Strategic Defense Initiative
From RationalWiki
| For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about Star Wars. |
The Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as "SDI" or the "Star Wars" program, was the brainchild of SOMEONE within the Reagan administration. The basic idea was to build a defense system against nuclear attack, in violation of arms control treaties signed with the USSR. In the most fanciful versions imagined, this involved space-based lasers/rockets destroying missiles soon after launch. While all of this was deemed possible, the technology that exists today (let alone 20 years ago when announced) was nowhere NEAR precise enough to pull it off. However, the idea took hold with certain paranoid types who were convinced that the US could not depend on the Soviets acting rationally.
Contents |
[edit] Why it was outlawed to begin with
Many Americans are surprised to learn that the US and USSR had signed treaties to outlaw these kinds of "shield" programs. They assume that anything "defensive" in nature must be a good thing.
However, deterrence theorists realized by the 1960s that the only way to prevent nuclear war was to make sure that no nation would be willing to risk an attack on another nuclear power. This idea was known as "Mutually Assured Destruction." If the US attacked the USSR, or vice versa, the US could not be certain to destroy all of the USSR's nuclear silos. Similarly, with so much of the US's nuclear capacity stationed in off-shore submarines, the Soviets could not destroy the American second-strike capability. Therefore, ANY nuclear attack was risking suicide.
To this end, anything that could protect a state from the risk of retaliation was considered bad. Even a system that was only 10 or 20% effective was risky, because a nation might get arrogant and believe they could knock out 80% of its opponents second-strike, thus not needing a full shield. To this end, a shield against second-strikes, even if only partially effective, gravely lowered the effects of nuclear war (for one party), thus increased the overall risk.
(Moreover, a nation confronting a state with such a shield might also be more belligerent, and try to attack first, so that their own nuclear forces would have the best chance at getting through. Such are the intricacies of nuclear deterrence.)
[edit] Usefulness
One of the problems with the shield is that it is no longer clear who exactly it is meant to defend against. The three major holders of atomic weapons are the USA, Russia, and China. Given that the ideological differences which once caused the cold war have largely disappeared, and that the three are very dependent on each other for trading purposes, the possibility of a nuclear war between these three has been considerably reduced.
That leaves "rogue states", by which we mean "North Korea". The possibility certainly exists that a "rogue state" or even a non-state terrorist group could create a nuclear weapon. They might even be able to build a handful. Their problem then becomes one of delivery. The superpowers got around this by creating intercontinental ballistic missile technology, which would have enabled them to launch massive coordinated attacks. Using this technology, a rocket and warhead are blasted into low earth orbit until it is above the target area and then falls vertically onto its target. (The vertical drop is what makes it a "ballistic" missile.)
Perhaps surprisingly, missile technology is a lot more complicated than nuclear weapons technology, in which the major problem is getting hold of the nuclear material. It also needs a LOT of testing which, given the nature of the activity, can hardly be carried out in secret. In the event that someone launched an attack, it would be very clear where such missiles were launched from.
But why would a state, or terrorist group, bother with this? If you are only going to launch one or a handful or weapons, why would you go to the bother of developing this technology when you could simply put your bomb on a ship and sail into New York harbor? It would be cheaper, simpler and more reliable. It would have the added advantage of being anonymous and would possibly allow you to escape the certain overwhelming US retaliation.
| “ | $100 billion dollars against an attack mode which is literally the most inconvenient, least likely way for bad guys to kill Yanks. Terrorists don't have missiles. Terrorists have VANS. A white-panel-truck defense shield, THAT would be worth our money. Tie the INS database into the Ryder rental computer. Now we're talking science.[1] | ” |
[edit] Feasability
The SDI system must never get any false positives, (as mistakenly shooting down an airliner would be very bad PR), and would have to work perfectly the first time it was needed.
(That distant sound you hear is every computer geek on Earth laughing bitterly at the idea.)
In testing, the SDI system can't seem to manage better results than shooting down one in three test missiles, fitted with radio transponders, on a clear day.[2] This does not fill me with hope.
Using principles of electronic warfare it is possible to overwhelm any missile defense with a threat cloud deployed by one or more of the ICBMs. This is a relatively cheap countermeasure consisting of inflated mylar balloons containing dummy warheads mixed with real warheads, radar-reflecting metal chaff, and infrared-emitting aerosols.
