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Rudy Garbely, an electrical engineer with ITT Cannon in Phoenix, says the microwaves from a ten-megaton detonation in space could turn virtually every unprotected electronic and electrical circuit within a 2,000-mile radius into a "piece of junk." Microwaves could be an effective way to destroy an enemy's mobile missiles. Because these missiles are not sitting in an easily targeted, fixed silo, it would take a large barrage of standard nuclear warheads to ensure that they were knocked out. But, as John Pike, a weapons expert with the Federation of American Scientists, points out, "a single third-generation nuke could blanket a wide area with microwaves, which would short-circuit the electronic mechanisms, disabling the missiles."
Another third-generation technique is to shape bombs in such a way that their blast is focused in specific directions, as is now done with conventional explosives. Making a nuclear bomb disk-shaped, for example, channels most of the destructive force into two opposite-directed cones of energy, rather than sending it evenly in all directions. The result: destruction of specific targets rather than entire cities.
The debate is not over whether these weapons can be developed but whether they should be. Physicist Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, argues that they are "uniquely designed for defensive purposes" and that "we need to know what the other side is doing and how to defend against it." But IBM's Richard Garwin, a weapons expert and active arms-control advocate, disagrees: "We shouldn't be going this route, not just because it's a Pandora's box but because it serves as justification for further nuclear testing. The human race has enough destructive weapons already."
Lowell Wood, the weapons designer at California's Livermore Laboratory who headed the Excalibur X-ray project, notes approvingly that the "obvious direction of weapons design is to increase the utility of weapons and at the same time decrease the disadvantages intrinsic to their use." But that is precisely what worries opponents. Because the new nukes will be smaller and less indiscriminately destructive, they will blur the line between nonnuclear and nuclear weapons, thus making it more probable that a conventional skirmish would escalate into a nuclear exchange.
Despite the controversy, the Reagan Administration is proceeding with the new weapons. Sylvester Foley Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Department of Energy for defense programs, says his department spends "about 10%" of its $1.85 billion research, development and weapons-testing budget on directed- energy nuclear bombs. The push to perfect third-generation nukes, some experts say, is the reason that the U.S. has refused to accept repeated Soviet proposals for a ban on nuclear testing.