The proposed "Star Wars" defense system was a clear violation of existing treaties. It fueled a lot of research and large sums of money were spent in what amounted to a calculated risk to break the nuclear stalemate. Years earlier Carter had transponders placed on many portions of our nuclear arsenal in an attempt to get the Russians to do the same. They did not and this left the US handicapped. Russia knew where many of our weapons were at. The US military had no such knowledge of Russian Weapons.
The irony of it is that the particle beam cannon does exist, it is used every day for other purposes. It was invented outside of the military research departments, which (the military research groups) deemed impossible to build in a compact enough unit to be deployed in space. Even today many site the inability to provide a compact particle beam cannon as the reason for abandoning the idea, but that is just not the facts. A particle beam cannon is possible because they are being produced and used for peaceful purposes.
The significance lies in its policy of furtherance of Cold War (& victory).
It proved to be exorbitantly expensive. But before that USSR collapsed & Communism evaporated. It left no 'raison d'etre' for the continuance of Cold War. Yet with no reason, it continues even today.
Russia hacked it Hollywood stuff it sounded space age During the Gulf war Hussein had some scud missiles that chugged along with birds nesting on them the USA put their missile defence system in Saudi Arabia and Israel they shot down a couple as I recall and missed plenty so it was way after star wars and not too impressive
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The proposed "Star Wars" defense system was a clear violation of existing treaties. It fueled a lot of research and large sums of money were spent in what amounted to a calculated risk to break the nuclear stalemate. Years earlier Carter had transponders placed on many portions of our nuclear arsenal in an attempt to get the Russians to do the same. They did not and this left the US handicapped. Russia knew where many of our weapons were at. The US military had no such knowledge of Russian Weapons.
The irony of it is that the particle beam cannon does exist, it is used every day for other purposes. It was invented outside of the military research departments, which (the military research groups) deemed impossible to build in a compact enough unit to be deployed in space. Even today many site the inability to provide a compact particle beam cannon as the reason for abandoning the idea, but that is just not the facts. A particle beam cannon is possible because they are being produced and used for peaceful purposes.
The significance lies in its policy of furtherance of Cold War (& victory).
It proved to be exorbitantly expensive. But before that USSR collapsed & Communism evaporated. It left no 'raison d'etre' for the continuance of Cold War. Yet with no reason, it continues even today.
Russia hacked it Hollywood stuff it sounded space age During the Gulf war Hussein had some scud missiles that chugged along with birds nesting on them the USA put their missile defence system in Saudi Arabia and Israel they shot down a couple as I recall and missed plenty so it was way after star wars and not too impressive