The empire strikes back.

The Empire Strikes Back

DOES THE United States have inplace a system to defend against nuclear-missile attack? According to a recent poll, 64 per cent of the American people think so, yet right now, notes Senator Malcolm Wallop, the U.S. can't defend itself against a single nuclear missile. "There is nowhere in our Armed Forces the mission to defend this nation from nuclear attack,' said Wallop. So, in April, Wallop and Senator Orrin Hatch, along with Jack Kemp and Jim Courter in the House, introduced legislation that would create a fourth branch of the armed services "to defend the United States against all aerial threats, including ballistic missiles.' The bill would create a new Secretary of the Defense Force and transfer all space-related functions of other branches, including the Army Strategic Defense Command, NORAD, the Air Force Space Division, the Unified Space Command, all space activities of the Navy, and the space support elements of the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, to the new Department of the Defense Force. The bill also sets deadlines for the development of a defense against nuclear attack. A space-based rocket system to destroy ballistic missiles would have to be tested in space 18 months after enactment of the bill; a space-based laser-weapons system space-tested within four years; a ground-based anti-missile system for destroying re-entry vehicles tested within three years; and a mobile, ground-based system tested within two years.

Supporters of the bill say the measureis necessary because the Reagan Administration has delayed the building and deployment of SDI. Major David Rigby, a spokesman for the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (the government agency charged with developing SDI), has maintained that "the SDIO is a research effort to explore technology that could support an effective defense against ballistic missiles. A decision as to the deployment has not been made.' Actually the Reagan Administration has made a decision on deployment: The answer, for the moment, is no. Time magazine recently quoted Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger as saying, "I specifically ruled out the use of off-the-shelf technology . . .'

The Defense Force bill is unlikelyto pass this term. But supporters hope to push the military to get going on nuclear defense by threatening to move in on its turf, according to Jack Crouch, a legislative assistant to Senator Wallop. The bill's supporters say they will probably succeed in passing a sense-of-the Congress resolution saying it should be the mission of the Armed Forces to defend the U.S. against nuclear weapons. At the very least, Republicans aim to expose what the Democrats' attempt to hamstring SDI means: no defense against nuclear attack.