Further Reading
Beaver, Frank.Oliver Stone: Wakeup Cinema. New
York: Twayne, 1994.
Kagan, Norman.The Cinema of Oliver Stone. New
York: Continuum, 2000.
Salewicz, Chris.Oliver Stone. London: Orion Media,
1997.
Silet, Charles L. P., ed.Oliver Stone: Interviews. Jack-
son: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
Charles L. P. Silet
See also Academy Awards; Action films; Cruise,
Tom; Douglas, Michael; Film in the United States;
Platoon;Wall Street.
Strategic Defense Initiative
(SDI)
Identification Plan to establish an antiballistic
missile defense
In an effort to protect the United States from a possible nu-
clear attack by the Soviet Union, President Ronald Reagan
proposed a high-tech defense shield capable of shooting
down incoming Soviet missiles. The plan generated much
criticism, both of its technical infeasibility and of its politi-
cal ramifications.
In the 1970’s, the United States followed a nuclear
deterrence strategy known as mutually assured de-
struction (MAD), which depended on a situation in
which the United States and the Soviet Union each
possessed enough nuclear weapons to survive an at-
tack by the other and still launch a devastating coun-
terstrike. The certainty of utter annihilation in a
nuclear war thus prevented one from happening.
When Ronald Reagan became president, however,
he considered MAD a risky strategy, especially as the
number of Soviet nuclear warheads increased. After
consultations with scientific advisers, Reagan gave a
nationally televised speech on March 23, 1983, in
which he announced plans to establish the Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI), which was tasked with cre-
ating a defensive shield to protect the United States
from nuclear attack. Reagan’s televised proposal en-
visioned a space-based front line of satellite defenses
that could destroy Soviet missiles at the early-launch
stage, a space-based second line to destroy individ-
ual warheads released by Soviet missiles that got
through the front line, and a ground-based third line
to destroy any warheads in their terminal phase that
avoided the other defensive lines.
Pushing the Technical Boundaries Shooting down
Soviet missiles represented a huge technical chal-
lenge. The project started with ground-based missile
technology, such as the Extended Range Interceptor
(ERINT), originally developed for the Safeguard
Anti-Ballistic Missile system devised in the 1970’s.
The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO),
established at the Pentagon in 1984, funded a num-
ber of innovative approaches based on the ERINT
technology that sought to detect, target, and destroy
Soviet missiles. On the relatively low-tech end of
development were projects like the Homing Over-
lay Experiment, a missile-launched projectile with
four-meter-diameter fans to increase the size of the
projectile and ensure a hit, and Brilliant Pebbles,
watermelon-sized satellites that would destroy Soviet
missiles by purposely colliding with them.
On the high-tech end of the research spectrum
were a number of directed-energy weapons pro-
grams that used energy to destroy missiles, rather
than physical collisions between missiles and target-
ing projectiles. These high-tech projects, centered
on beam-projecting weaponry, earned SDI its skepti-
cal nickname, “Star Wars.” The first research cen-
tered on an X-ray laser powered by a nuclear explo-
sion, with first tests carried out in 1983. In 1985, the
SDIO began tests with a deuterium fluoride laser,
which successfully destroyed a Titan missile booster
and several low-flying target drones. Another prom
ising project was the Hypervelocity Rail Gun, a space-
based platform that destroyed satellites with “bul-
lets” fired at fourteen hundred miles per hour. The
main drawback of the fluoride laser and the Rail
Gun was the massive electricity requirement of the
systems. Experiments on sensors designed to detect
and target incoming Soviet warheads, such as the
Boost Surveillance and Tracking System, proved
much more successful, as they proved capable of
tracking Soviet missiles from their initial launches
through their entire flight path. The total of SDI
funding amounted to approximately $30 billion be-
tween 1983 and 1989.
Criticism of SDI While many Americans supported
SDI, the plan attracted a considerable amount of
criticism. Some critics believed the system to be so
far beyond the technical capability of current sci-
ence that it would remain unfeasible for the foresee-The Eighties in America Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) 923