Free Republic

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for...

MOSCOW - Taking aim at the United States, Russia's defense minister Thursday threatened retaliatory steps if any country puts weapons in space and said Moscow won't negotiate controls over tactical nuclear arms with nations that deploy them abroad, Russian media reported. While he mentioned no country by name, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's comments reflected persistent wariness over U.S. intentions, despite arms control deals and increased cooperation between the Cold War foes since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. "Russia's position on this question has not changed for decades: We are categorically against the militarization of space," the Interfax news...

Twenty-one years and $100-billion ago, President Ronald Reagan described his Star Wars dream of a safe and secure nation. "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack?" he asked. What if "we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?" Today, while most of the world's attention is elsewhere, the United States is taking the first step toward Reagan's elusive and costly goal. Construction is underway in California and Alaska...

<p>'Rods from God'</p> <p>In April, within 15 minutes of receiving a report that Saddam Hussein had entered a restaurant in Baghdad, a B-1B bomber dropped four 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs on the place.</p> <p>It now appears Saddam slipped out of the building by a secret exit. But if one space-based weapon now being researched had been orbiting above Iraq -- and had worked as envisioned -- Saddam almost certainly wouldn't have got away.</p>