In March 1983, United States president Ronald Reagan proposed that the US should develop a programme which would defend the country from attack by enemy nuclear ballistic missiles. He had been persuaded that they should investigate this possibility after learning that should an attack happen, the missiles were tracked but at no stage was any attempt to intercept them considered. Horrified by this, he insisted that the US should have the capability to defend itself from missile attack.
Back then, the Cold War was still in full force, with the US-backed NATO squared off against the Soviet Union-backed Warsaw Pact, with both sides having enough nuclear firepower to wipe out Earth several times over. Knowing that if one side were to actually launch these missiles, it would result in their own demolition, the concept was known as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Reagan's plan threatened to destablilse the whole concept, as if they could stop one side's weapons yet be able to unleash their own, that might lead to an arms race which all parties involved claimed to want to stop.
The plan was derided at the time for being too unrealistic; the media seized upon the 'Star Wars' title for it since Reagan was keen to have a defensive capability for shooting down missiles from space. However the mere concept of it irritated the Soviet Union, which was not in a healthy enough financial state to counter this perceived threat and it is argued by some that this helped bring about the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
Although the SDI initiative never really got established, some technology to intercept missiles has been developed in the years since. Presented is a short film looking at the Strategic Defense Initiative which may serve to illustrate how ambitious the project would have been:
*2023 update: replaced dead video link*
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