Originally published 28 September 1987
In Stephen Crane’s American classic, The Red Badge of Courage, young Henry Fleming goes off to war fired by dreams of heroic sweep and grandeur. “He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and had longed to see it all. His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds.” In the war to preserve the Union he would mingle in one of the great affairs of the earth. He longs, yes longs, for the symbolic wound, the blood-red badge of courage.
The first foes Fleming encounters are some Confederate pickets along a river bank. One night while on guard duty he converses across the stream with one of them. “Yank,” the Confederate says to him, “yer a right dum good feller.” That friendly sentiment cast onto the still air makes the young soldier momentarily regret the war.
By novel’s end, regrets have multiplied, and Fleming has rid himself of the “red sickness of battle.” He turns with a lover’s thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks — and peace.
Picket line in space
The contemporary equivalent of the picket line is the surveillance satellite, and the proposed equivalent of Crane’s regiment of fervid youths arrayed to repulse the charge is the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) announced by President Reagan in 1983. In the century that has passed since Stephen Crane began his career as a writer, the technology of war has undergone a steady escalation. SDI is more than escalation; it is a quantum jump into an entirely new concept of national defense.
By now, the SDI program has become thoroughly entrenched in the Washington bureaucracy, defense industry, and scientific research establishments. The program is already the largest item in the defense budget, and dollar-wise perhaps the greatest single influence on American science and technology. More than $3 billion will be expended on SDI research in 1987 alone, and the level of funding has been rising.
There are those who believe that SDI will increase the security of our nation, and lessen the chance of a Soviet missile strike on American targets. And there are others who think the program is obscenely expensive, unworkable, and dangerous.
But the bottom line may be this: Staggering sums of money are at stake, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars, and the temptation to have one’s slice of such an enormous pie may prove overwhelmingly strong. The sheer magnitude of funding available for SDI research poses a colossal moral dilemma for those in the scientific and technological communities.
No friendly banter
It is hard to get one’s moral teeth into SDI. It offers no drum rolls, no bugle calls, no “brass and bombast” to call young men to war. Henry Fleming was made to feel for a moment sublime by the frenzy of the rapid, successful charge, the music of tramping feet, the sharp voices and clanking of arms. It is rather more difficult to romanticize a war fought with SBKKVs, ERISs, and HEDIs, to mention but a few of the components of SDI. And that, I suppose, is to the good. But neither does SDI offer the opportunity for friendly banter between foes across a river, the “right dum good feller” token of shared humanity that carries a seed of doubt about the efficacy of war.
What sort of novel might Stephen Crane have made out of the high-tech vocabulary of SDI:
- SBKKV (space-based kinetic kill vehicle) — rocket-launched non-nuclear homing vehicles that will seek out and collide with enemy missiles in the launch phase of their flight. Several rockets would be based on each of thousands of platforms “parked” in low-earth orbit.
- Pop-up X‑ray laser — relatively light weapons will be “popped-up” into space, presumably from submarines, to counter an enemy missile launch. They will convert a portion of the energy of a nuclear explosion into a powerful beam of X‑rays directed at the target.
- Free electron laser — hugely powerful ground-based lasers that will direct beams of radiation off orbiting mirrors onto enemy missiles.
- ERIS (exoatmospheric reentry-vehicle intercept system) — long-range ground-based rockets that will intercept enemy missiles will they are still in space.
- Space-based particle beam — device that would emit a beam of sub-atomic particles and cause them to collide with targets. The nature of the reaction between beam and target will enable sensors and computers to discriminate between warheads and decoys. Hundreds of orbiting particle beams will be needed, each powered by a nuclear reactor powerful enough to supply a small city with electricity.
- HEDI (high-endoatmospheric defense interceptor) — ground-launched rocket designed to intercept enemy missiles in the last reentry stage of their flight.
In the event of a full-scale nuclear attack, all of these systems and more will be brought into play in a battle watched by satellites and controlled by computers. Such a war will award no badges of courage. No youths will exchange dreams of heroism for dreams of peace. Space will blaze with bombs and beams. In an hour it will all be over.
