Strategic Defense Initiative

The Strategic Defense Initiative was a U.S. defense research program announced in 1983 to develop defenses against strategic ballistic missiles. It explored layered systems spanning space- and ground-based sensors and weapons.

Ballistic missile: A missile that follows a largely ballistic trajectory after its powered flight phase. The initiative targeted missiles whose brief powered launch and long ballistic flight posed different interception challenges.
Ronald Reagan: The 40th president of the United States, serving from 1981 to 1989. Reagan announced the initiative in his televised address on March 23, 1983.
Edward Teller: A Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who helped develop the hydrogen bomb and advocated strategic missile defense. Teller promoted high-energy laser concepts and became one of the initiative's most prominent scientific advocates.
Strategic Defense Initiative Organization: The U.S. government organization established in 1984 to manage research for the Strategic Defense Initiative. It coordinated the initiative's projects and later became the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
National Technical Means: Remote technical methods, especially satellites and other sensors, used by states to monitor military activity and treaty compliance. Verification by observation offered a way to manage arms competition without relying on interception.
Missile defense: Systems and strategies intended to detect, track, and defeat incoming missiles. The initiative was an ambitious research program within the broader pursuit of missile defense.
Reagan's March 23, 1983 speech: A televised presidential address in which Ronald Reagan called for research into defenses against nuclear missiles. This address publicly launched the initiative and framed its aim as making nuclear weapons less effective.
Ashton Carter: An American physicist and defense official who later served as U.S. secretary of defense. Carter's 1984 study examined technical and strategic problems facing the proposed defenses.
Brilliant Pebbles: A proposed system of autonomous space-based interceptors developed under the Strategic Defense Initiative. The concept became a prominent later design for intercepting ballistic missiles from orbit.
Nuclear deterrence: The prevention of attack by threatening a response that would impose unacceptable costs. The initiative sought to reduce reliance on deterrence by threatening retaliation.

Linked from 8 pages