The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons. The concept was first announced publicly by President Ronald Reagan on 23 March 1983. Reagan was a vocal critic of the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD), which he described as a "suicide pact", and he called upon the scientists and engineers of the United States to develop a system that would render nuclear weapons obsolete.
The SM-65 Atlas was the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed by the United States and the first member of the Atlas rocket family. It was built for the U.S. Air Force by Convair Division of General Dynamics at the Kearny Mesa assembly plant north of San Diego. Atlas became operational as an ICBM in October 1959 and was used as a first stage for satellite launch vehicles for half a century. The Atlas missile's warhead was over 100 times more powerful than the bomb dropped over Nagasaki in 1945.
The R-7 was a Soviet missile developed during the Cold War, and the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 made 28 launches between 1957 and 1961, but was never deployed operationally. A derivative, the R-7A, was deployed from 1959 to 1968. To the West it was known by the NATO reporting name SS-6 Sapwood and within the Soviet Union by the GRAU index 8K71. In modified form, it launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit, and became the basis for the R-7 family which includes Sputnik, Luna, Molniya, Vostok, and Voskhod space launchers, as well as later Soyuz variants.
Anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) are space weapons designed to incapacitate or destroy satellites for strategic military purposes. Several nations possess operational ASAT systems. Although no ASAT system has yet been utilised in warfare, a few nations have shot down their own satellites to demonstrate their ASAT capabilities in a show of force. Only the United States, Russia, China, and India have demonstrated this capability successfully.
The Tsyklon, GRAU index 11K67, was a Soviet-designed expendable launch system, primarily used to put Cosmos satellites into low Earth orbit. It is based on the R-36 intercontinental ballistic missile designed by Mikhail Yangel and made eight launches, with seven successes and one failure. All of its launches were conducted from LC-90 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It is sometimes designated Tsyklon-2A, not to be confused with the later Tsyklon-2 rocket. It was introduced in 1967 and was derived from the R-36 ICBM. It was retired in 1969.
The R-36 is a family of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and space launch vehicles (Tsyklon) designed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The original R-36 was deployed under the GRAU index 8K67 and was given the NATO reporting name SS-9 Scarp. It was able to carry three warheads and was the first Soviet MIRV missile. The later version, the R-36M was produced under the GRAU designations 15A14 and 15A18 and was given the NATO reporting name SS-18 Satan. This missile was viewed by certain United States analysts as giving the Soviet Union first strike advantage over the U.S., particularly because of its rapid silo-reload ability, very heavy throw weight and extremely large number of re-entry vehicles. Some versions of the R-36M were deployed with 10 warheads and up to 40 penetration aids and the missile's high throw-weight made it theoretically capable of carrying more warheads or penetration aids. Contemporary U.S. missiles, such as the Minuteman III, carried up to three warheads at most.
Brilliant Pebbles was a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system proposed by Lowell Wood and Edward Teller of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 1987, near the end of Cold War. The system would consist of thousands of small missiles, not unlike conventional heat seeking missiles, which would be placed in orbits so that hundreds would be above the Soviet Union at all times. If the Soviets launched its ICBM fleet, the pebbles would detect their rocket motors using infrared seekers and collide with them. Because the pebble strikes the ICBM before the latter could release its warheads, each pebble could destroy several warheads with one shot.
The R-12 was a theatre ballistic missile developed and deployed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Its GRAU designation was 8K63, and it was given the NATO reporting name of SS-4 Sandal. The R-12 rocket provided the Soviet Union with the capability to attack targets at medium ranges with a megaton-class thermonuclear warhead and constituted the bulk of the Soviet offensive missile threat to Western Europe. Deployments of the R-12 missile in Cuba caused the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. A total of 2335 missiles were produced; all were destroyed in 1993 under the Soviet and US Arms Control Treaty.
Space weapons are weapons used in space warfare. They include weapons that can attack space systems in orbit, attack targets on the earth from space or disable missiles travelling through space. In the course of the militarisation of space, such weapons were developed mainly by the contesting superpowers during the Cold War, and some remain under development today. Space weapons are also a central theme in military science fiction and sci-fi video games.
The Global Rocket 1 (GR-1) was a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed but not deployed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The system also was given the NATO reporting name SS-X-10 Scrag, and carried a Soviet GRAU index of 8K713.
The militarisation of space involves the placement and development of weaponry and military technology in outer space. The early exploration of space in the mid-20th century had, in part, a military motivation, as the United States and the Soviet Union used it as an opportunity to demonstrate ballistic-missile technology and other technologies having the potential for military application. Outer space has since been used as an operating location for military spacecraft such as imaging and communications satellites, and some ballistic missiles pass through outer space during their flight. As of 2019, known deployments of weapons stationed in space include only the Almaz space-station armament and pistols such as the TP-82 Cosmonaut survival pistol.
A kinetic bombardment or a kinetic orbital strike is the hypothetical act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert projectile, where the destructive force comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high speeds. The concept originated during the Cold War.
The UR-200 was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed by OKB-52 of Vladimir Nikolaevich Chelomey in the Soviet Union. It was known during the Cold War by the NATO reporting name SS-10 Scrag and internally by the GRAU index 8K81. The design was authorized by the Decisions of the Central Committee of the CPSU of March 16 and August 1, 1961, and the draft project was finished in July 1962. It first flew on November 4, 1963 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The ninth and final flight was conducted on October 20, 1964.
Nuclear weapons delivery is the technology and systems used to place a nuclear weapon at the position of detonation, on or near its target. Several methods have been developed to carry out this task.
The RS-28 Sarmat is a Russian liquid-fueled, MIRV-equipped, superheavy thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), under development by the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau since 2009. It is intended to replace the R-36M missile in Russia's arsenal.
Eglin AFB Site C-6 is an Air Force Space Command radar station which houses the AN/FPS-85 phased array radar, associated computer processing system(s), and radar control equipment. Commencing operations in 1969, the AN/FPS-85 was the first large phased array radar. The entire radar/computer system is located at a receiver/transmitter building and is supported by the site's power plant, fire station, 2 water wells, and other infrastructure for the system. As part of the US Air Force's Space Surveillance Network its mission is to detect and track spacecraft and other manmade objects in Earth orbit for "the Joint Space Operations Center satellite catalogue". With a peak radiated power of 32 megawatts the Air Force claims it is the most powerful radar in the world, and can track a basketball-sized object up to 22,000 nautical miles from Earth.
The RD-861 is a Soviet liquid propellant rocket engine burning UDMH and nitrogen tetroxide in a gas generator combustion cycle. It has a main combustion chamber, with four vernier nozzles fed by the gas generator output. It can be reignited a single time.
