Was the U.S. government lying when they said that the Star Wars program failed?

A short synopsis of the star wars program for those who don't know:

Under Regan's administration the US Department of Defense developed a program nicknamed the "Star Wars program." This was a program designed to destroy any incomming missles on US territory. However, it was met with some marginal successes and some huge failures, so the project was scrapped as it was then known. Later, it was funded under a different name, and the government focused on using missles to shoot down other missles instead of lasers from satelites in space. This current program has continued on, under many different names.

My question is did the government lie to its citizens about the Stars wars program, specifically, failure. I think so. The government had everything to lose and nothing to gain by announcing that it was capable of shooting down enemy weapons from space via a laser. We would be the only nation in the World with this type of technology, we would be able to shoot down any incoming missle before it hit land and thus know who was attacking us and retaliate (almost as if we had the first strike) laying a crucial blow against any country in the beginning. It would defeat their morale early on, and attack them in the heart of their own country. It is for these reasons that I think the U.S. currently has the ability to shoot down missiles with lasers.

I think they did have a partial failure due to the lack of tech back then, but if you notice they have attached lasers to 747s now... Maybe it's easier to shoot it down with something in the atmosphere vs. in orbit?

I wouldn't doubt though that they can shoot a missle down from space now and they probably either won't tell us they can flat out or they will say they used one of these planes to shoot it down. The latter could throw off the rest of the world's country's and they would try to emulate the airplane tech we developed while keeping the satellite strategy a secret weapon.

reply to post by Estharik


Well those lasers in the 747 are only reported to have a 200km effective range (weather that's true or not IDK)... and that is supposed to be pretty state of the art, and you do need a whole massive 747 to lug the laser and all the chemicals (it's a chemical laser) about.

Now I suppose an orbital platform could use a nuke power supply, that would make it feasible to launch the things.

But yhea I'd agree the tech was a couple of decades out of their reach - it has to be one powerful laser to penetrate that much atmosphere and still pack enough punch to take the missile out.... Unless the idea was to get the missiles at the very peak of the suborbital flight... Now thinking about it that would make a lot more sense, bearly any atmosphere, much less power needed, but it would have to be a very last line in defence - once that bad boy re-entry vehicle starts it's decent it gets very hard to stop.

reply to post by Now_Then


Towards the end of my post there I was trying to throw out the idea about a cover being used with the planes. I figure if we tell everyone hey.... we tried to shoot em down with satellites and it didn't work but HEY the planes work! Everyone would flock to that and not try the satellite strategy because it failed. Might sound a bit dumb but I haven't slept in a while

for me this is the proof that they have been lying.

Link to mystery holes in russia.

there were rumors about a project called "rods of god" and some other rumors about satellites with capabilities to fire upon the earth.

this is a nice thread about it.

Link to ATS topic Kinetic Bombardment

[edit on 16-6-2009 by Grey Magic]