SPACE DEFENSE

SPACE DEFENCE:

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposal by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic offense doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD).

Though it was never completely developed or deployed, the research and technologies of SDI paved the way for some anti-ballistic missile systems of today. The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was set up in 1984 within the United States Department of Defense to oversee the Strategic Defense Initiative. It gained the popular name Star Wars after the 1977 film by George Lucas. Under the administration of President Bill Clinton in 1993, its name was changed to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and its emphasis was shifted from national missile defense to theater missile defense; from global to regional coverage. BMDO was renamed to the Missile Defense Agency in 2002. This article covers defense efforts under the SDIO.

INTIAL STAGES:

In the fall of 1979, at Reagan's request, Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham conceived a concept he called the High Frontier, an idea of strategic defense using ground- and space-based weapons theoretically possible because of emerging technologies. It was designed to replace the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, a doctrine that Reagan and his aides described as a suicide pact.

The initial focus of the strategic defense initiative was a nuclear explosion-powered X-ray laser designed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by a scientist named Peter L. Hagelstein who worked with a team called 'O Group', doing much of the work in the late 1970s and early 1980s. O Group was headed by physicist Lowell Wood, a protégé and friend of Edward Teller, the "father of the hydrogen bomb".

Ronald Reagan was told of Hagelstein's breakthrough by Teller in 1983, which prompted Reagan's March 23, 1983, "Star Wars" speech. Reagan announced, "I call upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete." This speech, along with Reagan's Evil Empire speech on March 8, 1983, in Florida, ushered in the last phase of the Cold War, bringing the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union to its most critical point before the collapse of the Soviet Union later in 1991.

PROJECT AND PROPOSAL:

In 1984, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was established to oversee the program, which was headed by Lt. General James Alan Abrahamson, USAF, a past Director of the NASA Space Shuttle program.Research and development initiated by the SDIO created significant technological advances in computer systems, component miniaturization, sensors and missile systems that form the basis for current systems.

Initially, the program focused on large scale systems designed to defeat a Soviet offensive strike. However, as the threat diminished, the program shifted towards smaller systems designed to defeat limited or accidental launches.

By 1987, the SDIO had developed a national missile defense concept called the Strategic Defense System Phase I Architecture. This concept consisted of ground and space based sensors and weapons, as well as a central battle management system.The ground-based systems operational today trace their roots back to this concept.

Supporters of SDI hail it for contributing to or at least accelerating the fall of the Soviet Union by the strategy of technology, which was a prevalent doctrine at the time. At Reagan and Gorbachev's October 1986 meeting in Iceland, Gorbachev opposed this defensive shield, while Reagan wanted to keep it, and offered to give the technology to the Soviets. Gorbachev said he didn't believe the offer, saying "Excuse me, Mr. President, but I do not take your idea of sharing SDI seriously. You don't want to share even petroleum equipment, automatic machine tools or equipment for dairies, while sharing SDI would be a second American Revolution." Both Reagan and Gorbachev proposed total elimination of all nuclear-armed missiles, but SDI and intermediate-range missiles were sticking points. While SDI was a disagreement, the summit led to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which some have claimed was an outgrowth of Gorbachev's fear of SDI. Opponents of the program say that Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms were the cause of the USSR's collapse and that SDI was an unrealistic and expensive program. Furthermore, some believed that Gorbachev's opposition to SDI was intended to encourage the United States to pursue ABM defense at great economic expense. To quote Gorbachev, "But I think that I am even helping the president [Reagan] with SDI. After all, your people say that if Gorbachev attacks SDI and space weapons so much, it means the idea deserves more respect. They even say that if it were not for me, no one would listen to the idea at all. And some even claim that I want to drag the United States into unnecessary expenditures with this." This supposed calculation on Gorbachev's part, though, is highly unlikely, for because of his demands on the US giving up SDI, and Reagan's resulting stance in maintaining it, no arms reduction agreement in Iceland was concluded at all, which consequently meant that the USSR would have to keep spending money on the arms race as well, money that the Soviet economy no longer could afford, but the American economy could