The official name of the Department of Defense program under the Ronald Reagan administration was the Strategic Defense Initiative or simply SDI, often referred to as the Space Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars." Though it was never completely developed or deployed, the research and technologies of SDI paved the way for some anti-ballistic missile systems of today. The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was set up in 1984 within the United States Department of Defense to oversee the Strategic Defense Initiative. It gained the popular name Star Wars after the 1977 film by George Lucas. Under the administration of President Bill Clinton in 1993, its name was changed to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and its emphasis was shifted from national missile defense to theater missile defense; from global to regional coverage. BMDO was renamed to the Missile Defense Agency in 2002. This article covers defense efforts under the SDIO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative I was in northern Europe at the time this program was under development and the prevailing perception was that the Americans were attempting to set "proton ray guns" in geostationary orbit around the earth with the capability to burn down whole cities such as Moscow at the pull of a trigger. There was a DoD video demonstration broadcast by CNN and other worldwide news agencies at the time of a large "gun" set in some American desert that appeared to depict this gun blowing up a water tower more than a mile away by simply emitting a sort of invisible death ray. Sounds of the gun revving up could be heard, immediately followed by the water tower exploding. Some took it seriously, some not. The story goes that the USSR was thoroughly convinced that SDI was genuine at the Reagan/Gorbachev Iceland Conference. The Soviet Union began showing signs of economic instability soon after. Some European analysts later surmised that most of the SDI project was great theater put on by the US, but essentially a shell project, but they insisted after the Iceland Conference the USSR bought into the idea hook line and sinker and that the economic problems that the Soviet Union were having in the late '80s was due to the vast amount of money they put toward attempting to compete with the US Star Wars program. They beilieve that this was the true objective behind SDI. Many attribute the downfall of the USSR to this failed attempt at catchup which sucked their economy dry. I personally find that hard to believe, but it's a great story. Many analysts today also believe that Perestroika, Glasnost and all the high--profile changes starting with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall are a sham put on by the USSR and their supposed downfall is but theater to convince the West to let down their defenses. I find this bit of theater easier to believe, however, because post-Perestroika leaders of Russia, and their personal backgrounds, KGB behaviour and certain foreign policy and interior ministry actions since 1989 can be construed to support this idea. The old sport of monitoring and predicting moves of the major participants of the Cold War is still alive and well amongst us older news junkies. Old habits are hard to break.

It's gotten a whole bunch more names since then. And it has branched out of the original missile defense shield it originally came in. Hyperkinetic payload delivery systems, X-ray lasers, and some truly unusual stuffs. It's still in production. But remains largely untested in real life situations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative