SDI watch.

SDI Watch

"INSIDE A KEY RUSSIAN RADAR SITE' reads the front-page headline in the New York Times on September 7. Soviet officials had opened the Krasnoyarsk radar to inspection by a group of Democratic congressmen and staffers.

The congressmen noted crumbling concrete, easily broken glass windows, unshielded wiring, and generally "shoddy construction,' and concluded that this radar was no menace to American security.

The Krasnoyarsk radar has achieved a certain fame, or infamy, because it is in the middle of Siberia, far from the Soviet border. The ABM Treaty forbids such radars unless they are located "along the periphery of the national territory and oriented outward.'

The Krasnoyarsk radar is the most blatant Soviet violation of the ABM Treaty. This radar is thirty stories high. It is so big, according to James McCrery of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), that two football games could be played on it simultaneously if it were laid flat on the ground. Mr. McCrery says it is the largest and most powerful radar in the world.

The ABM Treaty comes up for review and renewal this year. Since continued U.S. adherence to the treaty is the most formidable weapon in the Soviet strategic arsenal, the USSR is naturally anxious to allay U.S. fears regarding the military significance of its Krasnoyarsk violation. Hence the timing of the invitation to the treaty's supporters in Congress. The U.S. has complained about the Krasnoyarsk radar in every conceivable forum, including before the Standing Consultative Commission (set up by the treaty to resolve such problems), at ministerial meetings, and in a joint resolution of Congress (passed almost unanimously)-- but to no avail. The Soviets say the radar has northing to do with the ABM Treaty and is for tracking satellites--a claim Robert Gates, Deputy Director of the CIA, calls "preposterous.'

Here are the reasons for Mr. Gates's strong language. 1) The radar faces in the wrong direction for tracking satellites (it faces in an easterly direction, not west; most satellites are launched toward the east to get a velocity boost from the earth's rotation). 2) It is in the wrong location for satellite tracking, for many reasons (for example, it makes no sense to put the radar in the wasteland of Siberia for satellite tracking: if it were in convenient European Russia, the earth's rotation would carry it under a satellite a few hours later anyway; and it is too far north to see the NASA shuttle, and too far west to see the launch of the military satellites out of Vandenberg). 3) It looks up at the heavens at the wrong angle (20 degrees above the horizon, good for picking up distant warheads but very poor for tracking satellites orbiting overhead). And 4) it has the wrong frequency for space tracking (too low).

That radar certainly looks like a radar for tracking warheads. It is hard to see why the Soviets, who have an excellent space program, should spend half a billion dollars on a badly designed space-tracking radar when they could just as well have built a good one. Frank Gaffney, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy, says flatly, "The Soviets are lying.'

Some fibs matter; others don't. This one matters. The purpose of the radar clause in the ABM Treaty was to keep either side from putting up the big radars used for "battle management.' "Battle management' means detecting oncoming warheads, tracking them accurately to see what targets they are headed for, and then handing over this information to small radars and intercepting missiles in their paths.

The small radars are extremely accurate but they have tunnel vision; they can only see a warhead if told just where to look for it. That is what the battle-management radar is for: it tells the small radar where to look. Once the small radar sees the warhead, it sends up an ABM interceptor with instructions to zero in on the warhead and destroy it.

These battle-management radars are huge, and take a long time to build--at least six to eight years. The Soviets build them so big because size and power enhance the radar's ability to track thousands of warheads simultaneously and accurately--a critically important function for a battle-management radar.

The congressmen who visited the Krasnoyarsk radar reported back that it could not be a battle-management radar because it was not "hardened,' that is, protected against nuclear explosions. However, Mr. McCrery of the DIA pointed out that the big new Soviet radar near Moscow, which is admittedly for battle management and is permitted by the ABM Treaty (each country is allowed one ABM site), is also not hardened.

The reason is that a screen thirty stories high and the size of two football fields, standing up on edge, can't be hardened; it is bound to be toppled by a nuclear blast. But the big radars don't need to be hardened for their role in the Soviet ABM system. The Soviets are counting on defending them heavily with ABM interceptors.

Against a massive first strike by American missiles, that would be difficult. But the Soviets are also counting on only having to deal with a very weak retaliatory second strike by the United States. According to their plans, they will launch the first strike.

The Soviets have eight more big radars, exactly like the one at Krasnoyarsk, either built or under construction. The nine radars form a ring around the USSR, protecting every possible approach corridor for U.S. ICBMs or submarine-launched missiles.

When construction of the Soviet radar network is completed (for the Krasnoyarsk radar that will be in 1989 or 1990; for three new radars just discovered, it will be a few years later; the others are already finished), the rest of the Soviet ABM system--the small radars and the intercepting missiles that would destroy the U.S. warheads--can be put in place "in a matter of months,' according to the CIA's Mr. Gates.

All signs point to this Soviet breakout from the ABM Treaty as occurring in about five years, timed to coincide with massive deployment of the new, mobile, and highly accurate SS-24s and SS-25s. The mobility of the new Soviet ICBMs imparts a farcical quality to the current arms-control negotiations, because it makes it impossible to verify their numbers. An arms-control agreement will not be able to prevent the deployment of the new weapons.

As matters are developing, we can look forward to a time in the 1990s when the American people will be confronted with a first-strike Soviet arsenal of more than ten thousand accurate SS-18, -19, -24, and -25 nuclear warheads, and an ABM defense capable of blunting our retaliatory second strike. At that time, according to the current mood in Congress on the deployment of an American missile defense, the United States will still be defenseless against a Soviet nuclear attack.

If an electorate still exists in America after this development, it will undoubtedly remember which party's congressmen advised the Speaker of the House, after their visit to Krasnoyarsk, that Congress must "insist most firmly on strict compliance with the ABM Treaty.'