The early 1980s were especially scary times for Americans. The former Soviet Union’s Cold War with the United States, NATO, and the other aligned free world nations had been underway for nearly 40 years. A string of Soviet dictators, beginning with Hitler’s contemporary Joseph Stalin, sought world hegemony under the banner of global Soviet-led communism. The threat of a surprise “Pearl Harbor” attack using nuclear-armed ballistic missiles became a reality by the end of the 1950s.
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In 1962, as a nuclear-armed missile race began, a strategic defense strategy called “Mutual Assured Destruction” or MAD emerged that called for the United States to develop an overwhelming nuclear counterstrike capability that would utterly destroy the Soviet Union should it first attack with nuclear weapons. As a result, the still expanding Cold War was “fought” under the continued threat of a mistake triggering a global nuclear catastrophe.
Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham, United States Army, entered U.S. military service in 1946 after graduating from West Point just as the Cold War began. With a distinguished military career, he became the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and, then, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency prior to retirement. In these positions, he was fully aware of the increasing nuclear threat posed by the Soviets.
After retiring, Graham worked privately to advance American civil and military spacefaring capabilities, particularly those related to national defense. In 1981, he founded High Frontier, Inc., a private organization focused on ballistic missile defense. The central premise of his efforts was to make nuclear-armed ballistic missiles obsolete by making them vulnerable to an active American defense system. His efforts led to the realization that only a space-based system could provide the level of assurance needed to negate the threat and make the MAD doctrine obsolete. Graham sought to bring sanity to America’s defenses against nuclear weapons.
On 23 March 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced what became the Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI. In substantial part, this SDI effort grew out of Graham’s High Frontier project to explain how advanced American space technologies could substantially defeat a Soviet missile attack.
After retiring, Graham had served as a military advisor during Ronald Reagan’s 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns. He continued his advisory role after Reagan became president in 1981. To advocate for space-based missile defense, Graham authored the book, The High Frontier: A New National Strategy, in 1982. This book was sponsored by The Heritage Foundation. A free copy of this book, now in a text searchable PDF format, can be downloaded at the link above.
Also, the 1989 Congressional Research Service report, Military Space Forces: The Next Fifty Years, by John M. Collins can also be downloaded for free as well as Communist China’s Space Threat by this blog’s author.
Additional space-related articles and publications are listed here.
Thanks to The Heritage Foundation for releasing this PDF version of the book.
If not already following this blog, please click the “follow” button at the bottom right to sign up. Receiving notification via email is best to ensure that you do not miss a new posting. Sending notifications is the only use of your email address. It is not sold or used elsewhere. Besides, you can always unsubscribe. Please forward these postings to your friends who share your spacefaring interest. Also, please check out the Spacefaring Institute’s YouTube channel.
James Michael (Mike) Snead is an aerospace Professional Engineer in the United States, an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and a past chair of the AIAA’s Space Logistics Technical Committee. He is the founder and president of the Spacefaring Institute LLC (spacefaringinstitute.net) which is focused on space solar power-generated astroelectricity and the astrologistics infrastructure necessary to enable the spacefaring industrial revolution that will build space solar power energy systems. Mike Snead has been involved in space development since the mid-1980s when he supported the U.S. Air Force Transatmospheric Vehicle (TAV) studies, the National Aerospace Plane program, and the Delta Clipper Experimental (DC-X) project. In 2007, after retiring from civilian employment with the Air Force, he began to study the need for (and politics associated with) undertaking space solar power. Beginning in the late 1980s, he has published numerous papers and articles on various aspects of manned spaceflight, astrologistics, and energy. His technical papers are located at https://www.mikesnead.com and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mike-Snead/research. His blog is at: https://spacefaringamerica.com. His eBook, Astroelectricity, can be downloaded for free here. He can be contacted through LinkedIn or through email sent to spacefaringinstitute@gmail.com.