Missile Defense, Presaged by Reagan’s ‘Star Wars,’ Is Rendering Iran’s Ballistic Arsenal Obsolete

The Iranian regime is lashing out in its death throes, but its ballistic missiles are being swatted from the sky before they can hit their targets. It’s a vindication of President Reagan’s faith in missile defense — a reminder to never bet against American ingenuity and to keep shooting for the stars.In an obituary for Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, NPR described the country’s ballistic missile arsenal as the dictator’s “brainchild.” It was an odd way to refer to technology that has been around since 1942, but illustrative of the static view of progress that stunts advancement.The history of warfare is rendering what’s cutting-edge today obsolete tomorrow. During the American Civil War in 1862, Confederate States Ship Virginia faced off against the Union’s United States Ship Monitor. These first “ironclads” fought to a draw but rendered the world’s navies obsolete overnight.In World War I, the first U.K. “landships” appeared on the Western Front, vehicles so secret that the British referred to them as “water tanks.” A generation later in World War II, tanks rendered trenches, cavalry, and infantry charges — along with France’s Maginot Line — Napoleonic relics.Reagan challenged Cold War conventional wisdom and sought to transcend ballistic missiles the same way. “I call upon the scientific community in our country,” he said in March 1983, “to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering” ICBMs “impotent and obsolete.” Detractors branded Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative “Star Wars.” It couldn’t work and wouldn’t work. “You can’t hit a bullet with a bullet” emerged as a mantra — eight words sounding like minds slamming shut. Yet the technology advanced in fits and starts until Reagan’s vision was realized. When Patriot missile defense systems debuted in the Gulf War of 1991, it was the equivalent of Monitor silencing claims that iron ships would sink and that the future, like the past, belonged to wooden vessels. Years later, there was similar snickering at the idea of landing planes on aircraft carriers. President Lincoln, like Reagan, banked on the spirit of invention. “All I have to say,” he remarked when examining a model of the proposed Monitor, “is what the girl said when she stuck her foot into the stocking: ‘It strikes me there’s something in it.’” There was something in SDI, too. Four decades after Reagan announced he was “launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history,” hitting bullets with bullets is routine. “I believe we can do it,” the president said, and so we did. President Biden, who opposed SDI as “reckless” during his Senate career, had missile defense on hand to counter Iran’s attacks in 2024. Like the archer in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1845 poem, Tehran can shoot arrows “into the air,” but they “fall to earth” and they know “not where.” On all but a few occasions, it’s from the target. The microwave and laser weapons that Reagan envisioned, 1980s science fiction, are now protecting the United States Navy in the Persian Gulf. Iran envisioned overwhelming the Americans with missiles and drones. But high-energy weapons systems like the HELIOS and LaWS, for as little as $1 a shot, render these arrows impotent. On October 1, 2024, as Iran rained missiles on Israel, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute posted on X. “Today,” they wrote, “we witnessed another reminder of the importance of missile defense as Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ successfully intercepted hundreds of Iranian missiles.” The Reagan Institute wrote that the 40th president “laid the foundation for systems like” Iron Dome. “When he announced SDI in 1983, President Reagan envisioned a world where ‘we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies.’” Reagan looked at the Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD status quo in the Cold War and sought a saner alternative. SDI proved pivotal to ending the Soviet threat in 1991. Today, the technology that flowed from the president’s vision is a routine part of warfare — rendering Iran’s ballistic missiles of little more use than wooden ships.

Missile Defense, Presaged by Reagan’s ‘Star Wars,’ Is Rendering Iran’s Ballistic Arsenal Obsolete

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