Soviet Union on the path of previous decades, faithful to the Cold War trajectory of two worlds in collision and ceaseless competition.
Since 1984, the Soviet leadership had been increasingly anxious about Reagan’s dream, and Reagan gave them plenty to worry about. In his second inaugural speech in early 1985, Reagan offered a high-flying description of his program, calling it a global shield to make nuclear weapons obsolete. “I have approved a research program to find, if we can, a security shield that will destroy nuclear missiles before they reach their target,” he said. “It wouldn’t kill people. It would destroy weapons. It wouldn’t militarize space, it would help demilitarize the arsenals of the Earth. It would render nuclear weapons obsolete.”
In Moscow, the KGB made its highest priority gathering intelligence about “American policy on the militarization of space.” That was the title of a ten-page directive issued three and a half weeks after Reagan’s inaugural speech. Soviet spies were ordered to gather intelligence on all the American programs that might deploy systems in space for nuclear and conventional war. They were asked to watch the use of the American space shuttle for deploying weapons in space, the U.S. effort to build an anti-satellite weapon; and they were given extensive tasks to spy on the Strategic Defense Initiative. Woven into the KGB’s instructions were details already plucked from newspapers about Reagan’s program, such as the budget sums and the broad direction, along with ample doses of fear and skepticism about the unknowns. Perhaps Reagan’s program would never work? Perhaps there was a hidden purpose? The KGB was “very anxious to know,” the instruction said, precisely what were the Reagan administration’s plans, how they were evolving, and the “targets, dates and expected financial outlay.” The KGB wanted to know what technical results were achieved in tests, whether it was possible to shoot down a missile using “kinetic weapons,” such as hitting it with another missile or solid object. And what were Reagan’s intentions for negotiating? Was Star Wars really a “large-scale disinformation operation” designed to force the Soviet negotiators into making concessions?35
An avalanche of intelligence reporting began to flow to Moscow, and stacks of it crossed Katayev’s desk. He observed that the spies were lazy and passive; they often simply sent along press clippings as intelligence. What the agents and Soviet military analysts feared the most, Katayev realized, was to underestimate the seriousness of the threat, so they overestimated it. No one could honestly declare that Star Wars would not work, so they reported that it might. The spies flooded the system with reports of the threat; before long, the military-industrial complex geared up to counter the threat. Starting in 1985 and continuing through the decade, Katayev recalled that about ten cables a day came through his offices in the Central Committee on political-military and technical issues. Of them, 30–40 percent dealt with Star Wars and missile defense. Katayev wondered if the Americans were deliberately trying to choke Moscow with fear by leaking a flood of information.36 In the two years since Reagan’s announcement, the Strategic Defense Initiative was not even close to blueprints—it was still little more than a dream—but it had grabbed the attention of the Soviet leadership.
To build a Soviet Star Wars would mean enormous, lucrative new subsidies for work at the design bureaus, institutes and defense factories. Many of these designers and workers already enjoyed better living conditions than the general population. It was, Katayev recalled, like a hunting dog sensing a new quarry. By summer of 1985, the weapons chiefs pulled together a comprehensive plan for a Soviet missile defense system. According to Katayev’s notebooks and papers, there were two major umbrella programs, each of which included a sprawling array of separate projects ranging from fundamental exploratory research to building equipment ready for flight tests. The two umbrella programs had code names. The first was “D-20,” which included research on ground-based missile defenses and was assigned to the Ministry of Radio Industry, which traditionally had worked on early warning, command and control and the Moscow anti-ballistic missile system. The second was “SK-1000,” a product of the design bureaus of the Ministry of General Machine Building, which oversaw missile and space-related research, development and production. Katayev calculated that altogether the programs would have involved 137 projects in the
For all the imposing scope and cost, the grand package concealed deep cracks in the system. Some of the programs, started years earlier, lacked results or purpose, or were starved for resources. Some of them were nearly abandoned or obsolete, hoping for a rebirth. SK-1000 included virtually all the space launcher and satellite programs that were underway in the Soviet Union at that time.
One program that illustrated the ambitions, haste and deficiencies that plagued Soviet space weapons builders was an anti-satellite craft known as Skif. The goal of Skif, started in 1976, was to carry a laser in space that could shoot down enemy satellites. The original idea was to build nothing less than a space battle station. It would be hoisted into orbit by the Energia, an enormous booster then under development, and perhaps serviced by the Buran, the planned Soviet space shuttle. By 1984, the Skif program had yet to produce any hardware because there was no laser that would be suitable for space weaponry. The Soviets were shaken that June by news of the successful American missile interception over the Pacific, the lucky single hit, known as the Homing Overlay Experiment, described earlier. Even without a space laser, the government in August ordered creation of a “demonstration” spacecraft, the Skif-D, which would carry a smaller, substitute laser, one that could not shoot down satellites but would at least replicate the original idea. Then, in 1985, came the renewed planning for a Soviet Star Wars. The Skif-D was modified once again. This time it was to be put on an accelerated schedule to fly by the following year. However, the designers still lacked a laser. So they decided to create a mock-up with no functioning laser equipment on board, and called it “Skif-DM.” The vessel was to be 36.9 meters long and weigh 77 tons. The Skif mock-up demonstrator was among those programs offered to Gorbachev for accelerated work in the summer of 1985.38
Roald Sagdeev, a physicist and director of the Space Research Institute, a leader in the Soviet deep-space exploration effort, recalled attending a small meeting in Gorbachev’s office. Gorbachev was still on a learning curve, asking questions and absorbing details about complicated arms control issues. According to Sagdeev, a top official of the Soviet space industry appealed to Gorbachev to build his own Star Wars. “Trust me,” the official said. “We are losing time while doing nothing to build our own counterpart to the American SDI program.”
“I almost died from suppressing my laughter,” Sagdeev recalled. He realized that the Soviet Union could not afford billions of rubles to do it and lacked critical technology, especially high-speed computers and precision optics.39
These were still early days for Gorbachev, and he was clearly not yet fully in control. The list of D-20 and SK-1000 could only have added to his fears about the military-industrial complex. On July 15, 1985, the Central Committee approved the huge list of proposals for a Soviet missile defense. What is significant here is not so much the approval—most of the programs were years away from materializing—but the unbridled ambitions of the designers and builders. They wanted to construct a massive and expensive response to Reagan’s dream. In the past, they had been the driving force behind Soviet weapons systems. Gorbachev would have to outfox them.
Velikhov, by his own experience and outlook, was ready to help navigate the forbidding obstacle course Gorbachev faced. Both open-minded and entrepreneurial, Velikhov was the right man at the right time. His specialty was nuclear and plasma physics. When the Soviet weapons designers gave Gorbachev their grand plan, he spotted the faults. Velikhov knew the top-secret history of Soviet efforts to build missile defenses, dating back to the 1960s, because he had participated in it. Certainly, they had achieved scientific and engineering breakthroughs against great odds, but the Soviet Union fell short of building next-generation weapons in space.40
The most concrete achievement was completion of a ground-based missile defense system around Moscow, as permitted by the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. In the event of an attack, interceptor rockets were poised to shoot up from locations around the city and knock out the incoming warheads. The Soviets had also launched a relatively primitive anti-satellite weapon, first designed in the 1960s, which would position itself into the same orbit as a target satellite and shoot conventional weapons at it. The system had largely ceased to work by 1983.41
But there were also many setbacks, especially in the quest for exotic laser and space weapons, which consumed huge expenditures in the 1960s and 1970s. A testing ground was constructed for this work at Sary
