From Wikipedia


Cold War

Episode Twenty Two

Star Wars - 1981 - 1988

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). The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was set up in 1984 within the United States Department of Defense to oversee the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The ambitious initiative was "widely criticized as being unrealistic, even unscientific" as well as for threatening to destabilize MAD and re-iginite "an offensive arms race" It was soon derided as Star Wars, after the popular 1977 film by George Lucas. In 1987 the American Physics Society concluded that a global shield such as "Star Wars" was not only impossible with existing technology, but that ten more years of research was needed to learn whether it might ever be feasible." 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; and it scope from global to regional coverage. Though it was never wholly developed or deployed, the research and technologies of SDI paved the way for some anti-ballistic missile systems of today. BMDO was renamed to the Missile Defense Agency in 2002. This article covers defense efforts under the SDIO.