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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. Missile Age dawns. Above all else, Soviet leaders feared that SDI would pave the way for weaponizing space. perestroika Ambassador to Canada Thomas Niles explained. For this mission, SDIO concentrated almost entirely on the "high tech" solutions like lasers. [85][86], In 1986 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 interpretation was that it served as a disguise for the US wish to initiate a first strike on the Soviet Union.[88]. This lack of natural light causes a slowing in plant and animal growth, making farming difficult or impossible. Soviet scientists were immediately tasked with investigating SDI. Hanhimaki, Jussi M. and Odd Arne Westad, eds. Ronald Reagans advocacy of the Strategic Defense Initiative struck me as bizarre, Gorbachev wrote in his memoirs. ERIC ZUESSEThe world that Truman started on that day in 1945 has shaped the world that we all live in today. The Secret Speech was an address given to the Congress of Soviets by Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev in February 1956. Tsar Bomba We were afraid that the industrialists in our military-industrial complex would say, Great, we should do the same thing (Rhodes 202). It was designed to replace the MAD doctrine that Reagan and his aides described as a suicide pact. Last edited on 13 February 2023, at 08:35, Flexible Lightweight Agile Guided Experiment, Exoatmospheric Reentry-vehicle Interceptor Subsystem, Exoatmospheric Reentry-vehicle Interceptor Subsystem (ERIS), accelerator-driven transmutation technology, anti-ballistic missile defense countermeasures, dissolution of the country between 1989 and 1991, International Conference of Laser Applications, "What Did We Get For Our $30-Billion Investment In SDI/BMD? Stasi was an abbreviation for the Ministry of State Security, a secret police agency in socialist East Germany. The Warsaw Pact was an alliance of European communist nations, formed in 1955. McCarran Act A parallel developmental program advanced laboratory X-ray lasers[60] for biological imaging and the creation of 3D holograms of living organisms. United Nations (or UN) Some of the technologies developed for SDI were used in numerous later projects. Science Advisor George Keyworth argued, I have been asked time and time again one simple question, is it now a good time to attempt a development of a technological solution to making ballistic missiles obsolete? Amongst its terms was a limitation on the number of nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). It appealed both to the desire for security against nuclear war and to the belief in the superiority of American technological achievements. NORAD is a joint US-Canadian military command centre, tasked with monitoring North American airspace for a possible attack. During his tour of the complex, Reaganimpressed with the extensive fortificationsasked General James Hill what would happen if a Soviet nuclear missile hit within the vicinity of the mountain. It overlooked an area of flat land that was considered a likely invasion route for Warsaw Pact tanks. START has since been renewed three times. These prototypes eventually evolved into the Brilliant Pebbles program.[72]. This page was last edited on 13 February 2023, at 08:35. This Cold War glossary contains definitions for key terms, concepts and events between 1945 and 1991. The Non-Aligned Movement was an organisation of governments not allied with either the Soviet or Western blocs. This was attractive as a cost saving measure, as it would allow scaling back of those systems, and was estimated to save $7 to $13billion versus the standard Phase I Architecture. The High Precision Tracking Experiment (HPTE), launched with the Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-51-G, was tested June 21, 1985, when a Hawaii-based low-power laser successfully tracked the experiment and bounced the laser off of the HPTE mirror. This was essentially the combination of the sensors on the garage satellites and the low-orbit tracking stations on the Smart Rocks missile. "[98], 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."[99]. [76] Brilliant Pebbles later became the centerpiece of a revised architecture under the Bush Administration SDIO. Additional assistance came from U.S. Russian War Relief (a private, nonprofit organization) and the Red Cross. Despite the apparent failure of the Cabra test, the long term legacy of the X-ray laser program is the knowledge gained while conducting the research. The Soviet response to the SDI during the period of March 1983 through November 1985 provided indications of their view of the program both as a threat and as an opportunity to weaken NATO. The project was abandoned in 1959. proxy war nuclear football This program was immediately dubbed "Star Wars." An artist's rendering of an X-ray laser hit an incoming missile. Additionally, the SDIO invested in computer systems, component miniaturization, and sensors. The role of the organization, however, remained largely unclear. The primary application of this doctrine started during the Cold War (1940s to 1991), in which MAD was seen as helping to prevent any direct full-scale conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union while they engaged in smaller proxy wars around the world. Marxism The Sino-Soviet split was a breakdown in relations between China and the Soviet Union during the mid to late 1960s. Nearly $13 billion in U.S. aid was sent to Europe from. These weapons would be very difficult to destroy, even in a preemptive nuclear strike, and thus the Americans and the Soviets reached a certain equilibrium. In the lecture, Teller talked about the idea of defending against nuclear missiles using nuclear weapons, principally the W65 and W71, with the latter being a contemporary enhanced thermal/X-ray device used actively on the Spartan missile in 1975. The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization was renamed again by the George W. Bush administration as the Missile Defense Agency and focused onto limited National Missile Defense. About $11 billion in war matriel was sent to the Soviet Union under that program. This raised significant issues about economic and technical costs associated with defending against anti-ballistic missile defense countermeasures used by the attacking side. Shultzs assessment proved to be correct. The CIM-10B Bomarc was the world's first long-range, nuclear capable, ground-to-air anti-aircraft missile. Stalinist During the Reykjavik talks with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986, Ronald Reagan addressed Gorbachev's concerns about imbalance by stating that SDI technology could be provided to the entire world including the Soviet Union to prevent the imbalance from occurring. NORAD was commissioned in 1956 and began operations in 1958. Ritter is of course heavily censored on mainstream platforms and is widely condemned by officials in the US government, including those in the State Dept. URL: https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/cold-war-glossary-m-z/ Reagan Doctrine The Securitate was the secret police force of socialist Romania for much of the Cold War. In 2001, President George W. Bush announced his administrations plan to withdraw from the ABM Treaty within six months. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. 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. sphere of influence To many, it was as unexpected as it was provocative. The Prague Spring reforms were ultimately suppressed by Moscow. Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. As Secretary of State Schultz explained, Prior to the presidents speech, even the possibility that the United States might seriously seek to defend itself from nuclear attack seemed outlandish. During the 20th century, Western imperial powers like Britain and France withdrew from colonies in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. M. D. Rosen et al., "Exploding Foil Technique for Achieving Soft X-Ray Laser," Shultz suggests that this feeling of helplessness, coupled with the defensive ideas proposed by Teller a decade earlier, combined to form the impetus of the SDI. As Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger explained, The fact is, deployment will not occur unless a defensive system is developed that would better contribute in better ways to deterrence than the arrangement which now keeps the peace, as it has for nearly 40 years (OConnell 77). The INF Treaty, which eliminated all short-range (310-620 miles) and intermediate-range (620-3420 miles) nuclear missiles, was signed at the Washington Summit later that year. While U.S.-Soviet relations had been strained since the end of World War II, fears of war between the two nuclear superpowers peaked with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Further, the report concluded that the DOD's subsequent statements before Congress about the HOE program "fairly characterize[d]" the success of HOE4, but confirmed that the DOD never disclosed to Congress the enhancements made to the target vessel. Under the SDIO's Innovative Sciences and Technology Office,[9][10][11] headed by physicist and engineer Dr. James Ionson,[12][13][14][15] the investment was predominantly made in basic research at national laboratories, universities, and in industry; these programs have continued to be key sources of funding for top research scientists in the fields of high-energy physics, supercomputing/computation, advanced materials, and many other critical science and engineering disciplines and funding which indirectly supports other research work by top scientists. This was part of Canada's role during the Cold War to defend North America against an attack from the Soviet Union. The Madman theory was a strategy or ploy used by United States president Richard Nixon during the Cold War. Team B was an investigative committee established by US president Gerald Ford in 1976. This boost phase intercept rendered MIRV impotent; a successful attack would destroy all of the warheads. The Cold War: A New History. In other cases, like Excalibur, they dismissed the concept entirely. In the early part of the Cold War, the threat (perceived. Reagan reportedly was very taken by Tellers briefing on directed-energy weapons (DEWs), such as lasers and microwaves. We dried up and eliminated their access and left the spies withering on the vine Nobody on the Joint Chiefs of Staff ever believed we were going to build Star Wars, but if we could convince the Russians that we could survive a first strike, we win the game. The Republikflucht was ended by the closure of the East German border and the erection of the Berlin Wall. In which John Green teaches you about the Cold War, the decades-long conflict between the USA and the USSR. A Minuteman is an American ballistic missile, developed in the early 1960s to carry nuclear payloads. When reformer Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he began to drastically cut Soviet military spending, particularly the anti-ballistic missile program the USSR had started in response to SDI. It played an indispensable role in ensuring the predictability and . During World War II, three countries decided to build the atomic bomb: Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Jessica Savitch reported on the technology in episode No.111 of Frontline, "Space: The Race for High Ground" on PBS on November 4, 1983. [53] Per the GAO report, the net effect of the DOD enhancements increased the infrared signature of the target vessel by 110% over the realistic missile signature initially proposed for the HOE program, but nonetheless the GAO concluded the enhancements to the target vessel were reasonable given the objectives of the program and the geopolitical consequences of its failure. In 1993, the Clinton administration further shifted the focus to ground-based interceptor missiles and theater scale systems, forming the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and closing the SDIO. This account was also confirmed by Teller, who wrote, Fifteen years later, I discovered that [Reagan] had been very interested in those ideas (Teller 509). The Soviet effort was small before August 1945. Macmillans speech is often cited as a shift in British policy, away from imperialism and towards decolonisation. SDI was criticized for potentially disrupting the strategic stability afforded by the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. Under BMDO, ERINT was later chosen as the MIM-104 Patriot (Patriot Advanced Capability-3,PAC-3) missile.[48]. The model was actually destroyed by the heat from the laser. The HOE used a Kinetic Kill Vehicle (KKV) to destroy a ballistic missile. What about stealth bombers? SALT I and SALT II were two US-Soviet arms reduction summits, held in 1972 and 1979. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Lawrence Eagleburger likewise critiqued, The president seems to be proposing an updated version of the Maginot Line [the interwar defensive fortifications on the Franco-German border which gave France a false sense of security] (252). nuclear deterrence During the Putin era, little of that has happened. Strategic Air Command (SAC) was a branch of the US Air Force during the Cold War. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Strategic_Defense_Initiative&oldid=1139087432, The immediate tactical action to reduce vulnerability, such as, Counter strategies which exploit a weakness of an opposing system, such as adding more. By 1987, however, Gorbachev agreed that missile reductions and SDI could be negotiated separately. Solidarity is a trade union formed by Polish shipworkers in September 1980. The treaty limited each side to have one limited ABM system to protect its capital and another to protect an ICBM launch area, and the signatories agreed not to develop, test, or deploy [additional] ABM launchers. ABM recognized the reality that an anti-ballistic missile system would actually make both sides less secure because it would undermine the balance of mutually assured destruction. Three weeks before the announcement of SDI, Reagan gave his famous evil empire speech, which branded the Soviet Union as the unequivocal enemy of the United States. The name implied that the concept would be replaced by more advanced systems in future phases. Russification Once in space, the KKV could extend a folded structure similar to an umbrella skeleton of 4m (13ft) diameter to enhance its effective cross section. The Soviet Union retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Macmillan was referring to the rising tide of nationalism in Africa, as well as opposition to the South African governments policy of apartheid. In 2019, space-based interceptor development resumed for the first time in 25 years with President Trump's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act. mujahideen The reason for so many programs was the rapidly changing strategic threat; the Soviets claimed to be producing missiles "like sausages", and ever-more missiles would be needed to defend against this growing fleet. There must be something better than this, replied a shocked Reagan (Shultz 262). Hover testing was completed in 1988 and demonstrated integration of the sensor and propulsion systems in the prototype SBI. The Mutual Defence Assistance Act is an act of the US Congress, passed in October 1949. The UN has many roles, including investigating international problems and forming resolutions to avoid conflict. The INF treaty eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with ranges of 310 to 620 miles, considered short-range, and 620 to 3,420 miles, or intermediate-range.. Despite his concerns about the shortcomings of SDI as a legitimate system of defense, Shultz recalled saying at the time, The Soviets will assume that we are on the verge of some special technical innovation. Title: Cold War glossary M to Z The Strategic Defense Initiative in fact proved to be the ultimate bargaining chip, recalled Shultz. The particle beam concept was demonstrated to basically not work, as was the case with several other concepts. Teller's X-ray laser, run under Project Excalibur, failed several key tests in 1986 and was soon being suggested solely for the anti-satellite role. A 1985 Gallup poll reported that 61% of respondents replied affirmatively to the question, Would you like to see the United States go ahead with the development of (SDI), or not?. BAMBI used a series of satellites carrying interceptor missiles that would attack the Soviet ICBMs shortly after launch. August 25, 2021. In a speech to the Federal Assembly in March 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized the United States decision to withdraw from ABM and asserted the ability of Russian nuclear forces to penetrate any potential anti-ballistic missile system. A missile could be tracked, but there was nothing they could do to stop it from reaching its target. This represented a significant improvement over previous efforts, which were only able to achieve about one shot per month. and particularly London. That is, attacking elements of the defensive system. Notable among these were particle-beam weapons, updated versions of nuclear shaped charges, and various plasma weapons. Prague Spring It was the ideology that underpinned socialism in the Soviet Union and other Soviet bloc nations. Each missile carried a single warheadthe largest in U.S. inventoryused liquid fuel propellants, and was stored and launched from hardened underground silos. Publisher: Alpha History It was in charge of Americas airborne assets, including strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and reconnaissance aircraft. secret police Early prototypes were essentially single-use weapons, requiring complete replacement of the rails after each firing. 1. The rocket carried the Polyus spacecraft, which was equipped with a laser system, Skif, and a missile system, Kaskad. Socialism is a political system which aims to transition from capitalism to communism. The Ubiquity - The student news site of Quartz Hill High School A thermonuclear weapon is a device that uses both fusion and fission, thus delivering a greater explosive yield. The Chinese foreign ministry denied that China had tested a hypersonic missile. Pro-Moscow communists were installed as leaders of these combined parties. They put together an all-star panel including many of the inventors of the laser, one of which was a Nobel laureate. It was founded in 1961 by Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslavian president Josip Tito, Egyptian president Gamal Nasser and other leaders. The launch of Sputnik I triggered American fears that the US had fallen behind the Soviet Union in space technology. Date published: September 14, 2018 In the end, Polyus failed to reach orbit and quickly broke apart. An anti-ballistic missile systemone which would give the United States complete protection from the Soviet Unionwas the natural next step. An Afghan guerrilla with a US-made Stinger anti-aircraft missile in this photo taken between November 1987 and January 1988. . The Footnote 1 Cold War (1945-1991) Footnote 2 was a nontraditional conflict between two conflicting ideologiescommunism and democracy. A superpower is a nation that dominates its region, due to its size and political, military and economic strength. It suggests that governments initiate wars to allow capitalists to produce more weapons, thus generating greater profits. Sept. 8, 1944. used operationally late in the war, was the system most extensively studied arid emulated by the Soviets. As Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin explained, the Soviet Union believed that the great technological potential of the United States had scored again and treated Reagans statement as a real threat (Gaddis 227). During the Cold War, Washington and Moscow came together over landmark arms control agreements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (or SALT I and SALT II) The idea was first based on satellites, but when it was pointed out that these could be attacked in space, the concept moved to a "pop-up" concept, rapidly launched from a submarine off the Soviet northern coast. Self-determination is a political principle which argues that populations should have the right to decide their own political system and government. Sovietisation French President Francois Mitterrand, for example, was very vocal about his concerns regarding SDI: I am opposed to the idea of SDII perceive it as a potential opportunity for a first strike.It is obvious that SDI will not replace nuclear weapons, but will become a substantial addition to the existing arsenals (Gorbachev 429). The United States must defend its homeland, its forces and its friends and allies against these threats. The anti-ballistic missile program was once again renamed, this time as the National Defense Agency (NDA). What we were most afraid of? 1. The Missile Age begins when German V-2 missiles -- which have one-ton payloads and travel faster than the speed of sound -- strike London during World War II. U-2 MAD postulated that intentional nuclear attack was inhibited by the certainty of ensuing mutual destruction. ", "L3Harris, SpaceX win Space Development Agency contracts to build missile-warning satellites", "Nuclear Weapons, China, and a Strategic Defense Initiative for this Century", "Today in Space and Missile Defense History", "The Space Review: Plagiarism in several space history articles (page 2)", "The secret laser-toting Soviet satellite that almost was Ars Technica", "Here Is the Soviet Union's Secret Space Cannon", Confessions of a Cold Warrior: An Autobiography, "Possible Soviet Responses to the US Strategic Defense Initiative Interagency Intelligence Assessment.1983. It defeated French colonial forces in the Second Indochina War (1946-54). NATO is a trans-Atlantic military alliance, formed in 1949. We had no idea where the idea had come from, none of us, said Kenneth Adelman. did not view SDI as an escalation. The Tet Offensive was a major campaign, launched by communists in Vietnam in January 1968. A 1961 decommissioned Atlas-F intercontinental ballistic missile silo complex is for sale. [41] Graham organized a meeting space at The Heritage Foundation in Washington and the groups began to meet in order to present their plans to the incoming president. Ping pong diplomacy refers to events in the early 1970s, when an American table tennis undertook a tour of communist China. The U-2 was an American spy plane used widely during the Cold War. This is also a story that risks disappearing into its own "success." After all, the Cold War is history. According to the BMDO, the research on neutral particle beam accelerators, which was originally funded by the SDIO, could eventually be used to reduce the half-life of nuclear waste products using accelerator-driven transmutation technology.[67]. Point Alpha It would blow us away, said Hill. These particles are disbursed by weather and eventually fall to earth. As Gorbachev recalled, Reykjavik was the site of a truly Shakespearean drama.Success was a mere step away, but SDI proved an insurmountable stumbling-block (Gorbachev 418). In fact, it was for this reason that the ideal was so appealing. Thermonuclear weapons were first tested by the US (1952) and the Soviet Union (1954). Another destabilizing scenario was countries being tempted to strike first before SDI was deployed, thereby avoiding a disadvantaged nuclear posture. Securitate [34], The polyus was a prototype of the Skif orbital weapons platform designed to destroy Strategic Defense Initiative satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser. A strategic nuclear weapon is a larger yield device, intended for launching against cities, ports, military bases or other large targets of significance. Their summary stated simply: We estimate that all existing candidates for directed energy weapons (DEWs) require two or more orders of magnitude, (powers of 10) improvements in power output and beam quality before they may be seriously considered for application in ballistic missile defense systems. Since a nuclear explosion was used as the power source, the detector was destroyed during the experiment and the results therefore could not be confirmed. The Speech of Hope was a public address, given by US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes in Stuttgart, Germany in September 1946. This was later proved to be incorrect. Among other controversies, SDI threatened to undermine the American and Soviet deterrence policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD). [66] The experiment successfully demonstrated that a particle beam would operate and propagate as predicted outside the atmosphere and that there are no unexpected side-effects when firing the beam in space. Options included both space-based and ground-based lasers, as well as a wide variety of missiles and tracking systems. 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." The Morgenthau Plan was an American plan for managing post-war Germany, devised in 1944. Sputnik [107], Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS), Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), Boost Surveillance and Tracking System (BSTS), Space Surveillance and Tracking System (SSTS), Frances FitzGerald, "Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War", pg. HOLY COW! It was tasked with analysing the Soviet military threat to the US. OPEC stands for the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, a cartel founded in Baghdad in September 1960. The Strategic Defense Initiative was ultimately most effective not as an anti-ballistic missile defense system, but as a propaganda tool which could put military and economic pressure on the Soviet Union to fund their own anti-ballistic missile system. [90] Soviet motivations behind attempting to launch components of the Skif laser in the form of Polyus were, according to interviews conducted years later, more for propaganda purposes in the prevailing climate of focus on US SDI, than as an effective defense technology, as the phrase "Space based laser" has a certain political capital. The Second Cold War is sometimes used to describe the post-Dtente revival of tensions during the early 1980s. Singing Revolution Specifically, they noted that all of the systems had to improve their energy output by at least 100 times, and in some cases as much as a million. Throughout most of the Cold War, American nuclear power was the primary deterrent which prevented a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Of course we cant simply disregard this dangerous program. While SDIO and SDS was ongoing, the Warsaw Pact was rapidly disintegrating, culminating in the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. [42], On March 23, 1983, Reagan announced SDI in a nationally televised speech, stating "I call upon the scientific community in this country, those 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. But we could not risk exposure of the administration's role and take the chance of another McCarthy period. The satellite observed several ballistic missile launches including some releasing liquid propellant as a countermeasure to detection. And what about cruise missiles? Republikflucht is German for flight from the Republic. neutron bomb Boost Surveillance and Tracking System was part of the SDIO in the late 1980s, and was designed to assist detection of missile launches, especially during the boost phase; however, once the SDI program shifted toward theater missile defense in the early 1990s, the system left SDIO control and was transferred to the Air Force. SMDC/ASTRAT Historical Office. I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.. Many such rods would be placed around a warhead, each one aimed at a different ICBM, thus destroying many ICBMs in a single attack.