14 - Into the 1990s

Summary

Since 1988, SDI has had its budget cut and both its design and rationale transformed. In early 1991 it was refocussed into a Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS).

The new détente threatened the most fundamental rationales for SDL Although the Soviets were concerned about space weapons, their desire for arms reductions was now paramount. They undercut the argument that SDI would be a good ‘bargaining chip’ by declaring, in September 1989, that SDI would no longer block a START Treaty. The fall of the Berlin wall and the domino-like collapse of state socialist regimes across Eastern Europe was endorsed, or even encouraged by Gorbachev. Leninism was de facto buried. The Soviets were reducing their forces and redeploying them in defensive positions: a process formalised by the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, signed in November 1990. In July 1990 the USSR began to raze the phased array radar facility at Krasnoyarsk, thus underlining a commitment to the ABM Treaty. SDI looked increasingly vulnerable to demands for a ‘peace dividend’. The new international climate, coupled with federal and budget deficits in the USA, ruled out the large budget increases, envisaged in the early SDI requests, for full-scale RDT&E and deployment in the 1990s. In 1987 the SDIO had planned to request $8 billion in FY 1991; in the event, the Administration asked for $4.66 billion and was granted $2.89 billion.