Specifically, the report suggests that several of the fundamental assumptions of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) are dubious enough to throw into question the validity of recent decisions to move rapidly to deploy simple forms of SDI. However, SDI supporters questioned whether the society's panelists were justified in interpreting their subject so broadly.
In fact the issue illustrated the extreme narrowness of the line that divides science from policy based on that science—particularly in an area as controversial as national defense.
The report concludes (see "Star Wars a Decade or More Away," page 11) that the amount of progress in directed energy weapons—which include intense lasers and energetic particle beams—is too little at present to judge the ultimate technical feasibility of such weapons in an overall SDI system. That makes questionable what panel member Jeremiah Sullivan of the University of Illinois termed "the general view, especially from SDIO, that ...
