Ronald Reagan and a goal far, far away: Star Wars and the Strategic Defense Initiative in Simi Valleyby Dwayne A. Day
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 The Reagan Museum exhibit, "Defending America and the Galaxy: Star Wars and SDI," which ended October 13, featured documents, photos, videos, and artifacts about both the early Star Wars movies and the Strategic Defense Initiative. These are ground processing systems used in missile defense tests. (credit: D. Day) |
From Star Wars to SDI to Star Wars
Titled “Defending America and the Galaxy: Star Wars and SDI,” the exhibit ran from March 15 to October 13. The exhibit was a bit of a gimmick, using photos, costumes, and props from some of the early Star Wars movies as a hook to interest a wider audience that might not visit a presidential museum. Approximately half of the exhibit was devoted to the movie Star Wars and its first two sequels, while the second half concerned Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.
 Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was often criticized around the world as ineffective, destabilizing, or both. (credit: D. Day) |
The first rooms in the exhibit explained the origin of George Lucas’ movie and then introduced some props and costumes from the movies. The costumes and some screen-used props were from actress Carrie Fisher’s estate, and there was a loose tie-in with Reagan as he and his wife Nancy were good friends with Fisher’s mother, Debbie Reynolds. Many of the artifacts on display were prop replicas, however, and a full-size BB8 droid that first appeared in a 2015 movie had nothing to do with the Strategic Defense Initiative, although it might be more recognizable to younger visitors than Princess Leia’s metal bikini.
 The Strategic Defense Initiative was widely mocked in popular cartoons. (credit: D. Day) |
The next part of the exhibit was devoted to the origins of the Strategic Defense Initiative. In March 1983, President Reagan announced plans for a national missile defense system to protect the continental United States from Soviet missile attack. The exhibit featured portions of his televised address, which was mostly devoted to discussion of the Soviet military threat and the need for an American military buildup, which had been underway since the early days of Reagan’s presidency. Only about 20% of Reagan’s speech focused on his new initiative. Immediately afterwards, Senator Ted Kennedy labeled the proposal “Star Wars,” a moniker that stuck and became more widely used than the official name of the program, especially after the third film in the franchise, “Return of the Jedi,” debuted two months later. One document on display in the exhibit showed how Reagan considered changing the name of the program to shake off the Star Wars label.
   Reagan administration officials were unhappy that SDI had been labeled as "Star Wars" by its critics and the press. They discussed possible name changes to the program to get away from the term "Star Wars" and improve the program's image. George Lucas was also unhappy that his film was being used in a political manner. (credit: D. Day) |
Ballistic missile defense
The exhibit briefly explained the prior history of missile defense and barely delved into the lobbying that led up to Reagan’s decision, although it did note that SDI essentially consolidated existing research under a centralized program. Ballistic missile defense began in World War II soon after the debut of long-range ballistic missiles. British military and scientific leaders began seeking defenses against the V-2s once the Germans started firing them at London. Interception of the supersonic missiles—unlike the much slower V-1 cruise missiles—was impossible, so the British turned to other tactics, such as deceiving the Germans about where the missiles hit to lure them off their targets.
 A major, but oft-overlooked aspect of the Strategic Defense Initiative was the development of new missile detectors. This system was developed in the 1970s and used to detect and characterize a Minuteman warhead in flight. Other space-based sensors were developed in the 1980s when SDI placed satellites with advanced detectors in orbit. (credit: D. Day) |
By the 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union were both investigating ways of intercepting ballistic missiles and finding it to be a major challenge. Anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) required nuclear warheads to be effective, meaning that even a small defensive system would detonate many nuclear weapons in the skies over their own territory, blinding defensive radars and potentially damaging electronics on the ground and in the air and destroying satellites in low Earth orbit. In the latter 1960s, the United States devoted substantial intelligence collection capabilities to understand the Soviet ballistic missile threat, and the Nixon administration somewhat reluctantly funded an American ABM system (see “Big bird, little bird: chasing Soviet anti-ballistic missile radars in the 1960s,” The Space Review, December 14, 2020.)
 The exhibit featured several artifacts from the missile defense and arms control fields. At center is a mockup of the homing vehicle for the F-15 anti-satellite weapon tested in the mid-1980s. Although not part of the Strategic Defense Initiative, it used similar technology, and the ASAT program was tied up in arms control negotiations. (credit: D. Day) |
The two superpowers, intimidated by the complexity and immense costs of creating an effective ballistic missile defense, instead signed a treaty in the early 1970s limiting their missile systems. The United States quickly abandoned its single missile site in North Dakota and never developed a defensive system for the nation’s capital, whereas the Soviet Union deployed a limited system around Moscow. The exhibit stated that the Soviet Union cheated on the treaty, which is technically correct, although it gained no significant advantage by doing so—any substantive improvement in Soviet ABM capabilities would have been detected by American intelligence systems.
 A homemade shirt created by an SDI supporter. (credit: D. Day) |
Non-government groups and former military officers advocated for a comprehensive anti-ballistic missile system in the years before Reagan became president, arguing that basing a system in space offered advantages over a ground-based defense, and that nuclear warheads would not be necessary to defeat Soviet missiles. Although some advocated for interceptor weapons, others pushed for more exotic solutions like lasers and particle beam weapons (see “Forces of darkness and light,” The Space Review, December 10, 2018.) Reagan became enamored of the idea and endorsed it. But the technological challenge was huge because offense was far easier than defense: defenders have to detect all the missiles, track them, discriminate between decoys and nuclear warheads, and coordinate a tremendously complicated defense involving thousands of lasers or interceptors targeting thousands of warheads during a very short time period. At the time, the Soviet Union had 308 SS-18 ICBMs in service, each with eight to ten nuclear warheads: approximately 3,000 reentry vehicles on those ICBMs alone. In addition, the USSR also possessed 300 SS-19 ICBMs, each carrying one to six warheads. A defensive system that was 99% effective would still allow dozens of Soviet warheads to reach their targets. Topping it all off, the full system could never be tested before it was required to work flawlessly.
Critics of SDI pointed out that the Soviets could easily build more missiles and add decoys to their existing weapons, swamping the defensive shield. The Soviets could also engage in other deceptive practices and alternative weapons, like cruise missiles. None of these options available to the Soviets required new technological breakthroughs, although somewhat bizarrely, the Soviets sought to develop entirely new anti-satellite systems to destroy SDI weapons. Almost none of this was explained in the museum exhibit. Current events have indicated the difficulty of developing a perfect defensive shield: after the highly successful Israeli interception of ballistic missiles in April, the more recent Iranian missile attack—and experience in Ukraine—indicates that as the defender runs out of missiles, the attacker will be more successful. Unlike earlier in the Ukraine war, today only a small percentage of Russian ballistic missiles are intercepted.
 After Reagan announced the SDI program in March 1983, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher publicly supported the program in part to maintain access to American technology. (credit: D. Day) |
The evolution of SDI
The exhibit wisely included a memo by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was concerned that Reagan’s program could create a rift in the alliance between the two countries. Thatcher considered the alliance even more important after Great Britain relied upon United States space assets during the Falklands War, which took place only a year earlier (see “The secret history of Britain’s involvement in the Strategic Defense Initiative,” The Space Review, February 1, 2021.) Aaron Bateman recently published a book via MIT Press that delved into that and other aspects of the SDI program (see “Review: Weapons in Space”, The Space Review, May 20, 2024.)
The exhibit featured several videos showing testing of SDI technologies as well as a few artifacts, such as advanced missile detection sensors and several mockups of “hit-to-kill” interceptors. It did not provide much explanation of the technologies, the difficulties developing them, and their evolution. Although the early SDI program, into Reagan’s second term, concentrated on lasers and other beam weapons, the difficulties of making these work led to a redirection of the program towards orbital interceptors, thousands of them in low Earth orbit, an approach that was labeled “Brilliant Pebbles” because the interceptors were expected to have a high degree of autonomy in engaging their targets. But technological failures in other areas, such as the January 1986 loss of the space shuttle Challenger, as well as the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, led critics to charge that SDI was technological hubris.
  After Reagan announced the SDI program in March 1983, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher publicly supported the program in part to maintain access to American technology. (credit: D. Day) |
One of the many things missing in the exhibit was a discussion of the SDI space research program. Nearly a dozen satellites of different types, mostly devoted to developing sensor technologies to detect and track relatively cold warheads against the deep cold of space, were launched during the 1980s. SDI’s technical legacy resides in the technology that emerged from these systems, which was later integrated into operational satellites. But that technology is mostly classified, even if the original SDI satellites have been partially declassified and their development stories and test results published in journals (see “Smashing satellites as part of the Delta 180 Strategic Defense Initiative mission,” The Space Review, July 17, 2023.)
 A mockup of the interceptor currently in use in the United States' limited missile defense system, based in California and Alaska. (credit: D. Day) |
Much of the hit-to-kill technology that is used in the current very-limited American strategic defense system based in California and Alaska, as well as shorter-range systems like the Patriot missiles, the US Navy’s SM-3, and the Israeli Arrow, was developed in the 1990s and later. Reagan’s vision of a space-based defensive shield was largely a technological dead-end.
 Visitors to the Star Wars/SDI exhibit entered near a model of a T.I.E. fighter. (credit: D. Day) |
Political legacy
Compared to the technology, SDI’s political legacy is much more well-known, and was better discussed in the exhibit. The Soviet Union’s response to SDI was complicated. Many Soviet scientists and military leaders believed that it was too technologically difficult to work, and they found the American commitment to SDI puzzling: why spend so much money on something that seemed absurd? Soviet military leaders, however, were willing to exploit SDI to advocate for various weapons systems, including many different anti-satellite weapons.
Soviet political and military leaders may have doubted SDI and even publicly ridiculed it, but they were also concerned that it might work, or at least work well enough to threaten a portion of their ICBM force, reducing its effectiveness and pushing them toward a first-use policy. In the wilderness of mirrors of nuclear deterrence theory, the ability to reduce the effectiveness of a Soviet missile strike was considered by many—both in the West and behind the Iron Curtain—as an incentive for the Soviet Union to engage in a first strike. Missile defense could therefore cause a war rather than prevent it.
  Star Wars was one of the first science fiction movies to depict a dirty, lived-in universe. Some of the best art designers and prop and model builders in the world worked on the film. The exhibit featured some screen-used props as well as many replicas. (credit: D. Day) |
In October 1986, Reagan met his counterpart Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev at a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. They engaged in a remarkable series of discussions in an isolated and relatively small house under a cloudy sky. The two men were both interested in significantly reducing their strategic missile arsenals—up to 50%. But Gorbachev would only agree if Reagan gave up the Strategic Defense Initiative and confined it to a laboratory for a decade. Reagan refused, and many of his and SDI’s critics later claimed that he had missed a major opportunity for substantial nuclear arms reductions. The exhibit includes text indicating that the Soviets were secretly building up their arsenal, so any Soviet reductions would have been meaningless. Unexplained is how Gorbachev could have continued doing so without eventually being caught. The exhibit included a few documents from the summit, although the complexities of what happened at that event would be difficult to convey in any museum exhibit—there are several books about the summits during Reagan’s presidency.
After Reagan left office in 1989, his successor, George H.W. Bush, sought to continue the program. But the tremendous cost and difficulty of developing a full nuclear shield was well apparent by that time, and the Soviet Union was already crumbling due to the inefficiencies of its economic system and the massive amounts the country was spending on its military. In the 1990s, some claimed that SDI led to the downfall of the Soviet Union, although Soviet defense expenditures were so high even by the 1970s—up to 20% of their government budget—that they were effectively bankrupting the country, and there is little evidence that the Soviets substantially increased spending to respond to SDI.
 Star Wars was a huge hit when it premiered in 1977 and there were several parodies, including "Hardware Wars." (credit: D. Day) |
Bush was no closer to developing a nuclear shield when he left office in 1993 than at any time in the prior decade. President Bill Clinton redirected the program, shifting its focus to ground-based interceptors and theater missile defense, a much easier task than strategic defense, and the basis of the United States’ currently deployed limited defensive shield. Thus, one could argue that Israel’s successful missile defense systems owe more to Clinton’s reorientation of missile defense towards realistic objectives than Reagan’s unrealistic vision of a space-based strategic shield. The museum exhibit noted the change in direction after Reagan left office, but did not expand upon it.
  The Reagan Museum exhibit featured props and costumes from the early movies. (credit: D. Day) |
The Reagan Museum is located north of Los Angeles, in the Simi Valley, and is most notable for its spectacular main hall with a former Air Force One aircraft perched as if flying over the valley. Presidential museums and libraries have complicated missions. They struggle to objectively portray their subjects while also lionizing them. They can easily lapse into hagiography, or at the very least, ignore the negative aspects of their presidents’ personalities and administrations. Although the Nixon Museum acknowledges Watergate, it does not play any of the tapes revealing Nixon’s bigotry, anti-Semitism, and nastiness. Lyndon Johnson’s hard-ball politics and crudeness—he used to dictate orders to aides while sitting on the toilet—go unmentioned at his museum. And the protectors of John F. Kennedy’s legacy successfully hid his philandering, misogyny, mafia ties, and efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro from public view for decades. Reagan certainly knew the power of image and helped create a persona that was larger than life. Reagan’s mythology has begun to fade, although the museum is still trying to protect it.
 Patented yes, Yoda was. (credit: D. Day) |
“Defending America and the Galaxy: Star Wars and SDI” was a temporary exhibit, and temporary exhibits at presidential libraries tend to be lower quality than the main museums—somewhat ad hoc, somewhat undercooked. This one lacked historically significant artifacts and could have used better storytelling and greater objectivity (not to mention some copy-editing). But it was a reasonable take on the subject, acknowledging that Reagan neither invented nor enabled effective strategic missile defense. After the end of the Cold War, it became clear that the Soviet threat was exaggerated and misunderstood. The mere fact that the superpower Reagan warned about so alarmingly in the early 1980s crumbled so easily within a decade demonstrated that Soviet might had been overestimated, including by the Soviets themselves. An objective museum exhibit on the Strategic Defense Initiative could still be valuable now that this one has closed. The subject of missile defense is still relevant, as missiles arcing through Middle Eastern skies attest.
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