ABSTRACT
Although the United States and the Soviet Union worked intensively on ballistic missile defences (BMD) throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the acceleration of US research and development can be dated to the ‘Star Wars’ speech of President Ronald Reagan on 23 March 1983. This marked the start of a hugely expanded BMD programme, the Strategic Defence Initiative, the basis of which was the belief that it would prove technically possible to provide a comprehensive defence for the United States against long-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. A substantial element in the programme was the development of directed energy weapons, principally those based on lasers and particle beams.
