The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or Strategic Defense Initiative), better known as Star Wars, designates a system of intercontinental ballistic missile weaponry intended to defend the United States in case of a nuclear attack. Proposed in 1983 by Ronald Reagan, it involved the development of cutting-edge ground and space weapons. Some of them seemed to come straight out of a (bad) science fiction movie.
Throughout history, arrows and shields have been the center of power relations among different groups of human beings. Those who had an arrow capable of piercing the enemy's shield were in an advantageous position. The group that invented a shield that could stop the enemy's arrow regained the situation of equilibrium or gained an advantage by attacking the other with its arrow.
Humanity began to practice the "art of war" with stones and sticks. Throughout history, it improved its technology and took advantage of its advances to devise increasingly efficient ways of killing its opponent. This madness continued through the centuries, and the race between arrows and shields became bullets versus armor, artillery rockets versus concrete bunkers, and so on. But nothing lasts forever, and sooner or later, and perhaps to everyone's misfortune, humanity found a way to end this diabolical scheme (by replacing it with a worse one, of course).
After going through a bloody World War, where billions of bullets of all kinds were used, which blew up shields and armor of all sorts, scientists finally discovered that this was not the optimal way to carry out a massacre. A more efficient weapon was needed, one that took advantage of recent advances in physics. In response to the demands of generals, who did not want to spend years on the battlefield again, at the end of World War II, the United States used the most efficient weapon of mass destruction that man had ever had in his arsenal: the atomic bomb.
Nuclear Weapons
This profoundly altered the scheme of shield-versus-arrow that had kept us entertained for millennia. It was not possible to put up a shield, no matter how much technology was applied to its construction, in front of an atomic bomb. Nor was it very practical to move entire populations into deep, dark caves to avoid the bombings, especially if they were going to have to live there forever. The answer was a radical change of strategy.
The reasoning, incredibly insane, "if you turn me to dust, before I disappear I will make sure to annihilate your entire country". To support this brilliant idea, each superpower in a position to do so (basically the USA and the former USSR) diligently built tens of thousands of atomic bombs, each one enough to destroy to the ground a large city.
The concept M.A.D. was born: Mutual Assured Destruction. "Mad", which in English means "crazy" (this is an intentional coincidence), defined this strategy very well. The old trick of improving the armor or the arrow had become the new "let's compare our nuclear bomb arsenals", also known as "let's see who has the longer one".
But, and despite having placed humanity on a powder keg with the most terrifying destructive capability in history, enough to destroy all the cities of the planet several times over, it was decided to go a little further. And the scheme of the shield and the arrow wanted to make its return. This initiative came to be known as "Star Wars".
"Star Wars"
Inspired by the movie of the same name, which had amazed millions of viewers a few years earlier, "Star Wars" was publicly proposed on March 23, 1983, by the movie actor Ronald Reagan, then turned president of the United States. The underlying idea was to change Mutual Assured Destruction for a strategic defense system based on highly advanced weapons, most of them located in space.
The first invention intended to be part of the "defensive umbrella" that the Reagan administration wanted to place in orbit was an X-ray laser, activated by atomic explosions. In a speech of the time, the president said: "I appeal to the scientific community, who gave us nuclear weapons, to direct their great talents to the cause of Humanity and World Peace; to provide us with the means of rendering those nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete." It seems a bit strange to link nuclear weapons with peace, but that was the prevailing idea of the time.
The lasers mentioned were intended to shoot down Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), capable of throwing multiple nuclear warheads at the United States. Basically, they tried to build a "shield" that would make the Russian quiver of "nuclear arrows" obsolete. However, the scientific community was quite doubtful about the success of this type of armor. For example, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Hans Bethe made statements showing his skepticism about the possibility that Star Wars could offer something useful for national defense.
The Emperor's Death Stars
Besides the aforementioned X-ray laser, the Americans intended to equip their defense system with other high-tech weapons, all to prevent their country from being destroyed in some future war. One of them was a deuterium fluoride laser, also known as the Advanced Chemical Laser Semi-Infrared (or MIRACL, in English). This exotic and powerful laser was successfully tested at the missile test range in the New Mexico desert, destroying a Titan missile launcher.
In 1989, a rocket was launched equipped with another device that was to be part of the defensive umbrella. It was a Neutral Particle Beam accelerator (NPB). The experiment demonstrated that these invisible particle beams could operate from space and propagate without unexpected side effects. The idea behind it was to reduce the amount of nuclear waste left by each use of the X-ray laser.
Another test, called the High Precision Tracking Experiment, or HPTE, consisted of sending a low-power laser beam from Hawaii to a 60 cm diameter mirror placed in orbit by the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-51-G. This experience was part of a series of technologies applied to stabilization, tracking and target direction. The beam, after reflecting off the mirror, could return to Earth and hit a target with a high level of precision.
But in the Star Wars initiative not everything was "death rays". This true sword of Damocles, destined to hang over all humanity, was characterized by having a great variety of weapons in its arsenal. The "Brilliant Pebbles" program, for example, consisted of a true constellation of kinetic projectiles the size of a watermelon, capable of accelerating to extremely high speeds and impacting against enemy missiles.
None of the aforementioned systems would have had any chance of success if they had not had a great variety of highly precise sensors. In this sense, the installation of interceptors located in orbital modules had been planned, whose first tests were successfully completed in 1988. It was demonstrated that the target-seeking system could detect the hot exhaust gases of enemy rockets, and aim at their bodies. This marked a milestone in infrared search systems in anti-missile weapons, since until that moment one could not distinguish between a projectile and the hot gases of its engines.
Fortunately, political changes that occurred shortly after the Star Wars initiative was conceived ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Cold War came to an end. Today, the US military has embarked on the fight against supposed global terrorists, and a system of laser beams hanging over our heads makes little sense. Therefore, practically none of these inventions, at least officially, has been implemented.
However, this review of the technologies that were considered as part of the Star Wars project can serve to give us an idea of what weapons we may see in some future war. And the thing is not entirely hopeful.
