This reflects more than just better pay, equipment, and leadership. You the American people have sent a signal to these young people that it is once again an honor to wear the uniform.
That's not something you measure in a budget, but it's a very real part of our nation's strength. It'll take us longer to build the kind of equipment we need to keep peace in the future, but we've made a good start. We haven't built a new long-range bomber for 21 years. Now we're building the B We hadn't launched one new strategic submarine for 17 years.
Now we're building one Trident submarine a year. We're determining how to solve that problem. At the same time, we're working in the START and INF negotiations with the goal of achieving deep reductions in the strategic and intermediate nuclear arsenals of both sides.
We have also begun the long-needed modernization of our conventional forces. The Army is getting its first new tank in 20 years.
The Air Force is modernizing. We're rebuilding our Navy, which shrank from about a thousand ships in the late 's to during the 's.
Our nation needs a superior navy to support our military forces and vital interests overseas. We're now on the road to achieving a ship navy and increasing the amphibious capabilities of our marines, who are now serving the cause of peace in Lebanon. And we're building a real capability to assist our friends in the vitally important Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf region.
This adds up to a major effort, and it isn't cheap. It comes at a time when there are many other pressures on our budget and when the American people have already had to make major sacrifices during the recession. But we must not be misled by those who would make defense once again the scapegoat of the Federal budget. The fact is that in the past few decades we have seen a dramatic shift in how we spend the taxpayer's dollar. Back in , payments to individuals took up only about 20 percent of the Federal budget.
For nearly three decades, these payments steadily increased and, this year, will account for 49 percent of the budget. By contrast, in defense took up more than half of the Federal budget.
By this spending had fallen to a low of 23 percent. Even with the increase that I am requesting this year, defense will still amount to only 28 percent of the budget.
The calls for cutting back the defense budget come in nice, simple arithmetic. They're the same kind of talk that led the democracies to neglect their defenses in the s and invited the tragedy of World War II. We must not let that grim chapter of history repeat itself through apathy or neglect. This is why I'm speaking to you tonight - to urge you to tell your Senators and Congressmen that you know we must continue to restore our military strength.
If we stop in midstream, we will send a signal of decline, of lessened will, to friends and adversaries alike. Free people must voluntarily, through open debate and democratic means, meet the challenge that totalitarians pose by compulsion. It's up to us, in our time, to choose and choose wisely between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.
The solution is well within our grasp. But to reach it, there is simply no alternative but to continue this year, in this budget, to provide the resources we need to preserve the peace and guarantee our freedom.
Now, thus far tonight I've shared with you my thoughts on the problems of national security we must face together. My predecessors in the Oval Office have appeared before you on other occasions to describe the threat posed by Soviet power and have proposed steps to address that threat.
But since the advent of nuclear weapons, those steps have been increasingly directed toward deterrence of aggression through the promise of retaliation. This approach to stability through offensive threat has worked. We and our allies have succeeded in preventing nuclear war for more than three decades.
In recent months, however, my advisers, including in particular the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have underscored the necessity to break out of a future that relies solely on offensive retaliation for our security. Over the course of these discussions, I've become more and more deeply convinced that the human spirit must be capable of rising above dealing with other nations and human beings by threatening their existence.
Feeling this way, l believe we must thoroughly examine every opportunity for reducing tensions and for introducing greater stability into the strategic calculus on both sides. One of the most important contributions we can make is, of course, to lower the level of all arms, and particularly nuclear arms.
We're engaged right now in several negotiations with the Soviet Union to bring about a mutual reduction of weapons.
I will report to you a week from tomorrow my thoughts on that score. But let me just say, I'm totally committed to this course. If the Soviet Union will join with us in our effort to achieve major arms reduction, we will have succeeded in stabilizing the nuclear balance. Nevertheless, it will still be necessary to rely on the specter of retaliation, on mutual threat. And that's a sad commentary on the human condition. Wouldn't it be better to save lives than to avenge them?
Are we not capable of demonstrating our peaceful intentions by applying all our abilities and our ingenuity to achieving a truly lasting stability? I think we are. Indeed, we must. After careful consultation with my advisers, including the Join Chiefs of Staff, I believe there is a way. Let me share with you a vision of the future which offers hope. It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive.
Let us turn to the very strengths in technology that spawned our great industrial base and that have given us the quality of life we enjoy today. What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U. I know this is a formidable, technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet, current technology has attained a level of sophistication where it's reasonable for us to begin this effort.
When reformer Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in , he began to drastically cut Soviet military spending, particularly the anti-ballistic missile program the USSR had started in response to SDI. But we should overcome our obsession with it. Scaling back the military budget was one method Gorbachev used in his efforts to revive the Soviet economy; another was negotiating directly with the United States. Caption: Reagan and Gorbachev at the Reykjavik Summit, Although SDI was a frequent topic in negotiations with Gorbachev, Reagan was reluctant to surrender his project.
Once again, however, Reagan offered to share SDI technology with the Soviet Union, although not all of his advisors shared his enthusiasm for the proposal.
He argued that SDI was hypocritical—the West would be terrified if the Soviet Union developed an anti-ballistic missile system. By , however, Gorbachev agreed that missile reductions and SDI could be negotiated separately. Along with reduced Cold War tensions, Gorbachev was aware that the U. The INF Treaty, which eliminated all short-range miles and intermediate-range miles nuclear missiles, was signed at the Washington Summit later that year. Caption: The logo of the Missile Defense Agency.
In , President George W. NDA, which still exists today, has studied the possibilities of space-based anti-ballistic missile technology , as SDI once did, although without any significant results to date. Hanhimaki, Jussi M. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Shultz, George P. Browse our collection of oral histories with workers, families, service members, and more about their experiences in the Manhattan Project.
Skip to main content. History Page Type:. Cold War History. Wednesday, July 18, Critics pointed to the vast technological uncertainties of the system, in addition to its enormous cost. Although work was begun on the program, the technology proved to be too complex and much of the research was cancelled by later administrations. The idea of missile defense system would resurface later as the National Missile Defense.
Edit source History Talk 0. For other uses, see SDI. Main article: Project Excalibur. See also: Directed-energy weapon. See also: Chemical laser. Strategic Defense Initiative Timeline. See also: Culture during the Cold War.
Missile Defense Milestones. Accessed March 10, Retrieved on Abrahamson : Henry F. Retrieved There is good evidence that in the late s the Soviets were giving serious thought to both explosive and nonexplosive nuclear power sources for lasers of an unknown type. However, it is difficult to see why an extensive system of directed-energy weapons in space would not be able to destroy missiles or satellites sent to attack it.
Such an attack would also prompt an immediate nuclear first strike against the attacking nation. Frequently used in reference to the Excalibur X-ray laser that would be launched from submarines. Confessions of a Cold Warrior. October ISBN New York Times. History of the Missile Defense Organization. Limited Ballistic Missile Strikes. Accessed April 27, Lockheed ERIS.
United States Nuclear Tests — Rosen et al. Matthews et al. November Accessed April 29, Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser. Accessed April 8, Duarte Ed. Volume 1: Project Summary. Statement of Lieutenant General Malcolm R.
Accessed March 11, Technology Review. Space Warfare And Strategic Defense. Exeter Books. Ballistic Missile Defense. Brilliant Pebbles. Summary of Brilliant Pebbles. Space and Missile Tracking System. Accessed June 18, October 20, Where do we get "Star Wars"? The Eagle. March Paul United States: Harper Perennial. Gerold Yonas. SDI:Prospects and Challenges. March 7, Cambridge, MA. Nuclear weapons and contemporary international law.
Martinus Nijhoff. Retrieved September 1, May 24, Reagan-Gorbachev Transcripts. Accessed September 18, Frances Fitzgerald Broad, William J. Star Warriors: A penetrating look into the lives of the young scientists behind our space age weaponry. Reprint edition ; Diane Pub. Cancel Save. Universal Conquest Wiki. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Strategic Defense Initiative. This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia view authors.
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