Ronald Reagan had a space-based defense plan known as Star Wars.

  • Reagan addressing the Nation on the National Security Defense Initiative
Reagan addressing the nation on the National Security Defense Initiative
Credit: Everett Collection Inc/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine

January 22, 2026

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Before there was Space Force, there was Star Wars. No, not the sci-fi franchise set in a galaxy far, far away, but the space-based defense plan proposed by Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983. Officially known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the program received its mocking nickname when Senator Ted Kennedy lambasted it as a “reckless Star Wars scheme.” Intended to defend the United States from the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, SDI relied on futuristic technology that didn’t yet exist. Chief among them was a laser system that could theoretically zap intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) out of the sky before they reached their target.

In announcing the program, Reagan called on the scientists who first developed nuclear weapons to “turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” With hundreds of Soviet missiles aimed at America, the president wanted to neutralize the threat of those weapons of mass destruction. More than $30 billion was spent on the Star Wars initiative over the next decade, but the critics who dismissed it as overambitious proved right. SDI never came to fruition and was officially canceled by Bill Clinton in 1993.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

Ronald Reagan took advice from an astrologist during his presidency.

To hear her tell it, Joan Quigley didn’t just advise President Ronald Reagan on his schedule — she also convinced him to take a softer stance on the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Perhaps not surprisingly then, the astrologist, who wrote a memoir about her experience offering advice to both the president and the first lady, received pushback from others within the administration, including Reagan’s chief of staff, the coincidentally named Donald Regan. The extent of Quigley’s influence depends on whom you ask, however. First Lady Nancy Reagan dismissed claims of their reliance on the astrologist in her own 1989 memoir, My Turn, which Quigley saw as a betrayal — albeit one she was able to foresee. “Struggle has been in my charts,” she told a reporter in 2014, saying she knew to “expect no gratitude” from the Reagans.

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