In 1983, President Reagan delivered his famous "Star Wars" speech pledging the nation to develop a space-based defense against nuclear attack that would make enemy missiles "impotent and obsolete." The high-tech shield would be based on a system of orbiting satellites and mirrors armed with powerful laser beams capable of zapping incoming warheads before they reached the U.S.
Now, after a decade of political ups and downs, 15 years of development and more than $1 billion in research, the first space-based laser is nearly ready to fly. With newly empowered Republicans pledged to beef up the nation's defenses, the futuristic weapon once derided as a "Star Wars" fantasy almost certainly will become an issue for ideological combat in the next Congress.
The device, known as Alpha, is a chemical laser that produces a concentrated beam of light packing a wallop of some 2.2 million watts, with an energy intensity at its core equivalent to several times the heat at the surface of the sun. The device was quietly developed by the federal government at a secluded test site near San Juan Capistrano, Calif. Ground tests began in 1987 and the first firing reportedly took place in 1989. But only in recent years have breakthroughs in mirror construction enabled engineers to package the technology in a device light enough to launch into space.
Opponents of "Star Wars" technology have long argued that deployment of space-based anti-missile defenses would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, which bars deployment of anti-missile arms in space. Critics also charge that the end of the Cold War has rendered such defenses unnecessary and that the cost -- estimated at $50 billion or more for a dozen orbiting battle stations -- is unjustifiable given that "Star Wars" cannot protect against the kinds of attacks by nuclear-armed terrorists that pose the most likely threat to the U.S.
The Clinton administration tried and failed to kill "Star Wars" when it took office. The program still receives about $3 billion a year, bringing its total cost for the decade to about $35 billion. Moreover, space-based missile defense has been a Republican issue ever since Mr. Reagan's speech. The GOP lawmakers who will dominate the next Congress are unlikely to give up the chance to vindicate Mr. Reagan's dream; their "Contract with America" calls for deployment of an anti-missile defense "at the earliest possible date." That would surely sour relations with the Russians. Thus the stage again seems set for a protracted, bitter struggle over the future of "Star Wars."