Henry Spencer wrote:

There's a piece in the December issue of Spaceflight by Dwayne Day, in
which he makes the interesting point that a good fraction of the US ASAT
activity may have been motivated more by deterring Soviet use of *their*
ASAT systems than by any perceived urgent requirement for antisatellite
capability per se.

That sure seemed to be the case at the time. The Soviets were doing some
ASAT tests, and all of the sudden the F-15 ASAT system seems to pop out
of nowhere do some tests, and then vanish. Of course, just about
everything about historical U.S. ASAT efforts is still somewhat shrouded
in mystery- I was amazed when Encyclopedia Astronautica had the article
about SAINT; the device was far more sophisticated in design than I ever
suspected: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/saint.htm
especially given its timeframe (1958-1962)
Of course, those Polyot satellites that the Soviets got into the ASAT
game with were also some pretty impressive pieces of design. I read
somewhere that the Polyot program was just about the only thing that
Chelomei ever did that impressed Korolev.





considering that it obviously worked, why wasn't it deployed?



Basically, sustained Congressional hostility.



Which makes it interesting in regards to my joint ASAT/ABM test
speculation; if you want to do ABM kill vehicle tests without having to
get the funding for them, then a test against a object that may well
resemble a balloon-encased warhead as well as a target satellite, and
that is in an elliptical orbit that may well simulate a section of a
ICBM's flight trajectory is a great way to kill two birds with one stone.

Pat