The 1980s star wars defense wasn't a boon doggle. It was a carefully thought out plan by Ronald Regan to drive the Russians to bankruptcy and it worked.
BTW, cruise missles are easily defeated as they fly much slower than balistic missles and can usually be taken care of with guns, not missle interceptors.
“The 1980s star wars defense wasn’t a boon doggle. It was a carefully thought out plan by Ronald Regan to drive the Russians to bankruptcy and it worked.”
Myth. Yes, the defense build up of the 1980’s did help, but it had about zilch to do with the relatively inexpensive enterprise of thinking how to avoid interceptor missiles. The Soviets went “bankrupt” trying to match our navy, new ground weapons and upgrades, and manpowerincreases. Afghan war did them in too...especially for reason of Saudi flooding the oil markets.