One year ago, the Heritage Foundation sponsored a study, High Frontier, which sought to answer those questions. High Frontier's scientists and military cost experts said - and were later backed by several independent industry evaluations - that the U.S. can build a defense capable of knocking out 98% of a Soviet missile strike by instituting a crash four-to-five year program to construct such systems in space and on the ground. And it described a set of systems to show that the job could be done using no laser beams, no "Star Wars" technology and costing less than $5 billion.

The remaining roadblock, and it is no small one, is the lingering mentality that a true defense is "decades off." An array of cavils have been generated by bureaucrats-jealous of turf and new ideas-and their go-slow allies in Congress. They suggest that the scientific problem of shooting down an ICBM is monumental. (Think of it: we can hit a MiG-23 moving at the same speeds and capable of evasive action; we cannot- hit a simple- trajectory missile).

The problem is the president, doesn't have time to wait for a technological consensus to form inside the regular government. It takes the U.S. 12 to 18 years to produce a major weapons system. Think of the B-1, the MX, Stealth. By the time a strategic defense could be built through regular channels, Mr. Reagan would be 92 years old and the Soviets would have bought or stolen the technology for defense from U.S. and European companies and be building their own version using IMF credits. It is urgent that the president appoint a panel of scientists and strategists to design a set of defensive systems using current technology-just as American presidents did when we built the ICBM, the Polaris and indeed the atom bomb. Otherwise, the initiative Mr. Reagan has gained will evaporate in a matter of months.
 

The Sea of Doubts

It is also important that he and the friends of defense arm themselves against the sea of doubts soon to be crashing against the idea:

All our expensive hardware could be knocked out of the sky by the Soviets. One means of doing this, suggested by scientist William Broad in the New York Times last fall, would be to set off a single nuclear explosion in space, emitting an electromagnetic pulse that would wipe out most sensitive electronic hardware. Mr. Broad was absolutely right in criticizing the vulnerability of many current U.S. satellites. Unfortunately his article was popularly misconstrued as, applying to all possible satellite .... no necessary connections to these whatsoever.

In fact, reducing the vulnerability of U.S. assets in space is a chief aim of space-defense advocates. Hardened satellites, with an active defense capability, provide protection against both a broad style explosion aimed at all satellites and other schemes involving ground-based missiles or laser weaponry.

Building a space-based defense will cost $200 billion or more. One such Individual estimate comes from Sen. Larry Pressler (R., S.D.), who a few weeks ago introduced a "freeze in space" resolution aimed at banning American defenses in space; a similar, but lower estimate of $50 billion comes from the Pentagon.

Mr. Pressler's criticism is interesting because it relies largely on estimates of more than $150 billion for laser and particle-beam weapons. They might indeed cost that much-which is why most advocates of a true defense call for simpler, available systems.

The Pentagon's estimate is closer. It is based, however, on a 10-year-plus building cycle. This is certainly a more cautious approach; it is also more costly. The General Accounting Office estimates that each year added to the production cycle of a major weapons system adds more than 25% to cost. So the Pentagon, like Mr. Pressler is correct-but only If you start with a low priority, bureaucratic acquisition mode that strategic-defense advocates attack.

A U.S. defense would be so perfect it would be seen as a threat by the Soviets. Indeed, it might. The question is, what would the Soviets do? Launch a first strike on the U.S.? Not likely, if indeed our nuclear deterrent is as sound as alleged. More likely, the Soviets would rapidly proceed to develop their own, similar system. Critics have an answer for this, too, arguing that it would simply "fuel the arms race" and, worse, "extend it to space."

But wouldn't it be better for the U.S. and the Soviets to compete in building defensive systems than to continue on the present offense-only track? If the final shootout is ever to come, let it come in space. The switch to defense wouldn't end U.S.-Soviet competition; it would, however, place that competition on a different ground that would be likely to be more stable and, incidentally, likely to favor the U.S.

A U.S. defense would be too imperfect it really wouldn't undo our reliance on mutually assured destruction (MAD).

This is the ironic flip side to the previous argument. In essence, it means that until someone devises a system so perfect that it is guaranteed to knock down every missile, bomber, and other delivery vehicle, and defeat every possible paper countermeasure, we cannot start down the road to defense.
 

More Balanced Approach Needed

In fact, you will never have a perfect -defense, not against the bullet, not against the tank and not against nuclear weapons. What you can do is vastly complicate an attacker's calculations, blunt his force and save millions of lives.

The important distinction is between deterrence and MAD, a special case of deterrence. MAD tells us that the key to peace and security is an assured capability by each side to reduce the other to rubble. The obvious emphasis is on offense-saving 30 million Americans, while nice, is less critical than blowing up 30 million, more Soviet citizens. Deterrence, on the other hand, recognizes you can persuade an attacker not to attack by showing him his attack won't work. 1f his attack won't work, it's obvious he can't destroy you, and you don't have a MAD situation.

America faces a choice roughly parallel to that offered Britain in the 1930s. The regular air force, and most of Parliament, proposed to meet the German rearmament threat plane for plane. British Spitfires for Luftwaffe attack fighters; bombs on Berlin for bombs on London.

Yet a group of military reformers, led by Winston Churchill, said that the best defense against the German bomber was a defense. Seizing on the new technologies of radar -"Star Wars" in those days-they proposed to detect German planes in the air and intercept them. There were doubts about strategy and technology; there were some conservatives who feared pounds for defense would come out of pounds for offense. But, as Churchill recalls in his memoirs, technical considerations and politics act and react-upon one another ... and once the decision was made to proceed with the essential plan we had outlined, most of the opposition from our bureaucracy vanished."

The Soviet Union spends roughly one ruble on nuclear defenses, from civil defense to air defense to ABM systems, for every ruble it spends on nuclear offense. The U.S. spends $100 on offense for every five cents on defense. Common sense suggests a more balanced approach in American military priorities. Good politics suggests a shift away from the MAD strategy that fans, with good reason, the fears of America and its allies. It will take leadership, but America can have defense that defends. 

Mr. Graham is former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and director of Project High Frontier.