What is the initiative for strategic defense (SDI)?

Strategic Initiative for Defense (SDI) was the National Defense Defense Program for the United States launched by President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983. Reagan said: she has horizontal. ” This was referred to as "Star Wars" speech because it was originally reduced as sci -fi and wasting money. The strategic defensive initiative eventually became colloquially known as Star Wars.

SDI was closed in 1993 by President Bill Clinton and replaced by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) organization, while putting more emphasis on regional rocket defense. For more than 10 years, a strategic defense initiative has spent more than 10 years on research and testing $ 25 billion in the US dollar, but has never reached its goal to create a reliable Anti-Missile System. Whether SDIshould ever be launched, at that time it was an extremely controversial and politicized theme and continues to be today.

The initial impulse for SDI was when Reagan heard that a scientist in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Peter L. Hagelstein, was designed by an X -ray laser powered by nuclear explosion. The national strategists imagined the curtain of such lasers, originally mounted on missiles, then on satellites, as an impenetrable wall to stop all incoming ballistic missiles. However, when this proposal was actually tested, only three days after Star Wars speech, it was a complete failure.

But the SDI was not just an X -ray laser design and many other approaches have been considered and explored in the next decade. The chemical laser Miracl (mid-infrared advanced chemical laser) was built in 1985 and was used to successfully shoot down the Titposilver during the test. Railway weaponsHyperelocity has led to improvement in technology, but nothing that could make a swarm of increasing Soviet missiles. The system of space mini-missics based on melon called brilliant pebbles was called the "crown success of the strategic defense initiative", although it was never deployed and the project was canceled in 1994.

The modern view of SDI's success is mixed. Proponents argue that the program has resulted in many important technological spin-offs, such as combat lasers and satellites cameras. Some even go so far to say that the collapse of the Soviet Union can be attributed to fear of the initiative of strategic defense. Detectives say that the whole program was impossible from the beginning and the money would be better spent on individually targeted projects outside the patronage of the missile defense program. National Research for the United States Rocket Defense continues to Today, and the tests have shown limited success. At best, such systems would probably shot no more than a few dozen missiles while inHundreds of real nuclear rollers would start, not if thousands of nuclear missiles. Perhaps the research will eventually create a highly capable anti-missile system, but it is not yet.