Word: sdi
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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...
...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...
...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...