Word: sdi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Most American scientists think an impregnable astrodome over the U.S. is sheer fantasy. Yet even a faulty SDI would force the Soviets to take costly countermeasures. Gorbachev put Reagan on notice that if the U.S. proceeded with SDI, the Kremlin would have no choice but to pull out of START. Soviet officials reiterated that warning last week...
Bush has never been a true believer in SDI, although as Vice President he paid lip service to the program as part of the catechism of the Reagan Administration. SDI is still sacred to the Republican hard right, so Bush lets his Vice President, Dan Quayle, champion the latest Star Wars brainstorm: "Brilliant Pebbles," an orbiting complex of miniaturized rockets that makes about as much sense as the name suggests. Since even the testing of space-based interceptors is prohibited by the ABM treaty and would therefore jeopardize Moscow's continued compliance with START, Brilliant Pebbles is more...
Star Wars. The Strategic Defense Initiative, designed to detect and intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles in outer space, was moribund until Iraq unleashed its Scud missiles. The Patriot changed all that, even though it is based on a technology that was developed long before SDI got to the drawing board. Still, SDI backers argue that the success of the Patriot teaches a significant lesson about the need to prepare against ICBMs. "All you'd have to do is watch the Scud missile battles over Tel Aviv and Riyadh," says Cheney, "to have a sense of the extent to which ballistic-missile...
...Thus SDI has suddenly gained a new respectability. The White House and Senate minority leader Robert Dole are encouraging more spending on the system. Mindful that the Soviet Union still has 2,300 ICBMs in its arsenal, and confident that the U.S. public no longer views Star Wars as an unattainable magic elixir, the Pentagon proposes to boost SDI research from its present $3.2 billion to $4.6 billion...
...Strengthening Democratic Institutions (SDI) program, chaired by former Kennedy School Dean Graham T. Allison Jr. '62, began this fall and is designed to give on the spot advice to public officials in the Soviet Union...