"The underground facility, jointly run by the United States and Canada, is carved inside Cheyenne Mountain, near Colorado Springs. In one widely cited account of the visit, many on the tour were visibly awed by the scale and seriousness of the operation. But when Reagan asked what the US could do to stop a nuclear missile, the answer shocked him: nothing."
"As the story goes, Reagan was told that all NORAD could do was track incoming warheads and provide information for retaliation. During the flight home, one aide remembered, Reagan "couldn't believe the United States had no defense against Soviet attack. He slowly shook his head and said, 'We have spent all that money and have all that equipment, and there is nothing we can do to prevent a nuclear missile from hitting us.'""
"His vision eventually took the form of the Strategic Defense Initiative: a plan for futuristic weapons in space-lasers, interceptors, armed satellites-that would render nuclear missiles "impotent and obsolete." SDI was a promise as sweeping as it was speculative, and it ultimately petered out under the weight of its technical limits and astronomical costs. After Reagan left office, his successors, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, quietly but significantly pared back SDI,"
In July 1979 Ronald Reagan visited NORAD, an underground US-Canadian facility in Cheyenne Mountain, and learned the system could only track incoming warheads, not stop them. Reagan concluded the United States needed a defense and proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, envisioning space-based lasers, interceptors, and armed satellites to make nuclear missiles impotent and obsolete. SDI proved speculative, technically limited, and astronomically costly, and it petered out. Successors George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton significantly pared back SDI, shelving much of the space-based effort and focusing on land-based interceptors; later efforts targeted limited threats from rogue states.
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