The post by Mr. Day is missing the point of my original article. It would be a really safe bet that almost everybody reading about China’s January ASAT test outside of Arms Control Today: 1) was informed in a sentence or clause that the Soviet Union conducted ASAT tests, and 2)assumed that the Soviet Union must have destroyed a target satellite similar to the way China recently did. They would be wrong. To be sure, the Soviet interceptor system employed an explosive conventional device, but its target was never shattered into pieces.

The article was not about assessing or comparing total debris creation. It also was not a comprehensive assessment of Soviet ASAT programs or current Russian ASAT capabilities. Inclusion of the 1985 OT&A finding was to simply point out that the U.S. government at that time assessed the Soviet program as a security threat.

For starters, it is misleading to state that the “targets” did not release debris. It was the attacker that generated the debris in the form of a shotgun blast aimed at the target. Much of the debris produced from these tests was probably too small to track. A better question to ask would be how much total debris was produced from those tests? No definitive answer can be produced because most of the debris was too small to track from the ground, but it should be possible to generate estimates. Given that the Soviets tested this weapon multiple times over many years, it is safe to say that Soviet ASAT tests produced MUCH more space debris than the single US test which gets all the attention.

Furthermore, rather than relying on a 1985 OTA report, the author might cite the work of Dr. Asif Siddiqi, who has written a history of the Soviet weapon based upon Russian sources.