Human rights in Ukraine is a highly contested topic. Since 2017, Freedom House
has given Ukraine ratings from 60 to 62 on its 100-point scale, and a
"partly free" overall rating. Ratings on electoral processes have
generally been good, but there are problems with corruption and due
process.
Both the 2015 local elections and the 2019 presidential elections
were generally peaceful, competitive and fair, although there are
indications of misuse of state resources and vote-buying, and media
pluralism has not yet been fully achieved. Attacks on journalists, civil society activists and members of minority groups are frequent, and police responses inadequate.
As of 2021 investigations into crimes against journalists and
human rights activists often do not result in convictions, and impunity
for torture is still widespread. Gender-based and homophobic violence by groups advocating discrimination are also a cause for concern as well as linguistic rights of national minorities. War crimes committed by both sides of the war in Donbas are not prosecuted, and in Russian-occupied Crimea dissent is repressed.
Background
Prior to 1991
As part of the Soviet Union, all human rights were severely limited. The Soviet Union was a one-party state until 1990 and a totalitarian state from 1927 until 1953 where members of the Communist Party held all key positions in the institutions of the state and other organizations. Freedom of speech
was suppressed and dissent was punished. Independent political
activities were not tolerated, whether these involved participation in
free labor unions, private corporations, independent churches or opposition political parties. The freedom of movement within and especially outside the country was limited.
1991–2014
In 1991 Ukraine declared independence. The referendum on the Act of Declaration of Independence was held in Ukraine on 1 December 1991. An overwhelming majority of 92.3% of voters approved the declaration of independence made by the Verkhovna Rada on 24 August 1991. Until 8 June 1995, Ukraine's supreme law was the Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Ukrainian SSR (adopted in 1978, with numerous later amendments). On 8 June 1995, President Leonid Kuchma and Speaker Oleksandr Moroz
(acting on behalf of the parliament) signed the Constitutional
Agreement for the period until a new constitution could be drafted.
The first constitution since independence was adopted during an
overnight parliamentary session after almost 24 hours of debate of 27–28
June 1996, unofficially known as "the constitutional night of 1996."
The Law No. 254/96-BP ratifying the constitution, nullifying previous
constitutions. The Agreement was ceremonially signed and promulgated in
mid-July 1996. According to a ruling of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine,
the constitution took force at the moment when the results of the
parliamentary vote were announced on 28 June 1996 at approx. 9 a.m. Kyiv Time and for the first time enshrined the obligations of human rights into law.
Ukraine was labelled as "free" by Freedom House in 2009.
In their report they stated: "Ukraine has one of the most vibrant civil
societies in the region. Citizens are increasingly taking issues into
their own hands, protesting against unwanted construction, and exposing
corruption. There were no limits seen on NGO activities. Trade unions function, but strikes and worker protests were infrequently observed, even though dissatisfaction with the state of economic affairs was pervasive in the fall of 2008. Factory owners were seen as still able to pressure their workers to vote according to the owners’ preferences."
On 20 October 2009 experts from the Council of Europe
stated "in the last five years the experts from the Council of Europe
who monitor Ukraine have expressed practically no concerns regarding the
important [process of the] formation of a civil society in Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the democratic states in Europe that is securing human rights as a national policy, as well as securing the rights of national minorities." According to Human Rights Watch
(HRW), "while civil society institutions operate mostly without
government interference, police abuse and violations of the rights of
vulnerable groups … continue to mar Ukraine's human rights record."
After the early 2010 election of PresidentViktor Yanukovych
international organizations started to voice their concern. According
to Freedom House, "Ukraine under President Yanukovych has become less
democratic and, if current trends are left unchecked, may head down a
path toward autocracy and kleptocracy."
Among the recent negative developments, they mentioned "a more
restrictive environment for the media, selective prosecution of
opposition figures, worrisome intrusiveness by the Security Service of Ukraine,
widely criticized local elections in October 2010 … and erosion of
basic freedoms of assembly and speech." This led Freedom House to
downgrade Ukraine from "Free" to "Partly Free" in Freedom in the World 2011. Also in 2011 Amnesty International spoke of "an increase in the number of allegations of torture and ill-treatment in police custody, restrictions on the freedom of speech and assembly, as well as mass manifestations of xenophobia".
As of late 2013 the situation continued to deteriorate and was one of the causes of the Euromaidan revolution, as joining or even working towards meeting the requirement to join the European union
would dramatically improve human rights across Ukraine. Russia, which
had already laid the ground work reacted to the Euromaidan protests and
invaded Crimea and the wider Donbas regions.
International and European human rights treaties
Ukraine is a party to the following international treaties
After Bucha, Lyman, Makariv, and Kherson
were liberated from Russian occupation, Ukraine discovered mass graves
containing bodies of civilians. Victims frequently bore evidence of
torture.
Electoral rights
International observers, including Freedom House and the United States Department of State,
generally consider Ukrainian election processes to be free and fair.
However, there were credible allegations of vote-buying, and media
coverage was at times biased. Nazi and Communist parties are banned.
Amendments to the constitution, which came into force, were detrimental to the right to receive a fair trial
because they re-introduced the so-called general supervision by the
prosecutor's office. Other serious problems included lengthy periods for
review of cases because the courts were overloaded; infringement of
equality of arms; non-observance of the presumption of innocence; the
failure to execute court rulings; and high level of corruption in
courts.
Independent lawyers and human rights activists have complained
Ukrainian judges regularly come under pressure to hand down a certain
verdict.
Recent (since 2010) trials of high-profile political figures Yulia Tymoshenko, Yuriy Lutsenko, Igor Didenko, Anatoliy Makarenko and Valeriy Ivaschenko have been described by the European Commission, the United States and other international organizations as "unfair, untransparent and not independent" and "selective prosecution of political opponents".
Multiple languages have always been spoken in what is now Ukraine.
In the 19th century the Russians and Jews were the main ethnic groups
in the urban areas while the countryside was mostly Ukrainian. Ukraine has a history of linguistic conflict dating back to at least
the nineteenth century. In 1863, Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Pyotr Valuev issued a circular that banned the publication of religious texts and educational texts written in the Ukrainian language.
The Soviet policy towards the Ukrainian language varied from the promotion of it under Lenin ("indigenization") to the persecution of the pro-Ukrainian language movement under Stalin, and tolerance of it which was coupled with the gradual decline of the use of the Ukrainian language and the creeping russification of Ukraine under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Following Ukraine's declaration of independence in 1991, the previous pro-Russian policies were reversed and the use of the Ukrainian language was actively encouraged and in certain areas, it was made compulsory. The 1996 Constitution stated that Ukrainian is the state language, and it also stated that the free use and development of Russian and other national minority languages is also permitted.
Subsequent legislation made the use of Ukrainian mandatory in various areas of public life. Exceptions were made for languages that are considered "indigenous" because the speakers of them lack a kin-state, such as the Crimean Tatar language and the Karaim language, as well as those languages that are the official languages of the European Union. However, significant minority languages in Ukraine, such as Russian, Belarusian and Jewish, are neither official EU languages nor indigenous, and concerns have been raised about their protection.
For example, print and online publications in languages that do not
meet these criteria are prohibited unless they also have a Ukrainian
translation, and secondary schooling in these languages is prohibited. The differential treatment of minority languages has been criticized on human rights and discrimination grounds by the Venice Commission, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Human Rights Office.
Russia exaggerated the real language issues, using them to create a false justification for the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. False claims included claims that Ukraine has been committing genocide, and claims that Ukrainians have been shooting people who speak Russian. In areas it controlled, Russia required that all classes be in Russian and allegedly tortured a teacher for teaching in Ukrainian.
In 2007, in Ukraine's provinces numerous, anonymous attacks and threats persisted against journalists, who investigated or exposed corruption or other government misdeeds. The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists
concluded in 2007 that these attacks, and police reluctance in some
cases to pursue the perpetrators, were "helping to foster an atmosphere
of impunity against independent journalists."
Ukraine's ranking in Reporters Without Borders's Press Freedom Index has in the latest years been around the 90th spot (89 in 2009, 87 in 2008), while it occupied the 112th spot in 2002 and even the 132nd spot in 2004.
During the Russia-backed 2010-2014 Presidency of Viktor Yanukovych was elected President of Ukraine, journalistic watchdogs complained about a deterioration of press freedom in Ukraine. Anonymous journalists said early May 2010 that they were voluntarily
tailoring their coverage so as not to offend the Yanukovych
administration and the Yanukovych Government. The Yanukovych Government said it did not censor the media, so did the Presidential Administration and President Yanukovych himself.
A May 2014 report from the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said that there were approximately 300
violent attacks on the media in Ukraine since November 2013.
A crackdown on what authorities describe as "pro-separatist" points of
view have triggered dismay among Western human rights monitors. For
example, the 11 September 2014 shutdown of Vesti newspaper by the Ukrainian Security Service for "violating Ukraine's territorial integrity" brought swift condemnation from the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Ukraine has also shut down several television stations operated by Russia on the grounds that they purvey propaganda.
In February 2017 the Ukrainian government banned the commercial
importation of books from Russia, which had accounted for up to 60% of
all titles sold.
According to Amnesty International,
in 2021 the media were generally pluralistic and free, but some outlets
were discriminated against by officials because of their perceived
pro-Russian leaning. Criticisms have been levelled at the decision to deprive Taras Kozak's TV channels of broadcasting licences. The investigation into the murder of the journalist Pavlo Sheremet in 2016 were undermined by serious deficiencies and lack of credibility.
Reports of torture
and ill-treatment by police persisted during 2007, as did unduly long
periods of pretrial custody. Of major concern were the inhumane
conditions in detention with overcrowded cells, appalling sanitary
conditions and the lack of appropriate medical care. During the year
numerous group suicide attempts took place in some penal colonies.
On 25 May 2016, the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of
Torture (SPT) suspended its visit to Ukraine after the government denied
it access to places in several parts of the country where it suspects
these secret jails were located.
In 2018 Amnesty International concluded that "The investigation into
the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) for its alleged secret prisons
failed to make any progress. Law enforcement officials continued to use
torture and other ill-treatment".
According to Amnesty International, in 2021 abuse of prisoners remained "endemic". As reported by the Prosecutor General's Office, in March 2022 the European Court of Human Rights had ruled against Ukraine in 115 cases.
The European Court found that Oleksandr Rafalsky had spent 15 years in
prison despite good reasons to believe that his "confessions" had been
extorted by torture.
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine numerous acts of torture of civilians and numerous acts of torture of prisoners of war by Russian forces have been documented, including rape and sexual violence against men, women, and children by Russian forces.
The Ukrainian government has taken a number of positive steps to fight HIV/AIDS,
chiefly in the area of legislative and policy reform. But these
important commitments are being undermined in the criminal justice and
health systems by widespread human rights abuses against drug users, sex
workers, and people living with HIV/AIDS.
Migrants and refugees
The
Ukrainian asylum system barely functions due to a highly decentralized
structure spanning several government agencies and departments. The
process of creating a single migration system has been slow; political
interference in the system is common and abuses of migrants and asylum seekers' rights continue.
There has been a growing awareness of human trafficking as a human
rights issue in Europe. The end of communism has contributed to an
increase in human trafficking, with the majority of victims being women
forced into prostitution.
In 2013 Ukraine was a country of origin and country of transit for
persons, primarily women and children, trafficked for the purpose of
sexual exploitation and forced labor. Charcoal production and pornography have been listed in the U.S. Department of Labor's List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor
under the country of Ukraine in December 2014. The Government of
Ukraine has shown some commitment to combatting trafficking but has been
criticized for not fully complying with the minimum standards for the
elimination of trafficking, and for inadequate trafficking prevention
efforts.
Violence against women is an entrenched social problem in Ukrainian
culture engendered by traditional male and female stereotypes.
It was not recognized during the Soviet era, but in recent decades the
issue became an important topic of discussion in Ukrainian society and
among academic scholars. According to the estimation of OSCE
the violence towards women is widespread in Ukraine and it is
associated with three times more deaths than the ongoing armed conflict
in the eastern provinces of the country.
The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was set up in 1984 within the US Department of Defense to oversee development. A wide array of advanced weapon concepts, including lasers, particle beam weapons and ground- and space-based missile systems were studied, along with various sensor, command and control, and high-performance computer
systems that would be needed to control a system consisting of hundreds
of combat centers and satellites spanning the entire globe and involved
in a very short battle. The United States holds a significant advantage
in the field of comprehensive advanced missile defense systems through
decades of extensive research and testing; a number of these concepts
and obtained technologies and insights were transferred to subsequent
programs.
Under the SDIO's Innovative Sciences and Technology Office, headed by physicist and engineer Dr. James Ionson, the investment was predominantly made in basic research
at national laboratories, universities, and in industry; these programs
have continued to be key sources of funding for top research scientists
in the fields of high-energy physics, supercomputing/computation,
advanced materials, and many other critical science and engineering
disciplines and funding which indirectly supports other research work by
top scientists.
In 1987, the American Physical Society
concluded that the technologies being considered were decades away from
being ready for use, and at least another decade of research was
required to know whether such a system was even possible.
After the publication of the APS report, SDI's budget was repeatedly
cut. By the late 1980s, the effort had been re-focused on the "Brilliant Pebbles" concept using small orbiting missiles not unlike a conventional air-to-air missile, which was expected to be much less expensive to develop and deploy.
SDI was controversial in some sectors, and was criticized for
threatening to destabilize the MAD-approach potentially rendering the
Soviet nuclear arsenal useless and to possibly re-ignite "an offensive arms race".
Through declassified papers of American intelligence agencies the wider
implications and effects of the program were examined and revealed that
due to the potential neutralization of its arsenal and resulting loss
of a balancing power factor, SDI was a cause of grave concern for the
Soviet Union and her primary successor state Russia. By the early 1990s, with the Cold War ending and nuclear arsenals being rapidly reduced, political support for SDI collapsed. SDI officially ended in 1993, when the Clinton Administration redirected the efforts towards theatre ballistic missiles and renamed the agency the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO).
In 2019, space-based interceptor development resumed for the first time in 25 years with President Trump's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act. The program is currently managed by the Space Development Agency (SDA) as part of the new National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA) envisioned by Michael D. Griffin. Early development contracts were awarded to L3Harris and SpaceX. CIA Director Mike Pompeo called for additional funding to achieve a full-fledged "Strategic Defense Initiative for our time, the SDI II".
History
National BMD
The US Army had considered the issue of ballistic missile defense (BMD) as early as the end of World War II. Studies on the topic suggested attacking a V-2 rocket would be difficult because the flight time was so short that it would leave little time to forward information through command and control networks to the missile batteries that would attack them. Bell Labs
pointed out that although longer-range missiles flew much faster, their
longer flight times would address the timing issue and their very high
altitudes would make long-range detection by radar easier.
This led to a series of projects including Nike Zeus, Nike-X, Sentinel and ultimately the Safeguard Program,
all aimed at deploying a nationwide defensive system against attacks by
Soviet ICBMs. The reason for so many programs was the rapidly changing
strategic threat; the Soviets claimed to be producing missiles "like
sausages", and ever-more missiles would be needed to defend against this
growing fleet. Low-cost countermeasures like radar decoys
required additional interceptors to counter. An early estimate
suggested one would have to spend $20 on defense for every $1 the
Soviets spent on offense. The addition of MIRV in the late 1960s further upset the balance in favor of offense systems. This cost-exchange ratio was so favorable that it appeared the only thing building a defense would do would be to cause an arms race.
The Extended Range Nike Zeus/Spartan missile of the late-1960s was designed to provide full-country defense as part of the Sentinel-Safeguard
programs. Projected to cost $40 billion ($361 billion in 2023) it would
have offered minimal protection and damage prevention in an all-out
attack.
When initially faced with this problem, Dwight D. Eisenhower asked ARPA
to consider alternative concepts. Their Project Defender studied all
sorts of systems, before abandoning most of them to concentrate on
Project BAMBI. BAMBI used a series of satellites carrying interceptor
missiles that would attack the Soviet ICBMs shortly after launch. This boost phase
intercept rendered MIRV impotent; a successful attack would destroy all
of the warheads. Unfortunately, the operational cost of such a system
would be enormous, and the US Air Force continually rejected such concepts. Development was cancelled in 1963.
Through this period, the entire topic of BMD became increasingly
controversial. Early deployment plans were met with little interest, but
by the late 1960s, public meetings on the Sentinel system were met by
thousands of angry protesters.
After thirty years of effort, only one such system would be built; a
single base of the original Safeguard system became operational in April
1975, only to shut down in February 1976.
A Soviet military A-35 anti-ballistic missile system was deployed around Moscow to intercept enemy ballistic missiles targeting the city or its surrounding areas. The A-35 was the only Soviet ABM system allowed under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In development since the 1960s and in operation from 1971 until the 1990s, it featured the nuclear-tipped A350exoatmospheric interceptor missile.
The bright spikes extending below the initial fireball of one of 1952's Operation Tumbler–Snapper test shots, are known as the "rope trick effect". They are caused by the intense flash of thermal/soft X-rays released by the explosion heating the steel tower guy-wires white hot. The development of the W71 and the Project Excalibur x-ray laser were based on enhancing the destructive effects of these x-rays.
George Shultz, Reagan's secretary of state, suggested that a 1967 lecture by physicist Edward Teller (the so-called "father of the hydrogen bomb") was an important precursor to SDI. In the lecture, Teller talked about the idea of defending against nuclear missiles using nuclear weapons, principally the W65 and W71, with the latter being a contemporary enhanced thermal/X-ray device used actively on the Spartan missile in 1975. Held at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the 1967 lecture was attended by Reagan shortly after he became the governor of California.
Development of laser weapons in the Soviet Union began in 1964–1965. Though classified at the time, a detailed study on a Soviet space-based laser system began no later than 1976 with the Polyus, a 1 MW Carbon dioxide laser-based orbital weapons platform prototype. Development was also started on the anti-satellite system Kaskad, an in-orbit missile platform.
A revolver cannon (Rikhter R-23) was mounted on the 1974 Soviet Salyut 3 space station, a satellite that successfully test fired its cannon in orbit.
In 1979, Teller contributed to a Hoover Institution publication where he claimed that the US would be facing an emboldened USSR due to their work on civil defense.
Two years later at a conference in Italy, he made the same claims about
their ambitions, but with a subtle change; now he claimed that the
reason for their boldness was their development of new space-based
weapons. According to the popular opinion at the time, and one shared by
author Frances FitzGerald; there was absolutely no evidence that such
research was being carried out. What had really changed was that Teller
was now selling his latest nuclear weapon, the X-ray laser. Finding limited success in his efforts to get funding for the project, his speech in Italy was a new attempt to create a missile gap.
In 1979, Reagan visited the NORAD command base, Cheyenne Mountain Complex,
where he was first introduced to the extensive tracking and detection
systems extending throughout the world and into space; however, he was
struck by their comments that while they could track the attack down to
the individual targets, there was nothing one could do to stop it.
Reagan felt that in the event of an attack this would place the
president in a terrible position, having to choose between immediate
counterattack or attempting to absorb the attack and then maintain an
upper hand in the post-attack era. Shultz suggests that this feeling of
helplessness, coupled with the defensive ideas proposed by Teller a
decade earlier, combined to form the impetus of the SDI.
In the fall of 1979, at Reagan's request, Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham, the former head of the DIA,
briefed Reagan on an updated BAMBI he called High Frontier, a missile
shield composed of multi-layered ground- and space-based weapons that
could track, intercept, and destroy ballistic missiles, which would
theoretically be possible because of emerging technologies. It was
designed to replace the MAD doctrine that Reagan and his aides described as a suicide pact. In September 1981, Graham formed a small, Virginia-based think tank called High Frontier to continue research on the missile shield. The Heritage Foundation
provided High Frontier with space to conduct research, and Graham
published a 1982 report entitled, "High Frontier: A New National
Strategy" that examined in greater detail how the system would function.
Graham was not alone in considering the anti-missile problem.
Since the late 1970s, a group had been pushing for the development of a
high-powered chemical laser that would be placed in orbit and attack
ICBMs, the Space Based Laser (SBL). More recently, new developments
under Project Excalibur by Teller's "O-Group" at LLNL suggested that a single X-ray laser could shoot down dozens of missiles with a single shot.
Graham organized a meeting space at The Heritage Foundation in
Washington and the groups began to meet in order to present their plans
to the incoming president.
The group met with Reagan several times during 1981 and 1982,
apparently with little effect, while the buildup of new offensive
weaponry like the B-1 Lancer and MX missile
continued; however, in early 1983, the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with
the president and outlined the reasons why they might consider shifting
some of the funding from the offensive side to new defensive systems.
According to a 1983 US Interagency Intelligence Assessment, there
was good evidence that in the late 1960s the Soviets were devoting
serious thought to both explosive and non-explosive nuclear power
sources for lasers.
Project and proposals
Announcement
On
March 23, 1983, Reagan announced SDI in a nationally televised speech,
stating "I call upon the scientific community in this country, those who
gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents to the cause of
mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear
weapons impotent and obsolete."
Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO)
In
1984, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was
established to oversee the program, which was headed by Lt. General James Alan Abrahamson USAF, a past Director of the NASA Space Shuttle program.
In addition to the ideas presented by the original Heritage
group, a number of other concepts were also considered. Notable among
these were particle-beam weapons, updated versions of nuclear shaped charges, and various plasma weapons. Additionally, the SDIO invested in computer systems, component miniaturization, and sensors.
Initially, the program focused on large scale systems designed to
defeat a massive Soviet offensive strike. For this mission, SDIO
concentrated almost entirely on the "high tech" solutions like lasers.
Graham's proposal was repeatedly rejected by members of the Heritage
group as well as within SDIO; when asked about it in 1985, Abrahamson
suggested that the concept was underdeveloped and was not being
considered.
By 1986, many of the promising ideas were failing. Teller's X-ray laser, run under Project Excalibur,
failed several key tests in 1986 and was soon being suggested solely
for the anti-satellite role. The particle beam concept was demonstrated
to basically not work, as was the case with several other concepts. Only
the Space Based Laser seemed to have any hope of developing in the
short term, but it was growing in size due to its fuel consumption.
APS report
The American Physical Society
(APS) had been asked by the SDIO to provide a review of the various
concepts. They put together an all-star panel including many of the
inventors of the laser, one of which was a Nobel laureate. Their initial
report was presented in 1986, but due to classification issues it was
not released to the public (in redacted form) until early 1987.
The report considered all of the systems then under development,
and concluded none of them were anywhere near ready for deployment.
Specifically, they noted that all of the systems had to improve their
energy output by at least 100 times, and in some cases as much as a
million. In other cases, like Excalibur, they dismissed the concept
entirely. Their summary stated simply:
We estimate that all existing candidates for directed
energy weapons (DEWs) require two or more orders of magnitude, (powers
of 10) improvements in power output and beam quality before they may be
seriously considered for application in ballistic missile defense
systems.
In a best case scenario, they concluded that none of the systems
could be deployed as an anti-missile system until into the next century.
Strategic Defense System
Faced
with this report, and the press storm that followed, the SDIO changed
direction. Beginning in late 1986, Abrahamson proposed that SDI would be
based on the system he had previously dismissed, a version of High
Frontier now renamed the "Strategic Defense System, Phase I
Architecture". The name implied that the concept would be replaced by
more advanced systems in future phases.
Strategic Defense System, or SDS, was largely the Smart Rocks
concept with an added layer of ground-based missiles in the US. These
missiles were intended to attack the enemy warheads that the Smart Rocks
had missed. In order to track them when they were below the radar horizon,
SDS also added a number of additional satellites flying at low altitude
that would feed tracking information to both the space-based "garages"
as well as the ground-based missiles. The ground-based systems operational today trace their roots back to this concept.
While SDS was being proposed, Lawrence Livermore National had introduced a new concept known as Brilliant Pebbles.
This was essentially the combination of the sensors on the garage
satellites and the low-orbit tracking stations on the Smart Rocks
missile. Advancements in new sensors and microprocessors allowed all of
this to be packaged into the volume of a small missile nose cone. Over
the next two years, a variety of studies suggested that this approach
would be cheaper, easier to launch and more resistant to counterattack,
and in 1990 Brilliant Pebbles was selected as the baseline model for the
SDS Phase 1.
Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS)
While SDIO and SDS was ongoing, the Warsaw Pact was rapidly disintegrating, culminating in the destruction of the Berlin Wall
in 1989. One of the many reports on SDS considered these events, and
suggested that the massive defense against a Soviet launch would soon be
unnecessary, but that short and medium range missile technology would
likely proliferate as the former Soviet Union disintegrated and sold off
their hardware. One of the core ideas behind the GPALS system was that
the Soviet Union would not always be assumed as the aggressor and the
United States would not always be assumed as the target.
Instead of a heavy defense aimed at ICBMs, this report suggested
realigning the deployment for the Global Protection Against Limited
Strikes (GPALS). Against such threats the Brilliant Pebbles
would have limited performance, largely because the missiles fired for
only a short period and the warheads did not rise high enough for them
to be easily tracked by a satellite above them. To the original SDS,
GPALS added a new mobile ground-based missile, and added more low-orbit
satellites known as Brilliant Eyes to feed information to the Pebbles.
GPALS was approved by President George H.W. Bush in 1991. The new system would cut the proposed costs of the SDI system from $53 billion to $41 billion over a decade.
Also, instead of making plans to protect against thousands of incoming
missiles, the GPALS system sought to provide flawless protection from up
to two hundred nuclear missiles. The GPALS system also was able to protect the United States from attacks coming from all different parts of the world.
Extended Range Interceptor (ERINT) launch from White Sands Missile Range
Extended Range Interceptor (ERINT)
The Extended Range Interceptor (ERINT) program was part of SDI's Theater Missile Defense Program and was an extension of the Flexible Lightweight Agile Guided Experiment
(FLAGE), which included developing hit-to-kill technology and
demonstrating the guidance accuracy of a small, agile, radar-homing
vehicle.
FLAGE scored a direct hit against a MGM-52 Lance missile in flight, at White Sands Missile Range
in 1987. ERINT was a prototype missile similar to the FLAGE, but it
used a new solid-propellant rocket motor that allowed it to fly faster
and higher than FLAGE.
Under BMDO, ERINT was later chosen as the MIM-104 Patriot (Patriot Advanced Capability-3,PAC-3) missile.
Homing Overlay Experiment (HOE)
4 m (13 ft) diameter web deployed by Homing Overlay Experiment
Given concerns about the previous programs using nuclear-tipped
interceptors, in the 1980s the US Army began studies about the
feasibility of hit-to-kill vehicles, i.e. interceptor missiles that
would destroy incoming ballistic missiles just by colliding with them
head-on.
The Homing Overlay Experiment (HOE) was the first hit-to-kill
system tested by the US Army, and also the first successful hit-to-kill
intercept of a mock ballistic missile warhead outside the Earth's
atmosphere.
The HOE used a kinetic kill vehicle
(KKV) to destroy a ballistic missile. The KKV was equipped with an
infrared seeker, guidance electronics and a propulsion system. Once in
space, the KKV could extend a folded structure similar to an umbrella
skeleton of 4 m (13 ft) diameter to enhance its effective cross section.
This device would destroy the ICBM reentry vehicle on collision.
Four test launches were conducted in 1983 and 1984 at Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands. For each test a Minuteman missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California carrying a single mock re-entry vehicle targeted for Kwajalein lagoon more than 4,000 miles (6,400 km) away.
After test failures with the first three flight tests because of
guidance and sensor problems, the DOD reported that the fourth and final
test on June 10, 1984, was successful, intercepting the Minuteman RV
with a closing speed of about 6.1 km/s at an altitude of more than
160 km (99 mi).
Although the fourth test was described as a success, the New York Times in August 1993 reported that the HOE4 test was rigged to increase the likelihood of a successful hit.
At the urging of Senator David Pryor, the General Accounting Office
investigated the claims and concluded that though steps were taken to
make it easier for the interceptor to find its target (including some of
those alleged by the New York Times), the available data
indicated that the interceptor had been successfully guided by its
onboard infrared sensors in the collision, and not by an onboard radar
guidance system as alleged.
Per the GAO report, the net effect of the DOD enhancements increased
the infrared signature of the target vessel by 110% over the realistic
missile signature initially proposed for the HOE program, but
nonetheless the GAO concluded the enhancements to the target vessel were
reasonable given the objectives of the program and the geopolitical
consequences of its failure. Further, the report concluded that the
DOD's subsequent statements before Congress about the HOE program
"fairly characterize[d]" the success of HOE4, but confirmed that the DOD
never disclosed to Congress the enhancements made to the target vessel.
The technology developed for the HOE system was later used by the
SDI and expanded into the Exoatmospheric Reentry-vehicle Interception
System (ERIS) program.
The 1984 SDI concept of a space based Nuclear reactor pumped laser or a chemical hydrogen fluoride laser satellite
resulted in this 1984 artist's concept of a laser-equipped satellite
firing on another, causing a momentum change in the target object by laser ablation. Before having to cool and re-aim at further possible targets.
This early artwork of the Nuclear detonation pumped laser array depicts an Excalibur engaging
three targets, simultaneously. In most descriptions, each Excalibur
could fire at dozens of targets, which would be hundreds or thousands of
kilometers away.
An early focus of the SDI effort was an X-raylasers powered by nuclear explosions. Nuclear explosions give off a huge burst of X-rays, which the Excalibur concept intended to focus using a lasing medium
consisting of metal rods. Many such rods would be placed around a
warhead, each one aimed at a different ICBM, thus destroying many ICBMs
in a single attack. It would cost much less for the US to build another
Excalibur than the Soviets would need to build enough new ICBMs to
counter it. The idea was first based on satellites, but when it was
pointed out that these could be attacked in space, the concept moved to a
"pop-up" concept, rapidly launched from a submarine off the Soviet
northern coast.
However, on March 26, 1983, the first test, known as the Cabra event,
was performed in an underground shaft and resulted in marginally
positive readings that could be dismissed as being caused by a faulty
detector. Since a nuclear explosion was used as the power source, the
detector was destroyed during the experiment and the results therefore
could not be confirmed. Technical criticism based upon unclassified calculations suggested that the X-ray laser would be of at best marginal use for missile defense.
Such critics often cite the X-ray laser system as being the primary
focus of SDI, with its apparent failure being a main reason to oppose
the program; however, the laser was never more than one of the many
systems being researched for ballistic missile defense.
Despite the apparent failure of the Cabra test, the long term
legacy of the X-ray laser program is the knowledge gained while
conducting the research. A parallel developmental program advanced
laboratory X-ray lasers
for biological imaging and the creation of 3D holograms of living
organisms. Other spin-offs include research on advanced materials like SEAgel and Aerogel, the Electron-Beam Ion Trap facility for physics research, and enhanced techniques for early detection of breast cancer.
Chemical laser
SeaLite Beam Director, commonly used as the output for the MIRACL
Beginning in 1985, the Air Force tested an SDIO-funded deuterium fluoride laser known as Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser (MIRACL) at White Sands Missile Range.
During a simulation, the laser successfully destroyed a Titan missile
booster in 1985, however the test setup had the booster shell
pressurized and under considerable compression loads. These test
conditions were used to simulate the loads a booster would be under
during launch.
The system was later tested on target drones simulating cruise missiles
for the US Navy, with some success. After the SDIO closed, the MIRACL
was tested on an old Air Force satellite for potential use as an anti-satellite weapon, with mixed results. The technology was also used to develop the Tactical High Energy Laser, (THEL) which is being tested to shoot down artillery shells.
During the mid-to-late 1980s a number of panel discussions on lasers and SDI took place at various laser conferences. Proceedings of these conferences include papers on the status of chemical and other high power lasers at the time.
The Missile Defense Agency's Airborne Laser program uses a chemical laser which has successfully intercepted a missile taking off, so an offshoot of SDI could be said to have successfully implemented one of the key goals of the program.
Neutral particle beam
In July 1989, the Beam Experiments Aboard a Rocket (BEAR) program launched a sounding rocket containing a neutral particle beam (NPB) accelerator.
The experiment successfully demonstrated that a particle beam would
operate and propagate as predicted outside the atmosphere and that there
are no unexpected side-effects when firing the beam in space. After the
rocket was recovered, the particle beam was still operational.
According to the BMDO, the research on neutral particle beam
accelerators, which was originally funded by the SDIO, could eventually
be used to reduce the half-life of nuclear waste products using accelerator-driven transmutation technology.
Laser and mirror experiments
Technicians at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) work on the Low-powered Atmosphere Compensation Experiment (LACE) satellite.
The High Precision Tracking Experiment (HPTE), launched with the Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-51-G,
was tested June 21, 1985, when a Hawaii-based low-power laser
successfully tracked the experiment and bounced the laser off of the
HPTE mirror.
The Relay mirror experiment (RME), launched in February 1990,
demonstrated critical technologies for space-based relay mirrors that
would be used with an SDI directed-energy weapon
system. The experiment validated stabilization, tracking, and pointing
concepts and proved that a laser could be relayed from the ground to a
60 cm mirror on an orbiting satellite and back to another ground station
with a high degree of accuracy and for extended durations.
Launched on the same rocket as the RME, the Low-power Atmospheric Compensation Experiment (LACE) satellite was built by the United States Naval Research Laboratory
(NRL) to explore atmospheric distortion of lasers and real-time
adaptive compensation for that distortion. The LACE satellite also
included several other experiments to help develop and improve SDI
sensors, including target discrimination using background radiation and
tracking ballistic missiles using Ultraviolet Plume Imaging (UVPI). LACE was also used to evaluate ground-based adaptive optics, a technique now used in civilian telescopes to remove atmospheric distortions.
Hypervelocity Railgun (CHECMATE)
Research out of hypervelocityrailgun
technology was done to build an information base about railguns so that
SDI planners would know how to apply the technology to the proposed
defense system. The SDI railgun investigation, called the Compact High
Energy Capacitor Module Advanced Technology Experiment, had been able to
fire two projectiles per day during the initiative. This represented a
significant improvement over previous efforts, which were only able to
achieve about one shot per month. Hypervelocity railguns are, at least
conceptually, an attractive alternative to a space-based defense system
because of their envisioned ability to quickly shoot at many targets.
Also, since only the projectile leaves the gun, a railgun system can
potentially fire many times before needing to be resupplied.
A hypervelocity railgun works very much like a particle accelerator in so far as it converts electrical potential energy into kinetic energy imparted to the projectile. A conductive pellet (the projectile) is attracted down the rails by electric current flowing through a rail. Through the magnetic forces
that this system achieves, a force is exerted on the projectile moving
it down the rail. Railguns can generate muzzle-velocities in excess of
2.4 kilometers per second.
Railguns face a host of technical challenges before they will be
ready for battlefield deployment. First, the rails guiding the
projectile must carry very high power. Each firing of the railgun
produces tremendous current flow (almost half a million amperes) through the rails, causing rapid erosion of the rail's surfaces (through ohmic heating),
and even vaporization of the rail surface. Early prototypes were
essentially single-use weapons, requiring complete replacement of the
rails after each firing. Another challenge with the railgun system is
projectile survivability. The projectiles experience acceleration force
in excess of 100,000 g.
To be effective, the fired projectile must first survive the mechanical
stress of firing and the thermal effects of a trip through the
atmosphere at many times the speed of sound before its subsequent impact
with the target. In-flight guidance, if implemented, would require the
onboard navigation system to be built to the same level of sturdiness as
the main mass of the projectile.
In addition to being considered for destroying ballistic missile
threats, railguns were also being planned for service in space platform
(sensor and battle station) defense. This potential role reflected
defense planner expectations that the railguns of the future would be
capable of not only rapid fire, but also of multiple firings (on the
order of tens to hundreds of shots).
Groups
of interceptors were to be housed in orbital modules. Hover testing was
completed in 1988 and demonstrated integration of the sensor and
propulsion systems in the prototype SBI. It also demonstrated the
ability of the seeker to shift its aiming point from a rocket's hot plume to its cool body, a first for infraredABM
seekers. Final hover testing occurred in 1992 using miniaturized
components similar to what would have actually been used in an
operational interceptor. These prototypes eventually evolved into the Brilliant Pebbles program.
Brilliant Pebbles was a non-nuclear system of satellite-based
interceptors designed to use high-velocity, watermelon-sized,
teardrop-shaped projectiles made of tungsten as kinetic warheads. It was designed to operate in conjunction with the Brilliant Eyes sensor system. The project was conceived in November 1986 by Lowell Wood at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Detailed studies were undertaken by several advisory boards, including the Defense Science Board and JASON, in 1989.
The Pebbles were designed in such a way that autonomous
operation, without further external guidance from planned SDI sensor
systems, was possible. This was attractive as a cost saving measure, as
it would allow scaling back of those systems, and was estimated to save
$7 to $13 billion versus the standard Phase I Architecture. Brilliant Pebbles later became the centerpiece of a revised architecture under the Bush Administration SDIO.
John H. Nuckolls, director of Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory from 1988 to 1994, described the system as "The crowning
achievement of the Strategic Defense Initiative". Some of the
technologies developed for SDI were used in numerous later projects. For
example, the sensors and cameras that were developed and manufactured
for Brilliant Pebbles systems became components of the Clementine mission and SDI technologies may also have a role in future missile defense efforts.
Though regarded as one of the most capable SDI systems, the Brilliant Pebbles program was canceled in 1994 by the BMDO.
Sensor programs
Delta 183 launch vehicle lifts off, carrying the SDI sensor experiment "Delta Star", March 24, 1989
SDIO sensor research encompassed visible light, ultraviolet, infrared, and radar
technologies, and eventually led to the Clementine mission though that
mission occurred just after the program transitioned to the BMDO.
Like other parts of SDI, the sensor system initially was very
large-scale, but after the Soviet threat diminished it was cut back.
Boost Surveillance and Tracking System (BSTS)
Boost
Surveillance and Tracking System was part of the SDIO in the late
1980s, and was designed to assist detection of missile launches,
especially during the boost phase; however, once the SDI program shifted
toward theater missile defense in the early 1990s, the system left SDIO
control and was transferred to the Air Force.
Space Surveillance and Tracking System was a system originally
designed for tracking ballistic missiles during their mid-course phase.
It was designed to work in conjunction with BSTS, but was later scaled
down in favor of the Brilliant Eyes program.
Brilliant Eyes
Brilliant Eyes
was a simpler derivative of the SSTS that focused on theater ballistic
missiles rather than ICBMs and was meant to operate in conjunction with
the Brilliant Pebbles system.
Brilliant Eyes was renamed Space and Missile Tracking System
(SMTS) and scaled back further under BMDO, and in the late 1990s it
became the low earth orbit component of the Air Force's Space Based
Infrared System (SBIRS).
Other sensor experiments
The Delta 183 program used a satellite known as Delta Star to test several sensor related technologies. Delta Star carried a thermographic camera, a long-wave infrared imager, an ensemble of imagers and photometers
covering several visible and ultraviolet bands as well as a laser
detector and ranging device. The satellite observed several ballistic
missile launches including some releasing liquid propellant as a countermeasure to detection. Data from the experiments led to advances in sensor technologies.
Countermeasures
An artist's concept of a ground / space-based hybrid laser weapon, 1984
In war-fighting, countermeasures can have a variety of meanings:
The immediate tactical action to reduce vulnerability, such as chaff, decoys, and maneuvering.
Counter strategies which exploit a weakness of an opposing system, such as adding more MIRV warheads which are less expensive than the interceptors fired against them.
Defense suppression. That is, attacking elements of the defensive system.
Countermeasures of various types have long been a key part of
warfighting strategy; however, with SDI they attained a special
prominence due to the system cost, scenario of a massive sophisticated
attack, strategic consequences of a less-than-perfect defense, outer
spacebasing of many proposed weapons systems, and political debate.
Whereas the current United States national missile defense
system is designed around a relatively limited and unsophisticated
attack, SDI planned for a massive attack by a sophisticated opponent.
This raised significant issues about economic and technical costs
associated with defending against anti-ballistic missile defense countermeasures used by the attacking side.
For example, if it had been much cheaper to add attacking
warheads than to add defenses, an attacker of similar economic power
could have simply outproduced the defender. This requirement of being
"cost effective at the margin" was first formulated by Paul Nitze in November 1985.
In addition, SDI envisioned many space-based systems in fixed
orbits, ground-based sensors, command, control and communications
facilities, etc. In theory, an advanced opponent could have targeted
those, in turn requiring self-defense capability or increased numbers to
compensate for attrition.
A sophisticated attacker having the technology to use decoys,
shielding, maneuvering warheads, defense suppression, or other
countermeasures would have multiplied the difficulty and cost of
intercepting the real warheads. SDI design and operational planning had
to factor in these countermeasures and the associated cost.
SDI failed to dissuade the USSR from investing in development of ballistic missiles.
The Soviet response to the SDI during the period of March 1983 through
November 1985 provided indications of their view of the program both as a
threat and as an opportunity to weaken NATO. SDI was likely seen not
only as a threat to the physical security of the Soviet Union, but also
as part of an effort by the United States to seize the strategic
initiative in arms controls by neutralizing the military component of
Soviet strategy. The Kremlin expressed concerns that space-based missile
defenses would make nuclear war inevitable.
A major objective of that strategy was the political separation
of Western Europe from the United States, which the Soviets sought to
facilitate by aggravating allied concern over the SDI's potential
implications for European security and economic interests. The Soviet
predisposition to see deception behind the SDI was reinforced by their
assessment of US intentions and capabilities and the utility of military
deception in furthering the achievement of political goals.
In 1986 Carl Sagan
summarized what he heard Soviet commentators were saying about SDI,
with a common argument being that it was equivalent to starting an economic war through a defensive arms race to further cripple the Soviet economy with extra military spending, while another interpretation was that it served as a disguise for the US wish to initiate a first strike on the Soviet Union.
Though classified at the time, a detailed study on a Soviet space-based LASER system began no later than 1976 as the Skif, a 1 MW Carbon dioxide laser along with the anti-satellite Kaskad,
an in-orbit missile platform. With both devices reportedly designed to
pre-emptively destroy any US satellites that might be launched in the
future which could otherwise aid US missile defense.
DIA drawing of the Soviet Terra-3 laser in the USSR
In 1987 a disguised Mir space station module was lifted on the inaugural flight of the Energia booster as the Polyus
and it has since been revealed that this craft housed a number of
systems of the Skif laser, which were intended to be clandestinely
tested in orbit, if it had not been for the spacecraft's attitude control system malfunctioning upon separation from the booster and it failing to reach orbit. More tentatively, it is also suggested that the Zarya module of the International Space Station, capable of station keeping and providing sizable battery power, was initially developed to power the Skif laser system.
The polyus was a prototype of the Skif orbital weapons platform designed to destroy Strategic Defense Initiative satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser.
Soviet motivations behind attempting to launch components of the Skif
laser in the form of Polyus were, according to interviews conducted
years later, more for propaganda purposes in the prevailing climate of
focus on US SDI, than as an effective defense technology, as the phrase
"Space based laser" has a certain political capital.
In 2014, a declassified CIA paper states that "In response to
SDI, Moscow threatened a variety of military countermeasures in lieu of
developing a parallel missile defense system".
Controversy and criticism
SDI was not just lasers; in this Kinetic Energy Weapon test, a seven-gram Lexan projectile was fired from a light-gas gun at a velocity of 23,000 feet per second (7,000 m/s; 16,000 mph) at a cast aluminum block.
Historians from the Missile Defense Agency attribute the term "Star Wars" to a Washington Post article published March 24, 1983, the day after the speech, which quoted Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy describing the proposal as "reckless Star Wars schemes", a reference to the fantasy franchise Star Wars.
Some critics used the term derisively, implying it was an impractical
science fiction. In addition, the American media's liberal use of the
moniker (despite President Reagan's request that they use the program's
official name) did much to damage the program's credibility.
In comments to the media on March 7, 1986, Acting Deputy Director of
SDIO, Dr. Gerold Yonas, described the name "Star Wars" as an important
tool for Soviet disinformation and asserted that the nickname gave an entirely wrong impression of SDI.
Jessica Savitch reported on the technology in episode No.111 of Frontline, "Space: The Race for High Ground" on PBS on November 4, 1983.
The opening sequence shows Jessica Savitch seated next to a laser that
she used to destroy a model of a communication satellite. The
demonstration was perhaps the first televised use of a weapons grade
laser. No theatrical effects were used. The model was actually destroyed
by the heat from the laser. The model and the laser were realized by
Marc Palumbo, a High Tech Romantic artist from the Center for Advanced
Visual Studies at MIT.
Ashton Carter, then a board member at MIT,
assessed SDI for Congress in 1984, saying there were a number of
difficulties in creating an adequate missile defense shield, with or
without lasers. Carter said X-rays have a limited scope because they
become diffused through the atmosphere, much like the beam of a
flashlight spreading outward in all directions. This means the X-rays
needed to be close to the Soviet Union, especially during the critical
few minutes of the booster phase, for the Soviet missiles to be both
detectable to radar and targeted by the lasers themselves. Opponents
disagreed, saying advances in technology, such as using very strong
laser beams, and by "bleaching" the column of air surrounding the laser
beam, could increase the distance that the X-ray would reach to
successfully hit its target.
Physicists Hans Bethe and Richard Garwin, who worked with Edward Teller on both the atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos,
claimed a laser defense shield was unfeasible. They said that a
defensive system was costly and difficult to build yet simple to
destroy, and claimed that the Soviets could easily use thousands of
decoys to overwhelm it during a nuclear attack. They believed that the only way to stop the threat of nuclear war was through diplomacy and dismissed the idea of a technical solution to the Cold War,
saying that a defense shield could be viewed as threatening because it
would limit or destroy Soviet offensive capabilities while leaving the
American offense intact. In March 1984, Bethe coauthored a 106-page
report for the Union of Concerned Scientists that concluded "the X-ray laser offers no prospect of being a useful component in a system for ballistic missile defense."
In response to this when Teller testified before Congress he
stated that "instead of [Bethe] objecting on scientific and technical
grounds, which he thoroughly understands, he now objects on the grounds
of politics, on grounds of military feasibility of military deployment,
on other grounds of difficult issues which are quite outside the range
of his professional cognizance or mine."
On June 28, 1985, David Lorge Parnas
resigned from SDIO's Panel on Computing in Support of Battle
Management, arguing in eight short papers that the software required by
the Strategic Defense Initiative could never be made to be trustworthy
and that such a system would inevitably be unreliable and constitute a
menace to humanity in its own right.
Parnas said he joined the panel with the desire to make nuclear weapons
"impotent and obsolete" but soon concluded that the concept was "a
fraud".
Another criticism of SDI was that it would require the United States to modify previously ratified treaties. The Outer Space Treaty
of 1967, which requires "States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to
place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or
any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on
celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other
manner"
and would forbid the US from pre-positioning in Earth orbit any devices
powered by nuclear weapons and any devices capable of "mass
destruction". Only the space stationed nuclear pumped X-ray laser
concept would have violated this treaty, since other SDI systems, did
not require the pre-positioning of nuclear explosives in space.
The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its subsequent protocol, which limited missile defenses to one location per country at 100 missiles each (which the USSR had and the US did not), would have been violated by SDI ground-based interceptors. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
requires "Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue
negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation
of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,
and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and
effective international control." Many
viewed favoring deployment of ABM systems as an escalation rather than
cessation of the nuclear arms race, and therefore a violation of this
clause. On the other hand, many others did not view SDI as an escalation.
SDI and MAD
SDI was criticized for potentially disrupting the strategic stability afforded by the doctrine of mutual assured destruction.
MAD postulated that intentional nuclear attack was inhibited by the
certainty of ensuing mutual destruction. Even if a nuclear first strike
destroyed many of the opponent's weapons, sufficient nuclear missiles
would survive to render a devastating counter-strike against the
attacker. The criticism was that SDI could have potentially allowed an
attacker to survive the lighter counter-strike, thus encouraging a first
strike by the side having SDI. Another destabilizing scenario was
countries being tempted to strike first before SDI was deployed, thereby
avoiding a disadvantaged nuclear posture. Proponents of SDI argued that
SDI development might instead cause the side that did not have the
resources to develop SDI to, rather than launching a suicidal nuclear
first strike attack before the SDI system was deployed, instead come to
the bargaining table with the country that did have those resources and,
hopefully, agree to a real, sincere disarmament pact that would
drastically decrease all forces, both nuclear and conventional.
Furthermore, the MAD argument was criticized on the grounds that MAD
only covered intentional, full-scale nuclear attacks by a rational,
non-suicidal opponent with similar values. It did not take into account
limited launches, accidental launches, rogue launches, or launches by
non-state entities or covert proxies.
During the Reykjavik talks with Mikhail Gorbachev
in 1986, Ronald Reagan addressed Gorbachev's concerns about imbalance
by stating that SDI technology could be provided to the entire world –
including the Soviet Union – to prevent the imbalance from occurring.
Gorbachev answered dismissively. When Reagan prompted technology sharing
again, Gorbachev stated "we cannot assume an obligation relative to
such a transition", referring to the cost of implementing such a
program.
A military officer who was involved in covert operations at the time has told journalist Seymour Hersh that much of the publicity about the program was deliberately false and intended to expose Soviet spies:
For example, the published stories
about our Star Wars programme were replete with misinformation and
forced the Russians to expose their sleeper agents inside the American
government by ordering them to make a desperate attempt to find out what
the US was doing. But we could not risk exposure of the
administration's role and take the chance of another McCarthy period. So
there were no prosecutions. We dried up and eliminated their access and
left the spies withering on the vine ... Nobody on the Joint Chiefs of
Staff ever believed we were going to build Star Wars, but if we could
convince the Russians that we could survive a first strike, we win the
game.
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