Star Wars research has focused on an innovation called Brilliant Pebbles -- thousands of small, independently controlled satellites designed to home in on and destroy enemy nuclear warheads. "The technology is at hand" to deploy a Brilliant Pebbles system, General George Monahan, then SDI director, assured Congress. The Pentagon contends that 4,614 Brilliant Pebbles could be put into orbit for $55 billion, vs. $69 billion for previous schemes.

But critics point out that the plan was adopted despite the reservations of the Pentagon's own Defense Science Board, which last year questioned whether the orbiting warhead killers could survive enemy countermeasures such as tiny attack rockets. An even more telling blow came from the General Accounting Office, which last month issued a report concluding that the entire SDI program was in such "flux" that deployment of any system was "premature and fraught with high risk." The GAO found that the Pentagon "has not yet solidified the role of Brilliant Pebbles or what elements will be in the final stage." Even worse, the agency found that the entire Star Wars concept is in doubt because the program's managers do not plan to test the system as a whole before deploying it. Shades of the Hubble telescope.

In hopes of giving SDI a fresh impetus and clearer voice, President Bush has appointed Henry Cooper, the chief U.S. negotiator on defense and space matters from 1987 to 1989, as the new SDI director. In an interview, Cooper conceded that "it is a critical period for SDI," but maintained, "SDI offers a lot of promise to the world."

But Cooper may not be able to overcome the growing doubts about Star Wars. After seven years of research, it is clear that no antimissile system can provide the impenetrable shield against incoming missiles that Ronald Reagan envisioned in 1983. Despite some impressive technological breakthroughs, especially in miniaturization, a warehouse full of Buck Rogers technology, including nuclear-generated X-ray lasers, has been tested and discarded after proving far more difficult to convert into practical weapons than anyone imagined. A Senate staffer likens the current infatuation with Brilliant Pebbles to the "Hail Mary" play in football. "With time running out and 80 yards to go," he says, "you throw the long one and pray." But with odd couples like Aspin and Dellums teaming up, the prospects of completing such a pass are becoming increasingly remote.