Additional assistance came from U.S. Russian War Relief (a private, nonprofit organization) and the Red Cross. It overlooked an area of flat land that was considered a likely invasion route for Warsaw Pact tanks. did not view SDI as an escalation. Reagan Doctrine nuclear winter Gaddis, John Lewis. These missiles were intended to attack the enemy warheads that the Smart Rocks had missed. An anti-ballistic missile systemone which would give the United States complete protection from the Soviet Unionwas the natural next step. Treaty of Brussels revolution Why cant we just lean on the Soviets until they go broke? quipped Reagan (Lazzari 23). During the 20th century, Western imperial powers like Britain and France withdrew from colonies in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. The Secret Speech was an address given to the Congress of Soviets by Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev in February 1956. Shultzs assessment proved to be correct. Only the Space Based Laser seemed to have any hope of developing in the short term, but it was growing in size due to its fuel consumption. Sovietisation is a term for the process by which communist governments were installed in eastern European nations after World War II (1945-50). An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is a surface-to-air missile designed to counter ballistic missiles (missile defense). In early 1981, he signed National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 12, which included the creation of a vigorous research and development program on ballistic missile defense systems. Reagan also adopted tough anti-Soviet rhetoric and policy, a stark contrast to the decade of dtente which preceded him. The Madman theory was a strategy or ploy used by United States president Richard Nixon during the Cold War. Advancements in new sensors and microprocessors allowed all of this to be packaged into the volume of a small missile nose cone. During the Cold War, enemy agents, posing as U.S. Navy crew, sabotage a nuclear submarine and steal its anti-ballistic missile guidance system. Stasi was an abbreviation for the Ministry of State Security, a secret police agency in socialist East Germany. Shultz suggests that this feeling of helplessness, coupled with the defensive ideas proposed by Teller a decade earlier, combined to form the impetus of the SDI. Development was cancelled in 1963. Cold War leaders who utilised Stalinist methods included Kim Il-sung (North Korea), Nicolae Ceausescu (Romania) and Enver Hoxha (Albania). The Warsaw Pact was an alliance of European communist nations, formed in 1955. During the Reykjavik talks with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986, Ronald Reagan addressed Gorbachev's concerns about imbalance by stating that SDI technology could be provided to the entire world including the Soviet Union to prevent the imbalance from occurring. Causes of the Cold War. It was a significant element of the US nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. " Previously, they were used more in combination with missiles. The Truman Doctrine demonstrated that the United States would not return to isolationism after World War II, but rather take an active role in world affairs. Early on Tuesday 16 October 1962, John F Kennedy's national security assistant, McGeorge Bundy, brought to the President's bedroom some high-altitude photographs taken from U-2 planes flying over. The Soviet Union retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Secret Speech Nuclear weapons were developed in 1944-45 and first used in two attacks on Japan (August 1945). Reagan felt that in the event of an attack this would place the president in a terrible position, having to choose between immediate counterattack or attempting to absorb the attack and then maintain an upper hand in the post-attack era. Specifically, they noted that all of the systems had to improve their energy output by at least 100 times, and in some cases as much as a million. The KKV was equipped with an infrared seeker, guidance electronics and a propulsion system. NORAD is a joint US-Canadian military command centre, tasked with monitoring North American airspace for a possible attack. Pro-Moscow communists were installed as leaders of these combined parties. The Strategic Defence Initiative was a missile defence program, initiated by the Reagan administration in 1983. The INF treaty eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with ranges of 310 to 620 miles, considered short-range, and 620 to 3,420 miles, or intermediate-range.. One of the core ideas behind the GPALS system was that the Soviet Union would not always be assumed as the aggressor and the United States would not always be assumed as the target.[46]. The satellite observed several ballistic missile launches including some releasing liquid propellant as a countermeasure to detection. Another criticism of SDI was that it would require the United States to modify previously ratified treaties. This program was immediately dubbed "Star Wars." An artist's rendering of an X-ray laser hit an incoming missile. and particularly London. Two days after announcing SDI, Reagan signed NSDD 85, which authorized the development of an intensive effort to define a long term research and development program aimed at an ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by nuclear ballistic missiles, but in a manner consistent with our obligations under the ABM Treaty and recognizing the need for close consultations with our allies. According to the Reagan administration, SDI was not a violation of ABM because it was only pursuing research and development, not deployment. [89], In 1987 a disguised Mir space station module was lifted on the inaugural flight of the Energia booster as the Polyus and it has since been revealed that this craft housed a number of systems of the Skif laser, which were intended to be clandestinely tested in orbit, if it had not been for the spacecraft's attitude control system malfunctioning upon separation from the booster and it failing to reach orbit. The USSR would join this alliance following Operation Barbarossa - the invasion of Russia by Nazi Germany. Railguns can generate muzzle-velocities in excess of 2.4 kilometers per second.[70]. This site is created by Alpha History and contains 314,783 words in 411 pages. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use. Hypervelocity railguns are, at least conceptually, an attractive alternative to a space-based defense system because of their envisioned ability to quickly shoot at many targets. In which John Green teaches you about the Cold War, the decades-long conflict between the USA and the USSR. Sharon Watkins Lang. Their Project Defender studied all sorts of systems, before abandoning most of them to concentrate on Project BAMBI. [63] The system was later tested on target drones simulating cruise missiles for the US Navy, with some success. An envelope. Once dismissed by cynics as a "conspiracy theory the New World Order is rapidly becoming a reality. Secretary of State Alexander Haig recalled, I know the aftermath the next day in the Pentagon, where they were all rushing around saying, What the hell is strategic defense? (OConnell 23). The missile gap refers toan American perception, common in the 1950s, that the Soviet Union possessed a larger stockpile of ballistic missiles. Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Its role was to gather information and intelligence by monitoring, intercepting and deciphering radio and signals traffic. Madman theory The Soviet effort was small before August 1945. Initially, the program focused on large scale systems designed to defeat a massive Soviet offensive strike. The Strategic Defense Initiative in fact proved to be the ultimate bargaining chip, recalled Shultz. New York, NY: Charles Scribers Sons, 1993. This lack of natural light causes a slowing in plant and animal growth, making farming difficult or impossible. Point Alpha ERIC ZUESSEThe world that Truman started on that day in 1945 has shaped the world that we all live in today. [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. Byrnes assured listeners that the US would protect German sovereignty and, in time, support a return to German self government. Soviet Response to the SDI Program", "A New U.S. Missile Defense Test May Have Increased the Risk of Nuclear War", "Report to The American Physical Society of the study group on science and technology of directed energy weapons", "A Newly Declassified CIA Paper Details a Tense Subplot in the Cold War Arms Race", "Congress Calls for Interceptors in Space", "What will the Space Development Agency really do? The launch of Sputnik I triggered American fears that the US had fallen behind the Soviet Union in space technology. The U-2 was an American spy plane used widely during the Cold War. In a speech to the Politburo in March 1986, Gorbachev exclaimed, Maybe we should just stop being afraid of SDI! Early prototypes were essentially single-use weapons, requiring complete replacement of the rails after each firing. The nuclear football travels with the president wherever he goes. [46] The new system would cut the proposed costs of the SDI system from $53billion to $41billion over a decade. These colonies became self-governing and many were subjected to Cold War pressures and influences. After the SDIO closed, the MIRACL was tested on an old Air Force satellite for potential use as an anti-satellite weapon, with mixed results. Ashton Carter, then a board member at MIT, assessed SDI for Congress in 1984, saying there were a number of difficulties in creating an adequate missile defense shield, with or without lasers. NATO (see North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). This Cold War glossary contains definitions for key terms, concepts and events between 1945 and 1991. To help rebuild after the war, the United States pledged $13 billion of aid to Europe in the Marshall Plan. President Ronald Reagan announces the Strategic Defense Initiative, March 23, 1983, National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 12, announced the SDI program in a television address broadcast nationally, As U.S. The addition of MIRV in the late 1960s further upset the balance in favor of offense systems. In-flight guidance, if implemented, would require the onboard navigation system to be built to the same level of sturdiness as the main mass of the projectile. OPEC was responsible for the 1973 Oil Crisis (see above). National Security Council (or NSC) This means the X-rays needed to be close to the Soviet Union, especially during the critical few minutes of the booster phase, for the Soviet missiles to be both detectable to radar and targeted by the lasers themselves. It was able to fly at high altitude, avoiding enemy radar detection and surface-to-air missile systems. [34] More tentatively, it is also suggested that the Zarya module of the International Space Station, capable of station keeping and providing sizable battery power, was initially developed to power the Skif laser system. And the answer, to the best of my judgment, is yes. These negotiations culminated in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which went into effect in 1988, and laid the groundwork for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in the 1990s. George Shultz, Reagan's secretary of state, suggested that a 1967 lecture by physicist Edward Teller (the so-called "father of the hydrogen bomb") was an important precursor to SDI. [95] In comments to the media on March 7, 1986, Acting Deputy Director of SDIO, Dr. Gerold Yonas, described the name "Star Wars" as an important tool for Soviet disinformation and asserted that the nickname gave an entirely wrong impression of SDI.[96]. Vietnam War satellite nation Posted BY: | NwoReport (Natural News) Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter also a former United States Marine Corps officer joins Mike Adams in a far-reaching interview that covers Ukraine, Russia, NATO, and Nord Stream. Brilliant Eyes was renamed Space and Missile Tracking System (SMTS) and scaled back further under BMDO, and in the late 1990s it became the low earth orbit component of the Air Force's Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS). The Viet Cong was a Western term for the National Liberation Front, or NLF, a group of communist guerrillas who operated inSouth Vietnamese and between 1959 and 1975. Of course we cant simply disregard this dangerous program. Launched on the same rocket as the RME, the Low-power Atmospheric Compensation Experiment (LACE) satellite was built by the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to explore atmospheric distortion of lasers and real-time adaptive compensation for that distortion. As Gorbachev recalled, Reykjavik was the site of a truly Shakespearean drama.Success was a mere step away, but SDI proved an insurmountable stumbling-block (Gorbachev 418). McCarthyism 110113, The Star Wars Enigma: Behind the Scenes of the Cold War Race for Missile Defense By Nigel Hey. Since the late 1970s, a group had been pushing for the development of a high-powered chemical laser that would be placed in orbit and attack ICBMs, the Space Based Laser (SBL). Reagan reportedly was very taken by Tellers briefing on directed-energy weapons (DEWs), such as lasers and microwaves. nuclear weapons Ostpolitik In July 1989, the Beam Experiments Aboard a Rocket (BEAR) program launched a sounding rocket containing a neutral particle beam (NPB) accelerator. The report considered all of the systems then under development, and concluded none of them were anywhere near ready for deployment. Its effectiveness was neutralised by US and Soviet hegemony during the Cold War. The Viet Cong fought against American forces during the Vietnam War (1965-75). By 1986, many of the promising ideas were failing. On March 23, 1983, President Reagan proposed the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), an ambitious project that would construct a space-based anti-missile system. The need for an effective anti-ballistic missile system grew considerably in Reagans eyes after he visited the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in 1979. Decades before, the two superpowers had successfully developed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as well as effective second strike capabilities such as nuclear submarines. As Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger explained, The fact is, deployment will not occur unless a defensive system is developed that would better contribute in better ways to deterrence than the arrangement which now keeps the peace, as it has for nearly 40 years (OConnell 77). No more, no less. 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. If they're like probably 90% of the population, they don't intend to make any big lifestyle changes or sacrifices to combat whatever climate change is occurring, and that's if it actually is occurring. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1995. [53] Per the GAO report, the net effect of the DOD enhancements increased the infrared signature of the target vessel by 110% over the realistic missile signature initially proposed for the HOE program, but nonetheless the GAO concluded the enhancements to the target vessel were reasonable given the objectives of the program and the geopolitical consequences of its failure. [47] The GPALS system also was able to protect the United States from attacks coming from all different parts of the world.[47]. Against such threats the Brilliant Pebbles would have limited performance, largely because the missiles fired for only a short period and the warheads did not rise high enough for them to be easily tracked by a satellite above them. Unsurprisingly, concerns over MAD and ABM were widespread following the announcement of SDI, even among members of the Reagan administration. [85][86], In 1986 Carl Sagan summarized what he heard Soviet commentators were saying about SDI, with a common argument being that it was equivalent to starting an economic war through a defensive arms race to further cripple the Soviet economy with extra military spending, while another interpretation was that it served as a disguise for the US wish to initiate a first strike on the Soviet Union.[88]. Rezidentura is a Russian word, describing a base of operations for spies in foreign countries. Title: Cold War glossary M to Z The real . Perestroika is a Russian word meaning restructuring. It was one of the Cold Wars most repressive and brutal security forces. [79], Space Surveillance and Tracking System was a system originally designed for tracking ballistic missiles during their mid-course phase. Or with that defense, he could then say to them, I am willing to do away with all my missiles. SALT I and SALT II were two US-Soviet arms reduction summits, held in 1972 and 1979. Instead of a heavy defense aimed at ICBMs, this report suggested realigning the deployment for the Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS). Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Lawrence Eagleburger likewise critiqued, The president seems to be proposing an updated version of the Maginot Line [the interwar defensive fortifications on the Franco-German border which gave France a false sense of security] (252). Olympic boycott It was originally built to test missile defense concepts, In 1984, officials within the United States Department of Defense (DoD) suggested it was the site of a prototypical anti-satellite weapon system. A sphere of influence is a region or group of nations controlled or influenced by another powerful nation. Wind of change It was detonated in remote northern Russia in 1961. During the mid-to-late 1980s a number of panel discussions on lasers and SDI took place at various laser conferences. Citation information This act required communist organisations to register with the government, while government agencies were given power to investigate subversive activities. U-2s were used chiefly to collect surveillance photographs. While SDIO and SDS was ongoing, the Warsaw Pact was rapidly disintegrating, culminating in the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. They are colloquially known as hydrogen bombs or H-bombs. The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) was signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush in Moscow in July 1991. The granting of support and aid to freedom fighters (anti-communist groups and movements) was at the core of the Reagan Doctrine. nuclear fallout The model and the laser were realized by Marc Palumbo, a High Tech Romantic artist from the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. Solidarity played a pivotal role in bringing about liberal reform and free elections in Poland in 1989. 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. It is technically feasible., Allies of the United States in Europe, particularly those in NATO, were also alarmed by the development of SDI. [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. French President Francois Mitterrand, for example, was very vocal about his concerns regarding SDI: I am opposed to the idea of SDII perceive it as a potential opportunity for a first strike.It is obvious that SDI will not replace nuclear weapons, but will become a substantial addition to the existing arsenals (Gorbachev 429). It was the first such missile tested in the USSR, inaugurating the opening in 1947 of the Soviet Union's first missile test range at Kapustin Yar. Alternatively, watch this nine-minute explainer video for an overview of the Cold . [22], The US Army had considered the issue of ballistic missile defense (BMD) as early as late in World War II. [61], Beginning in 1985, the Air Force tested an SDIO-funded deuterium fluoride laser known as Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser (MIRACL) at White Sands Missile Range. The Extended Range Interceptor (ERINT) program was part of SDI's Theater Missile Defense Program and was an extension of the Flexible Lightweight Agile Guided Experiment (FLAGE), which included developing hit-to-kill technology and demonstrating the guidance accuracy of a small, agile, radar-homing vehicle. at the same time significancly currailing war.time production in the London area. A strategic nuclear weapon is a larger yield device, intended for launching against cities, ports, military bases or other large targets of significance. The Sino-Soviet split was a breakdown in relations between China and the Soviet Union during the mid to late 1960s. Its policymakers wanted to contain Soviet communism to keep Europe and the world free for US companies and American trade. The Soviet bloc or Eastern bloc refers tocommunist nations in Europe during the Cold War. The Second Cold War is sometimes used to describe the post-Dtente revival of tensions during the early 1980s.