These colonies became self-governing and many were subjected to Cold War pressures and influences. Physicists Hans Bethe and Richard Garwin, who worked with Edward Teller on both the atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos, claimed a laser defense shield was unfeasible. Carter said X-rays have a limited scope because they become diffused through the atmosphere, much like the beam of a flashlight spreading outward in all directions. The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) was signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush in Moscow in July 1991. To help rebuild after the war, the United States pledged $13 billion of aid to Europe in the Marshall Plan. An early estimate suggested one would have to spend $20 on defense for every $1 the Soviets spent on offense. [47] The GPALS system also was able to protect the United States from attacks coming from all different parts of the world.[47]. [63] The system was later tested on target drones simulating cruise missiles for the US Navy, with some success. Reagan Doctrine The primary application of this doctrine started during the Cold War (1940s to 1991), in which MAD was seen as helping to prevent any direct full-scale conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union while they engaged in smaller proxy wars around the world. This act required communist organisations to register with the government, while government agencies were given power to investigate subversive activities. Sputnik (Russian for traveller) was the name of the first two man-made satellites to orbit Earth. Low-cost countermeasures like radar decoys required additional interceptors to counter. While U.S.-Soviet relations had been strained since the end of World War II, fears of war between the two nuclear superpowers peaked with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The capture of an American U-2 by the Soviets in 1960 caused an international incident. Socialist systems involve, among other things, government control of the economy and prohibitions of private ownership of capital. Sagdeev later acknowledged, If Americans oversold [SDI], we Russians overbought it.. Causes of the Cold War. Socialism is a political system which aims to transition from capitalism to communism. [38], In the fall of 1979, at Reagan's request, Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham, the former head of the DIA, briefed Reagan on an updated BAMBI he called High Frontier, a missile shield composed of multi-layered ground- and space-based weapons that could track, intercept, and destroy ballistic missiles, which would theoretically be possible because of emerging technologies. Orthodox historians Its policymakers wanted to contain Soviet communism to keep Europe and the world free for US companies and American trade. In addition, the American media's liberal use of the moniker (despite President Reagan's request that they use the program's official name) did much to damage the program's credibility. SDIO sensor research encompassed visible light, ultraviolet, infrared, and radar technologies, and eventually led to the Clementine mission though that mission occurred just after the program transitioned to the BMDO. The nuclear football is a briefcase carried by a military attache to the US president. Perestroika involved some liberal reforms and a relaxation of centralised controls over the economy. ", History of the Missile Defense Organization, "Striking a Bullet with a Bullet: HOE; 2022 Lockheed Martin Corporation", "Directory of U.S. Military Rockets and Missiles * Appendix 4: Undesignated Vehicles * HOE; Andreas Parsch, 2003", "Lies and Rigged 'Star Wars' Test Fooled the Kremlin, and Congress". Nuclear fallout can cause radiation sickness, cancers, birth deformities and death. An Olympic boycott was when one or more nations refused to send athletes to the Olympic Games, usually as a political protest. Claiming To Be A Disembodied Spirit & Fallen Angel (Video) Folks, every resident connected to a municipal water supply needs to know about this database. Though classified at the time, a detailed study on a Soviet space-based LASER system began no later than 1976 as the Skif, a 1 MW Carbon dioxide laser along with the anti-satellite Kaskad, an in-orbit missile platform. They said that a defensive system was costly and difficult to build yet simple to destroy, and claimed that the Soviets could easily use thousands of decoys to overwhelm it during a nuclear attack. Each missile carried a single warheadthe largest in U.S. inventoryused liquid fuel propellants, and was stored and launched from hardened underground silos. Revisionist historians argue that the United States and its expansionist foreign policy were chiefly responsible for the Cold War. The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts. The Viet Minh was a Vietnamese nationalist-communist group, led by Ho Chi Minh. SDI was criticized for potentially disrupting the strategic stability afforded by the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. Its role was to gather information and intelligence by monitoring, intercepting and deciphering radio and signals traffic. Between 1971 and 1974, all Lafayette, Madison, and. One of the many reports on SDS considered these events, and suggested that the massive defense against a Soviet launch would soon be unnecessary, but that short and medium range missile technology would likely proliferate as the former Soviet Union disintegrated and sold off their hardware. It was used to described reforms implemented by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in the mid 1980s. The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization was renamed again by the George W. Bush administration as the Missile Defense Agency and focused onto limited National Missile Defense. "[43], In 1984, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was established to oversee the program, which was headed by Lt. General James Alan Abrahamson USAF, a past Director of the NASA Space Shuttle program.[1]. On June 28, 1985, David Lorge Parnas resigned from SDIO's Panel on Computing in Support of Battle Management, arguing in eight short papers that the software required by the Strategic Defense Initiative could never be made to be trustworthy and that such a system would inevitably be unreliable and constitute a menace to humanity in its own right. The announcement by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia would suspend its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) brings an unwelcome degree of clarity to a situation the United States almost certainly would have to face three years from now. As Secretary of State Schultz explained, Prior to the presidents speech, even the possibility that the United States might seriously seek to defend itself from nuclear attack seemed outlandish. Bell Labs pointed out that although longer-range missiles flew much faster, their longer flight times would address the timing issue and their very high altitudes would make long-range detection by radar easier. McCarthyism Examples of Cold War secret police agencies were the KGB (Soviet Union), the Stasi (East Germany) and the Securitate (Romania). More recently, new developments under Project Excalibur by Teller's "O-Group" at LLNL suggested that a single X-ray laser could shoot down dozens of missiles with a single shot. It was the ideology that underpinned socialism in the Soviet Union and other Soviet bloc nations. 2. This cost-exchange ratio was so favorable that it appeared the only thing building a defense would do would be to cause an arms race. did not view SDI as an escalation. Paul Nitze, Cold War Arms Expert, Dies at 97, "Threat and Opportunity: The Soviet View of the Strategic Defense Initiative". These communist parties then obtained control of the government in elections, some of which may have been rigged. Publisher: Alpha History The concept of a military-industrial complex was mentioned by US president Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell speech in 1961. The War Zone has gone into detail about just how challenging shooting down a long-range ballistic missile is, and how rickety America's defenses really are when it comes to counter such an attack . Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: Diplomacy, Power, and the Victory of the American Ideal. For example, if it had been much cheaper to add attacking warheads than to add defenses, an attacker of similar economic power could have simply outproduced the defender. START (or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) During World War 2 the United Kingdom, France and the United States aligned another in order to defeat Nazi Germany. It was dubbed the Military Marshall Plan. These particles are disbursed by weather and eventually fall to earth. Below is a list of missiles, sorted alphabetically by name. Studies on the topic suggested attacking a V-2 rocket would be difficult because the flight time was so short that it would leave little time to forward information through command and control networks to the missile batteries that would attack them. This US-financed relief package provided funds to European nations to assist their reconstruction after World War II. Solidarnosc (or Solidarity) Although he was influenced by scientists such as Teller, the Strategic Defense Initiative was ultimately Reagans personal vision because it was based on technology that had not yet been invented. This represented a significant improvement over previous efforts, which were only able to achieve about one shot per month. Ballistic Missile Defense Technology: Is the United States Ready for A Decision to Deploy? The Soviet response to the SDI during the period of March 1983 through November 1985 provided indications of their view of the program both as a threat and as an opportunity to weaken NATO. During the 20th century, Western imperial powers like Britain and France withdrew from colonies in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. The demonstration was perhaps the first televised use of a weapons grade laser. Singing Revolution In 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a massive aid program to rebuild Europe after the ravages of World War II. The South-East Asia Treaty Organisation or SEATO was an alliance of eight Asia-Pacific countries, formed in 1955. The United Nations is a multilateral body, formed in 1945. Ballistic missiles are used to deliver nuclear, chemical, biological, or conventional warheads in a ballistic flight trajectory.The term "anti-ballistic missile" is a generic term conveying a system designed to intercept and destroy any type of ballistic threat; however, it is . Wind of change NATO (see North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). The project was conceived in November 1986 by Lowell Wood at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. SAC also monitored warning systems that watched for incoming attacks. [35][36], In 1979, Teller contributed to a Hoover Institution publication where he claimed that the US would be facing an emboldened USSR due to their work on civil defense. Some analysts might well see Russia's development programme as a long-term strategy to cope with Washington's abiding interest in anti-missile defences. Teller's X-ray laser, run under Project Excalibur, failed several key tests in 1986 and was soon being suggested solely for the anti-satellite role. [46] Also, instead of making plans to protect against thousands of incoming missiles, the GPALS system sought to provide flawless protection from up to two hundred nuclear missiles. Stasi was an abbreviation for the Ministry of State Security, a secret police agency in socialist East Germany. Macmillans speech is often cited as a shift in British policy, away from imperialism and towards decolonisation. The announcement of SDI shocked officials around the globe. Final hover testing occurred in 1992 using miniaturized components similar to what would have actually been used in an operational interceptor. The Viet Cong fought against American forces during the Vietnam War (1965-75). When reformer Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he began to drastically cut Soviet military spending, particularly the anti-ballistic missile program the USSR had started in response to SDI. Project A119 The Red Scares were two periods of anti-communist hysteria in the United States. Although Reagan was sincerely invested in SDI for the purposes of national security and never intended for it to be a bargaining chip, many of his advisors acknowledged its potential as a negotiating tool. Point Alpha, or Observation Post Alpha, was a US Army lookout in West Germany, close to the border with West Germany. The Sino-Soviet split was a breakdown in relations between China and the Soviet Union during the mid to late 1960s. On the one side are the United States and its East Asian and . The Soviet bloc countries (USSR) were pitted against the US-led Western powers. Rollback was a foreign policy objective of US president Ronald Reagan. Reagan pitched building an ambitious anti-missile system in 1983 dubbed "Star Wars." The R&D effort, which included space-based lasers, was sidetracked by funding shortfalls and the collapse of. The INF Treaty, which eliminated all short-range (310-620 miles) and intermediate-range (620-3420 miles) nuclear missiles, was signed at the Washington Summit later that year. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The Peacekeeper program began in 1971 as the missile experimental (MX) system as a way to increase the U.S. counterstrike capabilities against the Soviet Union, which at the time was focusing on constructing hardened shelters and missile defense systems. This site is created by Alpha History and contains 314,783 words in 411 pages. Orthodox historians argue that the Cold War was started by Joseph Stalins violation of post-war agreements and the expansionist nature of Soviet communism. Viet Minh The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which requires "States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner"[101] and would forbid the US from pre-positioning in Earth orbit any devices powered by nuclear weapons and any devices capable of "mass destruction". Finding limited success in his efforts to get funding for the project, his speech in Italy was a new attempt to create a missile gap. Ping pong diplomacy refers to events in the early 1970s, when an American table tennis undertook a tour of communist China. This is also a story that risks disappearing into its own "success." After all, the Cold War is history. [34], The polyus was a prototype of the Skif orbital weapons platform designed to destroy Strategic Defense Initiative satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its subsequent protocol,[102] which limited missile defenses to one location per country at 100 missiles each (which the USSR had and the US did not), would have been violated by SDI ground-based interceptors. Under the SDIO's Innovative Sciences and Technology Office,[9][10][11] headed by physicist and engineer Dr. James Ionson,[12][13][14][15] the investment was predominantly made in basic research at national laboratories, universities, and in industry; these programs have continued to be key sources of funding for top research scientists in the fields of high-energy physics, supercomputing/computation, advanced materials, and many other critical science and engineering disciplines and funding which indirectly supports other research work by top scientists.