Strategic Defense Initiative
Videos
The Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed the Star Wars program, was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic nuclear missiles. The program wa
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. The development of the W71 and the Project Excalibur x-ray laser were based on enhancing the destructive effects of these x-rays.
Extended Range Interceptor (ERINT) launch from White Sands Missile Range
13 ft (4 m) 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.
The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, also known as the ABM Treaty or ABMT, was a 1972 arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile s
Launch of a U.S. Army Nike Zeus missile, the first ABM system to enter widespread testing
Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signing SALT II treaty, 18 June 1979, in Vienna
President Reagan delivering the 23 March 1983 speech initiating SDI
Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush sign SORT on 24 May 2002 in Moscow.