Star Wars

The movie and book about J. Robert Oppenheimer have highlighted the role of Edward Teller in developing the hydrogen bomb and President Reagan’s Star Wars project, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).  Based on his reputation as the father of thd hydrogen bomb, Teller used his influence to persuade President Reagan to pursue the idea that the US could be protected from nuclear attack by defensive weapons, such as powerful lasers.  It was disagreement over the future of SDI that led to the failure of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, at which the two countries came close to agreeing on the elimination of all nuclear weapons.  

Around this time I was working at the  Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (which no longer exists) on space arms control.  The SDI, which required putting powerful lasers and other weapons in space, was anathema to space arms control in general and to existing agreements such as the Outer SpaceTreaty.

For better or worse, technology was unable to produce the weapons needed to realize SDI. In an effort to invigorate SDI, Reagan chose Air Force General James Abrahamson to lead the project. As a colonel Abrahamson had been the officer responsible for the development of the F-16, one of the most successful aircraft ever.  The only National Security Council meeting I ever attended was the one which named him as chief.  Even he, however, could not make SDI work, and it still remains technologically out of reach today.