The Strategic Defense Initiative or Star Wars, was first set up in 1984, as far as I am concerned the Americans and Russians can blow the shit out of each other in space, as long as they don't play their war games here on earth, I am reminded of the film 'The day the earth stood still', not the Keano Reeves crappy remake the original, where the alien and his robot threaten to destroy earth if we didn't stop fucking it up with the nukes we have, as the aliens would see this as a threat to the universe.
So, Trump the war mongering arshole wants to set up a new space force, he said "I'm hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces," what a twat.
In response I am expecting in the next couple of months a 'cold space war' with the Russians where they do the same thing, I am sure that the secret military missions using the space shuttle was to build these space weapons so I believe that they are already there.
My favorite weapon to come out of the SDI was Thor, the 'Rods of God'.
The idea is like shooting bullets at a target, except instead of losing velocity as it travels, the projectile is gaining velocity and energy that will be expended on impact. They were shotgunning a large swath of jungle, raining bullet-sized death at high speeds.
That's how Project Thor came to be.
Instead of hundreds of small projectiles from a few thousand feet, Thor uses a large projectile from a few thousand miles above the Earth. The "rods from god" idea was a bundle of telephone-pole sized (20 feet long, one foot in diameter) tungsten rods, dropped from orbit, reaching a speed of up to ten times the speed of sound.
The rod itself would penetrate hundreds of feet into the Earth, destroying any potential hardened bunkers or secret underground sites. More than that, when the rod hits, the explosion would be on par with the magnitude of a ground-penetrating nuclear weapon – but with no fallout. It would take 15 minutes to destroy a target with such a weapon.
So Trump beware of those UFO's that your government has been hiding, they may just pop into the White House and kick your arse. Or even better drop a rod on you there.
It is unfortunately inevitable that SDI will in a few years be operational and the USA, Russia, China and India will all have these weapons, scary thought eh?