Strategic Defense Initiative

Examples of Strategic Defense Initiative in the following topics:

• The Defense Buildup and the "Evil Empire"

  • Reagan initiated a large build-up of the American military with the intention of defeating the Soviet Union in an arms race.
  • In March of 1983, Reagan introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a defense project that would use ground- and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles.
  • Reagan believed that this defense shield would make nuclear war impossible, but disbelief that the technology could ever work led opponents to dub SDI "Star Wars," arguing that the technological objective was unattainable.

• The Guadalcanal Campaign

  • Guadalcanal marked the decisive Allied transition from defensive operations to the strategic initiative in the Pacific theater, leading to offensive operations such as the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Central Pacific campaigns, that eventually resulted in Japan's surrender and the end of World War II.
  • The victories at Milne Bay, Buna-Gona, and Guadalcanal marked the Allied transition from defensive operations to the strategic initiative in the theater, leading to offensive operations such as the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Central Pacific campaigns, that eventually resulted in Japan's surrender and the end of World War II.
  • Two attempts by the Japanese to continue their strategic initiative and offensively extend their outer defensive perimeter in the south and central Pacific to where they could threaten Australia and Hawaii or the US West Coast were thwarted at the naval battles of Coral Sea and Midway respectively.
  • Up to this point, the Allies had been on the defensive in the Pacific but these strategic victories provided them an opportunity to seize the initiative from Japan.
  • The "Europe first" policy of the United States had initially only allowed for defensive actions against Japanese expansion, in order to focus resources on defeating Germany.

• The Guadalcanal Campaign

  • The initial goals of Japanese leaders were to neutralize the US Navy, seize possessions rich in natural resources, and establish strategic military bases to defend Japan's empire in the Pacific Ocean and Asia.
  • Further attempts by the Japanese to continue their strategic initiative and offensively extend their outer defensive perimeter in the south and central Pacific were thwarted at the naval battles of Coral Sea (May 1941) and Midway (June 1941) respectively.
  • Up to this point, the Allies had been on the defensive in the Pacific but these strategic victories provided them an opportunity to seize the initiative from Japan.
  • The Guadalcanal campaign was a significant strategic combined arms victory by Allied forces over the Japanese in the Pacific theater.
  • The Japanese had reached the high-water mark of their conquests in the Pacific, and Guadalcanal marked the transition by the Allies from defensive operations to the strategic offensive in that theater and the beginning of offensive operations, including the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Central Pacific campaigns, that resulted in Japan's eventual surrender and the end of World War II.

• Responding to Uncertainty in Strategic Planning

  • In the past, strategic plans have often considered only the "official future," which was usually a straight-line graph of current trends carried into the future.
  • For example, an initial plan for a project may have to be adjusted if the budget changes.
  • What matters for the purposes of strategic management is having a clear view, based on the best available evidence and on defensible assumptions, of what is possible to accomplish within the constraints of a given set of circumstances.
  • Strategic management adds little value, and may do harm, if organizational strategies are designed to be used as detailed and infallible blueprints for managers.
  • Recognize the inevitability of uncertainty in strategic planning, alongside planning for effective responses to these uncertainties

• Homefront Security

  • The idea of civil defense began to come of age, both worldwide and in the United States, during World War I, when it was usually referred to as civilian defense. 
  • Even before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Council of National Defense was reactivated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
  • Under the OCD, the Civil Defense Corps (CDF) were established.
  • The request was initially opposed, for the CAP was still a young and inexperienced organization.
  • Examine the role of the Civil Air Patrol and the Civil Defense Corps in monitoring home-front security during World War II.

• Coral Sea and Midway

  • The Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway were strategic triumphs for the Allies and marked the critical point in halting Japanese expansion during World War II.
  • Although a tactical victory for the Japanese in terms of ships sunk, the battle would prove to be a strategic victory for the Allies for several reasons.
  • Luring the American aircraft carriers into a trap and occupying Midway was part of an overall "barrier" strategy to extend Japan's defensive perimeter, in response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo.
  • The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of the American reaction and poor initial dispositions.
  • Although the Japanese continued to try to secure more territory, and the U.S. did not move from a state of naval parity to one of supremacy until after several more months of hard combat, Midway allowed the Allies to switch to the strategic initiative, paving the way for the landings on Guadalcanal and the prolonged attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign.

• Competitive Dynamics

  • The dynamic model of the strategy process is a way of understanding how strategic actions occur.
  • This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context in order to identify opportunities and threats.
  • First, profiling can reveal strategic weaknesses in rivals that the firm may exploit.
  • Third, this proactive knowledge can give the firm strategic agility.
  • Similarly, defensive strategy can be employed more deftly in order to counter the threat of rival firms exploiting the firm's own weaknesses.

• Plant Defenses Against Pathogens

  • If the first line of defense is breached, the plant must resort to a different set of defense mechanisms, such as toxins and enzymes.
  • Additionally, plants have a variety of inducible defenses in the presence of pathogens.
  • A hypersensitive response, in which the plant experiences rapid cell death to fight off the infection, can be initiated by the plant; or it may use endophyte assistance: the roots release chemicals that attract other beneficial bacteria to fight the infection.
  • Mechanical wounding and predator attacks activate defense and protective mechanisms in the damaged tissue and elicit long-distancing signaling or activation of defense and protective mechanisms at sites farther from the injury location.
  • Some defense reactions occur within minutes, while others may take several hours.

• Planning a Project

  • The stages of a project within the strategic-planning discipline provide a step-by-step approach to generating and implementing an effective strategy, for either a corporation or a strategic business unit (SBU).
  • Implementing a framework for generating a project-planning cycle, complete with strategic objectives, implementation methods, and assessment, is a primary responsibility of strategic managers.
  • Initiation: The initiation stage includes generating the idea, assessing the feasibility and profitability of the project, conceptualizing the operational benefits and the bottom line, and getting approval and resources.
  • This stage includes predicting the time investment, costs, specific resources required, and the necessary inputs to achieve the outputs forecasted in the initiation stage.
  • By appropriately incorporating each stage of the model into the planning process, managers can effectively forecast the deliverable, and they can avoiding losing value by accurately assessing the margins that will be produced in a given strategic initiative.

• Strategic Management

  • Strategic management entails five steps: analysis, formation, goal setting, structure, and feedback.
  • Strategic management analyzes the major initiatives, involving resources and performance in external environments, that a company's top management takes on behalf of owners.
  • As strategic management is a large, complex, and ever-evolving endeavor, it is useful to divide it into a series of concrete steps to illustrate the process of strategic management.
  • Leaders allocate resources to specific projects and enact any necessary strategic partnerships.
  • Identify the five general steps that allow businesses to develop a strategic process