Word: sdi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...past seven years, Congress has appropriated $20.2 billion for the program. But critics on both sides of the aisle have become disillusioned by the Pentagon's relentless drive to put some version of Star Wars into space before it is killed outright. In their haste, the skeptics say, SDI's managers are skimping on tests that could determine whether the system will actually work...
Since February, Star Wars research has focused on an innovation called Brilliant Pebbles -- thousands of small, independently controlled satellites designed to home in on and destroy enemy nuclear warheads. "The technology is at hand" to deploy a Brilliant Pebbles system, General George Monahan, then SDI director, assured Congress. The Pentagon contends that 4,614 Brilliant Pebbles could be put into orbit for $55 billion, vs. $69 billion for previous schemes...
...helped him win votes from the religious right; but Richard Fenno, the political scientist who observed his 1980 race, noticed that Quayle kept his commitments to a minimum in this part of his campaign. In the Senate, Quayle avoided the social issues and sought expertise in defense, specializing in SDI. His staff emphasizes the way he could cooperate "even with Teddy Kennedy" to pass the job-training act. This is the kind of paternalistic program, involving business, that his grandfather supported in towns he "looked after." Quayle's pragmatism is good politics, but he seems to favor...
...have some who say that the changes in the Soviet Union happened because the U.S. under Reagan had a booming economy and a stronger military; it had SDI ((the Strategic Defense Initiative)), which the Soviet Union would have to spend billions of dollars to compete with, and had a firm foreign policy...