The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Alliance is a missile defense system and military alliance.
History[]
The Strategic Defense Initiative Alliance is part of the United States' strategy to maintain a technological and military edge during the Cold War, specifically to counter any threats posed by the Soviet Union.
The SDI Alliance involves advanced defense systems, possibly including orbital weapons platforms and missile interception technologies, reflecting the heightened tensions between the superpowers, as the world teeters on the brink of nuclear war.
However, this dynamic shifts dramatically due to Adrian Veidt's orchestrated alien hoax, which united the world against a perceived common extraterrestrial threat. This hoax successfully ended the Cold War, as both superpowers put aside their differences to address the new, false enemy. It is implied that the SDI Alliance could have been restructured to include the Soviet Union, fostering unprecedented cooperation between the former adversaries.
In 2015, the SDI Alliance started incorporating licensed patented micro-fusion propulsion technology from Trieu Industries.
Trivia[]
- The Strategic Defense Initiative Alliance is based on the real-world Strategic Defense Initiative, which was a proposed missile defense system announced by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1983.
- The inclusion of the SDI Alliance may be influenced by a piece of world-building from the first issue of the graphic novel. In this issue, a newspaper headline reads "Congress Approves Lunar Silos," suggesting a world where advanced military technologies, including those based in space, are actively developed and utilized. This detail may also indicate that the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibited the placement of weapons of mass destruction in orbit around Earth, either never came into effect or was abolished in the Watchmen universe.