Tom Harkin: “when our troops and our allies came under attack from Saddam's Scud missiles, where was star wars? Star wars was so…”

“when our troops and our allies came under attack from Saddam's Scud missiles, where was star wars? Star wars was so focused on the impossible dream of stopping a massive nuclear attack by long-range Soviet missiles, it neglected the very real threat of short-range missiles launched by a tyrant like Saddam Hussein. In fact, the only defense we had against Scuds in 1990 was the Patriot missile. But the Patriot missile was not even developed by SDI. No, it was too mundane, too down to Earth. In fact, it was too useful. Prior to 1990, the star wars program spent virtually nothing on developing theater missile defenses except for some architecture studies. The Patriot was originally designed and built by the Army to stop aircraft and Cruise missiles and they modified it before the gulf war to have limited capability against ballistic missiles. But the Army had only a small fraction of the funding lavished on star wars throughout the 1980's. In fact, star wars funds effectively diverted resources from theater missile defense based in the Army. Things changed dramatically after the gulf war. The star wars program suddenly adopted this long-neglected theater defense orphan. The program grew from $130 million in 1990 to $1.64 billion this year, a 12-to-1 increase in just 4 years.”