GREAT EXPECTATIONS

In material terms, SDI was a rising star, a growth market. The keen expectations which it generated reinforced support for the programme. The budget was projected at $26 billion for the first five years, rising to $69 billion for the first ten years, 1985–94. Much larger sums, – the ‘gigabucks’ – would come with a decision to deploy, which would initiate a costly full-scale RDT&E programme. A declassified DoD study on laser weapons in 1982 put the cost of a limited system for ‘damage denial’ at $500 billion. A former Secretary of Defense estimated the cost of a full Strategic Defense System (SDS) at $1 trillion. Richard DeLauer, Under-Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said that each element of the programme was ‘equivalent to or greater than the Manhattan project’: ‘When the time comes that you deploy any of these technologies, you'll be staggered at the cost that they will involve’.

Whatever the exact figure, the long-term prospect could not fail to excite the military-industrial interest groups, including the groups in the Pentagon. It is hard to quantify the SDI constituency of interest – even if the term ‘interest’ is restricted to those with a direct monetary stake in the programme. Many researchers were employed in work of multiple applications, which could be defined as ‘SDI work’ or otherwise. One estimate was that there were about 5,000 scientists, engineers and technical workers employed on SDI work in 1984 and that the number would rise to 18,600 by 1987.