‘SDI: a Camel’s Nose Under Tent’

The article by Profs. Louis D. Smullin and Kosta Tsipis (Editorial Pages, Feb. 18), “SDI: a Camel’s Nose Under the Tent,” criticizing the Reagan Administration’s push for early deployment of a partial defensive system is premised on a myth: that the aim of the Strategic Defense Initiative is to erect a leakproof roof over the American population. That, however, is simply not so.

A perfect system has never been planned or possible, and the 1983 Fletcher Commission that the President first commissioned to explore SDI said so loud and clear in its final report.

What a system, or parts of it, can do, is so complicate a Soviet targeteer’s job--he will not know which missiles will get through or where--that an attack will never be launchedin the first place because of the uncertainty. That sounds like pretty good protection to me.

It is not the “extreme right wing” or an “extremist fringe” that is pushing for early deployment of SDI. It is sober-minded, responsible people who are charged with this nation’s defense.

They see that the rapid progress being made in defensive technologies at last offers some chance to right the strategic imbalance, and threat to security, caused by a decades-long, sustained Soviet buildup in offensive weapons.

RICHARD P. SYBERT

Los Angeles