Strategic Defense Imitative

Background

In 1979, the Cold War was still raging between the United States and the USSR

Both countries had a large number of nuclear missiles United States: 1,600 USSR: 1,500

Ronald Regan’s Visit

In 1979, Ronald Regan visited the NORAD Command center in Cheyenne mountain.

The commanding officers showed him the day to day operations and our counter measures for a nuclear attack.

Regan realized that from this visit that we didn’t have a way to defend from a nuclear attack.

The Speech

On March 23, 1983 Regan gave his famous “Star Wars” speech

In it he called for an increase in defense spending (44 Billion increase)

He told the American public about his defense plan in the event of a nuclear attack

Strategic Defense Initative

Used three “screens” to defend the country First, use of space stations that fire

watermelon sized projectiles to blow up the missiles over Soviet air space

Second, lasers would be fired from the ground and redirected by using large mirror like satellites over the Atlantic ocean

Lastly, laser equipped planes and surface to air missiles would destroy any remaining missiles over the United States

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMUb8FWr88A

Strategic Defense Initative

Weapons

Brilliant Pebbles Name for the weapon that would fire

watermelon size bullets from a space craft at the missiles

Brilliant Eyes Recognition system that was supposed to be

placed in satellite to direct a laser beam. Space Based Interceptors

Weapons used thermal imaging to track the nuclear missile and disable it

Aftermath

There was wide criticism when Regan proposed this idea Use of ABM missiles Physicist Hans Bethe said that it was would

be difficult to build, let alone work Said an easy way to bypass the system would be

to just launch decoys that was mixed in with the other nuclear missiles

Also use of x-rays would be improbable due to the waves spreading out quickly

Aftermath

Offices said that the technology was “years away from being even developed , let alone working.”

Regan was even quoted as saying that “it was just a story and many Americans believed that it could be built.”

Plan was never fully carried through, due to cost and technological limitations

Violation of Treaties

Outer Space Treaty of 1967 Outlawed the use of nuclear capable weapons

and any weapons of mass destruction that was placed in outer space

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty Limited number of ABM to 100 per country

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Meant to aid in the limitation of nuclear

weapons People felt that by creating more missiles and

weapons systems, it was just further escalating the arms race

Work cited

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB197/

http://www.coldwar.org/articles/80s/SDI-StarWars.asp

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/32383d.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMUb8FWr88A

Work Cited

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/march-23-1983-reagan-proposes-star-wars-missile-defense-system/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

http://martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/aug2006/starwars1.html#Cost