In response to Mike Murvihill’s letter about Star Wars (Feb. 9), I would first like to say I find it hard to believe we could build the whole Star Wars system for $30 billion to $60 billion when we have just recently spent $26 billion on Star Wars research alone, without a working system yet being produced. Come on, Mike, aren’t your cost estimates a little naive?

But, aside from that, I would ask you, Mike, how you can stop the missiles from flying. How are you going to stop the 1,000 nuclear warheads that will leak through Star Wars? How will you stop the depressed trajectory submarine-launched missiles which the Soviets will deploy?

The fact is, Mike, that the Freeze Campaign has not ignored Star Wars. We have seriously examined it, and found it to be a useless fantasy. Rather than reducing the need for nuclear weapons, Star Wars will insanely accelerate the arms race as each side vastly increases the number of offensive missiles they have so they can overwhelm the enemy’s defenses.

As you said, Mike, the time has come for action. And the action we should take is to approach the Soviets with some serious arms control proposals without the Star Wars strings attached. At the summit last year, Reagan gave up a chance to eliminate nuclear weapons because he wanted to build a weapon that would eliminate nuclear weapons. Let’s cut out the fantasy in the middle and get to the real solution to the arms race: a mutual, verifiable freeze on the testing, development, and deployment of nuclear weapon systems, followed by reductions in the world’s stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Bill Mellman

president

NIU Freeze Campaign