Strategic Defense Initiative

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a plan created by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983^[1] to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on defense instead on the offensive mutual assured destruction (MAD).

Strategic Defense Initiative Media

The Extended Range Nike Zeus/Spartan missile of the late-1960s was designed to provide full-country defense as part of the Sentinel-Safeguard programs. Projected to cost $40 billion ($263 billion in 2024) it would have offered minimal protection and damage prevention in an all-out attack.^[2]
The bright spikes extending below the initial fireball of one of 1952's Operation Tumbler–Snapper test shots, are known as the "rope trick effect". They are caused by the intense flash of thermal/soft X-rays released by the explosion heating the steel tower guy-wires white hot.
President Reagan delivering the March 23, 1983, speech initiating SDI
Extended Range Interceptor (ERINT) launch from White Sands Missile Range
4 m (13 ft) diameter web deployed by Homing Overlay Experiment
The 1984 SDI concept of a space based Nuclear reactor pumped laser or a chemical hydrogen fluoride laser satellite resulted in this 1984 artist's concept of a laser-equipped satellite firing on another, causing a momentum change in the target object by laser ablation. Before having to cool and re-aim at further possible targets.
This early artwork of the Nuclear detonation pumped laser array depicts an Excalibur engaging three targets, simultaneously. In most descriptions, each Excalibur could fire at dozens of targets, which would be hundreds or thousands of kilometers away.
Technicians at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) work on the Low-powered Atmosphere Compensation Experiment (LACE) satellite.
Brilliant Pebbles concept artwork