The United States holds a significant advantage in the field of comprehensive advanced missile defense systems through decades of extensive research and testing a number of these concepts and obtained technologies and insights were transferred to subsequent programs. A wide array of advanced weapon concepts, including lasers, particle beam weapons and ground- and space-based missile systems were studied, along with various sensor, command and control, and high-performance computer systems that would be needed to control a system consisting of hundreds of combat centers and satellites spanning the entire globe and involved in a very short battle. The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization ( SDIO) was set up in 1984 within the US Department of Defense to oversee development. Reagan called upon American scientists and engineers to develop a system that would render nuclear weapons obsolete. The concept was announced on Maby President Ronald Reagan, a vocal critic of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which he described as a ' suicide pact'. The Strategic Defense Initiative ( SDI), derisively nicknamed the ' Star Wars program', was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons ( intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles).
