More than three decades ago, the United States announced the launch of the SDI ("Strategic Defense Initiative") program, named "Star Wars" in honor of a fashionable film novelty. The products that were supposed to be created within the framework of this program, in their practicality and effectiveness, differed little from the military irons from the cinema.
The tasks were - wow! Here you have missile interceptors, precision weapons, and the nuclear shield of democracy! They were shyly called “achievable”, but there was no need to talk about preliminary deployment of something in metal.
The romantic era of the sixties ended long ago, so at least there was no more talk of "trucks with space needles" - in other words, vehicles that seeded the orbits used by the enemy with lethal space debris. They could spoil the lives of companions at the most. To counter a good missile attack, a more serious tool was required.
At first, the developers took up the concept of an anti-nuclear umbrella, almost literally. It took off in the form folded behind the fairing, and in space it was deployed into a combat position and intercepted an enemy rocket. One should not delude oneself with the seeming fragility of a four-meter structure: already at 3 km / s relative speed, the collision energy approaches the energy of detonation of trinitrotoluene of a comparable mass. And for the interceptor and the warhead, the relative speed of the meeting is about 6-7 km / s - twice as much!
True, all this beauty was also required to get there. This is where the problems began. Yes, on the fourth test, the umbrella successfully hit the warhead mockup, but in the best traditions of the Pentagon, before that, it was "slightly improved": by artificially increasing the brightness of the heat trail about twice as compared to realistic parameters. The thermal aiming head then "took" it. But the radar could not!
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In response to this failure, the designers rolled out the following interceptor, with the beautiful acronym ERIS. Named after the ancient Greek goddess of strife, Eris, the new missile also used an infrared-guided clamshell ram. This time, the aiming radar was completely abandoned and the missile was fired from external ground and space objects. But they improved the work of the infrared unit and the physical dimensions of the ram almost twice. For the manufacture of the interceptor, they took the stages of the Minuteman ICBM. Stacks of ready-made steps in warehouses for the first time even promised the project a small savings.
True, it was not Reagan who was looking after the tests, but Bush, but who cares about such trifles as the postponement of a president or another? Much sadder was the fact that the "countering false targets" algorithm was a banal window dressing: after all, the training warhead threw out only two inflatable reflectors. For comparison - modern analogues. With all the power of today's computers, in order to guarantee the interception of just a dozen missiles from Asia, a minimum number of interceptor groups is required from a hundred pieces! The current technology still cannot be guaranteed to distinguish one hundred percent between true and false targets.
The project needed a real solution. Not some banal missiles, but a real self-propelled battle iron from "Star Wars", just like in the movies. And the iron was gone!
At first glance, the percussion module of the program "Diamond Pebbles" seemed to be stolen straight from a cheap action movie. Of course, the shape of the protective corps was justified by the corresponding functions and needs, but the self-propelled element of the anti-missile defense looked completely frivolous.
With the help of thousands of such "pebbles" it was supposed to ensure the closure of the main corridors of the exit of ICBMs for the atmosphere and defeat them at the acceleration stage. The idea was not to shoot down the warheads, but to hunt for the expensive and difficult-to-manufacture missile buses carrying them. So the myth arose about the undermining of the economy of the USSR as a result of such a confrontation.
But…
But, alas, a meter-long "pebble" together with a cover, a solar battery and hanging tanks pulled 50-100 kilograms of mass. At the same time, more than a few minutes should not have passed from interception to ramming. Considering that it is possible to launch a missile from both submarines and traditional silos, and the most probable enemy stretched from Kamchatka to Kaliningrad, it was necessary to try to sow the maximum space in different orbits with "pebbles". And then suddenly a missile will be brought to the launch site on wheels or by train, and there is no interceptor nearby … And that's all, consider that it is not at all. In order for the irons to be of any use in the event of a mass launch, thousands of them had to be made.
As a result, the program turned out to be no cheaper than a nuclear missile program. But the rocket has been quietly sleeping in the mine for decades, and the striking element must be constantly kept in low orbit, where it will live from a few months to a few years, and then a new one will have to be launched instead.
The designers, after all, fought not for an absolute guarantee of inaccessibility, but only for turning the anecdotal "… staff reduction in alphabetical order: Idaho, Iowa, Alabama …" - into a scam roulette, where the Soviet command basically does not know how many missiles there are launch successfully fly to the target, and which will be shot down and will not fulfill their task.
In general, it is not surprising that, as soon as it became clear that a nuclear war was postponed for an unknown period, a stern accountant came and all the participants in the special anti-missile Olympiad were expelled from space.
Well, now we are seeing just another restart of the same programs on a modern technical base. So far, with rather modest results, but the achievements of a quarter of a century ago clearly show that designers still have much to strive for.
Especially in the difficult task of mastering space budgets.
With this we wish them new creative success!
Mikhail Lapikov