Beam Weapons; The Next Arms Race

New York: Plenum Press, 1984. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 22 cm. xi, [1], 363, [1] pages. Illustrations. Figures. Chapter references. Appendix. Index. Jeff Hecht has written extensively about lasers, light and optics for a wide range of publications, including New Scientist magazine, Laser Focus World, Optics & Photonics News, High Technology, Technology Review, and Bulletin of the American Scientists. The author wrote: I first wrote about laser weapons in 1976 in an article that was published in the October 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction. Now that the President of the United States can talk about beam weapons in deadly serious tones on national television, it seems time for a more serious look. This book is based on my analysis of information I've gathered in years of writing about laser technology. I have never had a security clearance, and though that limits the information I have been able to obtain, it means that I can say things that otherwise would be replaced by [deleted]. I have been watching the field long enough to play "fill in the blanks" with censored government documents and to make reasonable guesses of what many of the [deleted]s originally said. There are no simple answers here, just complex technical and defense issues that deserve careful study and that are important to the future of our nation and the world. The defense issues raised in the latter half of the book may seem more immediate to the general reader, but they are inevitably related to the technological background laid in Chapters 4-9. Throughout the book, I have documented my sources as much as possible, while respecting the confidentiality of information given in private. Beam Weapons describes the roots of Ronald Reagan's 'Star Wars' quest for a strategic defense system to intercept and destroy nuclear ballistic missiles before they could reach their targets. The goal was to develop radically new beam weapons that destroyed nuclear missiles with directed energy — laser beams or charged particles. The daring program was born at a time of intense technological optimism, when NASA talked of weekly space shuttle flights. Pentagon planners envisioned a fleet of orbiting laser battle stations that could blast thousands of nuclear missiles out of the sky. Critics dubbed the plan an impossible 'Star Wars' fantasy. The controversy quickly grew heated. In Beam Weapons, Jeff Hecht focuses on the core technical issues. He tells how lasers and particle beams work, explains what is needed for effective missile defense, and carefully analyzes the feasibility of proposed systems. More than 30 years later, the Cold War is history, but the technology Reagan sought remains beyond the state of the art.