AHC: A More Plausible Reagan SDI/Star Wars

Ian_W

Banned
With the recent AHC of an early space battle, I wonder if there was a plausible way Reagan could actually get part of his Star Wars aka Strategic Defense Initiative off the ground.

Doing it with space-based lasers and so on is really hard - you not only need a bunch of difficult technical developments, you then need a lot of big satellites in a lot of different orbits, and you need to make sure they don't get blinded and so on.

A ground-based SDI, especially if you're willing to use nukes in a counter-nuke role, is a lot easier.

Of course, you then need to deal with Obvious Countermeasures, like the Soviets parking cruise missile submarines just off the US coast, or building manned bombers that don't use the ballistic missiles that your SDI system defends against.

So then you need a massive upgrade in your defenses against the other two legs of the triad to stop that end run.

And then there is the political aspect of your allies going 'wait a second. You've only shielded your homeland. What about us ?'.
 
The biggest difficulty is the speed of ICBMs. Opponents mock the idea as trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, but that's not accurate - an ABM can locate its target and change direction. But an ICBM moves at an extreme speed that would make it difficult to hit. (14,000 mph if I remember correctly).
 

Ian_W

Banned
@Ian_W

Would it be too much of a stretch if Reagan could get the British and the rest of NATO on board?

That doesn't solve the fundamental problems around physics and orbital mechanics.

Assume we've got a missile launch from Siberia aimed at Cheyenne Mountain.

Assume we have an anti-missile satellite with a laser.

Now, either that laser has to be able to fire from geostationary orbit at around 35 500km, or you need enough satellites so one of them will be over the flight path at all times.
 
I always thought it was better that an effective ABM program never came to fruition because it would eliminate the delicate balance of power that nuclear weapons represent.

A world orbited by a huge network of laser or particle beam satellites is one with more SLBM's, tactical nukes, cruise missiles, hypersonic atmospheric vehicles and other sneaky delivery systems that are harder to counter, but easier to deploy on "accident." ICBM's are terrifying, but in the grand scheme of things not nearly so much as these systems IMO.
 
SDI was one of the best ways to start WWIII so it was pretty good that it was obvious it could never have worked.

In the 80s the USSR was pretty much afraid already that the NATO was willing to start an invasion and if SDI had looked like a realistic way for the USA out of MAD... what would have stopped the USSR from starting a preemptive strike?

Exactly nothing.
 
OldNavy1988 wrote:
With the recent AHC of an early space battle, I wonder if there was a plausible way Reagan could actually get part of his Star Wars aka Strategic Defense Initiative off the ground.

Technically? I think it did as our current crop of recon-sats was born from plans to track and kill mobile Soviet ICBM launchers. Similary that’s where out ABM system came from. Inclusive the work for laser systems, railgun and particle beam systems. As Ian_W notes actually deploying such systems is stretch. The main problem was Reagan got convinced that a “space based” system when arguably a multi-layered system with minimum space based assets is more viable.

And as for getting out Allies on-board well there’s the issue that about 99% of THEIR incoming “problems” aren’t ICBM’s or IRBM’s but cruise missiles and artillery shells of which the SDI was no help what-so-ever.

But of course this gives me a fine chance to once again plug my favorite fictional defense of the USA:
https://books.google.com/books?id=i...epage&q="The First Cup Of Coffee War"&f=false

“The First Cup of Coffee War” :)

The other problem of course was the cost of space lift meant that even assuming some plausible launch vehicle could be fielded that cut the cost of launch by an order or magnitude the cost was still unlikely to be bearable even for the US.

Plus the whole backing-the-USSR into a corner is never going to turn out well and they were already convinced that the Shuttle was a first strike weapons platform…

Randy
 
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