LOTTMAN: Tell me a little bit about High Frontier. What are the organization's base principles and long-term views?

ROBERTS: High Frontier was created back in 1983 by Lt. Gen. Dan Graham, who passed away recently, but who had been the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency on active service. And of course the Defense Intelligence Agency relies heavily on satellites to get information all around the world. And so that caused Gen. Graham to become interested in this area and also in defense. And realize that we had no defense against missiles.

So he was on pretty good terms with President Reagan. So he told President Reagan in the spring of 1983 that something ought to be done. So Reagan came out with something that is known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. SDI. And the press made fun of it in those days and started calling it “Star Wars.” Which of course was a put-down, but that didn't bother Graham because, he said, well, we gotta have this sooner or later. And that was the beginning of High Frontier. And I teamed up with him about five years after that in 1988. And in addition to being Secretary-Treasurer, I've also been a primary contact with people on Capitol Hill.

And so now we feel we're making good progress. As a matter of fact, Congress has voted several times to start funding missile defense, and it's been vetoed by Mr. Clinton. I don't know why Clinton has done this, but he has.

Finally, in recent months, somebody told Clinton, “hey, it's bad politics to be opposed to missile defense. Why don't you say something better?” So he has come out and said, “yeah, I guess we should have a national military defense,”—quote—“when technologically possible.” That's his out. Well, as a matter of fact, it is technologically possible. We've spent millions of dollars in research, to do this job. And all that remains to be done is to get a favorable person in the White House.

LOTTMAN: A lot of people want to debate the technological feasibility, or the treaty implications, or what have you. I'm pretty much here to focus on the limited NMD system currently being talked about, and I'm operating under the assumption that the technical challenges will be overcome, treaties will be altered as necessary, etc….

ROBERTS: We've been relying on mutual assured destruction, or MAD, and we think that is mad. And of course, that's the theory that if someone throws a missile at you, you throw one back. If you kill millions of our people, we'll kill millions of yours. Well, we think there's a better solution. Let's not kill people, let's just knock down the missiles. And this will be done as soon as we have a favorable administration.

And as I said, they've spent a lot of money on making this a feasible situation. And they've had some successful tests recently from the ground-based systems. However, the quickest way to do this is through the Navy's system. The Aegis cruisers and destroyers already have missiles aboard. Of course, they are ship-to-ship, or shore-to-shore, something like that, but they can be converted. And we need the satellites to do it, but the Vice Chief of Naval Operations has said that he could put up a system in 30 months. 2-1/2 years.

LOTTMAN: That's not the system they've been testing…

ROBERTS: No, it is not. The system they've been testing is strictly a ground-based system, from one location. Well, that's fine, if that's where the missiles are coming to. But if you need it over here, a couple of hundred miles away, then whaddya got? So the Navy system has the advantage of being deployed around the world. And you can move it into an area very quickly if you want to. Of course, on the other hand, if they were gonna do it most efficiently, you'd have a space-based system. And there are several ways to do that.

LOTTMAN: OK, that's interesting. Just to backtrack a little bit: the average person, who is, you know, interested in missile defense, and who has followed the recent flight tests and the progress with that system, your views are obviously a little further out in the long term than that, but for that person, where are we today? What stage of the process are we in today?

ROBERTS: Well, the ground-based system has produced a vehicle that will travel 3500 or 4000 miles. And a rocket was fired from Vandenburg Air Force Base out in California, and travelled that distance, over towards the islands of Kwajelein. There it was intercepted by a ground-based missile. And it was a direct hit. And there was one that was a miss by a matter of seconds. That's come quite a ways. I think they are feeling pretty confident of that. There hasn't been any money appropriated for expansion of this, but I expect there will be, either this year or next year.

LOTTMAN: Expansion in terms of a bigger system, or…

ROBERTS: Or beginning to produce some of these things.

LOTTMAN: Where are we in terms of High Frontier's views of homeland defense?

ROBERTS: Well, the ground-based system is better than nothing, and the Administration has been talking about putting it in Alaska because they feel that this would intercept possible Chinese missiles on their way over to the continental United States. That's alright, but it's only one place. And we feel that there's a definite need for multiple coverage.

LOTTMAN: Assuming that the ground-based system performs reliably, people have confidence in it, and they do deploy it, at that point, how much safer are we in the US than we are today?

ROBERTS: Well, we're a lot safer, within certain limits. One location is only going to cover a fraction of the United States. And a location in Alaska is not going to do much if you have a renegade missile fired from Russia in the other direction.

I think the greatest risk right now is accidental launch. Within the last 4 or 5 years, the Russians have had an accidental launch of a long-range missile. Fortunately, it travelled several thousand miles and was then diverted. But that's always a possibility. And that missile had a warhead on it.

Then, of course, there is the other possibility of a renegade group taking over a system. In other words, the political situation in Russia right now is a little bit of a turmoil because you've had Yeltsin going out, a new man coming in, and I think it's likely it'll be OK. But why should we remain defenseless against these possibilities, if we can do something about 'em? We don't think it makes any sense. And it will be a small part of the total defense budget. Not huge.

LOTTMAN: So an accidental launch or a rogue launch we will be at least more protected than we are today?

ROBERTS: Yes, that's right.

LOTTMAN: So those threats will be covered—where do you see those threats in terms of the overall threat spectrum?

ROBERTS: I think it's a limited situation. I don't expect any missiles to be directed toward us from our NATO allies. The only possibilities are China and Russia, and then rogue nations such as North Korea, which has already fired a missile, in our direction, about 3,500 miles, and shook up the troops pretty much, shook up Japan a lot, because it was fired over the Sea of Japan, and over Japan itself, and then dropped in the Ocean South of Alaska. Well, that kind of shook things up a bit over on Capitol Hill, and they decided, well, we'd better put some more money in this thing.

LOTTMAN: As far as the spectrum of threats in general against the homeland, do you see missiles as the principal threat, or the one we need to be most concerned about, as opposed to other means of causing havoc…

ROBERTS: Well, we have reasonable effective conventional forces. Some people say they've been cut back too much, and that may be a fact, but nevertheless, they are there. We have a good Navy, we have a good Air Force, we have a good Army. But we don't have any protection against missiles. So yeah, you can protect yourself by going to conventional warfare, but there's a big hole there, and that's missiles. And we have to do something about that. We think so.

LOTTMAN: Again, stepping out into the future a few years, we've deployed this ground-based system, what do you see as the next step after that, in the evolution of missile defense?

ROBERTS: That, we believe, would be a very good thing to do, and it's a good possibility.

The other thing is the airborne laser, in which you would have a 747 equipped with a very powerful laser, which can go up to 60,000 feet or more, and in the area which is threatened, be able to knock down a missile, if it's there at that time. Of course, you don't know exactly where it's coming, so there are limitations to the airborne laser.

A space-borne laser is something else. And that has a lot of work to do. And also the space-borne little satellites, that we'll call “brilliant pebbles.” Brilliant Pebbles will be deployed around the globe in space, maybe several hundred miles apart, which can take care of a missile coming from virtually anywhere, with the capability of intercepting it on the rise, or before it starts to go down. And of course, that was Gen. Graham's idea in the first place. He didn't live to see it, but that would probably be the most effective system.

LOTTMAN: Where are we in terms of space-based laser development, would be one question….

ROBERTS: There has been funding provided for that, and especially the airborne laser. The space-borne laser to a lesser extent. That's some distance off. The airborne laser, I think, could be done within several years. And Boeing is probably anxious top see that, cause they'll sell some 747's. (laughs)

LOTTMAN: Would space-based lasers just be for missile defense?

ROBERTS: It would be designed for missile defense. But there's also the possibility of space-based lasers knocking down enemy satellites. And it's presumed that the opponents' satellites (are) taking a good look at the United States. And if you got into a war you'd wanna knock those down.

LOTTMAN: With these satellites, if they are deployed outside the atmosphere, would those be vulnerable to, say, EMP? Could that take out the whole infrastructure?

ROBERTS: No. It could probably take out something that was close by, but not the whole thing. No way.

LOTTMAN: What sort of countermeasures do we have to account for? The security of these satellites themselves, and any systems we put into space, even today is very important. It's only going to become more important in the future. Or are the countermeasures themselves gonna be too expensive for any potential opponent to try to escalate the technology…?

ROBERTS: Well, what kind of countermeasures. We would assume that, let's say, for example, there was a takeover of the leadership in China, and they decided that they wanted to attack the United States for whatever reason. Our countermeasure would be ballistic missile defense. Which we currently don't have. On the other hand, they don't have it either. They may be working on it, but they don't have it to the best of my knowledge. I don't think anyone else does either. It's something that may be coming along, because other countries may want to defend themselves, as well as the United States.

LOTTMAN: But thinking in terms of adding something to their attack to try to defeat a defensive system, confuse it—countermeasures against our defense is what I'm talking about. Is that realistic that any potential enemy will attain that technology.

ROBERTS: Russia has a missile defense system. I misspoke a moment ago. I said Russia doesn't have a missile defense system when in fact they do. And they have had it for some time on the periphery. This, of course, is a violation of the ABM treaty of 1972, but then they have been violating that since the day it was signed. And we have always said, we can't do much about this, because of treaties. Which doesn't make any sense, really.