Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) space missions

[Blackstar]

We don't have a thread here devoted to the space missions of the SDI program. We should have one, so I'm starting it.

I'll try to put SDI-related documents and reports in this thread. Feel free to do the same.

[hoku]

Since the DELTA 180 article also addresses the "Midcourse Space Experiment" (MSX), which was ultimately launched in 1996, it is worth mentioning that the Air Force Research Lab actually carried out a Galactic Plane Survey, and published a catalog of astronomical sources identified, see attachment with some info on the MSX "Spatial InfraRed Imaging Telescope" (SPIRIT III). Their rationale for carrying out an astronomical survey was that bright infrared sources might confuse targeting sensors, hence better map their location and brightness.

They also advertised their survey at conferences, and handed out MSX mugs with an image of the survey - though 25 years clearly have taken their toll on my souvenir mug 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midcourse_Space_Experiment

[hoku]

... and for context, here are the YouTube links to Reagan's pre-briefing announcement of SDI to "High Levels Defense officials", followed by his "Address to the Nation", both on March 23, 1983:

Any guess on the origin of the "aerial photographs" shown in his address?

[Blackstar]

Any guess on the origin of the "aerial photographs" shown in his address?

SR-71. I have a vague recollection that it was a special flight ordered to gather imagery for this purpose.

[hoku]

Any guess on the origin of the "aerial photographs" shown in his address?

SR-71. I have a vague recollection that it was a special flight ordered to gather imagery for this purpose.

Thanks. I'd been wondering if the US still dared to fly U-2s over Cuba in the 1980s.

Reagan concludes the discussion of the "aerial photographs" with the teaser "I wish I could show you more without compromising our most sensitive intelligence sources and methods." This might indicate that satellites were watching the Caribbeans as well (two KH-11should have been operational in early 1983).

[hoku]

SDI chronology 1983 to 1988 by the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and a PBS/Forntline timeline of missile defense 1944 to 2002. Any other (official?) SDI histories or chronologies?

How many of the bilateral memoranda of understanding (with Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, UK, ...) resulted in space missions? There was STS-39 with SPAS-II IBSS doing the "Infrared Background Signature Survey". What else?

https://aerospace.org/sites/default/files/policy_archives/SDI%20Chronology%201983-88.pdf
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/missile/etc/cron.html

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/22572400

[Blackstar]

Here is a GAO report on the Zenith Star program. Zenith Star was a big laser satellite. It got canceled while still in development.

[Blackstar]

A GAO report on the Homing Overlay Experiment. HOE was tested in 1983 and 1984 and the last test was successful. In 1993, information became available indicating that the Army made the target much more detectable in order to produce a successful test (i.e. they cheated). There were allegations that the Army had lied to Congress about this. The GAO report found that although there was a "deception" effort associated with the program, it did not happen for the fourth test.

As an aside, looking at the HOE entry on Wikipedia damaged my Zen. No, George Lucas did not sue Ronald Reagan over use of the Star Wars name, and the Wiki citation for that claim is about as solid as tomato soup.

[hoku]

A GAO report on the Homing Overlay Experiment. HOE was tested in 1983 and 1984 and the last test was successful. In 1993, information became available indicating that the Army made the target much more detectable in order to produce a successful test (i.e. they cheated). There were allegations that the Army had lied to Congress about this. The GAO report found that although there was a "deception" effort associated with the program, it did not happen for the fourth test.
<...>

I'd guess the initial tests were more about getting the search, targeting, and interception techniques and algorithms tested and tuned. From the DELTA 180 article posted above:
"During the approval cycle, some cooperation by the target was requested to help ensure success of both the approval process and the intercept. The response was manifest in the form of a corner reflector that provided (as it turned out, very desirable) target enhancement."
and
"The primary original purpose of the Delta 180 Program was to understand the problems of tracking and guidance for a space intercept."

Edit: Another possibility is that adding "target enhancements", i.e. the (apparent) requirement of "cooperative targets", provided some level of plausible deniability when questioned by the Soviets if these tests were all in accordance with the ABM treaty (see attached excerpt from Matthew Bunn's "Foundation for the Future: The ABM Treaty and National Security", which discusses this issue in some detail.).

https://scholar.harvard.edu/matthew_bunn/publications/foundation-future-abm-treaty-and-national-security

[LittleBird]

I realise that I only have one book on SDI, the fascinating "Star Warriors" by William Broad-though you can't please 'em all: https://www.commentary.org/articles/gerald-steinberg/star-warriors-by-william-j-broad/- and I've only read one or two more, of which one based on Michael Charlton's interview series for the BBC "The Star Wars History" https://archive.org/details/fromdeterrenceto0000char/page/n167/mode/2up was by far the most memorable (because of its remrkable list of talking heads-see second and third grabs).

And I see this is mainly an official document and  report thread, so I'll repress the urge to chime in, except to mention the set of declassified/unclassified docs, originally collected as a microfich iirc, at https://archive.org/details/MilitaryInSpace/Space-001/

It spans a very long period from 50s to 90s iirc, and I think some of the OTA reports in it may be useful.

I suspect that as ever the intersections between programmes will be the most fertile areas for new hstory, see e.g. the attached AW&ST item from 1988.

[LittleBird]

While not an official report this 2003 history seminar on the UK's response to SDI is fascinating:

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/assets/icbh-witness/sdi.pdf

[Jim]

LACE/RME
Delta 180 VSE
Delta 182 TVE
Delta 183 Delta-Star
MSX
MSTI(s)
Starlab
Starbird
AFP-675 CIRRIS
SKIRT
CLEMENTINE

[Blackstar]

LACE/RME
Delta 180 VSE
Delta 182 TVE
Delta 183 Delta-Star
MSX
MSTI(s)
Starlab
Starbird
AFP-675 CIRRIS
SKIRT
CLEMENTINE

Thanks for that list. Should it include LOSAT-X?

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2700/1

[Jim]

LACE/RME
Delta 180 VSE
Delta 182 TVE
Delta 183 Delta-Star
MSX
MSTI(s)
Starlab
Starbird
AFP-675 CIRRIS
SKIRT
CLEMENTINE

Thanks for that list. Should it include LOSAT-X?

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2700/1

I forgot about that one.

[Vahe231991]

... and for context, here are the YouTube links to Reagan's pre-briefing announcement of SDI to "High Levels Defense officials", followed by his "Address to the Nation", both on March 23, 1983:

Any guess on the origin of the "aerial photographs" shown in his address?

The aerial photographs of Cuba, Grenada, and Nicaragua you mention were taken by the SR-71 Blackbird in the early 1980s.

[Hog]

... and for context, here are the YouTube links to Reagan's pre-briefing announcement of SDI to "High Levels Defense officials", followed by his "Address to the Nation", both on March 23, 1983:

Any guess on the origin of the "aerial photographs" shown in his address?

The aerial photographs of Cuba, Grenada, and Nicaragua you mention were taken by the SR-71 Blackbird in the early 1980s.

Same answer as Blackstar's post #3 of this very thread.  Did your post add value?? (I mean value to the forum, not your "post count" or "posts per day ratio" or whatever your usual necroposting motivations are.)

[Blackstar]

Monday evening I will have an article in The Space Review about the Delta 180 mission. That mission, also known as the Vector Sum Experiment, was launched in September 1986 and the interceptor spacecraft collided with the Delta II upper-stage in a head-on intercept. It also carried various sensors for imaging both the interceptor and a ground-launched rocket.

The mission was classified, but one week after the test, SDIO held a press conference and talked about it extensively. They released a lot of photos. Several of the photos I have were originally classified "Secret" and then have "Unclassified" stamped over them, which is kinda cool. Gives it a neat Cold War feeling.

There are some interesting questions about this mission. A big one I have is if the government would have gone public if the mission had failed. All the pre-mission information does not say anything about an actual interception, so they could have kept the mission goals secret if they had not done an intercept. In fact, if all they had done was gather sensor data, they still could have claimed that it was successful. That said, the mission was an amazing bit of systems engineering and management--it was less than two years from a "go" decision to the launch.

I have a lot of great photographs of hardware and the test during this experiment, but I'll only use about half of what I have for this article. I really wanted to write a well-illustrated article for Space Chronicle, which runs high-quality color photos, but I got tired with how BIS treats its writers. I may run something in Quest, but they don't do color photos, which is disappointing.

[Blackstar]

While not an official report this 2003 history seminar on the UK's response to SDI is fascinating:

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/assets/icbh-witness/sdi.pdf

Aaron Bateman's upcoming book is going to delve into this in greater detail. He has information on how Thatcher and her government responded to SDI. Naturally it was complicated. Thatcher was interested in cooperating for several reasons, not necessarily because she shared Reagan's vision for SDI. But maintaining a good relationship with the United States and access to American technology and particularly intelligence information was important to Thatcher.

Thatcher was much more in favor of cooperating with the United States on missile defense, but she had members of her government who were opposed and who actively sought to undermine her. A few weeks ago I heard a former UK scientist who was involved in the work say that he had been told by a senior government official to not do what the prime minister had ordered.

[LittleBird]

While not an official report this 2003 history seminar on the UK's response to SDI is fascinating:

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/assets/icbh-witness/sdi.pdf

Aaron Bateman's upcoming book is going to delve into this in greater detail. He has information on how Thatcher and her government responded to SDI. Naturally it was complicated. Thatcher was interested in cooperating for several reasons, not necessarily because she shared Reagan's vision for SDI. But maintaining a good relationship with the United States and access to American technology and particularly intelligence information was important to Thatcher.

Thatcher was much more in favor of cooperating with the United States on missile defense, but she had members of her government who were opposed and who actively sought to undermine her. A few weeks ago I heard a former UK scientist who was involved in the work say that he had been told by a senior government official to not do what the prime minister had ordered.

I look forward to it. That 2003 seminar I linked to produced a proceedings book of about 100 pages which really does make fascinating reading. Particpants include Heseltine, Charles Powell, Roy Domett and numerous others whose names will mean somthing to Brits of a certain age. It was run by the doyen of strategy academics in the UK, Lawrence Freedman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Freedman

One intriguing vignette is that she was a keen reader of Aviation Week---one can almost hear that familiar voice saying "Now Gen Abrahamson, is it really true that you can ..." ?

[Blackstar]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4622/1

Smashing satellites as part of the Delta 180 Strategic Defense Initiative mission
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, July 17, 2023

In September 1986, two American satellites smashed into each other high in the skies over the Pacific Ocean, creating a spectacular shower of sparks and streaks, and making a powerful statement. This was no accident, but a deliberate test as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—nicknamed “Star Wars” by opponents and the media—and one of the most impressive examples of rapid spacecraft development of the Cold War.

The mission was designated Delta 180, named after the vehicle number of the Delta II rocket that launched it into space. Although it was an incredible rapid engineering accomplishment—going from program start to successful space intercept in less than 18 months—it was also a project with substantial domestic and international political impact. Delta 180 was intended to silence critics of the Star Wars program in the United States, but also to provide negotiating ammunition before the Reykjavik Summit in October, where President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met to discuss nuclear disarmament. The Reykjavik Summit ran into a significant stumbling block when Reagan refused Gorbachev’s demand to abandon SDI, raising the provocative question of whether Delta 180 had bolstered Reagan’s resolve, and maybe prevented him from achieving greater success at the summit.

[hoku]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4622/1

Smashing satellites as part of the Delta 180 Strategic Defense Initiative mission
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, July 17, 2023
<snip>
The program was named Vector Sum.

Isn't a codename supposed to obfuscate the purpose of a project? Who came up with the idea to choose Vector Sum, which is a most concise description of the function of an interceptor vehicle, for this (secret SDI) program?   

[Jim]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4622/1

Smashing satellites as part of the Delta 180 Strategic Defense Initiative mission
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, July 17, 2023
<snip>
The program was named Vector Sum.

Isn't a codename supposed to obfuscate the purpose of a project? Who came up with the idea to choose Vector Sum, which is a most concise description of the function of an interceptor vehicle, for this (secret SDI) program?   

I believe it is not a real code word

[Blackstar]

Yes, I don't believe it was a code word. I think it was the APL internal name for the project. I don't have any declassified documents from the program itself, but it would not surprise me if SDIO always referred to it simply as Delta 180.

[hoku]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4622/1

Smashing satellites as part of the Delta 180 Strategic Defense Initiative mission
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, July 17, 2023
<snip>
The program was named Vector Sum.

Isn't a codename supposed to obfuscate the purpose of a project? Who came up with the idea to choose Vector Sum, which is a most concise description of the function of an interceptor vehicle, for this (secret SDI) program?   

I believe it is not a real code word

Thanks for the clarification! I guess it fits in with "Brilliant Eyes", "Brilliant Pebbles" and "Thrusted Vector" as a two-word descriptive moniker.

[hoku]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4622/1

Smashing satellites as part of the Delta 180 Strategic Defense Initiative mission
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, July 17, 2023
<snip>
What discussions about the test took place within the White House before and after the test, and how did they affect policy?

Somewhat surprising (at least to me) the official briefing by Lt Gen Abrahamson to the president on the "technically significant results" of Delta 180 (and plans for 181) did not take place before March 1987, i.e. 6+ months after the flight of Delta 180.

https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/public/digitallibrary/smof/cos/bakerhoward/box-004/40-27-6912132-004-022-2017.pdf

Edit: this briefing might have been in preparation of a meeting of Sec of State Shultz with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze in Moscow on April 14/15, 1987.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB238/russian/Final1987-04-14%20Gorbachev-Shultz.pdf

[Blackstar]

Somewhat surprising (at least to me) the official briefing by Lt Gen Abrahamson to the president on the "technically significant results" of Delta 180 (and plans for 181) did not take place before March 1987, i.e. 6+ months after the flight of Delta 180.

Reagan probably got a short briefing after the test. In addition to doing the interception, there were a lot of sensor observations. Crunching that data would have taken time. But he could have been told about the basics a week or two after the mission.

[hoku]

LACE/RME
Delta 180 VSE
Delta 182 TVE
Delta 183 Delta-Star
MSX
MSTI(s)
Starlab
Starbird
AFP-675 CIRRIS
SKIRT
CLEMENTINE

Thanks for that list. Should it include LOSAT-X?

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2700/1

I forgot about that one.

"SDIO Data Center Overview" has a complete(?) list of experiments (including air and ground-based experiments/facilities) as of Jan 1991. The doc also has info on where the data were (or were to be) archived, and a few (badly scanned) pages with sample data.

[Blackstar]

"SDIO Data Center Overview" has a complete(?) list of experiments (including air and ground-based experiments/facilities) as of Jan 1991. The doc also has info on where the data were (or were to be) archived, and a few (badly scanned) pages with sample data.

Interesting discovery. That acronym list includes the Airborne Optical Adjunct, which was a weird name for a 767 modified with a laser. My memory is that AOA was really a tactical experimental platform, only good for shooting at small missiles in the atmosphere.

I seem to remember that the 767 sat in storage for many years before being scrapped. I also think it was a very early 767, maybe #2 or 3? So it's a shame that the airframe was not preserved.

Update: AOA was apparently modified from the prototype 767-200, so it was the very first 767, and it was scrapped.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_767


Photo attached.

[hoku]

"History of the Space Based Laser (SBL) Concept Definition" - conference paper from 1991 with nice line drawings of the various concept phases.

[LittleBird]

Does this thread include the 70s missions that were in some sense precursors to SDI and/or Space Domain Awareness but didn't fly ? [Edit: In absence of a no, I'll assume answer is yes ;-) ... So have now attached the docs as well.]

i) If so then here's Hysat, new to me but a nuclear powered space surveillance mission design from the mid 70s that evolved to the unflown SBSS. It was mentioned in a FAS page: https://spp.fas.org/military/program/track/overview.htm#N_28_

63428F Space Surveillance Technology SBSS

In fiscal year 1976, the Space Infrared Sensor Program and the early phases of the SBSS Program were initiated. During its conceptual phase, SBSS had been referred to as Deep Space Surveillance Satellite or Low Altitude Surveillance Satellite.(28)

The 1977 Hysat Study, a part of the Deep Space Surveillance System program (DSSS), was sponsored by the USAF Space & Missile Systems Organization. Fairchild investigated the applicability of nuclear radioisotope heat sources for this mission. The rather sizable electrical power requirement (1500-3500 watts (e)) is provided by rollup solar arrays, alongside or atop the spacecraft, and attached to the upper body.(29)

The Space Based Surveillance System (SBSS) concept, which called for the deployment of four satellites in equatorial orbits at an altitude of 1100 kilometers, with the possibility of additional satellites in inclined orbits for polar coverage. The satellites were to be launched by the Shuttle using the Inertial Upper Stage, and have a design life of five years.

The Fairchild study that draws on earlier GE Rockwell and Hughes work is here: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/07/268/7268806.pdf

The GAO's assessment of where it subsequently went is here: https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-86-45s-17.pdf

ii) If not then where should I move this to ? One of the Teal Ruby threads ?

[LittleBird]

Here's what seems to me at least to be an interesting link  between Hysat/DSSS and  hoku's post above about MSX and the early days of infrared astronomy in space: https://users.physics.unc.edu/~gcsloan/library/2012/price/price08.pdf

In the late 1960s, ARPA and the Air Force SAMSO had very ambitious goals for space-
based infrared surveillance and a succession of Air Force company grade officers pushed the
technology and flight tests. At ARPA, Maj. Bob Paulson provided Project 1366 funds to
SAMSO for the Autonetics Stellar Radiation Sensor and the Hughes HI STAR telescopes and to
AFCRL to fly them. At SAMSO, Capt. Ted Jenks directed the Autonetics SRS effort while
Capt. Bill Crabtree did the same for the Hughes HI STAR sensors. The SRS and HI STAR
provided the technical demonstration for the first proposed operational infrared surveillance
system, the Deep Space Surveillance System (DSSS), which was to fly by the end of the 1970’s.
However, a satellite demonstration was needed and SAMSO took the initial steps in 1971 by
flying two celestial mapping satellites. The Autonetics Celestial InfraRed Mapper (CIRM) was
an analog of the SRS except that it had a two color infrared focal plane and was cooled by a large
super-critical helium cryostat. This experiment was launched on 6 June 1971 and surveyed 38%
of the sky during its brief 138 minute mission. Unfortunately, cross-talk from the attitude
control system into the sensor electronics limited the observations to the very brightest infrared
sources. The Hughes HI STAR class Celestial Mapping Program (CMP) instrument was inserted
into a sun-synchronous 793 km altitude circular orbit on 17 October 1971 on what was planned
to be a long duration experiment as the sensor was cooled by a closed cycle Viulleumier cooler.
However, two problems arose that compromised performance and lifetime. A higher priority
experiment on the payload required that the satellite be oriented such that the CMP sensor
scanned parallel to the Earth’s horizon rather than through the zenith as preferred. The photon
background from off-axis Earth radiation in that configuration reduced sensitivity. The high
priority package was to operate for the first several weeks and then emphasis was to shift to
CMP and zenith scans. Unfortunately, the cryocooler flex lines across the scan gimbal began to
leak after two weeks in orbit and CMP only obtained three orbits of data early in the mission.
Although SAMSO considered CIRM and CMP as failures and the problems with the CMP
cryocooler put a taint on mechanical low temperature coolers that lasted for decades, CMP did
obtain redundant coverage in two infrared spectral bands on about as much sky (82%) as HI
STAR and HI STAR South combined and demonstrated the feasibility of infrared space-based
surveillance from an orbital platform. Holman, Smith and Autio (1976) also used the CMP data
to demonstrate that particle radiation was not an insurmountable barrier to space-based infrared
astronomy missions (see also McCarthy and Autio, 1978).

To me one interesting aspect is how much "iceberg" there was already "underwater", i.e. pre existing R&D in the 70s and 80s *before* Reagan's speech. Bears on the question of the balance between Teller and co's X ray lasers, and other technologies which may have actually been both more mature and far more consequential.

[Blackstar]

To me one interesting aspect is how much "iceberg" there was already "underwater, i.e. pre existing R&D in the 70s and 80s *before* Reagan's speech. Bears on the question of the balance between Teller and co's X ray lasers, and other technologies which may have actually been both more mature and far more consequential.

I think that uncovering this would be really difficult. You'd have to go deep into the technical literature and understand it, and do a lot of interviews to figure out how the improvements in sensor technology happened. And a lot of that stuff would be classified. It might be doable for somebody working inside the field, like a DoD historian. It could be interesting stuff, but it's probably a topic that is never going to be really explored for that reason.

[LittleBird]

To me one interesting aspect is how much "iceberg" there was already "underwater", i.e. pre existing R&D in the 70s and 80s *before* Reagan's speech. Bears on the question of the balance between Teller and co's X ray lasers, and other technologies which may have actually been both more mature and far more consequential.

I think that uncovering this would be really difficult. You'd have to go deep into the technical literature and understand it, and do a lot of interviews to figure out how the improvements in sensor technology happened. And a lot of that stuff would be classified. It might be doable for somebody working inside the field, like a DoD historian. It could be interesting stuff, but it's probably a topic that is never going to be really explored for that reason.

Indeed, but my ambitions are really much more limited-perhaps I gave the wrong impression. I think underwater was a poor choice of words, I think I meant invisible to the general public rather than classified.

 I'd just like to read the stuff which is already out there e.g. the above memoir by Price or the 3 volume ARPA history that includes some of their SDI stuff iirc. And I'm only really interested in the science and tech that was never classified (or classifiable) e.g. that which really just needs an understanding of Stefan-Boltzmann law, or optics, or ...

[Blackstar]

Reagan Library has a Star Wars exhibit:

https://www.reaganfoundation.org/library-museum/special-exhibits/star-wars/

[Skyrocket]

"SDIO Data Center Overview" has a complete(?) list of experiments (including air and ground-based experiments/facilities) as of Jan 1991. The doc also has info on where the data were (or were to be) archived, and a few (badly scanned) pages with sample data.

I nearly forgot about BMDO's (initiated under SDIO) "Bow Shock" or "Bowshock" missions, which to were to measure the bow-shock UV emissions from reentering bodies at different speeds and heights. Not quite sure, why Bow Shock is listed here as "boost phase experiments".

Bowshock 1 and 2 were suborbital missions.

But Bowshock 3 was orbital - and somewhat special. The satellite was called Skipper. The instruments and the bus were built in the USA by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, while the propulsion module, solar power systems were built in Russia by Moscow Aviation Institute (RIAME/MAI). Russia also provided the piggy-back launch on a Molniya-M rocket. The mission was launch successfully, but eventually failed due to faulty wiring in the power system.

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/skipper.htm

[Blackstar]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4874/1

Ronald Reagan and a goal far, far away: Star Wars and the Strategic Defense Initiative in Simi Valley
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, October 14, 2024

In April, Iran launched hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel, which shot most of them out of the sky (with American help), rendering the attack ineffective. Soon afterwards, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed giving credit for the successful defense to President Ronald Reagan, who in 1983 had started the Strategic Defense Initiative, labeled “Star Wars” by its critics, which was intended to defend the continental United States against thousands of nuclear warheads fired from the Soviet Union.

The writer, not missing a partisan opportunity, also took a swipe at President Biden for opposing SDI decades earlier while he was a senator. It was a particularly shallow bit of political writing, because ballistic missile defense existed long before Reagan’s SDI, and long after it, and there is a big difference between defending against thousands of strategic missile reentry vehicles, and hundreds of regional ones. An October Iranian ballistic missile attack, where many Iranian missiles got through the defenses yet mostly missed their targets, highlighted the point that had those Iranian missiles been nuclear-armed, only one of the dozens that made it to the ground would have been devastating.

These recent events illustrate the degree to which we still lack a good grasp of the legacy of Reagan’s proposal. A recently concluded exhibit at the Reagan Library and Museum tried to tackle that subject, but mostly failed.

[hoku]

Thanks for the interesting article - this story has many facets indeed! But really, they couldn't come up with anything better than "SSS", "ANDES", and "ANDI" when they thought about rebranding "SDI"?

Patented yes, Yoda was.

https://patents.google.com/patent/USD265754S/en

[Blackstar]

Thanks for the interesting article - this story has many facets indeed! But really, they couldn't come up with anything better than "SSS", "ANDES", and "ANDI" when they thought about rebranding "SDI"?

Yeah, that surprised me too. If you don't like the name they stuck you with, then you have to come up with something that's better. Where's Don Draper when you need him?

[hoku]

The attached cartoon is from jan or Feb 1983, i.e. pre-SDI announcement. The 100 kg reactor core of Kosmos 1402 with 100 kg of 95% enriched Uranium 235 was about the re-enter.

[Blackstar]

The Reagan Museum exhibit had a bunch of cartoons about SDI. I'll give them credit that they covered almost all the bases on the subject, including the cultural reaction.

NASA's HQ history archive used to actively keep a political cartoons file with space-themed cartoons in it. I don't know if they have kept up with it, but they did through the 1990s and it was a great resource for anybody who wanted to show how NASA events were being covered from a cultural angle.

[hoku]

By 1987 they apparently had given up on the idea of rebranding, and instead went for swag and giveaways:

"C40067-3, President Reagan (holding bumper sticker "SDI could ruin a Nuclear Bomb's whole day"), Vice President Bush and Caspar Weinberger with Craig Fuller and General Abrahamson at a Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting in the conference room at the Pentagon, Washington, DC. 04/08/1987."

https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/audiovisual/white-house-photo-collection-galleries/president-work

[hoku]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4874/1

Ronald Reagan and a goal far, far away: Star Wars and the Strategic Defense Initiative in Simi Valley
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, October 14, 2024

<snip>

Critics of SDI pointed out that the Soviets could easily build more missiles and add decoys to their existing weapons, swamping the defensive shield. The Soviets could also engage in other deceptive practices and alternative weapons, like cruise missiles. None of these options available to the Soviets required new technological breakthroughs, although somewhat bizarrely, the Soviets sought to develop entirely new anti-satellite systems to destroy SDI weapons.

<snip>

After the end of the Cold War, it became clear that the Soviet threat was exaggerated and misunderstood. The mere fact that the superpower Reagan warned about so alarmingly in the early 1980s crumbled so easily within a decade demonstrated that Soviet might had been overestimated, including by the Soviets themselves.

So were the critics right, or might some version of SDI actually have worked quite well (thanks due to the Soviet's underwhelming capabilities and technology)?

[Blackstar]

So were the critics right, or might some version of SDI actually have worked quite well (thanks due to the Soviet's underwhelming capabilities and technology)?

I think the critics were right. The number of Soviet reentry vehicles was in the thousands, every single one of them with a nuke. As I noted in the article, 99% successful intercepts would still result in a few dozen nukes hitting US soil.

[Bizgec]

https://thespacereview.com/article/4622/1

Smashing satellites as part of the Delta 180 Strategic Defense Initiative mission
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, July 17, 2023
<snip>
The program was named Vector Sum.

Isn't a codename supposed to obfuscate the purpose of a project? Who came up with the idea to choose Vector Sum, which is a most concise description of the function of an interceptor vehicle, for this (secret SDI) program?   

The attached image is a representation of a vector difference, not a vector sum...

[Spiceman]

The Soviets had by the 1980's close from 40 000 nukes. Admittedly, not all of them MIRV on ICBMs. But, at such numbers, only 0.1 percent of 40 000 is still 40 nukes.  At 10 megatons each, that 400 megatons. For 25 megatons warheads: 1000 megatons.

And if that volley  obliterate that corner of the USA... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis

... then the death toll is still utterly appalling: 10 to 20 million dead. GAME OVER.

ABM was a lose-lose game. Even if 99.99% of Soviet nukes were intercepted, only one 10 megaton warhead falling on a large city kills million people.  GAME OVER.

------

Remember that even in Watchmen alternate reality, with Dr Manhattan as a full-bodied ABM, Ozymandias  tells Night Owl II that the scared Soviets simply build more nukes, up to 50 000 or more;  to the point even the glowing blue naked superguy wouldn't stop everything if shit hit the fan.

[Jorge]

The Soviets had by the 1980's close from 40 000 nukes. Admittedly, not all of them MIRV on ICBMs.

"Not all" is a huge understatement. They probably never had more than about 10,000 deliverable ICBM warheads at any time.

[Blackstar]

The Soviets had by the 1980's close from 40 000 nukes. Admittedly, not all of them MIRV on ICBMs.

"Not all" is a huge understatement. They probably never had more than about 10,000 deliverable ICBM warheads at any time.

I did a quick look when I wrote the article and pulled up the 1981 edition of Soviet Military Power. (If you are not familiar with SMP, look up the Wikipedia entry on it, but I can explain more later.)

There's a table in there with Soviet ballistic missiles. It stated that they had 306 SS-18s with 8-10 reentry vehicles apiece, and 300 SS-19s with 1-6 reentry vehicles apiece. That's a minimum of 2748 reentry vehicles. Even if you knock off 20% due to launch failures, that still gives you 2198 reentry vehicles as the low end. That's a lot of RVs to deal with. If all you were doing was shooting RVs, then you want a minimum of two interceptors per RV, which means nearly 4400 interceptors. And of course you would have to assume that a certain percentage of those interceptors would not be available when you needed them, so you would probably need 5000+ interceptors.

The equation is more complicated than that. You would really want to hit the missiles in boost phase, before they deploy their RVs, because then you can take out a bunch at a time. But boost phase intercept is really hard to do. And you also have to deal with decoys. What if the Soviets put 3 decoys for each of those ICBMs? That adds 900 additional targets and you either have to be really confident that you can discriminate between decoy and warhead, or you have to target all the decoys as well, meaning an extra 2000 interceptors, right? Now we're up to 7000 interceptors.

Now extend this to the Brilliant Pebbles concept, where you have all your interceptors in space. That creates a big problem because it means that most of your interceptors are going to be nowhere near the things they need to intercept. It is no use having a thousand interceptors over the southern hemisphere. So how many interceptors do you really need? The number probably gets into the tens of thousands of orbiting satellites, and you have to track all of them and compute their trajectories relative to what they need to intercept. And you have to do this with 1989 computing technology.

I'm just spitballing all of this, but you start to see how immensely complex the problem was. I'll post an image here of an Israeli airbase that was recently targeted by Iran and you can see all the craters nearby that were formed by missiles that were not intercepted. (https://horsdoeuvresofbattle.blog/2024/10/04/imint-irans-strike-on-nevatim-airbase/ ) It's easy to imagine that if just one of those had a nuke, it would have wiped out the airbase. It's a numbers game and it does not work in favor of the defender.


Addenda: I was only doing rough calculations of ICBMs. They also had submarine launched ballistic missiles that would increase the number of RVs that had to be intercepted. So you can see how difficult it was.

[hoku]

The Soviets had by the 1980's close from 40 000 nukes. Admittedly, not all of them MIRV on ICBMs.

"Not all" is a huge understatement. They probably never had more than about 10,000 deliverable ICBM warheads at any time.

Given how expensive it is to maintain those warheads (half-lifetime of Tritium, etc.), and that the Soviet warheads reportedly had a much shorter shelf life than the US ones, 10,000 deliverable ICBM warheads must have been one of the major drags on their economy. Thus maybe the following claim had some merit after all?

https://thespacereview.com/article/4874/1

Ronald Reagan and a goal far, far away: Star Wars and the Strategic Defense Initiative in Simi Valley
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, October 14, 2024

<snip>
 In the 1990s, some claimed that SDI led to the downfall of the Soviet Union, although Soviet defense expenditures were so high even by the 1970s—up to 20% of their government budget—that they were effectively bankrupting the country, and there is little evidence that the Soviets substantially increased spending to respond to SDI.

[Blackstar]

The Soviets had by the 1980's close from 40 000 nukes. Admittedly, not all of them MIRV on ICBMs. But, at such numbers, only 0.1 percent of 40 000 is still 40 nukes.  At 10 megatons each, that 400 megatons. For

Most of those were tactical weapons. You have to look at the strategic weapons.

[Blackstar]

The Soviets had by the 1980's close from 40 000 nukes. Admittedly, not all of them MIRV on ICBMs.

"Not all" is a huge understatement. They probably never had more than about 10,000 deliverable ICBM warheads at any time.

Given how expensive it is to maintain those warheads (half-lifetime of Tritium, etc.), and that the Soviet warheads reportedly had a much shorter shelf life than the US ones, 10,000 deliverable ICBM warheads must have been one of the major drags on their economy. Thus maybe the following claim had some merit after all?

https://thespacereview.com/article/4874/1

Ronald Reagan and a goal far, far away: Star Wars and the Strategic Defense Initiative in Simi Valley
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, October 14, 2024

<snip>
 In the 1990s, some claimed that SDI led to the downfall of the Soviet Union, although Soviet defense expenditures were so high even by the 1970s—up to 20% of their government budget—that they were effectively bankrupting the country, and there is little evidence that the Soviets substantially increased spending to respond to SDI.

Note that I got the 20% from a former US arms negotiator who referred to it in his book. I'll look for the reference. I haven't looked at the CIA intelligence reports on this, because I was not doing deep research. But he was at Reykjavik for the summit, and he later wrote that what was driving Gorbachev to the negotiating table was the immense cost of his military. He said that the CIA was engaged in huge arguments about whether it was (I'm guessing) 7-9% of their GDP on defense vs. 5-7% of their GDP, when the reality was that it was more like 20%. They were bankrupting themselves. I don't think we have ever had a good understanding of the Soviet (or now the Russian) economy. It was (is) relatively small, and they spent a lot more of their relative spending on military stuff.


Update: It was Ken Adelman, who wrote a book. He did a fascinating interview here:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/28D0GEYyJMYJrEw3RQXpfN

Go to the 13-minute mark in that interview where he mentions the arms spending.

[Blackstar]

So were the critics right, or might some version of SDI actually have worked quite well (thanks due to the Soviet's underwhelming capabilities and technology)?

I think the critics were right. The number of Soviet reentry vehicles was in the thousands, every single one of them with a nuke. As I noted in the article, 99% successful intercepts would still result in a few dozen nukes hitting US soil.

I'll also add to this: I was a teenager at the time and I supported SDI. Only later in Reagan's term did I realize how unworkable it really was.

Also, it's not quite right to look at SDI only in the context of a perfect shield. There was a question of the benefit of a shield that was, say, 90% effective. What would that do? Some argued that this would be even more destabilizing, because it would force the Soviets onto a hair trigger launch policy, and might also force them to do things like seek out decapitating strikes to wipe out the American military and political leadership in order to preserve their strategic capability. When I was in college, I was planning to go into studying nuclear deterrence and strategic theory in grad school. I changed my mind after awhile and decided to go into space policy instead. I changed my mind before the Berlin Wall came down, and then once the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no need for deterrence theorists anymore, so that field mostly evaporated by the early 1990s. And then new revelations from the Soviet side made it clear that a lot of American strategic weapons theory was bogus. It was based upon a lot of false assumptions about how the Soviets would react and what they were doing and why.

[edkyle99]

Nukes was one thing, but look at what has been happening in just the past two years in Ukraine and the Middle East.  Missile defenses aren't perfect, but imagine the alternative if these conventional munition missile barrages had gone unopposed.  Someone was right to clamor for missile defense R&D back then, I think, even if it worked out differently than then-expected.

 - Ed Kyle

[Blackstar]

Nukes was one thing, but look at what has been happening in just the past two years in Ukraine and the Middle East.  Missile defenses aren't perfect, but imagine the alternative if these conventional munition missile barrages had gone unopposed.  Someone was right to clamor for missile defense R&D back then, I think, even if it worked out differently than then-expected.

 - Ed Kyle

That wasn't really the issue in my article. It was about SDI, not whether missile defense in general makes any sense. I don't know anybody who argues that no missile defense is the right policy.

[Blackstar]

I spouted off a bunch of numbers up-thread for the size of the Soviet reentry vehicle threat that would have had to be negated by the SDIO program. My numbers were rather low, because I was only counting the RVs on the SS-18 and SS-19, the most modern ICBMs then in the Soviet inventory. The Soviets also had older, less accurate (and less survivable) ICBMs in their inventory and I did not count those.

Here is a chart from the 1985 1986 edition of Soviet Military Power that indicates that Soviet ICBM reentry vehicles totaled more than 6000 at the time. This chart does not include Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile RVs. If I can get a sharper version of this chart, I'll replace this one.

[Blackstar]

Up-thread I mentioned Soviet Military Power, which was a US government publication during the 1980s and a rather remarkable one. It was the first time that the United States government released an unclassified assessment of Soviet military capabilities based upon US intelligence collection. Now there were numbers that were available before SMP for things like how many ICBMs the Soviets had, but those numbers were either released in official leaks to the press (somebody from the intelligence community briefing somebody from the New York Times), or in information provided to Congress in reports. SMP was a much more extensive effort to publicly share the information in order to justify Reagan's defense buildup. There is a Wikipedia entry with links to most of the editions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Military_Power

Some of those pdfs are rather poor, and it's a shame that nobody has done a good job of producing high-quality scans of the publication.

Somebody really should write a Ph.D. dissertation about SMP and publish a book on it, digging into the history of how it got approved and then assembled. There must have been big arguments within the US intelligence community about what information could be released and what was too sensitive to release. Do we publicly state that we know that the Soviet bomber has X range instead of Y range? Will we reveal our sources and methods if we put certain information into the public? I bet there was a lot of debate about that, as well as ways to conceal what was known. The Soviets also put together their own version, which I remember was rather sloppy. And I know that there was a private publication that was an annotated version of SMP that sought to point out that many of the numbers were exaggerated or lacked proper context.

[Ariane7]

CGI genius Hazegrayart has done it again: Titan-Barbarian and Zenit Star.



Awesome.

[Blackstar]

CGI genius Hazegrayart has done it again: Titan-Barbarian and Zenit Star.

Zenith Star is a bit of an enigma to me. Although Regan appeared with it and was pitched about it, and the company was working on it, I don't know when it peaked and/or how "real" it actually was. My ignorant impression is that it was getting underway at a time when attitudes were already shifting away from big lasers and towards other approaches like Brilliant Pebbles. And of course ZS may have been one of the reasons why people started thinking in different terms: they looked at how much it was going to cost just to build a single prototype and decided that this approach would bankrupt the country.




Update: Added two Zenith Star images that I just stumbled upon. The cartoon is by some guy in Japan who for some reason draws anime girls and satellites. Sometimes they are really obscure satellites, like weather satellites. He decided to do one on Zenith Star. I have no idea why.

[Ariane7]

Big chemical lasers would be eye-watering expensive if deployed to kill ICBMs. Note that the Soviet plans for Skif ( = Polyus) quickly shifted from killing ICBMs (ABM) to ASAT: killing satellites.

As far as SDI was concerned, since its early history in 1979 it was split into three bickering factions
-big chemical lasers (Maxwell Hunter)
-kinetic killers: Smart Rocks (Daniel O. Graham)
-Excalibur nuclear pumped lasers (Edward Teller and his goons)

[Blackstar]

Big chemical lasers would be eye-watering expensive if deployed to kill ICBMs. Note that the Soviet plans for Skif ( = Polyus) quickly shifted from killing ICBMs (ABM) to ASAT: killing satellites.

I think Skif was always an ASAT:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4598/1

[Jim]

CGI genius Hazegrayart has done it again: Titan-Barbarian and Zenit Star.

Should have only 4 exhaust bells on first stage and there was no fire in the hole engine start for the second stage.

[dchill]

I know the "Space Based Laser (SBL)" version of Zenith Star that I worked on at Lockheed Martin was a big chemical laser based system.  I would think the animation would most likely show streams of the chemical reactants streaming out the exhaust ports.  I always imagined it'd be a light show much more spectacular than a urine dump from an Apollo capsule.

[Blackstar]

Just came across this 1977 BBC program. I was not aware of it. Lots of discussion about using lasers and particle beam weapons in space to shoot down stuff. Note that this was six years before Reagan and SDI.

Interesting what they say about reconnaissance satellites. The person I'm most interested in is retired Major General George Keegan, who had spent five years as head of Air Force Intelligence. On this program Keegan talks about stuff that nobody else talked about, like using satellites to detect Soviet radar signals.

[LittleBird]

Just came across this 1977 BBC program. I was not aware of it. Lots of discussion about using lasers and particle beam weapons in space to shoot down stuff. Note that this was six years before Reagan and SDI.

Interesting what they say about reconnaissance satellites. The person I'm most interested in is retired Major General George Keegan, who had spent five years as head of Air Force Intelligence. On this program Keegan talks about stuff that nobody else talked about, like using satellites to detect Soviet radar signals.

Here's how the Telegraph reviewed it (October ‘78 it turns out )  and a sample of the contemporary UK press on related stories.

[LittleBird]

Looks like it was a two part programme and that's part 1, second part looks just as interesting if anyone can find it.
Run times add up to 85 min which explains why the Telegraph's review had that number. Haven't watched it yet so apologies for any misunderstanding. I remember it did get a lot of attention at the time.

[StraumliBlight]

Looks like it was a two part programme and that's part 1, second part looks just as interesting if anyone can find it.

Part 2 is uploaded here:

https://m.ok.ru/video/5340266695215

[LittleBird]

I remember it did get a lot of attention at the time.

As I had vaguely remembered, it was a cover story in Radio Times (BBC only, it and the non-BBC TV times were nearest UK equivalent to TV guide in those days)

[Blackstar]

I haven't watched all of it. Those that do, post your thoughts, please.

At the moment I'm really interested in Keegan. I've found several documents where he was railing about the range estimates for the Backfire bomber, where he disagreed with the CIA's (new) estimates. He hated the CIA's intelligence analysis in general. He also pushed the theory that the Soviet Union was developing many new laser weapons.

Keegan figured prominently in William Burrows' best-selling book "Deep Black." He was a hard-liner who believed that the Soviet threat was being underestimated.

[LittleBird]

Just came across this 1977 BBC program. I was not aware of it. Lots of discussion about using lasers and particle beam weapons in space to shoot down stuff. Note that this was six years before Reagan and SDI.

Interesting what they say about reconnaissance satellites. The person I'm most interested in is retired Major General George Keegan, who had spent five years as head of Air Force Intelligence. On this program Keegan talks about stuff that nobody else talked about, like using satellites to detect Soviet radar signals.

Here's how the Telegraph reviewed it, and a sample of the contemporary UK press on related stories.

I don't want to upload whole AvLeak piece but the first 2 pages gives the context of the Sunday Times article from a few days later and shows figure that was  redrawn. The beam weapon in the pic is the Army's Sipapu concept.

[Blackstar]

Whatever happened to particle beam weapons? We don't hear about them being discussed anymore, only lasers.

[StraumliBlight]

Whatever happened to particle beam weapons? We don't hear about them being discussed anymore, only lasers.

Pentagon Shelves Neutral Particle Beam Research [Sep 4, 2019]

Defense officials are taking a step back from one of its most ambitious research goals: launching a massive neutral-particle-beam generator, essentially a ray gun, into space to fry the electronics of enemy missiles. The funds will go instead toward more fundamental research aimed at making lasers more powerful, according to Michael Griffin, defense undersecretary for research and engineering.

[LittleBird]

And also

https://eandt.theiet.org/2020/11/10/dear-evil-engineer-has-time-finally-come-particle-beam-weapons

[catdlr]

Whatever happened to particle beam weapons? We don't hear about them being discussed anymore, only lasers.

Pentagon Shelves Neutral Particle Beam Research [Sep 4, 2019]

Defense officials are taking a step back from one of its most ambitious research goals: launching a massive neutral-particle-beam generator, essentially a ray gun, into space to fry the electronics of enemy missiles. The funds will go instead toward more fundamental research aimed at making lasers more powerful, according to Michael Griffin, defense undersecretary for research and engineering.

I guess the cost to make a "Death Star" is still beyond us.

[JulesVerneATV]

How much of it was real or just bluffing or smoke and mirrors, wasn't it a de-escalation and diplomacy tactic in the end?  Reagan was known to film and theater he was a sports entertainment commentator and would go on to narrate Army films maybe some of it was a show or a bluff like poker? The Russians were trying something, the Soviet Shuttle or Buran. The Soviets started to collapse, the Russians started to bankrupt and overall the spending did not have fans, it had a lot of political critics like Reagan's IranContra event, he wasnt the first guy showing stunning cognitive decline nor will he be the last,  he was the host of MCA Inc was a Democrat for a while and switched Republican supporting Nixon. Ronnie was from a different period his family were from before the 20th century the 1880s, he was before the motion picture was even a thing, Empires still existed and the nation state mostly didnt even exist, there were no space rocket nor satellites, he was caught on the Nixon tapes saying some pretty wild stuff about Africans and 'Shoes' and the Car didnt really exist in his time so it he sometimes was stunned by new stories or films with toy ships moving across a screen. He was a great speaker and reader, he often gave the public confidence the Narrative Presidency Ronald Reagan there were a lot of crazy SSTO designs like Hyperion, Rombus pushed. L.A. Times Archives in 1990  'Star Wars Device Explodes in Test Described as Successful'
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-01-27-fi-758-story.html
There was a Russian military anti-satellite system, the Polyus military test , also known as Polus, Skif-DM, or '17F19DM'
https://web.archive.org/web/20040815133801/http://www.k26.com/buran/Info/Polyus/polyus-energia.html
Barbarian in space: the secret space-laser battle station of the Cold War
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4598/1
High Endoatmospheric Defense Interceptor (HEDI) Technology Testing Program May 1989 then Lockheed Corporation awarded to develop an ABM system - the ERIS
'Despite the partial failure of the second test, the ERIS test program was considered fully successful'
https://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/eris.html
HEDI 89
https://archive.org/details/HighEndoatmosphericDefenseInterceptorHEDITechnologyTestingProgramMay1989/page/n171/mode/2up
'Polyus'
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/polyus.5501/

Whatever happened to particle beam weapons? We don't hear about them being discussed anymore, only lasers.

was any of it really happening? maybe its a bit like parapsychological UFO 'news' that would leak to the press or 'psychic powers' as a weapon, the scifi MarvelDC StarTrek StarWars 'magic' weapons I think you see them in Scifi tv shows now or Japan toons or Japanese Anime. However there are real things out there like advances in Railguns etc
C-Span talked about his book, The Men Who Stare at Goats
https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/the-men-who-stare-at-goats/152661
stories of studies of attempts to kill goats by staring at them magically or using JusticeLeague Xmen powers and 'stopping their hearts'.

Death-Beams and meaningless Ghostly Hocus-pocus Parapsychology?
https://ersby.blogspot.com/2017/03/pat-prices-remote-viewing-of-urdf-3.html

Pat Price’s remote viewing of URDF-3 is frequently cited as a great success of psychic functioning. The dramatic similarity of Price’s drawing of a gantry crane with the sketch based on photographic intel makes it a popular choice when listing evidence for ESP. But this needs to be put into some kind of context: Price generated a great deal of data. Stillman was given about four hours of taped conversation from days one and two, seventy-nine pages of transcripts from days three and four, and a total of thirty sketches.
Furthermore, Price was not completely blind to the nature of the target and also someone knowledgeable about the location specifically asked him to draw the crane. Given this, it is hardly surprising that, on occasion, Price described features that could reasonably be compared to the actual location.
The final word on the issue should go to Stillman who, in his conclusion, wrote:
“In trying to determine the validity of this remote viewing experiment, the worth of the data to the eventual user has to be considered. If the user had no way of checking, how could he differentiate the fact from the fiction? In the case of URDF-3, the only positive evidence of the rail-mounted gantry was far outweighed by the large amount of negative evidence noted in the body of this analysis.”

1991 news, Technology: Big bang greets slimmed down Star Wars
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12917554-400-technology-big-bang-greets-slimmed-down-star-wars/

The original SDI plan proposed by Ronald Reagan involved a thicket of weapons, including exotic lasers based in space, covering the United States and its allies with a global protective umbrella.

some comments on the religious sandbox

According to Peter Clausen, director of research for the Union of Conerned Scientists, if the Scud missiles had carried nuclear warheads, ‘the Patriot’s performance would not look so good: we would be mourning the destruction of Tel Aviv’.

Understanding the Concept of 'Star Wars'
https://www.realclearhistory.com/2018/03/22/understanding_the_concept_of_039star_wars039_1873.html
Snowstorm: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Buran Shuttle
https://www.spaceflighthistories.com/post/soviet-buran-shuttle

[Blackstar]

Whatever happened to particle beam weapons? We don't hear about them being discussed anymore, only lasers.

Pentagon Shelves Neutral Particle Beam Research [Sep 4, 2019]

Defense officials are taking a step back from one of its most ambitious research goals: launching a massive neutral-particle-beam generator, essentially a ray gun, into space to fry the electronics of enemy missiles. The funds will go instead toward more fundamental research aimed at making lasers more powerful, according to Michael Griffin, defense undersecretary for research and engineering.

I guess the cost to make a "Death Star" is still beyond us.

Golden Dome just got $25 billion, so they're making a down-payment on it.

[Blackstar]

How much of it was real or just bluffing or smoke and mirrors, wasn't it a de-escalation and diplomacy tactic in the end?

Define "real."

People are able to convince themselves that things they know are not true are true. And other people are willing to simply cash the checks.

I think there were certainly some people who legitimately believed that missile defense could work at the level required. But I think that over time, even those people realized that it could not. A defense that was 95% effective would be really expensive to achieve, but would also allow dozens of nuclear weapons to strike the United States. That was pretty clear back then, and it's pretty clear even today.

And note that the calculation takes on a lot different meaning when you're dealing with nukes. Israel claims that its defense system was 99% successful. But weapons still struck Tel Aviv. If only one of them had a nuclear warhead, that 99% success rate would not matter.

[ExGeek]

How much of it was real or just bluffing or smoke and mirrors, wasn't it a de-escalation and diplomacy tactic in the end?

Define "real."

People are able to convince themselves that things they know are not true are true. And other people are willing to simply cash the checks.

I think there were certainly some people who legitimately believed that missile defense could work at the level required. But I think that over time, even those people realized that it could not. A defense that was 95% effective would be really expensive to achieve, but would also allow dozens of nuclear weapons to strike the United States. That was pretty clear back then, and it's pretty clear even today.

And note that the calculation takes on a lot different meaning when you're dealing with nukes. Israel claims that its defense system was 99% successful. But weapons still struck Tel Aviv. If only one of them had a nuclear warhead, that 99% success rate would not matter.

And therein lies the folly in the whole enterprise of a nuclear protective "shield."  The number of "9s" you need (as in 99.9999....% successful) ups the cost into the realm of impossibility.  So if you build it, the discussion becomes how many nuclear strikes can get through and still consider the defense system successful?  It's all very Strangelovian.

[Apollo22]

Dumb stupid math, but order-of-magnitude reality check. Near the end of Cold War, the Soviets had north of 50 000 nukes.  Just three megaton-nukes on New York, Los Angeles and Chicago could kill a few dozens million americans.

50000*0.0001 = 5   or, in reverse: 100-0.0001% = 99.9999 % 

That's the shield efficiency needed... and still, three dozens million americans are incinerated nonetheless. In an absolute best case scenario.

Plus, after 1975 ICBMs have MIRVs, which make any ABM defense a colossal PITA.

It's a lose-lose game. Even with 2025 technology, as seen in a certain non-nuclear missile exchange last month (that shall-not-be-named because toxic politics, ok)

[Blackstar]

And therein lies the folly in the whole enterprise of a nuclear protective "shield."  The number of "9s" you need (as in 99.9999....% successful) ups the cost into the realm of impossibility.  So if you build it, the discussion becomes how many nuclear strikes can get through and still consider the defense system successful?  It's all very Strangelovian.

The current GMD system has 44 missiles (40 in Alaska, 4 in California). The military claims it has a 97% success rate if 4 interceptors are launched against 1 missile. That means at best it can achieve that high success rate against 11 missiles, although my guess is that the best rate is lower than this because not all interceptors will be operational at all times, and not all of them would be in the best position to fire. But let's just assume the numbers are correct. The way statistics works is that the 97% rate only applies to each individual missile, not all of them, so it's not 97% success rate against 11 missiles. But even if you take the high success rate, the enemy can double or triple the number of missiles, as well as add other countermeasures to reduce the interceptor effectiveness. It's not a static calculation. And as the old saying goes, a single nuclear warhead can ruin your whole day.

During the 1980s, Reagan was pushing the idea of a 100% effective shield. Most of the people who worked for him acknowledged (at least in private), that this was not achievable. So they argued that the goal was to develop an SDI system that was so effective that it would change the Soviet calculus for attack. Well, there was no way to really determine what the Soviet calculus was, and the cost for doing that was really high. That's why the system kept getting scaled back during the 1980s and why even the true believers eventually became less convinced it could work.

[Blackstar]

Dumb stupid math, but order-of-magnitude reality check. Near the end of Cold War, the Soviets had north of 50 000 nukes.  Just three megaton-nukes on New York, Los Angeles and Chicago could kill a few dozens million americans.

50000*0.0001 = 5   or, in reverse: 100-0.0001% = 99.9999 % 

That calculus is based upon bad initial assumptions. Most of those weapons were tactical, not strategic (including artillery shells, depth charges, etc.). Your better starting point would be counting the number of Soviet ICBM reentry vehicles. If you go up-thread, I think I provided that number. It was about 3000 RVs, if I remember correctly.


Just looked up my earlier post:

I did a quick look when I wrote the article and pulled up the 1981 edition of Soviet Military Power. (If you are not familiar with SMP, look up the Wikipedia entry on it, but I can explain more later.)

There's a table in there with Soviet ballistic missiles. It stated that they had 306 SS-18s with 8-10 reentry vehicles apiece, and 300 SS-19s with 1-6 reentry vehicles apiece. That's a minimum of 2748 reentry vehicles. Even if you knock off 20% due to launch failures, that still gives you 2198 reentry vehicles as the low end. That's a lot of RVs to deal with.

[Apollo22]

You're right. I was off by an order of magnitude, basically a factor of 10.

Still, that's just one less  ,9  in the percentage. 

Let me try again
3000*0.001 = 3  or, in reverse: 100-0.001% = 99.999 % 
(alternatively : 2000*0.001 = 2 )

Still way too many 9 after the coma. 

Again, it just takes one multi-megaton-nuke on L.A and another multi-megaton-nuke on New York to kill a few millions american people. Even if the rest of the nation is intact, albeit the economy would take a major hit, starting with Hollywood having gone up in smoke, also New York stock exchange... kinda 9-11 but x10000.
And that's remain some kind of best case scenario where the system works almost flawlessly, which is completely irrealistic...

[hoku]

Just came across this 1977 BBC program. I was not aware of it. Lots of discussion about using lasers and particle beam weapons in space to shoot down stuff. Note that this was six years before Reagan and SDI.
<snip>

The "show" has some "Missile gap" vibes.

Do we know if the USSR ever got close to something like a working prototype for their alleged beam weapon at Semipalatinsk?

edit: John Pike in 1992 "The Death-Beam Gap: Putting Keegan's Follies in Perspective"
https://spp.fas.org/eprint/keegan.htm

[Blackstar]

I wrote:

"There's a table in there with Soviet ballistic missiles. It stated that they had 306 SS-18s with 8-10 reentry vehicles apiece, and 300 SS-19s with 1-6 reentry vehicles apiece. That's a minimum of 2748 reentry vehicles."

That was the minimum. The maximum would have been 4860 reentry vehicles.

Even if we assume a 97% success rate for interception, that means over 140 reentry vehicles get through. It's a tough problem.

[edzieba]

At the strategic level, even 'bad' systems that let a warhead through have utility.

Say you have a system protecting a missile field that as a 99% probability of interception. an adversary needs to dedicate 100 RVs to that location to 'guarantee' a hit, so that interception system has cost your adversary 100 missiles worth of economic production (let's call that 100 M_a). If it cost more than 100M_a for your interception system (call that 1I_f) then you have 'won' that exchange, otherwise you have 'lost' it by wasting more of your economic output than you have forced your opponent to waste (there will be a scaling factor between X_a and X_f values to account for differences in overall economic productivity, but we'll skip that for now. Now, if your system has a 99.9% interception probability, your 1 I_f now only needs to be lower than 1000 M_a.
At the strategic level, you want to bleed your opponent dry economically in order to force an economic collapse without either side ever actually launching any of these weapons. You can't do it too fast, or you might force an actual exchange. Your interception system never needs to be perfect and intercept all incoming warheads, only good enough to make it more expensive to target that location than the cost of the interception system. Even better, your interception system technically does not need to actually work at all, as long as you can reliably convince your adversary that it will work - having it actually work is generally the easiest way to achieve that convincing that in practice, though, and certainly helps you in getting the budget to build it!

But once the missiles start flying, that's now a tactical engagement and your interception system is judged by completely different metrics. There, you are now comparing the cost of interception success vs. the economic harm of a warhead getting through, and the economic harm of a successful strike tens to be absolutely massive, both in the short term and in the long term (and if too many get through, there is no long term). This also means that an interception system with a very high interception probability but a very very high economic cost is infinitely preferable to a slightly less effective system that is dramatically cheaper.

These two requirements are almost in opposition to each other: the strategic view favours the cheapest possible system because you need it to cost the adversary more in missiles and warheads than it does you to intercept them, regardless of the absolute interception probability. The tactical view demands the absolute highest interception probability it is possible to achieve regardless of the cost, because the cost of noninterception rapidly approaches "all your economic activity forever" so it is close to impossible to be 'too expensive'.

[Blackstar]

These two requirements are almost in opposition to each other: the strategic view favours the cheapest possible system because you need it to cost the adversary more in missiles and warheads than it does you to intercept them, regardless of the absolute interception probability. The tactical view demands the absolute highest interception probability it is possible to achieve regardless of the cost, because the cost of noninterception rapidly approaches "all your economic activity forever" so it is close to impossible to be 'too expensive'.

You can talk about "economic activity" but the reality is we're talking about lives.

[Robotbeat]

How much of it was real or just bluffing or smoke and mirrors, wasn't it a de-escalation and diplomacy tactic in the end?

Define "real."

People are able to convince themselves that things they know are not true are true. And other people are willing to simply cash the checks.

I think there were certainly some people who legitimately believed that missile defense could work at the level required. But I think that over time, even those people realized that it could not. A defense that was 95% effective would be really expensive to achieve, but would also allow dozens of nuclear weapons to strike the United States. That was pretty clear back then, and it's pretty clear even today.

And note that the calculation takes on a lot different meaning when you're dealing with nukes. Israel claims that its defense system was 99% successful. But weapons still struck Tel Aviv. If only one of them had a nuclear warhead, that 99% success rate would not matter.

I think it would matter because Iran, if it developed nukes right now, wouldn’t have thousands of warheads but maybe like 4 or 5, and if they sent one and it didn’t work, they’d risk total destruction. Israel already tolerates a level of societal destruction that we wouldn’t politically tolerate. For them, the calculus is different. They probably COULD tank like one nuke and still survive as a state. Ukraine certainly survives that level of destruction pretty regularly by Russia’s artillery and missile strikes. They lost on the order of 100,000 or more, plus many cities reduced to rubble.

I think your analysis of the political costs of an only 95% effective shield in the US may be accurate, but not sure that translates well to other countries and against enemies with far smaller arsenals.

[Robotbeat]

There’s the very real point that Russia has been able to wield their nuke arsenal as a threat to cower the West.

I, unfortunately, think nuclear war some time this century, perhaps not on the scale feared of in the Cold War but still terrible, is a very real possibility. And I don’t think the absence of a missile defense system would reduce that possibility. The binary logic of MAD I think is no longer applicable. We live in increasingly dangerous times. Such is the end of Pax Americana which so many wanted for so long… well, that’s where we’re headed and that’s where we /are/ today. Be careful what you wish for, and God help us all.

[thespacecow]

Talking about ballistic missile defense only under the context of nuclear war is extremely shortsighted. As we just witnessed a few weeks ago, ballistic missile defense has a lot of utility during conventional war too. And in-space interceptor by its nature has global coverage, same as Starlink, you get missile defense "for free" globally. There're several global hotspots where ballistic missile may start flying in the near future which US may want to defend against, for example look up DF-21D.

[edzieba]

These two requirements are almost in opposition to each other: the strategic view favours the cheapest possible system because you need it to cost the adversary more in missiles and warheads than it does you to intercept them, regardless of the absolute interception probability. The tactical view demands the absolute highest interception probability it is possible to achieve regardless of the cost, because the cost of noninterception rapidly approaches "all your economic activity forever" so it is close to impossible to be 'too expensive'.

You can talk about "economic activity" but the reality is we're talking about lives.

At a tactical level, yes: the bombs are already on their way, the sole overarching goal is survival.

At a strategic level, no. The underlying assumption of MAD is that all the missiles are never, ever, fired. The economic warfare there is forcing the diversion of GDP from useful aims (feeding your citizens, etc) to useless ones (building missiles that will sit and do nothing). Silos are holes in the ground that you convince your opponent to throw money into by yourself throwing money into, and the winner is the one that runs out of money last.

It's this dichotomy that makes BMD so difficult to actually implement regardless of the TRL of the interception method chosen:
- The strategic level - that ensures nobody ever fires a missile in the first place - heavily favours the absolute lowest cost system that is just barely effective enough. Or rather, has all appearances of being just effective enough but never needs to demonstrate it in practice because if it has to operate in practice everyone has already lost.
- The tactical level seen by everyone who actually has the missiles aimed at them and really does not want to be nuked - and have the exact visceral and entirely justifiable reaction to the idea of strategic economic warfare through threatening with weapons of mass destruction - has the exact opposite design requirements: maximum effectiveness, in the real world, regardless of cost, because the cost is lives.

The problem comes in that satisfying the second requirement (that everyone wants, and so everyone votes for the people who promise to deliver it) is stupendously and unavoidably expensive. The people who promise to deliver it then see the strategic system proposals, with their far lower cost, and demand those systems perform the tactical role but at the strategic cost. That's how you end up time after time with BMD systems funnelled into chasing very high interception probabilities, but that then are never funded to the level needed to roll out to nationwide coverage.

[LittleBird]

I haven't watched all of it. Those that do, post your thoughts, please.

I've only watched the first part, and it's clearly got two threads. The one about beam weapons  may not have aged very well but is interesting. In fact the bit that I found most interesting was the other thread about the reality of military space in the mid 70s, and  the rather unusual collection of venues that the Panorama team managed to visit: NORAD, TRW in Redondo Beach, Rockwell, AFRL in Albuquerque, White Sands, and Vandenberg's SLC 6.  They filmed some interesting hardware on the factory floor in a couple of cases, the DSCS II comsat at TRW, and Navstar GPS at Rockwell.

I also thought that Ray Cline (spelt Kline throughout but surely this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_S._Cline ) was an interesting interviewee, and appeared to casually remark on the use of satcoms in the field by spies at one point-I need to rewatch.

This surprised me a bit but when I look it up I realise that the Pyramider project had been talked about publicly as a result of the Boyce and Lee spy trial  of 1977 a year or so before the BBC doc in October 1978 and although it was never implemented this would have made the subject public in some sense even if it hadn't been before.

[Blackstar]

I haven't watched all of it. Those that do, post your thoughts, please.

I've only watched the first part, and it's clearly got two threads. The one about beam weapons  may not have aged very well but is interesting. In fact the bit that I found most interesting was the other thread about the reality of military space in the mid 70s, and  the rather unusual collection of venues that the

One notable thing about this was that this was 1977. Reagan announced SDI in 1983. There was growing advocacy for space-based defense in the late 1970s. I've written a little bit about that, but others have written more. It's interesting to see who was advocating for this stuff at that time. Keegan was playing up the Soviet laser threat. There was also Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, who founded High Frontier.

[Blackstar]

At a tactical level, yes: the bombs are already on their way, the sole overarching goal is survival.

At a strategic level, no. The underlying assumption of MAD is that all the missiles are never, ever, fired. The economic warfare there is forcing the diversion of GDP from useful aims (feeding your citizens, etc) to useless ones (building missiles that will sit and do nothing). Silos are holes in the ground that you convince your opponent to throw money into by yourself throwing money into, and the winner is the one that runs out of money last.
 

When I was in college in the 1980s I read a lot of strategic deterrence literature--Brodie, Kahn, Wohlstetter, etc. I was thinking about going into that field in grad school. But I shifted to space policy instead. That was the wise choice, not only because the Cold War ended and that field vanished, but because by the 1990s there was a lot of reexamination of the strategic deterrence literature during the Cold War, now that authors had access to actual Soviet sources. What they discovered was that a lot of the deterrence theory was bunk. It was based upon false assumptions about how the Soviets would actually behave. We had built up these big models of things like ladders of escalation, etc. that were not based on reality.

[LittleBird]

I haven't watched all of it. Those that do, post your thoughts, please.

I've only watched the first part, and it's clearly got two threads. The one about beam weapons  may not have aged very well but is interesting. In fact the bit that I found most interesting was the other thread about the reality of military space in the mid 70s, and  the rather unusual collection of venues that the

One notable thing about this was that this was 1977. Reagan announced SDI in 1983. There was growing advocacy for space-based defense in the late 1970s. I've written a little bit about that, but others have written more. It's interesting to see who was advocating for this stuff at that time. Keegan was playing up the Soviet laser threat. There was also Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, who founded High Frontier.

1978 in fact, though indeed well before SDI. In fact programme was broadcast only a few weeks after Carter’s speech acknowledging spy satellites, a clip from which is included.


Interested to see in the document that hoku pointed to upthread that even Graham was sceptical of some of Keegan’s claims.

“ The former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, LTG Daniel O. Graham concluded that Keegan's analysis was built on too many assumptions:(6)

" ... one worst case analysis may be right, but something that depends on a whole group of them never is."”

[Blackstar]

Interested to see in the document that hoku pointed to upthread that even Graham was sceptical of some of Keegan’s claims.

“ The former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, LTG Daniel O. Graham concluded that Keegan's analysis was built on too many assumptions:(6)

" ... one worst case analysis may be right, but something that depends on a whole group of them never is."”

What document is that?

I think Keegan really pushed three things:

-the Backfire bomber range estimate
-the Soviet Union was building massive bunkers to protect their leadership in nuclear war
-the Soviet Union had an extensive laser program aimed at shooting satellites and ballistic missiles

I'm writing about the first one, but the last one is most relevant to this thread. (The second one could be covered in the reconnaissance threads.) Keegan really pushed that hard, claiming that there were a number of new laser test sites inside the Soviet Union. A key one was labeled PNUTS.

At the end of the Cold War, American scientists gained access to one or more of these sites and discovered that the Soviet laser program was not as big or advanced as people like Keegan claimed. In fact, I think the Soviet Union may have been trailing the United States in laser technology.

[hoku]

I haven't watched all of it. Those that do, post your thoughts, please.

<snip> They filmed some interesting hardware on the factory floor in a couple of cases, the DSCS II comsat at TRW, and Navstar GPS at Rockwell.
<snip>

I found it very considerate of TRW to clearly mark the SECRET components of DSCS II ... 

[hoku]

Interested to see in the document that hoku pointed to upthread that even Graham was sceptical of some of Keegan’s claims.

“ The former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, LTG Daniel O. Graham concluded that Keegan's analysis was built on too many assumptions:(6)

" ... one worst case analysis may be right, but something that depends on a whole group of them never is."”

What document is that?
<snip>

Wade, Nicholas, "Charged Debate Erupts over Russian Beam Weapon," Science, 27 May 1977, pages 957-959.

edit: 2 more paragraphs from Wade's article attached

[leovinus]

Interested to see in the document that hoku pointed to upthread that even Graham was sceptical of some of Keegan’s claims.

“ The former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, LTG Daniel O. Graham concluded that Keegan's analysis was built on too many assumptions:(6)

" ... one worst case analysis may be right, but something that depends on a whole group of them never is."”

What document is that?
<snip>

Wade, Nicholas, "Charged Debate Erupts over Russian Beam Weapon," Science, 27 May 1977, pages 957-959.

The intelligence community always has it own view. Disagreement with the rest of the world on BDA is a regular occurrence. Desert Storm 1991 anyone? Iran recently? They just have their own view based on their experience.

[LittleBird]

Interested to see in the document that hoku pointed to upthread that even Graham was sceptical of some of Keegan’s claims.

“ The former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, LTG Daniel O. Graham concluded that Keegan's analysis was built on too many assumptions:(6)

" ... one worst case analysis may be right, but something that depends on a whole group of them never is."”

What document is that?

I think Keegan really pushed three things:

-the Backfire bomber range estimate
-the Soviet Union was building massive bunkers to protect their leadership in nuclear war
-the Soviet Union had an extensive laser program aimed at shooting satellites and ballistic missiles

I'm writing about the first one, but the last one is most relevant to this thread. (The second one could be covered in the reconnaissance threads.) Keegan really pushed that hard, claiming that there were a number of new laser test sites inside the Soviet Union. A key one was labeled PNUTS.

At the end of the Cold War, American scientists gained access to one or more of these sites and discovered that the Soviet laser program was not as big or advanced as people like Keegan claimed. In fact, I think the Soviet Union may have been trailing the United States in laser technology.

Hoku has kindly quoted the original article now, but the one he had previously quoted was John Pike's interesting summary https://spp.fas.org/eprint/keegan.htm

I enjoyed this in particular

The confusion about Semipalatinsk was not limited to the American side. It was suggested that, on the basis of Western reports:(18)

" ... many young Russian scientists in the 1980s were thrilled to be sent to Semipalatinsk, where they assumed they would be working on "Keegan's beam" ... Apparently they were disappointed that it did not exist. Consequently, morale suffered."

[LittleBird]

Probably the most interesting memo I've seen on ABMs and how the other side would react is the attached one by Kissinger in early 1969 explaining why in his view banning ABMs would be more to the Soviets' advantage than US's. 

   I came across it reproduced in a general readership book on the cold war
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cold-War-Experience-Norman-Friedman/dp/1844424898
  and is  online at https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/LOC-HAK-484-15-1-7.pdf
see grabs from beginning below.

It'd be interesting to know if anything analogous exists about spaceborne ABMs/beams/lasers from the SDI era or from the 1978 precursor moment under discussion.

[Apollo22]

Ok so this forum moderation has reached a new low.
One can't even say anymore that, this man
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Kahn
a) is relevant to the ABM discussion
b) was a nuclear war hawk with somewhat sinister ideas about sacrificing hundred of millions americans
c) and as such, inspired Kubrick for Dr Strangelove (also Sidney Lumet for Fail safe)

Seriously, learn your history before supressing posts.

[Blackstar]

It'd be interesting to know if anything analogous exists about spaceborne ABMs/beams/lasers from the SDI era or from the 1978 precursor moment under discussion.

I'm not well-read on the SDIO literature. Aaron Bateman has a recent book on that, and he's an outstanding scholar. Alas, I have not yet read it.

What became clear during the 1990s was that rather than the Soviet Union seeking to develop their own SDI/Star Wars system, they looked at various ways of destroying the American system. They investigated numerous ASAT systems. In fact, the Polyus-Skif system (mentioned elsewhere in this forum) was a big laser for shooting at American satellites, not missiles.

What I don't know is if the Soviets also considered other rather obvious countermeasures, like adding decoys to their ICBMs, and/or increasing their number of reentry vehicles. The Cold War ended before that stuff progressed very far.

[LittleBird]

It'd be interesting to know if anything analogous exists about spaceborne ABMs/beams/lasers from the SDI era or from the 1978 precursor moment under discussion.

I'm not well-read on the SDIO literature. Aaron Bateman has a recent book on that, and he's an outstanding scholar. Alas, I have not yet read it.

What became clear during the 1990s was that rather than the Soviet Union seeking to develop their own SDI/Star Wars system, they looked at various ways of destroying the American system. They investigated numerous ASAT systems. In fact, the Polyus-Skif system (mentioned elsewhere in this forum) was a big laser for shooting at American satellites, not missiles.

What I don't know is if the Soviets also considered other rather obvious countermeasures, like adding decoys to their ICBMs, and/or increasing their number of reentry vehicles. The Cold War ended before that stuff progressed very far.

There are widespread reports, but nothing official,  that say that the SS18/R36  carried many decoys-40 is a number you’ll see.

[LittleBird]

I haven't watched all of it. Those that do, post your thoughts, please.

I've only watched the first part, and it's clearly got two threads. The one about beam weapons  may not have aged very well but is interesting. In fact the bit that I found most interesting was the other thread about the reality of military space in the mid 70s, and  the rather unusual collection of venues that the

One notable thing about this was that this was 1977. Reagan announced SDI in 1983. There was growing advocacy for space-based defense in the late 1970s. I've written a little bit about that, but others have written more. It's interesting to see who was advocating for this stuff at that time. Keegan was playing up the Soviet laser threat. There was also Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, who founded High Frontier.

An interesting who's who list here, from AW&ST 2nd October '78, page 21. Note Bussard, of ramjet fame, and Gerold Yonas who became SDI's chief scientist and has an interesting-looking memoir (https://sdiguy.blog/).

[LittleBird]

I haven't watched all of it. Those that do, post your thoughts, please.

I've only watched the first part, and it's clearly got two threads. The one about beam weapons  may not have aged very well but is interesting. In fact the bit that I found most interesting was the other thread about the reality of military space in the mid 70s, and  the rather unusual collection of venues that the

One notable thing about this was that this was 1977. Reagan announced SDI in 1983. There was growing advocacy for space-based defense in the late 1970s. I've written a little bit about that, but others have written more. It's interesting to see who was advocating for this stuff at that time. Keegan was playing up the Soviet laser threat. There was also Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, who founded High Frontier.

One thing I really need to do is read the sections on this period in (SDI staff historian) Donald Baucom's book:

https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700611003/

https://archive.org/details/originsofsdi19440000bauc

[Blackstar]

I have occasionally seen people assert that SDI was Reagan's idea and it just sprang up at that time. Of course, that's not true. The concept of missile defense went back to the 1940s, and there were active ABM development programs in the 1950s-early 1970s. All that died down a lot with the 1972 ABM treaty. Then there were people in the 1970s who started talking about more exotic ways of shooting down missiles using lasers and particle beam weapons. The idea was percolating, and there were advocates for it.

[LittleBird]

I have occasionally seen people assert that SDI was Reagan's idea and it just sprang up at that time. Of course, that's not true. The concept of missile defense went back to the 1940s, and there were active ABM development programs in the 1950s-early 1970s. All that died down a lot with the 1972 ABM treaty. Then there were people in the 1970s who started talking about more exotic ways of shooting down missiles using lasers and particle beam weapons. The idea was percolating, and there were advocates for it.

Perhaps surprisingly, in the US at least, the idea of particle beam weapons dates to the 50s if not before, and ARPA’s project SEESAW.

The JASONs were still keeping an eye on that in 1968 https://irp.fas.org/agency/dod/jason/seesaw.pdf

Wolfgang Panofsky commented in Physics Today on how SEESAW originated in a proposal from Robert Wilson https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/60/10/15/388369/Footnotes-on-particle-beam-weapon-history (open access)

The AEC subsequently established a project called Hydra to take a look at particle-beam weapons. I made an analysis (which would be trivial today) calculating the multiple scattering of charged hadron beams in the atmosphere and concluded that such multiple scattering would make proton beams infeasible as weapons unless they had an energy of many GeV. Also, some serious beam-stability problems emerged.

Interest in particle-beam weapons was revived in 1958 by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) as Project Seesaw. However, the laws of physics have prevented practical realization of a particle-beam weapon, and the ARPA project was cancelled after a decade and very substantial expenditure.

[Blackstar]

I have no idea where I got this, but there's a lot of interesting stuff in here.

Note that it indicates that the US was developing decoys, including jammers, all through the 1960s and 1970s.

[Blackstar]

This is the High Frontier book from 1982 outlining a space-based missile defense.

[LittleBird]

Note that it indicates that the US was developing decoys, including jammers, all through the 1960s and 1970s.

There's an article in Crosslink from 2002, archived by the modelling site ninfinger here https://www.ninfinger.org/models/vault2022/IUS/V4N1.pdf and attached that summarises the work of Aerospace's Reentry Systems Division of San Bernadino, in that era. Says that

Defense penetration programs progressed in tandem with research and development of ballistic reentry vehicles. The idea was to provide a number of options for neutralizing both current and anticipated Soviet antiballistic missile systems. The ABRES program developed and tested many methods for penetrating such a defense.

One such method, designed to counter long-range exoatmospheric defenses, used exoatmospheric chaff to confuse Soviet antiballistic missile systems. This chaff was composed of thin metallic dipoles of the proper length to absorb and reflect the energy of the Soviet radars, which would register only a series of opaque “clouds,” hiding the reentry vehicle in one and the third stage in another. The first design to be flight-tested for Minuteman II showed serious problems, and ABRES was asked to develop a solution. Time was critical, because the U.S.S.R. was deploying its antiballistic missile system around Moscow. Within a few months, successful flight tests were conducted, and a nine-cloud system was deployed on the Minuteman II.

It makes the interesting claim (my boldfacing) thet

These flight demonstrations prompted the Soviets to cancel their system around Moscow because they realized they would have to use nine interceptors to destroy one reentry vehicle.

9 chaff clouds is also interesting in view of the 9 upper ports on the Minuteman trainer at the Vandenberg museum in your second TSR article.

[Blackstar]

Thank you for that. It is interesting. I have an article in advanced draft form about US intelligence collection on the Soviet ABM system. The Soviets seemed to have planned a bigger ABM defensive system for Moscow, but scaled that back in 1964. They started construction of a number of launch sites on the periphery of Moscow and then stopped construction on a bunch of them in that year.

There was a further scaling back by 1968. Something that US intelligence noticed was that they used the HEN HOUSE radars on their periphery to detect US ballistic missiles. However, they stopped new construction by 1968, leaving several gaps in coverage.

[hoku]

For reference, attached are a few pages from McNamara's April 4, 1961 statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

p0015 (Page 14) on enhancing the combat effectiveness of US ICBMs: "One of the most important such steps is the development of techniques and devices such as decoys, multiple warheads, etc."

p0030 (Page 29) states that NIKE-ZEUS' effectiveness in its ABM role could be degraded by "use of more sophisticated warheads screened by multiple decoys"

https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/jfknsf-273-007#?image_identifier=JFKNSF-273-007-p0001

[LittleBird]

Thank you for that. It is interesting. I have an article in advanced draft form about US intelligence collection on the Soviet ABM system. The Soviets seemed to have planned a bigger ABM defensive system for Moscow, but scaled that back in 1964. They started construction of a number of launch sites on the periphery of Moscow and then stopped construction on a bunch of them in that year.

If the Minuteman II entered service in 1965, then  1964 sounds right-assuming the chaff was tested early on.

[LittleBird]

For reference, attached are a few pages from McNamara's April 4, 1961 statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

p0015 (Page 14) on enhancing the combat effectiveness of US ICBMs: "One of the most important such steps is the development of techniques and devices such as decoys, multiple warheads, etc."

p0030 (Page 29) states that NIKE-ZEUS' effectiveness in its ABM role could be degraded by "use of more sophisticated warheads screened by multiple decoys"

https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/jfknsf-273-007#?image_identifier=JFKNSF-273-007-p0001

Thanks. I had always thought that decoys etc were rarely discussed but maybe there's more out there than I thought, e.g. this Aviation Week item from 1969.

[Blackstar]

For reference, attached are a few pages from McNamara's April 4, 1961 statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

p0015 (Page 14) on enhancing the combat effectiveness of US ICBMs: "One of the most important such steps is the development of techniques and devices such as decoys, multiple warheads, etc."

When Peter Hunter first started scanning Atlas ICBM and missile photos, he occasionally found some that showed early penetration aids for the Atlas ICBM, ca. 1959. I think he told me that in some cases he cropped those out of the photos, figuring they might still be sensitive 50 years later.

[Blackstar]

New book on Polaris that includes an entire chapter on Chevaline, which was developed by UK's MoD to enable Polaris RVs to penetrate the Moscow ABM system.

[hoku]

A few more details on "decoys" in the 1961 to 1963 time frame - this is from a Sep 30, 1961 memo from McNamara to JFK. At that time the "effectiveness" of Nike-Zeus was the ABM "gold standard". They studied how it would perform against current and near-future generation war heads launched by Atlas, Titan, Minuteman, or Polaris.

Atlas: fragments from the exploding tank resulted in multiple radar targets, which took some effort to sort out while war head and fragments were still outside of the atmosphere. Launching on steeper trajectories (reduced range) would make a discrimination between war heads and fragement more difficult. By 1963 an upgrade for Atlas E and F with "penetration aid pods" was planned.

Minuteman equipped with Mark II nose cone resulted in a low radar cross section, and hence a reduced ABM. detection range.

Future upgrades considered for Minuteman, Titan II and Polaris were electronic jammers and other (unspecified) penetration aides.

[LittleBird]

Minuteman equipped with Mark II nose cone resulted in a low radar cross section, and hence a reduced ABM. detection range.

Wikipedia entry on Minuteman corroborates this by saying that Minuteman II had:

A penetration aids system to camouflage the warhead during its reentry into an enemy environment. In addition, the Mk-11C reentry vehicle incorporated stealth features to reduce its radar signature and make it more difficult to distinguish from decoys. The Mk-11C was no longer made of titanium for this and other reasons.

[Blackstar]

From my recent article on the Vandenberg museum. This was a training device. Those compartments held countermeasures. I think I was told that a normal Minuteman only had the lower six holes, but that this was taken from a Minuteman that had been specially configured to carry a bunch more for a flight test, but was never flown, and then turned into a ground training device. But I'm not sure of that.

[Blackstar]

Chris Pocock, who has written many books about the U-2, has a new one out about a former CIA/NASA U-2 pilot. I have read the section where he flew over the Soviet ABM testing site in the 1950s. Book info is here:

https://dragonladyhistory.com/2025/07/15/my-new-book-shadow-flyer/

[Apollo22]

Sary Shagan ?

Interesting to note that before Francis G. Power "grand slam" flight atempt (From Pakistan to Norway - or burst), U-2 overflights were more like big border-penetration flights (as did the SR-71 later, albeit at a much smaller scale). Start from Pakistan, make a big loop into Soviet airspace before returning  same place.

Is there a map of the 1956-1960 U-2 flights somewhere - just to see how deep they went ?

[Blackstar]

Sary Shagan ?

Interesting to note that before Francis G. Power "grand slam" flight atempt (From Pakistan to Norway - or burst), U-2 overflights were more like big border-penetration flights (as did the SR-71 later, albeit at a much smaller scale). Start from Pakistan, make a big loop into Soviet airspace before returning  same place.

Is there a map of the 1956-1960 U-2 flights somewhere - just to see how deep they went ?

Yes. Sary Shagan was the Soviet surface-to-air missile test site. Then became their anti-ballistic missile test site. Later (1970s) they started to put some lasers there, prompting concern that they might be ASAT or ABM lasers. Also the site of some space tracking radars.

I don't have a map of the early U-2 flights, but I think your characterization of them is correct. They tended to loop, picking some key targets to photograph. However, one problem with doing that is that the Soviets could then figure out that the plane that went in might be coming back, and they could intercept it.

[Blackstar]

There's an article in Crosslink from 2002, archived by the modelling site ninfinger here https://www.ninfinger.org/models/vault2022/IUS/V4N1.pdf and attached that summarises the work of Aerospace's Reentry Systems Division of San Bernadino, in that era. Says that

That's an interesting issue covering a bunch of things:

-launch ranges (why the US has them in Florida and California)
-the Inertial Upper Stage
-USAF and the space shuttle
-Gemini rendezvous

A few other things. Worth looking at.

[Blackstar]

I read through the Crosslink article on RVs. Interesting stuff. Mentions an unpublished larger document that probably has a lot more of the history of Aerospace's work on that topic.

By total coincidence, I ran across these images of RVs on social media today.

[catdlr]

I read through the Crosslink article on RVs. Interesting stuff. Mentions an unpublished larger document that probably has a lot more of the history of Aerospace's work on that topic.

By total coincidence, I ran across these images of RVs on social media today.

Here is the entire set of pictures from Convair

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/53633823383/in/photostream/

[Blackstar]

I have been working on part 5 of my DSP, missile warning, history, which covers the SBIRS era from 1995 until today. The more I dig into this, the more shocked I am about what a mess it was. Yeah, the basics are pretty obvious--first launch was supposed to take place in 2002, but did not take place until 2011. But document after document I look at paints this picture where a) they think they now have all the problems solved, and then b) a few years later more problems crop up again. Over and over again.

One thing I may compile is a listing of all the planned launch dates to show how they kept slipping. Richelson's second edition history took the story up to 2011, mainly by adding a SBIRS chapter covering the period 1998 to 2011. But even that isn't sufficient considering how many problems persisted even after that. For instance, the first SBIRS-GEO was launched in 2011, but did not become operational until 2013. One of the news articles I have indicates that a reason for that is that USAF did not have an on-orbit testing plan in place before launch. A nine-year delay and they still didn't have time to plan how they would test this complicated satellite in orbit?

[Comga]

May I be a literalist, break into the discussion of reentry vehicles, etc. and discuss an actual "SDI space mission"?

I worked on The Relay Mirror Experiment, RME, and attended a few technical meetings and presentations for the Low power Atmospheric Compensation Experiment (LACE) which piggybacked to orbit atop RME when it was launched on a Delta 2 in 1990.
The concept supported by RME was that there would be giant ground based lasers.
They would fire at satellites with relay mirrors.
(With the beams compensated for atmospheric distortion)
These would "relay" the beam to "fighting satellites"
These would focus the beam onto ICBMs or warheads.
RME worked on the second step.
A modest power infrared laser was installed at AMOS, the Air Force observatory atop Haleakala on Maui.
A visible laser beacon was combined and coaligned with it.
A target board was built near the coast outside the town of Kihei.
It transmitted another visible laser beacon from its center.
The satellite performed an automated variation of the Boy Scout signaling trick where you find the mirror orientation that shines sunlight to a search plane by tracking two points, the Sun and the plane, so as to put the mirror normal on the median vector.  (Yes, I'm an optics guy.)
This reflected the IR beam to the target board.
We serendipitously photographed the mountaintop beacon being shown on the target, while said target measured the offsets of the infrared beam of the experiment.
We did better than required, but it was quite difficult, and the encounters only lasted a few minutes.
To make this an effective system would have taken a Starlink constellation of relay mirrors.
Plus the details of building the giant laser and the "fighting mirror" satellites.
And doing the atmospheric compensation on a beam strong enough to burn projectiles.
It was a big step, but along a very long path.

[Blackstar]

Alas, there is a Wikipedia entry for LACE, but not for RME:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LACE_(satellite)

[Comga]

Alas, there is a Wikipedia entry for LACE, but not for RME:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LACE_(satellite)

Really?  No Wikipedia entry for RME?
It successfully achieved its goals. 
Repeatedly and solidly. Many passes with the beam from AMOS bouncing off the satellite’s mirror onto the target board for minutes.
LACE was a flop. 
They got about one second of functionality.   Maybe.

A Pentagon official stated that LACE's retroreflector system wasn't sending back signals at the expected power level, which that official speculated that the issue could be due to heat damage to a reflector.[18]

Bull
I know why the retroreflector array (mounted on the end of the rearward (-V) boom) wasn’t functional.  So did my boss. 
It wasn’t heat damage.  It was design errors. (plural)
They didn’t understand the nature of retroreflectors, silly as that sounds.  They destroyed the angular performance of each of their several dozen little retros with bad design choices. Then they had a procurement difficulty which they “solved” by making the performance problem even worse. 
They were not interested in looking into questions from some young bearded guys from some company in the hinterlands.
I was the retroreflector engineer on RME.  Our retros exceeded their requirements by a generous margin.
That was around 1988, but I remember it clearly.

[LittleBird]

May I be a literalist, break into the discussion of reentry vehicles, etc. and discuss an actual "SDI space mission"?

I worked on The Relay Mirror Experiment, RME, and attended a few technical meetings and presentations for the Low power Atmospheric Compensation Experiment (LACE) which piggybacked to orbit atop RME when it was launched on a Delta 2 in 1990.
The concept supported by RME was that there would be giant ground based lasers.
They would fire at satellites with relay mirrors.
(With the beams compensated for atmospheric distortion)
These would "relay" the beam to "fighting satellites"
These would focus the beam onto ICBMs or warheads.
RME worked on the second step.
A modest power infrared laser was installed at AMOS, the Air Force observatory atop Haleakala on Maui.
A visible laser beacon was combined and coaligned with it.
A target board was built near the coast outside the town of Kihei.
It transmitted another visible laser beacon from its center.
The satellite performed an automated variation of the Boy Scout signaling trick where you find the mirror orientation that shines sunlight to a search plane by tracking two points, the Sun and the plane, so as to put the mirror normal on the median vector.  (Yes, I'm an optics guy.)
This reflected the IR beam to the target board.
We serendipitously photographed the mountaintop beacon being shown on the target, while said target measured the offsets of the infrared beam of the experiment.
We did better than required, but it was quite difficult, and the encounters only lasted a few minutes.
To make this an effective system would have taken a Starlink constellation of relay mirrors.
Plus the details of building the giant laser and the "fighting mirror" satellites.
And doing the atmospheric compensation on a beam strong enough to burn projectiles.
It was a big step, but along a very long path.

Was wondering where I had seen a picture of an RME-like system recently, and find it was in Dr Gerold Yonas' blog https://sdiguy.blog/2025/01/20/never-underestimate-the-importance-of-surprise/  , where he reports that

In 1988, the Pentagon published a document that described the status of Soviet technology and projected what might happen in the future. One future space weapon threat was the use of ground-based lasers and a distribution of space-based relay mirrors to provide lethal blows to space assets and missile launches in their early boost phase.

The Pentagon analysts projected that the space weapon threat shown in the illustration below might be deployed “after the year 2000” ...

[LittleBird]

There's an article in Crosslink from 2002, archived by the modelling site ninfinger here https://www.ninfinger.org/models/vault2022/IUS/V4N1.pdf and attached that summarises the work of Aerospace's Reentry Systems Division of San Bernadino, in that era. Says that

That's an interesting issue covering a bunch of things:

-launch ranges (why the US has them in Florida and California)
-the Inertial Upper Stage
-USAF and the space shuttle
-Gemini rendezvous

A few other things. Worth looking at.

A few years later they did a whole issue on their support to BMD activities over the years, including SDI. Contents pages below, and issue attached.

[leovinus]

May I be a literalist, break into the discussion of reentry vehicles, etc. and discuss an actual "SDI space mission"?

[snip]

And doing the atmospheric compensation on a beam strong enough to burn projectiles.
It was a big step, but along a very long path.

An opportunity to ask an optics person I was wondering about energy losses at every stage. For example, sending a 1 GW  (1 know :/ ) laser beam up through the atmosphere to the first mirror, to the second and then down to earth, there would be energy loss at every stage, right? How much energy was lost until you measured the beam again on Earth? 1%, 99%? And would the mirrors actually have been reflective enough or would they have molten when the beam energy is "big" and the loss at the mirror "great"? Thanks

[Blackstar]

https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/08/office-of-the-historian-shared-knowledge-services-bureau-of-administration-releases-foreign-relations

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XLIV, Part 1, National Security Policy, 1985–1988.

This is the first of two parts of the volume National Security Policy, 1985–1988. It covers the Ronald Reagan administration’s efforts to modernize U.S. strategic forces, identify Soviet compliance and noncompliance with existing arms control agreements, and pursue the Strategic Defense Initiative, which President Reagan announced in March 1983 and subsequently made a central objective of his presidency. Documentation in this volume illuminates the administration’s interpretation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in advance of key summits between the President and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during Reagan’s second term. It also documents the internal deliberations leading up to the 1988 ABM Treaty Review in Geneva, the negotiating record of which is included here. 

This volume was compiled and edited by James Graham Wilson. The volume and this press release are available on the Office of the Historian website. For further information, contact the Office of the Historian.

[hoku]

https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/08/office-of-the-historian-shared-knowledge-services-bureau-of-administration-releases-foreign-relations

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XLIV, Part 1, National Security Policy, 1985–1988.

This is the first of two parts of the volume National Security Policy, 1985–1988. It covers the Ronald Reagan administration’s efforts to modernize U.S. strategic forces, identify Soviet compliance and noncompliance with existing arms control agreements, and pursue the Strategic Defense Initiative, which President Reagan announced in March 1983 (...).
<snip>

Do we know why it was called Strategic Defense Initiative, and who coined the term?

An undated (1977?) "SCC Agenda paper" prepared by the NSC during the Carter administration already employs the term with respect to Soviet efforts:
"US R&D efforts in the area of active defenses should guard against possible Soviet technological breakthroughs or abrogation of the ABM Treaty and maintain those technology programs necessary to assess and respond to Soviet strategic defense initiatives, as appropriate."

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v04
(page 145 of the PDF, page 120 of the document)

[Blackstar]

[hoku]

Interesting! "Talon Gold" is linked to LODE, the Large Optics Demonstration Experiment (which later turned into LAMP), which was another (1977?) pre-SDI study. LODE hardware can now be found in the NASM collection:

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/segment-primary-mirror-large-optics-demonstration-experiment/nasm_A20210197002

[hoku]

Following the web trail on LODE and LAMP led me to Bill Otto's history of "Space Based Lasers", which includes a line drawing of "Ultra LITE". LITE possible standing for Laser Integration Technology Experiment.

Do we know anything more about Ultra LITE? It looks like it might have been derived from a KH-11 class vehicle, with the optics scaled up for a 4m diameter primary mirror, and with a deformable 4th mirror added behind the primary. The 120 inch diameter of the spacecraft bus also might suggest a KH heritage.

http://billotto.atwebpages.com/SBL.htm

[Comga]

Following the web trail on LODE and LAMP led me to Bill Otto's history of "Space Based Lasers", which includes a line drawing of "Ultra LITE". LITE possible standing for Laser Integration Technology Experiment.

Do we know anything more about Ultra LITE? It looks like it might have been derived from a KH-11 class vehicle, with the optics scaled up for a 4m diameter primary mirror, and with a deformable 4th mirror added behind the primary. The 120 inch diameter of the spacecraft bus also might suggest a KH heritage.

http://billotto.atwebpages.com/SBL.htm
M

What I don’t see here is a laser.
There doesn’t seem to be room for any laser beyond a low-powered illuminator.
(And I didn’t see “LITE” at the linked reference.)
Why do you think the “L” is for laser?

[Blackstar]

Okay, vague memory here and I don't have the files with me to look up.

There was a big multi-mirror space telescope developed for SDIO. We've discussed it on this board before. I think it appeared on the cover of Aviation Week. What was it called?

I actually have a file on this thing somewhere. Have thought about writing an article about it. But I have not ginned up the enthusiasm to do so.

[catdlr]

Okay, vague memory here and I don't have the files with me to look up.

There was a big multi-mirror space telescope developed for SDIO. We've discussed it on this board before. I think it appeared on the cover of Aviation Week. What was it called?

I actually have a file on this thing somewhere. Have thought about writing an article about it. But I have not ginned up the enthusiasm to do so.

Might be this one:

https://archive.aviationweek.com/issue/19860915#:~:text=STRATEGIC%20DEFENSE%20INITIATIVE-,SDI%20Delta%20Space%20Experiment%20To%20Aid%20Kill%2DVehicle%20Design,Defense%20Initiative's%20space%20experiment%20Sept.

or this:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=16969.0

Or this:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59144.0#:~:text=That%20mission%2C%20also%20known%20as,and%20a%20ground%2Dlaunched%20rocket.

[Blackstar]

No, none of those are the right ones. I'll have to search. It was a big multi-segment mirror, something like 4-5 meters at least. It's the one that eventually ended up on the lobby of some military university.

Anyway, I do have a file on it somewhere. I thought about writing about it. Recently I learned about a collection of Zenith Star materials, but I'd have to travel to view them.

[Apollo22]

How about that one ? https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=54269.msg2386420#msg2386420

I suggest using the "advanced search" function. Put the word "segmented" with user "Blackstar". See the attached picture.

(nota bene: for some obscure reason it takes two or three tries before getting results.)

[hoku]

Following the web trail on LODE and LAMP led me to Bill Otto's history of "Space Based Lasers", which includes a line drawing of "Ultra LITE". LITE possible standing for Laser Integration Technology Experiment.

Do we know anything more about Ultra LITE? It looks like it might have been derived from a KH-11 class vehicle, with the optics scaled up for a 4m diameter primary mirror, and with a deformable 4th mirror added behind the primary. The 120 inch diameter of the spacecraft bus also might suggest a KH heritage.

http://billotto.atwebpages.com/SBL.htm
M

What I don’t see here is a laser.
There doesn’t seem to be room for any laser beyond a low-powered illuminator.
(And I didn’t see “LITE” at the linked reference.)
Why do you think the “L” is for laser?

My understanding is that this was meant as a demonstration/test of key technologies  ("4 meter flight experiment with 4 option levels of technology").
These might have been
i) large lightweight optics (4 meter primary mirror)
ii) wavefront sensing
iii) wavefront control (deformable mirror)
iv) optical+IR imaging sensors

[hoku]

Another interesting proposal (and cost saving measure) was to launch one of the "descendants" of Zenith Star on Energia

[bobthemonkey]

Star LITE looks familiar, with a SLD/ICM heritage service module.

[LittleBird]

How about that one ? https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=54269.msg2386420#msg2386420

I suggest using the "advanced search" function. Put the word "segmented" with user "Blackstar". See the attached picture.

(nota bene: for some obscure reason it takes two or three tries before getting results.)

That's the one, another quick way to identify the project was to put Blackstar's query into an AI-see attached and https://nps.edu/-/nps-new-home-for-giant-segmented-mirror-space-telescope. But I am curious, @Blackstar et al, remind me how we know it was an SDI project, when the official line was that the "Segmented Mirror Space Telescope (SMT), [was] designed and developed for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) as a technical demonstrator and experimental testbed for cutting-edge space imaging technologies." ?

[edzieba]

SMT was NRO.
Blackstar, were you thinking of the SDI Litton Itek Large Adaptive Mirror, AKA LAMP?

[LittleBird]

Following the web trail on LODE and LAMP led me to Bill Otto's history of "Space Based Lasers", which includes a line drawing of "Ultra LITE". LITE possible standing for Laser Integration Technology Experiment.

Do we know anything more about Ultra LITE? It looks like it might have been derived from a KH-11 class vehicle, with the optics scaled up for a 4m diameter primary mirror, and with a deformable 4th mirror added behind the primary. The 120 inch diameter of the spacecraft bus also might suggest a KH heritage.

http://billotto.atwebpages.com/SBL.htm

One to put next to things like the SEOS earth observation satellite design from the mid 70s, and ponder.

[Blackstar]

SMT was NRO.
Blackstar, were you thinking of the SDI Litton Itek Large Adaptive Mirror, AKA LAMP?

Yeah, that was it. I'm in my office now and I swear I had a folder on that thing. But I cannot find it. It was borrowed from a coworker who is now retired and I might have given it back to him. I might have also scanned part of it. So I need to look for the files.

I think that it was funded by SDI and was unclassified. In the early 1990s they asked us to look at possible civil missions that could use it. But I don't think we did a study of it.


Addendum: Went looking for my file, couldn't find it. That doesn't mean I don't have it, it could be buried. I did find my big file on Clementine 2, however. SDI proposal to fly a second Clementine mission. Did not happen.

[Blackstar]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/19/reagan-gorbachev-ballistic-missile-ban-1986/

David Ignatius
How the national security bureaucracy blocked Reagan’s ballistic missile ban
The president embraced a vision for a safer world. Declassified documents show what happened next.
August 19, 2025 at 7:30 a.m. EDTToday at 7:30 a.m. EDT

Change is suspect at the Pentagon, now and forever, as President Ronald Reagan discovered in the waning days of the Cold War.

In 1986, Reagan had the heretical idea that the United States should make a deal to ban all ballistic missiles — and maybe all nuclear weapons. But the military brass and the CIA were so aghast at this disruptive proposal that over the next six months they buried it in a blizzard of negative secret memos until it died.


SNIP


The interagency drama that followed Reagan’s disarmament proposal “comes through for the first time” in the documents, said State Department Historian James Graham Wilson, who made them public this month as part of a broader declassification of material from 1985 to 1988, the last four years of Reagan’s presidency. I want to tell the story in some detail, because it offers an unusual window into how the government works to protect what officials see as the public interest — even when that seems to contradict a democratically elected president’s wishes.

[Blackstar]

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1981-88v44p1

I thought I had included the direct link to the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volume and also attached it, But apparently I did not. It is attached here.

I have been told by somebody who is familiar with this subject much more than I am that there's some really good stuff in here. Now it's not going to be technical reports, so if that's what you want, you will be disappointed. But it includes the high-level discussions about SDI and arms control. Also apparently discusses ASAT policy, although I have not gone through it yet. I only did a quick search for "shuttle" but did not come up with much.

[Blackstar]

"Golden Dome has no clear design, no real cost estimate, and no one has explained how this protects or enhances strategic stability."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/08/lawmaker-trumps-golden-dome-will-end-the-madness-and-thats-not-a-good-thing/

Addendum:

https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-07/golden-dome-and-arms-control-impediment-or-opportunity/#post-heading


https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-07/will-the-next-world-war-begin-in-orbit-jonathan-mcdowell-on-strategic-competition-in-space/#post-heading

[Apollo22]

"Golden Dome has no clear design, no real cost estimate, and no one has explained how this protects or enhances strategic stability."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/08/lawmaker-trumps-golden-dome-will-end-the-madness-and-thats-not-a-good-thing/

Looks like SDI by 1987. They started with chemical lasers (Maxwell Hunter, 1977-1982) then they shifted to Teller and Woods (grotesque) Excalibur nuclear-pumped laser, 1983-1986. After it proved unworkable - surprise surprise - they returned to kinetic interceptors - Daniel Graham Smart Rocks, now rebranded Brilliant Pebbles... by Teller and Woods. Chemical lasers returned too - Zenit Star.
A few years down the road they still had no seamless system against a massive ICBM attack - but USSR collapsed and the whole thing became moot. THAAD took over the ABM business - with ground based interceptors, but for theater only.

[Skyrocket]

"Golden Dome has no clear design, no real cost estimate, and no one has explained how this protects or enhances strategic stability."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/08/lawmaker-trumps-golden-dome-will-end-the-madness-and-thats-not-a-good-thing/

Looks like SDI by 1987. They started with chemical lasers (Maxwell Hunter, 1977-1982) then they shifted to Teller and Woods (grotesque) Excalibur nuclear-pumped laser, 1983-1986. After it proved unworkable - surprise surprise - they returned to kinetic interceptors - Daniel Graham Smart Rocks, now rebranded Brilliant Pebbles... by Teller and Woods. Chemical lasers returned too - Zenit Star.
A few years down the road they still had no seamless system against a massive ICBM attack - but USSR collapsed and the whole thing became moot. THAAD took over the ABM business - with ground based interceptors, but for theater only.

IMHO, SDI by 1987 looked pretty well defined (which it indeed wasn't) compared to the diffuse "Golden Dome" idea (I hesitate to call it even a project by now).

[Blackstar]

"Golden Dome has no clear design, no real cost estimate, and no one has explained how this protects or enhances strategic stability."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/08/lawmaker-trumps-golden-dome-will-end-the-madness-and-thats-not-a-good-thing/

Looks like SDI by 1987. They started with chemical lasers (Maxwell Hunter, 1977-1982) then they shifted to Teller and Woods (grotesque) Excalibur nuclear-pumped laser, 1983-1986. After it proved unworkable - surprise surprise - they returned to kinetic interceptors - Daniel Graham Smart Rocks, now rebranded Brilliant Pebbles... by Teller and Woods. Chemical lasers returned too - Zenit Star.
A few years down the road they still had no seamless system against a massive ICBM attack - but USSR collapsed and the whole thing became moot. THAAD took over the ABM business - with ground based interceptors, but for theater only.

Yes. If you read the interview with the congressman, there are many similarities to SDI. The one big difference this time is that Congress has shoved a huge amount of money into the budget, with no plan to spend it. What happens when you suddenly have $25 billion sitting in your bank account, but no contracts that require it?

And we might consider this when thinking about the NASA budget cuts. That money was allocated for projects, it had somewhere to go.


Addendum:

Something else he mentions is that during the SDIO era, the problem was that increasing offensive weapons was cheaper than increasing defensive weapons. But he suggests that maybe with technology advances with lasers, that is no longer the case, and it is more expensive to increase offensive weapons.

I don't think that is actually true, because the problem with laser systems in space is that they're going to be big and they're going to be relatively expensive, which makes them prime targets. Even if you can field a laser battlestation that can shoot down hundreds of missiles, the enemy only needs to hit it with a single ASAT to take it out. So you're going to need a lot of those platforms to survive.

As he notes, to figure this out, somebody needs to do the analysis, and there's no indication that anybody is doing that. Right now they're just throwing a lot of money at it.