LET'S BEGIN WITH THE 1983 SPEECH, THE SDI, THE PRESIDENT'S ANNOUNCEMENT OF SDI. WHAT WAS, WAS THERE ANY KIND OF REACTION AMONGST THE DEFENSE CONTRACTORS? THAT SPEECH, WAS IT EXPECTED, WAS IT A SURPRISE, WAS THERE ENTHUSIASM?

I believe that there was some surprise coming from the President's speech back in 1983, because there had been no real prior knowledge out in the defense industry that that particular speech, with that particular emphasis upon SDI, was going to be made. There had been a lot of sort of independent studies and some independent programs that were going on involving defense systems. In fact, there was an awful lot of high energy laser work, which was being funded by DARPA. But that speech sort of coalesced a bunch of independent ideas, independent thoughts, into sort of a common goal. And that aspect of it was a surprise to the defense industry, but a rather pleasant surprise, because it did provide focus for a bunch of programs that up to that time did not have any unified focus.

WE HAD HAD AN ABM SYSTEM EARLIER, IN THE EARLY '70s, LATE '60s, EARLY '70s, AND I JUST WONDER, FROM A DEFENSE CONTRACTOR'S POINT OF VIEW, WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DECIDE ON A PROGRAM, YOU GUYS GEAR UP, YOU DO A LOT OF WORK ON IT, AND THEN CONGRESS OR SOMEBODY DECIDES, "WELL, IT'S NOT A PRIORITY," WE BACK OFF ON IT, HOW DO YOU ABSORB THOSE CYCLES OF INTEREST?

What I'm struggling with is how to phrase your question so that I can answer it. The country did have a lot of work going on on ABM programs prior to the President's speech. And those programs, though, seemed to have a far amount of cycling up and down in them, with interest in the development of essentially a terminal defense system to protect ICBM silos, US silos, and then a decision to disband that, because it didn't look like, under the direction that the Soviet threat was headed, that the system would be cost-effective, and Congress decided to terminate the funding into the program. That's not unusual in the defense industry, whether it's with an ABM program or a fighter aircraft or a bomber. We see those cyclings up and down with new programs coming in and old programs getting cancelled, (1) as technology changes, but (2) as the threat changes, and the political mindset changes as to the importance of doing something at a particular point in history versus five years downstream you change your mind and say, "Well, the world situation is different, and so we don't need to put money into that, we'll put it into something else." It does cause some consternation with the aerospace industry. But we've sort of learned to live with that, because it's sort of part of the way the business is run.

EXPLAIN TO US HOW YOU RELATE, I MEAN, HOW A PRODUCT, YOU WORK IN CONJUNCTION WITH DEFENSE LABORATORIES ON A PROJECT, IS THAT RIGHT? I'M THINKING NOW OF SDI-TYPE PROJECTS, ONES THAT ARE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY, THAT ARE KIND OF ON THE, YOU KNOW, NOT PRODUCING FIGHTER PLANES, FOR EXAMPLE, BUT THIS KIND OF MORE ADVANCED STUFF. WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE LABORATORIES? HOW DO YOU WORK WITH THEM?

On SDI, there's probably some unique relationships with federal laboratories that we haven't seen on most other defense programs. And part of that reason is the laboratory at Lawrence Livermore and the laboratory at Los Alamos have been doing an awful lot of work on directed energy devices. Most of that work was done in conjunction with trying to develop methods for generating nuclear energy to use as devices to drive fusion. And on SDI, what we at TRW have done is we have formed an industrial associate relationship with Lawrence Livermore on a program called the free electron laser. And we are working closely with them on the design and development of that particular concept. The idea is to develop a device that you could use on the ground, that you would direct up in space, and then relay that beam, that beam of laser energy, onto an incoming ICBM.

TELL US THE STORY OF HOW THAT PROJECT GETS GOING AFTER THE SDI SPEECH IN MARCH OF '83. IN OTHER WORDS, WAS THAT AN ONGOING PROJECT THAT SUDDENLY GETS NEW ATTENTION AND NEW FUNDING? CAN YOU TELL ME THE STORY OF THAT?

Most of the laser work that's gone on in the United States was being funded long before SDI became, or came into being, in 1984. The President's speech was in '83, but the program officially got launched in January of '84. The work that we here at TRW were doing on the program was funded out of DARPA and with the services. We had a contract with the Navy to develop a high-energy laser device. Their interest was for shipboard defense. DARPA funded the development of a program called ALPHA, and that was to design a laser that could be put out into space and be used as a device to shoot down other objects from this space platform. The object didn't have to be an ICBM. It could have been another satellite, it could have been aimed at a very high flying aircraft. But the concept was a research and development program to see if you could, indeed, put together the technology on the ground to build such a device. There was nothing in that program that included putting a laser out in space. It was all a ground test program. The national laboratories were also working on the development of laser devices to support fusion energy. What happened with the establishment of an SDI was to take all those different programs and pull them together under an SDI label, and have the funding and the direction those programs were going sponsored out of the SDIO, so that there was more focus on a common mission, that mission now being, how do you shoot down an ICBM?

GOING BACK TO '84, WHEN YOU, FUNDS HAVE BEEN, A PROGRAM GETS INTRODUCED TO CONGRESS, FUNDS ARE ALLOCATED OR ARE ABOUT TO BE ALLOCATED, CONGRESS VOTES FUNDS, WHAT'S TRW DOING AT THIS TIME? ARE YOU SAYING, "HEY, LOOK AT US, WE'VE GOT A GREAT PROGRAM HERE." ARE YOU KIND OF ENCOURAGING BUSINESS? HOW DO YOU TIE INTO THAT? OR DO YOU WAIT UNTIL THEY CALL YOU OR WHAT? DO YOU UNDERSTAND MY QUESTION? IT'S A LITTLE BIT OF A MESSY QUESTION THERE.

No, I don't quite understand.

WELL, I GUESS, A DEFENSE CONTRACTOR BECOMES AWARE THAT A LARGE SUM, LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY ARE AVAILABLE FOR A NEW KIND OF DEFENSE PROGRAM, RIGHT, AND I WONDER: DO YOU WRITE APPLICATIONS FOR GRANTS FOR THAT MONEY OR DO YOU WAIT UNTIL SOMEBODY COMES TO YOU? YOU, AS A DEFENSE CONTRACTOR.

What happened in 1984 with the initiation of an SDI program was an establishment of a budget for SDI technology development, which was actually less money for running the program than had been proposed by the Department of Defense to handle all of the different technologies that were part of that being funded. The differential was about $300 million. The proposal out of the Department of Defense was to spend $1.7 billion in 1984 on technologies that subsequently got tied into SDI. The actual budget that came out was at $1.4 billion. Now, presumably, although the request was $1.7, we wouldn't have gotten that much money. So, with the initiation of SDI, there was no big sudden funding increase. Subsequent to that point in time, the funding is running, the request for funding was for about $27 billion over five years to do this technology research. If you go back and look at what was being proposed in the Carter Administration to cover this type of technology over the subsequent five years, they were in the range of about $12 to $14 billion. So, the establishment of an SDI and an SDIO, the organization to run it, by Reagan essentially was to double the amount of funding that was going into this particular type of research and technology over the subsequent five years. There was very little money into brand-new research in the beginning because, as I mentioned, the funding started out at a little bit lower level than had originally been proposed, so there was money to cover existing technology. Since then, there have been a lot of new ideas that have come up, and as we are moving downstream closer to the design and development of some of these systems, the amount of money required has gone up rather significantly. Now, the way the contractors have tried to handle this, the industrial contractors, is to (1) make sure that the programs that they've been involved in, that were pulled in under the SDIO, continued to get funding that were on high priority lists. But also if they had some new ideas about new technology, new things that could be coupled in, to essentially submit unsolicited proposals into the SDIO to get those types of activities funded.

DOES A DOUBLING, SO LET ME SEE IF I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU SAID HERE, PART OF THAT. CARTER PROPOSES $12 TO $14 BILLION OVER A FIVE YEAR PERIOD FOR ABM, ASAT, THAT KIND OF STUFF, RIGHT? REAGAN DOUBLES THAT, OR PROPOSES DOUBLING THAT. CAN YOU ABSORB DOUBLE THE AMOUNT OF MONEY? I MEAN, IS IT EASY TO ABSORB DOUBLE THE AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PROJECTS WITHOUT, HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

Well, the doubling of the money into the SDIO, or into SDI type of functions, needs to be put in perspective. If you look at the expenditure rate, we're running over the past year around $3.5 billion in FY '87. You have to compare that now with a total Department of Defense expenditure of a little over $300 billion, about half of which is procurement, $150 billion. So if you look at the amount of money going out in the aerospace industry, the SDI funding at $3.5 billion is about 2 percent. You can compare it with another number, which is the amount of RDT and research, development, test and evaluation, money spent by the Department of Defense, which ran around $36 billion. And in that case, then, the $3.5 billion is running close to 10 percent. So, 90 percent of the research and development money is going into other programs. The change, then, of a number from one level to double that level inside SDI is really not very significant in terms of the total amount of money being spent by the Department of Defense and being fed out into the aerospace industry. Relatively easy to absorb a doubling in those particular technologies.

APPLY THAT SPECIFICALLY TO THE FREE ELECTRON LASER PROGRAM THAT YOU'RE WORKING WITH LIVERMORE. WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT PROGRAM UNDER SDI? HOW DID THAT CHANGE?

Essentially, the Department of Energy. The free electron laser program being run by Lawrence Livermore had been getting its funding from the Department of Energy as a means for trying to develop fusion energy. It was going along at a relatively low funding level, and with the establishment of SDI Lawrence Livermore pointed out to the SDIO and to the federal government that this particular program had a great deal of promise as a means of shooting down ICBMs. The SDIO then picked up the funding for the program, transferred the money to the Department of Energy in order to increase the level of activity that was going on at Lawrence Livermore. That has been fairly common, not only with the national laboratories and with industry in general, but also with a lot of the universities who were doing research, found that that research might be applicable to SDI, and then went in and suggested to the SDI that they might want to pick up the funding for those programs. In many cases, a lot of the technology received increased funding from what it had been getting. The problem that the program is now facing is with the restriction on the budget that is being placed by Congress. There's more research work being done than there is money to go around, and the research that has been started was based upon a continual growth in that SDIO budget. The President went in and requested, and the Department of Defense went in and requested, around $5.2 billion without the Department of Energy funding, just for Department of Defense. And that is obviously going to be significantly cut next year. That means that there's a lot of research work going on that's going to have to be stopped and/or significantly stretched out.

IS THE FREE ELECTRON LASER PROGRAM THAT YOU'RE WORKING WITH, IN LIVERMORE, IN COMPETITION WITH ANOTHER FREE ELECTRON LASER PROGRAM? IS THAT HOW THE FUNDS, WILL YOUR PROJECT BE CHOSEN OVER ANOTHER, OR WILL BOTH PROJECTS BE FUNDED AT A LOWER LEVEL?

Currently, there are two different approaches to a free electron laser that are being funded by the SDIO. One of those approaches is the Lawrence Livermore. Another is being funded and handled by the Boeing Company up in Seattle, with support out of Los Alamos. Those two programs are essentially in competition with each other, and one of those two will be chosen as the preferred approach sometime in the summer of 1988. And that particular approach, then, would be the one that would be installed, that design would be installed down at White Sands, New Mexico, as the test vehicle.

WHAT STAGE ARE THESE PROGRAMS IN? I MEAN, IS THIS THE PROOF OF PRINCIPLE STAGE? OR WHAT STAGE IS YOUR...?

Both of those free electron laser programs are in the proof of principle. They are in the early design and development phase. The real money that goes into either one of those programs will occur when one does the design and development of the device to be installed down at White Sands, New Mexico.

WILL SDIO KNOW ENOUGH BY THE END OF '88 TO MAKE A JUDGEMENT ABOUT WHICH ONE TO GO WITH?

The SDIO would like to continue the funding on both of those programs beyond the middle of 1988, to gain additional information as to really what the preferred approach should be. But with the shortage of money, they have to do like a lot of us have to do, they have to make a decision early. They cannot afford this parallel approach. So, one of the two programs will be selected on the basis of available information in the summer. The Army is the actual purchasing agency that will make that decision.

WHAT'S TRW DOING NOW ON THE FREE ELECTRON, WHAT PHYSICALLY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING, AND WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING SHOULD THEY DECIDE TO GO WITH THE LIVERMORE VERSION?

TRW's role on the free electron laser with Livermore is what I think I mentioned earlier as an industrial associate. And we have a team of people physically co-located up at Livermore, working with their scientists, trying to work through the detailed design of this free electron laser. The concept is that if that particular design approach is chosen, then it would be the responsibility of TRW to do the actual final detailed design with some supervision from the Lawrence Livermore people, and then to actually manufacture the hardware and install that hardware down at White Sands.

I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH YOU CAN TALK ABOUT THIS, BUT I WONDER, CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE TIME TABLE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FREE ELECTRON LASER? I MEAN, DO WE HAVE EXPECTATIONS OF WHEN IT WILL MOVE TO DIFFERENT STAGES? OR IS THAT UP IN THE AIR STILL?

Well, the plan on the free electron laser is to have a device that you can actually be getting energy out of lasing and getting lasing light out of in the early '90s. Now, with the funding question still up in the air for sort of all of the SDI programs, that date could slip, as could the dates on most of the other experiments that are being proposed. So, I don't think one can put an exact date at this point in time, because there is no commitment yet from Congress as to the level at which they would be willing to fund that or any of the other activities that are going on in SDI. The earliest would be in the early to mid '90s.

I HAVE A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS HERE. ONE, IS THERE A LEVEL OF FUNDING THAT'S SO LOW THAT THE PROGRAM ITSELF BEGINS TO REALLY SUFFER, OR A LEVEL OF FUNDING SO HIGH THAT IT CAN'T BE ABSORBED WELL? IN OTHER WORDS, HOW CRITICAL ARE THESE FUNDING DECISIONS THAT CONGRESS IS MAKING IN TERMS OF, I MEAN, I KNOW, FOR EXAMPLE, JUST TO PUT THIS IN A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE, WE KNOW THAT UNDER CARTER THE B-1 BOMBER DOES NOT GO INTO DEVELOPMENT, BUT IT STILL GOES ALONG IN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. IT PERCOLATES ALONG KIND OF IN THE BACKGROUND. AND THEN REAGAN DECIDES TO MOVE IT FORWARD, AND HE CAN KIND OF PICK THAT UP AND MOVE IT FORWARD. BUT WHAT'S IT LIKE IN SDI TYPE, LET'S BE SPECIFIC: WHAT'S IT LIKE WITH THE FREE ELECTRON LASER PROGRAM? WILL THE LEVEL OF FUNDING, WHAT WILL IT CHANGE? DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M TRYING TO ASK? I FEEL LIKE A MARSHMALLOW THIS MORNING. MUST BE MONDAY MORNING. THERE'S A QUESTION THERE SOMEWHERE.

It's a little bit difficult to directly tie the rate at which one can progress on SDI with a particular level of funding. One of the approaches that General Abramson has been taking is to try to, in all areas where there is critical technology, in other words areas where you're not sure that a particular approach will be successful, that one has an alternate approach, so that funding has been in the past going into more than one technical approach to solve the same critical problem. As one cuts back on the funding going into SDI, then fewer and fewer of those critical technical areas can afford the luxury of parallel approaches. And so, one has to make a decision a lot earlier than you would like to do it as to which particular technology you're going to put your money behind. The other option is, "Well, I will continue to put money behind both of them, but then I will delay my ability to get an output of that technology." The current program, the current SDI program, has been moving forward in a direction that could well spend, profitably spend, on the order of $5 billion a year. With that continuing over the next two or three years as the program moves into the development and fielding of test hardware, cutting that program back to the level of $3 to $4 billion a year means that many of these approaches, parallel approaches, are going to have to be stopped, and some of the ones that are mainline approaches are going to be delayed. So that the decision timing on when you could have an SDI or whether the technology is there to support it, that time will move, that decision point will move out in time.

THAT ALSO MUST MAKE IT SOMEWHAT DIFFICULT FOR THE DEFENSE CONTRACTOR. THIS IS THE RACE COURSE, OR RACE TRACK, I FORGET WHAT IT'S CALLED.

HORSE RACE.

HORSE RACE. I MEAN, THE SENSE THAT YOU HAVE TO, YOU, COLLECTIVELY, DEFENSE CONTRACTORS, HAVE TO GEAR UP FOR A PROGRAM AND HIRE PEOPLE AND MAYBE EVEN CREATE A FACILITY, AND THEN THEY DECIDE ON A DIFFERENT ONE AND YOU'VE GOT TO GET RID OF ALL THOSE GUYS AND GO BACK AGAIN. HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT? OR AM I WRONG, WAS WHAT I SAID WRONG?

There's been a lot of turmoil in the direction in which the technology was going to go and be funded within the SDIO as a result of the budget machinations. And also as we move forward in time, new ideas have replaced old ideas, so that programs that thought they were relatively firmly entrenched and were going to move ahead have had money taken away from them and, in some cases, dropped. This does create some confusion in the aerospace industry. But recognize for at least the large aerospace corporations the amount of funding that they're getting on SDI compared to the total amount of Department of Defense funding they're getting is less than 10 percent. So we're talking about oscillations in funding of a 10 percent portion of the total amount of money that most companies are picking up from the Department of Defense, in terms of all of their programs. That doesn't make the people who are working that 10 percent very happy, but in terms of an overall corporate goal and the establishment of facilities and people, you have that other 90 percent that can absorb some of these oscillations. Not always true, however, because if there is a particular unique technology that is being handled by the SDIO, and they stop the funding of that, that team of people can well disappear and it would take on years to try to reestablish that capability. So once it disappears, at least for the near-term, one has to assume that it cannot be recovered.

SO WHAT I HEAR YOU SAYING IS THAT IT DOESN'T HURT THE COMPANY THAT MUCH, BECAUSE IT'S A SMALL PERCENTAGE, BUT THAT THAT PROGRAM COULD BE DAMAGED?

These types of fluctuations don't in general hurt the overall aerospace industry or even a particular major aerospace corporation. They do hurt individual people or groups of people, and they do hurt the ability of the federal government to be able to tap that technology in the future, because their base has disappeared.

LET ME GET BACK TO THE FREE ELECTRON LASER. IF YOUR VERSION OF IT, OR LIVERMORE'S VERSION OF IT, GETS ACCEPTED, THEN THE NEXT THING YOU DO IS YOU BUILD A FACILITY IN WHITE SANDS. CAN YOU JUST VERY BRIEFLY, WHAT WOULD THAT FACILITY DO, AND WHAT WOULD BE ACCOMPLISHED? WHAT WOULD BE THE NEXT STAGE? PROOF OF PRINCIPLE, I TAKE IT, WOULD HAVE BEEN COMPLETED, AND THEN IT'S...?

The plan for the free electron laser program at White Sands involves a group of industrial teams. One of them, TRW already is one of the members of that team. Our job is to integrate a free electron laser, whose-ever design is selected next summer, in with an optical train that would be provided by an another industrial contractor, and to provide, build and provide the test facility and operate that test facility with all of this equipment coming together and running some tests with it. So, the program, well, now I lost the train of thought.

I THINK YOU WERE MOVING TOWARD WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO ACCOMPLISH WITH THAT PROGRAM, WHERE YOU'LL GET, WHERE THAT PROGRAM AT WHITE SANDS WILL TAKE THAT PROJECT, SHOULD YOU GET IT.

One of the big unknowns on a ground-based laser, free electron laser, is the question of what type of interaction there'll be with the atmosphere when you send a laser beam through the atmosphere. So one of the big parts of the test program at White Sands will be to direct that beam of energy up through the atmosphere to determine what types of distortions are introduced into the beam, what type of what we call blooming, which causes the beam, then, to disperse, will occur. The other, of course, is to prove that you can actually put together all of that equipment and get the types of power levels out of that laser that we're all talking about.

THAT, PUTTING A BEAM INTO SPACE, IS THAT ONE OF THE THINGS THE SOVIETS ARE WORRIED ABOUT? DO THEY VIEW THAT AS A VIOLATION OF THE ABM? DO YOU KNOW? MAYBE I'M NOT ASKING THE RIGHT PERSON THE QUESTION.

One of the interesting things about a ground-based laser versus a space-based laser is that it appears that the ground-based laser does not violate an ABM treaty, whereas there is some argument on the part of the Soviets that putting a laser, a high-energy laser, in space, specifically one that was designed to shoot down ICBMs, is a violation of the treaty. A ground-based laser that directs a beam into space, if you don't put a relay mirror in space to direct that beam of energy in the direction of an ICBM, is essentially a test facility that can be used for, again, putting energy into space. Theoretically, you could shoot that energy at almost anything that's up there, whether it's aircraft flying over, it's satellites in space, or by putting in mirrors in space you redirect it at an ICBM. But the ground facility and the direction of the energy into space does not appear to be any violation of any treaty.

IS TRW DOING THE MIRRORS, TOO, OR IS THAT BEING DONE BY ANOTHER CONTRACTOR?

No. The optical, what we call the optical train for the free electron laser program is not part of TRW's responsibility. It's the responsibility of another contractor.

IF YOUR VERSION OF THE FREE ELECTRON LASER IS ACCEPTED, AND IF YOU THEN GO FORWARD AND BUILD THIS TEST FACILITY AND DO THIS TEST TO SEE HOW THE THING WORKS, WHAT HAPPENS TO IT WHEN IT GOES UP IN THE ATMOSPHERE, UP INTO SPACE, DO YOU THEN AUTOMATICALLY GET THE NEXT CONTRACT, THE NEXT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT?

The current free electron laser program, if it goes ahead as is contemplated, only is being looked at as a test program out through a period of the early 1990s, to gather rather fundamental and important test information both on how well the laser works and, as I mentioned, on its ability to penetrate the atmosphere and maintain a coherent beam. Any follow-on programs beyond that at this stage of the game appear as if they would be competed within the aerospace industry and not necessarily given to TRW or any of the other current contractors. Clearly, those contractors who are working the program today have some preferred position when you move to a follow-on, but, as history has shown us, that in no way guarantees that those contractors will have a follow-on business.

WHAT WOULD BE THE NEXT STAGE AFTER THE WHITE SANDS FACILITY?

Any subsequent testing or development of free electron lasers beyond the current program at White Sands would really depend upon a decision as to whether when we're going to deploy an SDI system. The current approach to an SDI deployment does not have lasers, either ground-based or space-based, as part of an early deployment. And the reason for that being a belief that the technology in the laser area is behind the technology in the kinetic energy kill vehicle area. So, early architectures stress both space and ground-based kinetic kill vehicles, interceptors. Subsequent architectures move in the direction of introduction of either a ground-based or a space-based, or both, in terms of lasers, to intercept the RVs and to shoot down the boosters during the boost phase.

A COUPLE OF THINGS. JUST TO MAKE SURE I HEARD YOU RIGHT, I THINK WHAT I HEARD YOU SAY IS THAT THEN THE NEXT PHASE AFTER THE WHITE SANDS TESTING WOULD BE A PHASE THAT WOULD MOVE TOWARD DEPLOYMENT, BECAUSE YOU'D KNOW ENOUGH THEN, RIGHT? DID I UNDERSTAND THAT CORRECTLY OR AM I JUMPING TOO FAR?

I think one ought to understand that the current program in SDI is a research and development program and does not involve deployment of any operational system. What the SDIO is trying to do is to get enough test information on various systems together, such that a decision can be made by whoever is President and whoever is in Congress in the early 1990s, as to whether the country ought to go ahead and deploy and SDI system.

OKAY. WELL DONE. DO YOU HAVE AN OBSERVATION ON THE READINESS OF KINETIC KILL SYSTEMS AS OPPOSED TO A LASER, THE MORE "EXOTIC" TECHNOLOGIES?

I think there's some differences or breadth of opinion within the aerospace industry as to the relative state of the art of high energy lasers as compared to kinetic kill vehicles. The President saw in November a mock-up of one proposed approach to a space-based laser called Zenith Star when he was at Martin Company. A major portion of that Zenith Star program is the Alpha laser being developed here at TRW. There are many of us who feel that that equipment is ready to be assembled and demonstrated as a space-based demonstration platform, which would not have the capability to shoot down ICBMs, because it wouldn't have the power level or the types of optics in it, but could be used in the early '90s to demonstrate that you did have a capability to put the various elements of the system together and to deploy it in space and to use it for a series of tests. The feeling within the industry is that by that point in time one would be further along with the kinetic kill vehicle program. The real argument is, as to whether space-based lasers or ground-bases lasers are just a few years behind the ability to deploy kinetic kill vehicles or are up to 10 years behind. My own opinion is, it's on the shorter end of that time scale rather than the longer-end, that lasers are not that far behind the kinetic kill vehicles.

IF WE WENT AHEAD...

How was that, without giving you an exact number?

THAT WAS GOOD, THAT WAS GOOD. THIS IS ANOTHER WILD QUESTION, A DIFFICULT TO ANSWER QUESTION. BUT ASSUMING THAT, I MEAN, IF SDI GOT THE KIND OF FUNDING THAT SDIO WOULD LIKE, WHICH IT'S NOT GETTING, BUT IF IT DID GET THAT KIND OF FUNDING, ANY WILD PROJECTIONS ABOUT HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE TO REALLY PUT TOGETHER A WORKABLE FREE ELECTRON LASER DEFENSE SYSTEM?

The difficulty that the free electron laser program faces is that to do it right, it ends up a many hundred million dollar program, and, in fact, there is some indication that if you built the size of free electron laser that you ought to build, and you built the type of test equipment to go demonstrate it, and the mirrors that are required to put the beam out into space with the test articles, you're talking in the range of a $1 to $2 billion program, over many years That size of expenditure in one particular element of SDI requires that the SDI budget be funded at a pretty high level, if you're going to take that fraction of the budget and put it into just one thing. As the SDIO finds its money being reduced, the possibility of getting that free electron laser program done in the way it ought to be done diminishes rather drastically, just because of the demands from so many other areas for funding. Those that take large amounts of money from the SDI are those that probably get cut the fastest, and either get stretched out or get totally stopped. We're already seeing the free electron laser program getting stretched out with the reduction of funding. That's already happening.

TAKING A REALLY BROAD VIEW, LOOKING DOWN INTO THE FUTURE –

One of the questions that often gets asked me and other people in the aerospace industry is that if SDI is as small a percentage of the total amount of Department of Defense business that you, as an aerospace contractor, are involved in, why is the interest in your company and in other companies as high as it is, why is that interest as high as it is in SDI? And I think the answer to that can probably be approached from two points of view. One, SDI is conducting some of the most leading, front edge technology that is going on in the United States today. Not every major technology program within the Department of Defense is part of SDI. As an example, there's a VISIK program which is being run independent of SDI, but SDI is going to rely very heavily on that program in terms of the development of hardware. But the vast majority of cutting edge technology is being funded today within the Department of Defense, by SDI. So, companies are interested in participating in that technology. Remember, that technology was going on before there was an SDI formed, and it is a fundamental belief within the aerospace industry that that technology would proceed even if there wasn't an SDI program, perhaps not at as high a funding level, but there would continue to be interest in high energy lasers. The Army was interested in them to put on board tanks as an anti-tank weapon long before there was an SDI program. The Air Force wanted to put them on airplanes, and the Navy was looking at shipboard installations. The applications still exist out there. Although the current activity on lasers is directed towards and anti-ballistic missile program, the other interest still exists. If the program were to move into deployment, it would move from a program that is spending a few billion dollars a year into a program that would be spending $50 or $100 billion a year. That, in terms of today's Department of Defense expenditures, becomes very significant. The $300 billion that we're spending today within the Department of Defense would either move to $400 billion to cover this type of a program or one would have to cut back approximately $100 billion of other expenditures into ships, tanks, missiles, and other equipment to fund the SDI program. So, the interest of industry is with that as a potential downstream. But, more importantly, I think it falls in the area of, this is leading edge technology, and most of the aerospace industry is very interested in being a part of that.

HERE'S A QUESTION WHICH I'D BE INTERESTED IN HEARING YOUR ANSWER TO AS SOMEONE REPRESENTING THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY: HOW GOOD COULD A DEFENSE BE POTENTIALLY? DO WE KNOW YET HOW GOOD AN SDI TYPE DEFENSE COULD BE WAY DOWN THE ROAD? PERFECT? PROTECT OUR POPULATION, BY AND LARGE, SMALL PART OF IT, ONLY OUR LAUNCH PADS? WHAT COULD WE HOPE FOR IF WE WERE WILLING TO PUT THE RESOURCES INTO IT?

The question often arises as to, can you build a perfect defense? And I believe there's, at least none of the people that I am associated with or come in contact with believe that anything can be perfect, that that idea has long ago gone by the wayside in terms of SDI. Can you build a system, an SDI system, which will protect population, even though that system isn't perfect? And the answer is yes. It would take a considerable amount of money. The number of RVs that that system would be allowed to leak through would have to be kept extremely low, on the order of a few to maybe perhaps 10. And that couples then in with a reduction in strategic forces by both the United States and the Soviet Union. A given defense system with a particular leakage rate percentage is going to work better if there are fewer missiles thrown at it than if there's a larger number. So, the two sort of go hand in glove, a reduction in strategic forces and a strategic defense system that could protect population at the same time it would also protect our strategic forces.

ONE OFF-THE-WALL QUESTION: FIFTY YEARS FROM NOW, WHEN HISTORIANS ARE WRITING THE HISTORY OF THIS TIME AND THEY'RE WRITING A CHAPTER OR PART OF A CHAPTER ON THE REAGAN YEARS AND THEY'RE WRITING A PARAGRAPH OR TWO ON THE PRESIDENT'S CONTRIBUTION TO OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE, STRATEGIC DEFENSE, OR STRATEGIC DEFENSE POLICY AS A WHOLE, WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO SAY ABOUT, WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO SAY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT REAGAN DID DURING HIS EIGHT YEARS IN OFFICE IN REGARD TO NUCLEAR WAR?

Fifty years from now, looking at what happened during the Reagan Administration as regards strategic missiles, as regards SDI, it seems to me that the key thing that will be remembered, because I really don't, I'm not able to forecast what's going to happen over the next year or two, but it seems to me the key thing that will be remembered is that a dialogue was begun between the United States and the Soviet Union as to a reduction in arms and an attempt to make the world a safer place within which to live.