28 European Firms to Work on ‘Star Wars’

BRUSSELS — Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, seeking to unite the North Atlantic Treaty Organization behind the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, announced Thursday that 28 European companies will take part in a new “Star Wars” research project.

Weinberger said the project will research the possibility of developing a defense against short-range nuclear missiles.

Assistant Defense Secretary Richard N. Perle told reporters that, although the focus of the study “clearly is on tactical ballistic missiles,” the research could be applied to a system capable of dealing with intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Seven teams made up of 51 firms--including 28 European companies and one Israeli firm--will be awarded contracts to work on the first phase of the new research, Weinberger said. The contracts are worth $2 million to each of the seven consortiums. They are expected to complete preliminary studies by July, 1987, at which point they will compete for follow-up contracts potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The seven teams of companies, each of which includes European and U.S. members, are headed by Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohn GmbH of West Germany; CosyDe, a joint venture of the French firms of Aerospatiale and Thomson CSF; SNIA BPD of Italy, and LTV Aerospace & Defense, the RCA Corp., Hughes Aircraft Co. and Lockheed Corp. of the United States.

At the opening of the two-day meeting of defense ministers from 14 of the 16 members of NATO, the military leadership made it clear it does not endorse President Reagan’s proposal to eliminate all intercontinental missiles.

West German Gen. Wolfgang Altenburg, chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, said Reagan’s offer to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the Iceland summit in October to cut the number of missiles by half is “worth thinking about.” But, he said, the proposal to eliminate all of them “is something that needs a lot of thought” because a “conventional defense cannot substitute for a nuclear deterrence.”

The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff voiced similar doubt, concerned that removal of all strategic nuclear missiles in 10 years as proposed at Reykjavik would not allow the West enough time to build up a conventional defense to match that of the Soviet Bloc.

Altenburg told a news conference that NATO’s military leadership does not want “to block any progress in arms control” but views the Reykjavik proposals as nothing more “than a beginning.”

“There has to be a nuclear element (to a defense of Europe), which will be the ultimate deterrence,” he said.