at any given time, hundreds of stations were needed. The Air Force noted that there was nowhere near enough launch capacity to build such a system, and even if it could be launched, maintaining it would cost at least $30 billion a year in 1963 dollars (). Additionally, it was noted that there was no effective way to protect the stations against attacks by anti-satellite weapons (ASATs), and the Soviets could easily afford to launch one for each platform. Although twenty years had elapsed since BAMBI had first been studied and the concept had been re-examined several times, no obvious solution to these problems had presented itself. The Smart Rocks proposal, now known officially as Global Ballistic Missile Defense, ignored all of these problems, presenting a bare minimum of information. One observer derided the concept as being "one view-graph deep" and "unencumbered by practical engineering considerations or the laws of physics." In spite of this, Graham soon found a group of like-minded Republicans who formed a group known as the High Frontier Panel to help develop and support his idea. The group was led by Karl Bendetsen and began meeting in a room provided by The Heritage Foundation. Excalibur Around the same time that Graham was formulating his Smart Rocks concept, studies into X-ray lasers at Livermore made an apparent breakthrough. Nuclear explosions give off massive amounts of X-ray energy, and it appeared possible these could be focussed down into narrow beams as the basis for a long-range laser weapon. Previous systems had used carbon-based lasing materials, but calculations showed that the energy could be greatly increased by using a metal rod instead. The idea had been largely theoretical until a key test of the new concept in November 1980. By surrounding a nuclear warhead with dozens of rods, each could be independently aimed to shoot down an enemy missile. A single such warhead might be able to destroy 50 missiles in a radius of a around it. A small fleet of such warheads could seriously disrupt any Soviet attack. In February 1981, Teller and Wood traveled to Washington to pitch the idea of a Manhattan Project-level development effort to produce these weapons in what they called Project Excalibur. Teller was also a member of the High Frontier group and began attacking Graham's Smart Rocks as "outlandish", and suggested his own Excalibur be used in its place. Graham countered by