| Publication |
2012.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
For decades, Russian leaders have expressed concern over American ballistic-missile defence programmes. Early US and Soviet attempts in the 1960s were curtailed by the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. US proponents of missile defence decried the treaty as an attempt by the Soviet Union to overcome what those proponents believed was America's lead in BMD technology. Russian embrace of the idea that defences upset strategic stability, the central paradigm of the treaty, was suspect because the Soviet Union spent inordinate sums developing strategic air and civil defences, reflecting its conviction that limiting damage from a hypothetical nuclear attack was a worthwhile, if not achievable, goal.
After US President Ronald Reagan's 1983 'Star Wars' speech, Moscow again expressed concern over the US Strategic Defense Initiative, even though such plans were technically fanciful at the time. Within the decade, Russian concerns had subsided, due in part to Russian scientists who noted the infeasibility of many of Reagan's space-based weapons and, more importantly, to more pressing issues raised by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet the Strategic Defense Initiative had at least one viable offspring in the form of hit-to-kill interceptors, which were successfully demonstrated in a 1984 test (the Homing Overlay Experiment).
|