delivery capability required for a credible deterrent. A more purely institutional type of deterrence is the use of various diplomatic means including negotiation, trade embargoes, propaganda, and placing armed forces on military alert. Such safeguards are beyond the scope of this study and will not be discussed further. The last type of safeguard deals with methods for preventing the actualization of potential threats. For example, the diversion of the SPS power beam could be effectively prevented by encrypting the pilot beam signals and by providing remote or redundant pilot beam transmitters. This class of safeguards—whether technological or institutional—would be factored into the detailed engineering design of any SPS system at an early stage. 5.1 Technological Safeguards Table 5-1 lists possible technological safeguards and the abbreviations used for these safeguards. It also indicates whether the safeguard would be used against threats, against vulnerabilities, or both. Alternate SPS designs can safeguard elements of the systems against certain types of assaults which may otherwise be difficult to avert. In the Reference Design configuration of the power satellite, for example, the photovoltaic arrays are sensitive to surge currents induced by ionizing radiations from nuclear explosions at great distances (SGEMP). Redesign of the system to include currentlimiting devices distributed throughout the solar cell arrays would significantly reduce the vulnerability of the power satellites to SGEMP. Should the solution result in an excessive cost or weight penalty, a more radical change (such as use of Rankine cycle or Brayton cycle thermal conversion instead of photovoltaics) may be necessary. Similarly, if the rotary joint in the Reference Design appears to be unacceptably vulnerable to mutilation, and hardening the joint is impractical, the power satellite could be redesigned to eliminate the rotary joint, with a fixed transmitter array illuminating a separate passive reflector satellite always aimed at the rectenna. As is evident in Table 5-1, some of the safeguards using force delivery overlap the threats discussed in Section 3. Antisatellite weapon systems, for example, could be used by the SPS to defend itself, or by a non-SPS nation to protect itself against force delivery adapters attached to an SPS.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==