Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military@att.att.com
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: ABM
Keywords: X-ray lasers
Message-ID: <6251@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 5 May 89 00:34:42 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
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Approved: military@att.att.com



From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker)

[mod.note:  I received this posting anonymously, though I'm not sure
why the author wishes to remain unknown.  Doesn't seem to be any
sensitive information;  I assume (s)he has a good reason... - Bill ]

The ABM Treaty allowed 1 site to protect each nations Capital, and one
missile (ICBM) field.  They choose the former, and we chose the latter.
Neither country completely implemented a system.

The history of the ABM program began in the 1950s shortly after the Nike
Hercules Program, it was first called Nike-X, it developed the Nike Zeus
delivery system.  That was upgraded to the Sentinel and the Safeguard Systems.
It is a fallacy to believe that the missiles (Spartan (a longer range
Zeus) and Sprint (a short-range, fast burn, stand-off weapon) were the corner
corner stone.  They used enhanced X-ray warheads to achieve their effects.
There were some very sophisticated radars and parallel processing
computers developed for these systems.  Some notable parts of the phone
company and belt-way bandits came out of these programs.

Numerous ABM articles in Scientific American can be found by such authors as
Herbert York, W. Panofsky, and others which describe these systems.

The one of the physicist developers of the Sprint and Spartan warheads
read the net for a while and gave a talk at the CPSR Palo Chapter once
on the role of computers national defense.