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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brilliant Pebbles | 2/9 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:24:19.440513+00:00 | kb-cron |
There are a wide variety of stories about the origins of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. According to one often repeated tale, it was Reagan's viewing of Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain that did it. Edward Teller instead pointed to a talk he gave on the topic of BMD in 1967 that Reagan attended. Others point to Reagan's visit to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in 1979; there he saw the systems that could detect a Soviet launch and then track their warheads. When he asked what they could do in that situation, the answer was "launch our own missiles". Whatever the source, Reagan was convinced that mutual assured destruction (MAD) was ridiculous, dismissing it as the international equivalent of a suicide pact. Reagan asked Daniel O. Graham, his military advisor during the 1980 presidential campaign and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to look for possible solutions. At first, Graham proposed a system of crewed space fighters, but the idea was quickly dismissed. Next, he revived the 1960s Project BAMBI to be the basis of a new system he referred to as Smart Rocks. This concept used "battle stations" in low Earth orbit, each carrying several dozen small missiles similar to a conventional heat-seeking air-to-air missile. The platforms would carry advanced sensors to detect and track Soviet ICBMs as they launched, and then launch its missiles and guide them until the missile's own infrared sensors picked up the ICBM. As the ICBM rocket engine was extremely bright in infrared, even a very simple interceptor missile could successfully track them. As the interceptors were relatively small and carried a limited amount of rocket fuel, they could only attack ICBMs within a limited range of the stations. This meant the stations had to be in low orbit, to keep them close to their targets. At these altitudes, the stations moved at speeds around 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 km/h) compared to the surface of the Earth. At that rate, any given station would spend only a few minutes over the Soviet Union. To ensure there were enough stations in the right locations at any given time, hundreds of stations were needed. The Air Force noted that there was nowhere near enough launch capacity to build such a system, and even if it could be launched, maintaining it would cost at least $30 billion a year in 1963 dollars (equivalent to $315 billion in 2025). Additionally, it was noted that there was no effective way to protect the stations against attacks by anti-satellite weapons (ASATs), and the Soviets could easily afford to launch one for each platform. Although twenty years had elapsed since BAMBI had first been studied and the concept had been re-examined several times, no obvious solution to these problems had presented itself. The Smart Rocks proposal, now known officially as Global Ballistic Missile Defense, ignored all of these problems, presenting a bare minimum of information. One observer derided the concept as being "one view-graph deep" and "unencumbered by practical engineering considerations or the laws of physics". In spite of this, Graham soon found a group of like-minded Republicans who formed a group known as the High Frontier Panel to help develop and support his idea. The group was led by Karl Bendetsen and began meeting in a room provided by The Heritage Foundation.
=== Excalibur ===
Around the same time that Graham was formulating his Smart Rocks concept, studies into X-ray lasers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL or Livermore) made an apparent breakthrough. Nuclear explosions give off massive amounts of X-ray energy, and it appeared possible these could be focused down into narrow beams as the basis for a long-range laser weapon. Previous systems had used carbon-based lasing materials, but calculations showed that the energy could be greatly increased by using a metal rod instead. The idea had been largely theoretical until a key test of the new concept in November 1980. By surrounding a nuclear warhead with dozens of rods, each could be independently aimed to shoot down an enemy missile. A single such warhead might be able to destroy 50 missiles in a radius of 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) around it. A small fleet of such warheads could seriously disrupt any Soviet attack. In February 1981, Teller and Wood traveled to Washington to pitch the idea of a Manhattan Project-level development effort to produce these weapons in what they called Project Excalibur. Teller was also a member of the High Frontier group and began attacking Graham's Smart Rocks as "outlandish", and suggested his own Excalibur be used in its place. Graham countered by pointing out a serious flaw in Excalibur; he noted that it worked by blowing itself up, so in the event a Soviet anti-satellite weapon approached, it could either blow itself up to attack the ASAT, or allow itself to be blown up by the ASAT. In either case, the Excalibur would be destroyed. Teller soon returned with a solution. In this concept, the Excalibur weapons would be placed on missiles on submarines and launched when needed. Seeing himself increasingly sidelined, Graham left the group in December 1981 to form High Frontier Inc. In March 1982, they published a glossy book on the topic. It claimed that the system could be "fully deployed within five or six years at a minimum cost of some $10–$15 billion". A pre-publication copy was sent to the Air Force, who dismissed it, saying that it "had no technical merit and should be rejected".
=== Early failures, APS report ===