The Strategic Defense Initiative: The Development of an Armaments Programme (Cambridge Studies in In

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During the postboost phase, a single-warhead missile will direct itself toward its target, while a missile with multiple warheads will release all of its bombs. Additionally, missiles can detach decoy bombs, which are made of tinfoil, aluminum, or chaff. During the midcourse phase, which lasts for approximately twenty minutes, the warheads and decoys travel through space towards their intended targets. When the decoys are detected by radar, it is nearly impossible to distinguish them from the actual bombs.

Therefore, the defensive forces may waste a lot of time and resources trying to shoot them down. In the last phase, referred to as the terminal or reentry phase, the warheads reenter the atmosphere and finally explode at a specified height or on the ground. During this last phase, it is hardest to shoot down the missiles. However, the atmosphere affects the decoys differently than the actual warheads, so it is easy to distinguish them from one another at this time.

A strategic defense system would consist of layered defenses. The first layer consists of spy systems, such as satellites, ground radar, and infrared detectors to detect the missiles as soon as they are launched. Because of the bulkiness of the engines and the volume of rocket fuel in the missile, it is easiest to destroy a missile during the boost phase.

During this phase, missiles would be destroyed with counter-missiles, which could be ground, air, or space-based, and kinetic energy weapons, which collide with the ballistic missile. During the midcourse phase, strategic defense would have to rely on an EKV, or exoatmospheric kill vehicle, which is a package of sensors similar to a computer that could be launched on top of the intercepting rocket and home in on the warhead, destroying it by colliding with it Margulies Ground-based interceptors are lasers, particle beams, and missiles located on the ground or on aircraft and submarines.

The Star Wars program consisted of several plans to counter nuclear missiles, including laser beams, which would be mounted on satellites in space to shoot down nuclear missiles. A mirror would be used to reflect the beam towards the missile. There was also a proposition to use an excimer laser, which is a very powerful laser beam with a short wavelength Lampton However, the excimer laser would be much too big to launch into orbit.

Particle-beam weapons and smart rocks, missiles with computers inside, were also proposed as means to counter a Soviet missile attack. However, each of these countermeasures has several technical problems, and none of them has been proven to be completely effective. In these treaties, both countries agreed to neither test nor deploy nuclear weapons in outer space. While the United States would not be violating the treaty by doing research, once system development began there would be blatant conflicts.

To add further complications, the treaty failed to specifically address how it would deal with any future technologies that might be constructed differently than the current ABM systems. To appease his detractors, President Reagan asserted in the April Report to Congress on the Strategic Defense Initiative that he would comply with a more restrictive interpretation of the treaty rather than the broader one. For the United States to be in complete compliance with the ABM Treaty, it could pursue three specific types of allowed activities.

However, Article V of the ABM Treaty specifically prohibits the development, testing, and deployment of weapons that are ABM systems, whether they are land-based, sea-based, or air-based. The important aspect of fixed land-based systems which differentiates it from land-based systems is that the missiles must remain within the atmosphere instead of being launched all the way into outer space. Violations of the ABM Treaty by either country during this time would have certainly added more tension to the Cold War.

One of the main issues surrounding the Strategic Defense Initiative was its cost and how it would affect the economy. For example, for SDI II, he suggests that instead of using active defense, we should improve our passive defense capabilities. Passive defense could be defined as placing missiles in secret areas, such as in silos, submarines, and aircraft, so that they are less likely to be attacked. Robinson believes that a ground-based defense would be much more effective and cheaper than a space-based defense, and that the money allocated to the space-based defenses could be better spent.

One of the main issues discussed in the book, Star Wars: The majority of the money went to the few states that had large military bases and seemed to already have high proportions of the SDI contracts. However, Georgia, representing the other extreme, paid seven percent of its taxes for SDI, yet received only 0.

Although Star Wars was not completely bankrupting the economy at the time, the cost was much too high to be maintained. However, this appeared to be merely a show of bravado. One of the great fears of the Soviet Union in the s was the loss of its existing legitimacy as a superpower, along with the fear of losing its overall power. In an effort to remain technologically, economically, and politically competitive with the United States, the Soviet Union would have to improve the quality and competitiveness of its products.

The Soviet Union believed that the most important implications of SDI were those relating to the impact on the current and future military balance. Although each of these claims reflects an element of falsehood, they all present a particular fear that was then part of the Soviet political mentality.

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In the Report to the Congress on the Strategic Defense Initiative, the United States mentions several programs that the Soviet Union was then pursuing, including kinetic energy weapons, laser weapons, particle beam weapons, and radio-frequency weapons. ASAT works by launching a satellite into an orbit very close to that of the target satellite and then exploding a warhead, destroying the target satellite.

Another program that the Soviet Union had undertaken in response to SDI was to make their military assets less vulnerable to attack, by building ICBM silos, launch facilities, and command and control centers Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, , Appendix A Obviously, the Soviet Union viewed SDI as a great threat to their society and made large efforts to retain their technological equality with the United States.

Only one decade after the ratification of the ABM Treaty, both nations were on the path to building enormous anti-ballistic missile and counter-missile systems. Edward Teller first became interested in missile defense as early as , but it was not until a visit in to the U. Teller briefed Reagan for two hours on the Spartan and Sprint antimissile systems being developed in Livermore.

This meeting with Teller was the first time that Reagan was introduced to the possibilities of missile defense. On September 14, , Teller met with Reagan for the first time since the latter became president. The X-ray laser was then being researched at the Livermore Laboratory, and Teller still believed it to be the best method of destroying ballistic missiles. He hoped that SDI would protect people from a nuclear holocaust while also providing a catalyst for the eventual abolition of all nuclear weapons. Teller may have been disappointed that his X-ray concept was not favored, but he nevertheless began to champion other technologies that were being explored.

Teller also faced much criticism from his long-time rival, Hans Bethe, who was strongly against the Strategic Defense Initiative. Those who were in favor of Star Wars can be divided into four main groups Barnaby The Relay mirror experiment RME , launched in February , demonstrated critical technologies for space-based relay mirrors that would be used with an SDI directed-energy weapon system. Research out of hypervelocity railgun technology was done to build an information base about railguns so that SDI planners would know how to apply the technology to the proposed defense system.

This represented a significant improvement over previous efforts, which were only able to achieve about one shot per month. Hypervelocity railguns are, at least conceptually, an attractive alternative to a space-based defense system because of their envisioned ability to quickly shoot at many targets. Also, since only the projectile leaves the gun, a railgun system can potentially fire many times before needing to be resupplied. A hypervelocity railgun works very much like a particle accelerator insofar as it converts electrical potential energy into kinetic energy imparted to the projectile.

A conductive pellet the projectile is attracted down the rails by electric current flowing through a rail. Through the magnetic forces that this system achieves, a force is exerted on the projectile moving it down the rail. Railguns can generate muzzle-velocities in excess of 2. Railguns face a host of technical challenges before they will be ready for battlefield deployment. First, the rails guiding the projectile must carry very high power.

Each firing of the railgun produces tremendous current flow almost half a million amperes through the rails, causing rapid erosion of the rail's surfaces through ohmic heating , and even vaporization of the rail surface. Early prototypes were essentially single-use weapons, requiring complete replacement of the rails after each firing. Another challenge with the railgun system is projectile survivability.

Strategic Defense Initiative

In order to be effective, the fired projectile must first survive the mechanical stress of firing and the thermal effects of a trip through the atmosphere at many times the speed of sound before its subsequent impact with the target. In-flight guidance, if implemented, would require the onboard navigation system to be built to the same level of sturdiness as the main mass of the projectile. In addition to being considered for destroying ballistic missile threats, railguns were also being planned for service in space platform sensor and battle station defense.

This potential role reflected defense planner expectations that the railguns of the future would be capable of not only rapid fire, but also of multiple firings on the order of tens to hundreds of shots. Groups of interceptors were to be housed in orbital modules. Hover testing was completed in and demonstrated integration of the sensor and propulsion systems in the prototype SBI. It also demonstrated the ability of the seeker to shift its aiming point from a rocket's hot plume to its cool body, a first for infrared ABM seekers.

Final hover testing occurred in using miniaturized components similar to what would have actually been used in an operational interceptor. These prototypes eventually evolved into the Brilliant Pebbles program. Brilliant Pebbles was a non-nuclear system of satellite-based interceptors designed to use high-velocity, watermelon-sized, teardrop-shaped projectiles made of tungsten as kinetic warheads. The Pebbles were designed in such a way that autonomous operation, without further external guidance from planned SDI sensor systems, was possible.

Nuckolls, director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from to , described the system as "The crowning achievement of the Strategic Defense Initiative". Some of the technologies developed for SDI were used in numerous later projects. For example, the sensors and cameras that were developed and manufactured for Brilliant Pebbles systems became components of the Clementine mission and SDI technologies may also have a role in future missile defense efforts.

SDIO sensor research encompassed visible light , ultraviolet , infrared , and radar technologies, and eventually led to the Clementine mission though that mission occurred just after the program transitioned to the BMDO. Like other parts of SDI, the sensor system initially was very large-scale, but after the Soviet threat diminished it was cut back. Boost Surveillance and Tracking System was part of the SDIO in the late s, and was designed to assist detection of missile launches, especially during the boost phase.

Space Surveillance and Tracking System was a system originally designed for tracking ballistic missiles during their mid-course phase. The Delta program used a satellite known as Delta Star to test several sensor related technologies.

Delta Star carried a thermographic camera , a long-wave infrared imager, an ensemble of imagers and photometers covering several visible and ultraviolet bands as well as a laser detector and ranging device. The satellite observed several ballistic missile launches including some releasing liquid propellant as a countermeasure to detection. Data from the experiments led to advances in sensor technologies.

In war-fighting, countermeasures can have a variety of meanings:. Countermeasures of various types have long been a key part of warfighting strategy. However, with SDI they attained a special prominence due to the system cost, scenario of a massive sophisticated attack, strategic consequences of a less-than-perfect defense, outer spacebasing of many proposed weapons systems, and political debate.

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Whereas the current United States national missile defense system is designed around a relatively limited and unsophisticated attack, SDI planned for a massive attack by a sophisticated opponent. This raised significant issues about economic and technical costs associated with defending against anti-ballistic missile defense countermeasures used by the attacking side. For example, if it had been much cheaper to add attacking warheads than to add defenses, an attacker of similar economic power could have simply outproduced the defender.

This requirement of being "cost effective at the margin" was first formulated by Paul Nitze in November In addition, SDI envisioned many space-based systems in fixed orbits, ground-based sensors, command, control and communications facilities, etc. In theory, an advanced opponent could have targeted those, in turn requiring self-defense capability or increased numbers to compensate for attrition.

A sophisticated attacker having the technology to use decoys, shielding, maneuvering warheads, defense suppression, or other countermeasures would have multiplied the difficulty and cost of intercepting the real warheads. SDI design and operational planning had to factor in these countermeasures and the associated cost. The Soviet response to the SDI during the period March through November provided indications of their view of the program both as a threat and as an opportunity to weaken NATO.

SDI was likely seen not only as a threat to the physical security of the Soviet Union, but also as part of an effort by the United States to seize the strategic initiative in arms controls by neutralizing the military component of Soviet strategy. The Kremlin, however, masked their real concerns, advocating that space-based missile defenses would make nuclear war inevitable.

A major objective of that strategy was the political separation of Western Europe from the United States, which the Soviets sought to facilitate by aggravating allied concern over the SDI's potential implications for European security and economic interests. The Soviet predisposition to see deception behind the SDI was reinforced by their assessment of US intentions and capabilities and the utility of military deception in furthering the achievement of political goals.

In Carl Sagan summarized what he heard Soviet commentators were saying about SDI, with a common argument being that it was equivalent to starting an economic war through a defensive arms race to further cripple the Soviet economy with extra military spending , while another less plausible interpretation was that it served as a disguise for the US wish to initiate a first strike on the Soviet Union. Though classified at the time, a detailed study on a Soviet space-based LASER system began no later than as the Skif , a 1 MW Carbon dioxide laser along with the anti-satellite Kaskad , an in-orbit missile platform.

With both devices reportedly designed to pre-emptively destroy any US satellites that might be launched in the future which could otherwise aid US missile defense. It was originally built to test missile defense concepts, In , officials within the United States Department of Defense DoD suggested it was the site of a prototypical anti-satellite weapon system.

In a disguised Mir space station module was lifted on the inaugural flight of the Energia booster as the Polyus and it has since been revealed that this craft housed a number of systems of the Skif laser, which were intended to be clandestinely tested in orbit, if it had not been for the spacecraft's attitude control system malfunctioning upon separation from the booster and it failing to reach orbit.

The polyus was a prototype of the Skif orbital weapons platform designed to destroy Strategic Defense Initiative satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser. In , a declassified CIA paper states that "In response to SDI, Moscow threatened a variety of military countermeasures in lieu of developing a parallel missile defense system".

Historians from the Missile Defense Agency attribute the term "Star Wars" to a Washington Post article published March 24, , the day after the speech, which quoted Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy describing the proposal as "reckless Star Wars schemes. In addition, the American media's liberal use of the moniker despite President Reagan's request that they use the program's official name did much to damage the program's credibility.

Gerold Yonas, described the name "Star Wars" as an important tool for Soviet disinformation and asserted that the nickname gave an entirely wrong impression of SDI. Jessica Savitch reported on the technology in episode No. The demonstration was perhaps the first televised use of a weapons grade laser. No theatrical effects were used. The model was actually destroyed by the heat from the laser. Ashton Carter , then a board member at MIT , assessed SDI for Congress in , saying there were a number of difficulties in creating an adequate missile defense shield, with or without lasers.

Carter said X-rays have a limited scope because they become diffused through the atmosphere, much like the beam of a flashlight spreading outward in all directions. This means the X-rays needed to be close to the Soviet Union, especially during the critical few minutes of the booster phase, in order for the Soviet missiles to be both detectable to radar and targeted by the lasers themselves.

Opponents disagreed, saying advances in technology, such as using very strong laser beams, and by "bleaching" the column of air surrounding the laser beam, could increase the distance that the X-ray would reach to successfully hit its target. Physicists Hans Bethe and Richard Garwin , who worked with Edward Teller on both the atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos , claimed a laser defense shield was unfeasible.

They said that a defensive system was costly and difficult to build yet simple to destroy, and claimed that the Soviets could easily use thousands of decoys to overwhelm it during a nuclear attack. They believed that the only way to stop the threat of nuclear war was through diplomacy and dismissed the idea of a technical solution to the Cold War , saying that a defense shield could be viewed as threatening because it would limit or destroy Soviet offensive capabilities while leaving the American offense intact.

In March , Bethe coauthored a page report for the Union of Concerned Scientists that concluded "the X-ray laser offers no prospect of being a useful component in a system for ballistic missile defense. In response to this when Teller testified before Congress he stated that "instead of [Bethe] objecting on scientific and technical grounds, which he thoroughly understands, he now objects on the grounds of politics, on grounds of military feasibility of military deployment, on other grounds of difficult issues which are quite outside the range of his professional cognizance or mine.

On June 28, , David Lorge Parnas resigned from SDIO's Panel on Computing in Support of Battle Management, arguing in eight short papers that the software required by the Strategic Defense Initiative could never be made to be trustworthy and that such a system would inevitably be unreliable and constitute a menace to humanity in its own right. Another criticism of SDI was that it would require the United States to modify previously ratified treaties.

The Outer Space Treaty of , which requires "States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner" [83] and would forbid the US from pre-positioning in Earth orbit any devices powered by nuclear weapons and any devices capable of "mass destruction". Only the space stationed nuclear pumped X-ray laser concept would have violated this treaty, since other SDI systems, did not require the pre-positioning of nuclear explosives in space.

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its subsequent protocol, [84] which limited missile defenses to one location per country at missiles each which the USSR had and the US did not , would have been violated by SDI ground-based interceptors.

“Star Wars”: The Strategic Defense Initiative

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires "Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control. On the other hand, many others [ who? SDI was criticized for potentially disrupting the strategic doctrine of mutual assured destruction.

MAD postulated that intentional nuclear attack was inhibited by the certainty of ensuing mutual destruction. Even if a nuclear first strike destroyed many of the opponent's weapons, sufficient nuclear missiles would survive to render a devastating counter-strike against the attacker. The criticism was that SDI could have potentially allowed an attacker to survive the lighter counter-strike, thus encouraging a first strike by the side having SDI. Another destabilizing scenario was countries being tempted to strike first before SDI was deployed, thereby avoiding a disadvantaged nuclear posture.

Proponents of SDI argued that SDI development might instead cause the side that did not have the resources to develop SDI to, rather than launching a suicidal nuclear first strike attack before the SDI system was deployed, instead come to the bargaining table with the country that did have those resources and, hopefully, agree to a real, sincere disarmament pact that would drastically decrease all forces, both nuclear and conventional.

It did not take into account limited launches, accidental launches, rogue launches, or launches by non-state entities or covert proxies. During the Reykjavik talks with Mikhail Gorbachev in , Ronald Reagan addressed Gorbachev's concerns about imbalance by stating that SDI would be given to the Soviet Union to prevent the imbalance from occurring.

Gorbachev answered that he could not take this claim seriously. Another criticism of SDI was that it would not be effective against non-space faring weapons, namely cruise missiles , bombers , short-range ballistic missile submarines and non-conventional delivery methods. However, it was never intended to act as a defense against non-space faring weapons.

In , scientist Aldric Saucier was given whistleblower protection after he was fired and complained about "wasteful spending on research and development" at the SDI. Because of public awareness of the program and its controversial nature, SDI has been the subject of many fictional and pop culture references.

This is not intended to be a complete list of those references. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article covers efforts under the SDIO. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. March Learn how and when to remove this template message. Dead Hand and Biopreparat. Strategic Defense Initiative Timeline. Culture during the Cold War. Accessed March 10, Reviews of Modern Physics.

S1 — via APS. S-Z, By Cathal J. The New York Times. Finney 25 November Archived from the original on 2 July Schultz, Turmoil and Triumph: Federation of American Scientists.

Introduction - The Strategic Defense Initiative

Plagiarism in several space history articles page 2 ". Confessions of a Cold Warrior: Oxford University Press, , 2: History of the Missile Defense Organization. The Militarization and Weaponization of Space 1st ed. Retrieved 22 December Accessed April 29, Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser. Accessed April 8, Statement of Lieutenant General Malcolm R. Accessed March 11,

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