We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
Previous chapters have shown why SDI was consolidated and how it acquired momentum. This chapter will examine one aspect of the shaping of SDI, namely, the issue of early deployment. This was a bid to change the programme by reordering and accelerating short-term projects.
Some of Reagan's keenest admirers believed that his vision had been captured by the bureaucracy. A disenchanted Angelo Codevilla, formerly aide to Senator Malcolm Wallop of the ‘laser lobby’, charged the SDI Office with stifling the growth of strategic defence by raising performance requirements and restricting the programme to research:
no part of it has the task, or even the opportunity, to design and develop any weapons system or any part thereof. Such things would require integration of work in all five program elements … Severally and jointly, the parts do not necessarily have any connection with the reality of weaponry … SDI is in effect a decision to postpone until the 1990s any serious consideration of what, if anything, the United States shall do to prevent Soviet missiles, once launched, from landing in the US.
In late 1986, important SDI factions started to urge deployment of SDI, with an early Initial Operating Capability (IOC) for a partial defence, to be followed by a fuller system. In the short term and for practical purposes SDI would become a defence of some ‘point’ sites, rather than being what Reagan envisaged, a comprehensive protection for the nation.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
