April 3, 2018—The Price Is Right!

“Brilliant Pebbles, canceled by the Clinton Administration for ideological reasons, could be resurrected and begin deployment before 2024, total cost $20 billion or less. The current National Defense Authorization Act in Sections 1685 “Boost Phase Ballistic Missile Defense” and 1688 ‘Plan For Development Of Space-Based Missile Intercept Layer” opens the door for the return of ‘Star Wars!’” ~Peter Vincent Pry in Better SANE than MAD, published by The Mackensie Institute

Click here for this important article by my colleague Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, which quotes an article I co-authored as the basis of this cost estimate. I promised him I’d prepare more definitive background for this estimate, which is the focus of today’s message. Apparently, he has received numerous questions about that basis, which is in fact well founded and has been referenced recently in at least three articles by key personnel who lived through the formative Brilliant Pebbles years that under pin what is nearly a 30-year old estimate:

I was joined by USAF Retired Lt. General James A. Abrahamson (the first SDI Director, who began funding the Brilliant Pebbles effort thirty years ago as a special access program) in two articles that objected to exaggerated recent cost estimates for space-based interceptors. Click here for our July 21, 2017 Wall Street Journal Letter to the Editor rebutting a previous Journal article that exaggerated by a factor of 5-10 the costs for building space-based interceptors today and click here for our August 14, 2017 Newsmax article further elaborating this important point. Both provide a sound basis for Pry’s claim, and the second elaborates the basis for believing that the private sector today provides a basis for lower cost estimates. There is little doubt that, were he still alive, the second SDI Director, USAF Lt. General George Monahan, would have joined us — since he led the efforts involving numerous expert technical reviews that in turn led Brilliant Pebbles to become the first SDI effort to gain the approval of the Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) to enter a Demonstration and Validation (DemVal) phase.
Earlier, I joined three others who lived through and well understand the pertinent history, and believe we should replicate that history with today’s technology to provide even more cost-effective space-based defenses, based on the same Brilliant Pebbles approach. Click here for our November 29, 2016 National Review article, “How Trump Can Fulfill Reagan’s Defense Vision.” Retired USA Lieutenant General Malcolm R. O’Neill, who was my Deputy SDI Director, then Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, and subsequently Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. A first rate physicist, Mal led Kinetic Energy interceptor programs on General Abrahamson’s SDI watch and was in charge of most important early technology demonstrations that undergirded Brilliant Pebbles. Retired USAF Colonel Rowland “Rhip” H. Worrell was Director of the SDI Brilliant Pebbles Task Force that managed the Brilliant Pebbles acquisition effort narrowing the field from six competing companies to two engaged in a fully approved DemVal program — including validated cost estimates. Subsequently, Rhip served as Director of the National Test Facility Joint Program Office, and Vice Commander of the USAF Space Warfare Center. Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. is president of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA), Inc., and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, and chairman of the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, which documented in substantial detail the political and technical issues that derailed the entire SDI effort and especially that sidelined the most cost-effective product of the SDI era.

Indeed — Dr. Pry’s claims are based on sound history and technology that was readily available 30 years ago, facts that should indeed be recalled and emulated with today’s even more capable technology, actually now being exploited by the private sector and especially our enemies.

Consider four questions:

What was done 30 years ago?
Why was that technology banished and ignored for 30 years?
Why should you believe it is relevant today?
What should be done today?

What happened during the SDI era.

Perhaps the best way to review this history, is to consult the documentation of the SDI Historian of the days that witnessed those important events, Dr. Donald R. Baucom. Click here (or link to it from the bottom of the High Frontier webpage (www.highfrontier.org) for his authoritative first hand historical account of most of the key events, “The Rise and Fall of Brilliant Pebbles” — published in The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Volume 29, Number 2, Summer 2004, pp 143-190. (Note the publication date and the fact that the George W. Bush administration did nothing to revive the Brilliant Pebbles effort, so well was its legacy purged by the Clinton administration during the preceding 8-years.)

Baucom began his review by noting that, conceptually, the basic ideas were not new. In the early 1960s, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in its Project Defender, projected that lightweight, e.g. weighing only 2-pounds, would work just fine to destroy attacking missiles and reentry vehicles. Moreover, DARPA emphasized the utility of intercepting ballistic missiles in their boost phase, while their rockets still burn and they are most vulnerable — and recognized the importance of meeting stressful cost-challenges in building space based defenses.

What was new with Brilliant Pebbles was the impact of advancing technology over the subsequent quarter century — and I would add, most prominently by the private sector, especially with the impact of microprocessors and dramatically increasing processing power of miniaturized computers that were at the heart of the Brilliant Pebbles concept.

Brilliant Pebbles was proposed and pursued by physicists and engineers of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL), led by Dr. Lowell Wood with considerable public support from Dr. Edward Teller. They recognized this maturing of technology, especially the rapidly evolving miniaturization of key applications of that technology, perhaps most notably with computers to enable their proposed Brilliant Pebbles autonomously battle-managed constellation while dealing with likely offensive countermeasures that enemies might develop.

Dr. Wood’s personal inventory of applicable technologies concluded that autonomous interceptors could be produced using technology that could be bought off-the-shelf, much of it only a little advanced over mass-produced consumer and technical professional electronics: video camcorders, scientific work stations and the like. Though this result was striking enough, it was even more astonishing to total up the likely costs. It seemed likely that a simple, small kinetic kill vehicle seeker package composed of such elements could be mass-produced for a few tens of thousands of dollars. This new interceptor was to “be small, cheap and smart.” Most important, it would have none of the vulnerabilities that came with big tracking satellites or groups of interceptors housed in orbiting garages. (This reality should be borne in mind as these same garage concepts are again being considered.)

Lowell argued that BP would be designed to be brilliant, not merely smart, and to have far better than human vision, not just crude imaging systems; so that the defensive system architecture would be simply the BP constellation, and nothing else. No additional space-based sensor system would be required — as later validated by studies on my SDI watch.

Each BP would carry so much prior knowledge and detailed battle strategy-and-tactics, compute so swiftly and see so well that it could perform its purely defensive mission adequately, with no external supervision or coaching. Complexity, durability, reliability and testability issues in such architectures thereby either would simplify to readily manageable levels, or else vanish entirely.

While future BPs could be smaller and lighter, Lowell believed it was then possible to develop an effective Pebble that would weigh between 1.5 and 2.5 kilograms (.9 and 1.5 pounds), which was about 100 times the mass needed to assure destruction of an armored missile. Note the early 1960s DARPA Project Defender projection of a 2-pound kill vehicle.

While I urge you to read Baucom’s entire history — and I’m leaving out a lot, most pertinent for our purposes here is to review the “season of studies” that examined LLNL concepts and related SDI companion efforts. These studies included extensive “red-team” challenging evaluations of the LLNL Brilliant Pebbles concept and its ability to defeat potential future countermeasures and perform as planned. Consider just a brief list of comments:

The Space-Based Element Study (SBES), begun in May 1988 under the leadership of Dr. Charles Infosino, to reevaluate the space based defenses of the evolving overall architecture, and ended up pushing the prior concepts toward the LNLL BP model. In early 1989, General Abrahamson retired and his end of tour (EOT) report strongly endorsed Brilliant Pebbles as the key to an effective, affordable space-based architecture and believed that BP could be operational in five years at a cost of less than $25 billion (for a full blown constellation—several times larger than that advocated on my watch as SDI Director). “This concept,” he wrote, “should be tested within the next two years and, if aggressively pursued, could be ready for initial deployment within 5 years.” Moreover, “once deployment has begun and a competitive industrial base is established, the system could be scaled to higher levels of effectiveness for ever-decreasing incremental costs.”
General Abrahamson’s EOT report, 30-years ago, came about three weeks before President George Herbert Walker Bush took office on January 20, 1989, and his administration immediately launched a major review of American security requirements including an examination of the structure and objectives of the SDI program and its possible future role in the then emerging security environment. General Monahan, then at the SDI helm, proceeded to review and modify the evolving SDI overall system concepts. In June 1989, President Bush’s National Security Directive 14 concluded that the goals of the SDI program remained “sound strategic defenses” and should continue to be a major U.S. response to the “Soviet challenge.”
In this R&D effort, “particular emphasis” was to be placed on “promising concepts for effective boost-phase defenses, for example, ‘Brilliant Pebbles.’” Bush also directed Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney to commission an independent review of the SDI program to see that the goals laid down in NSD-14 were carried out. This independent study was to be completed by 15 September 1989, but it was after leaving the Defense and Space Talks that I was chartered to conduct this study, and my March 15, 1990 report strongly endorsed the Brilliant Pebbles concept. My conclusions were based not only on my brief review, but on input from several other reviews led by General Monahan, as discussed by Baucom. By May 1989, these studies included two technical feasibility studies by outside advisers, a Red/Blue evaluation to judge how well BP would deal with potential future Soviet countermeasures, and a “bottom up” cost estimate.
One of the most important technical feasibility studies was conducted by JASON, a group of America’s top scientists, who work under the aegis of MITRE Corporation and advise government agencies on defense and other technical issues. This study, during June and July of 1989 focused on the technical feasibility of BP’s component technology and of its battle management command, control and communications (BMC3) system. The JASONs also examined other interceptor concepts for comparison purposes and concluded that there were no technological “showstoppers” or fatal flaws in the BP concept; and that the Brilliant Pebbles interceptor could probably be produced using then current technology, although a better BP interceptor could be produced with technologies that were just a couple of years downstream. (Note this was 19 years ago.) Their final report also noted several problems needed to be addressed: Performance of readily-available technology; lack of hardness of commercial technology against a nuclear environment; and serious countermeasures threats.
Even with such qualifications and suggestions for further analysis, the JASONs observed that BP’s general concept of autonomous interceptor operation offered important advantages, among them that no additional space sensor support might be required since “the extra constellation size needed (because of inefficiencies in selecting targets autonomously compared to central battle management) is likely to be less costly than the central battle manager, and, of course, avoids reliance on a small number of high-value or essential components which are hard to defend.” (This observation was consistent with conclusions of an early “Eastport Study” during General Abrahamson’s watch, and should receive weight in the context of the current wide support for space sensors to support more centralized battle management requirements for our terrestrially bound BMD systems.)
Overlapping the JASON study, the Defense Science Board (DSB), established a Brilliant Pebbles Task Force to review the BP concept, which met six times between June and September with the various other groups, including the JASONs. Its report at the end of December 1989, like the JASONs, found no fundamental flaws. The DSB noted that the design of BP had thus far been examined by a number of competent and independent groups that had pointed to several areas for possible improvement, but found no fundamental flaws had been uncovered.
Another evaluation of Brilliant Pebbles was a Red-Blue interactive countermeasures exercise completed in two formal phases in 1989 — in July-August and September-October — concluding that BP would be subject to the same countermeasures faced by all space-based elements in the SDI architecture, but faced no special problems in this area. The study’s major recommendation was that survivability features should be built into the BP system. (An important consequence was the inclusion of a number of sensors to Brilliant Pebbles, which were “space-qualified” by the later award-winning Clementine mission to the Moon that provided over a million frames of data in 13 spectral bands — more data than from the entire Apollo program.)
Cost studies were also conducted for the complete SDI architecture at the time, which included a much larger BP constellation than is of current concern. More pertinent for our current considerations are subsequent cost estimates that bear on the BP constellation that actually entered into a formal Defense Acquisition Program sized for the mission recommended in my March 15, 1990 Independent Review, as also discussed by Baucom. Just over a month earlier General Monahan accompanied President George H.W. Bush to LLNL, during which Lowell Wood briefed on BP and the president gave LLNL and the BP program a boost, lauding America’s national laboratories for “developing technologies to strengthen deterrence through strategic defenses.” Among the most promising of these new technologies, he said was Brilliant Pebbles.
Following my March 15, 1990 independent review (recommending a global defense concept including Theater Missile Defense (TMD) as well as homeland defense systems and an overlay BP system that could do both), Secretary Dick Cheney asked me to become SDI Director and “make it happen.” And the studies continued with that construct as General Monahan’s primary focus, now focused on Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) reviews. He chartered the Terminal Tiers Review (MATTR) in the Spring of 1990, which continued into my SDI watch that began in June 1990. Prior to then, Defense Acquisition Executive Betti approved my recommended (Protection Against Limited Strikes) PALS, later Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS), architecture. At that stage, the estimated cost of the 1000 BP constellation was $11 billion in 1991 dollars.
On January 3, 1991, two weeks before the beginning of the first Gulf War, I joined a full blown briefing of GPALS to President Bush in the White House Situation Room. During that war and the Scud-Patriot duel, leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee — Senators Sam Nunn (D-GA) and John Warner (R-VA), actually experienced a Scud raid while visiting Israel. Thus, it was not surprising that the combined houses of Congress applauded President Bush on 29 January 29, 1991 when he announced in his State of the Union Address that the focus of SDI was shifting to the GPALS architecture, saying: “I have directed that the SDI program be refocused on providing protection from limited ballistic missile strikes – whatever their source. Let us pursue an SDI program that can deal with any future threat to the United States, to our forces overseas, and to our friends and allies.”
Shortly thereafter—on February 12, 1991, Assistant Secretary of Defense Steve Hadley and I gave a Pentagon press briefing on GPALS. Click here for the annotated briefing (rotate for ease of reading). Notably, I briefed that “Research, development, testing and deployment is expected to cost about $10 billion in 1988 dollars.” Approximately the same as the $11 billion I had briefed to Secretary Cheney as part of my March 15, 1990 independent review, prior to the completion of several studies. In either case this inflates to about $20 billion today — and that estimate counts deployment and operations for 20 years. Today’s cost should be less because of the technology development over the past 20 years.

In any case, Dr. Pry’s estimate in his “Better SANE that MAD” article is well justified, based on the studies of three decades ago.

So How Did We Develop Corporate Amnesia?

This recounting makes one wonder how we went so far astray over the last quarter century.

The short answer is that at the outset of the Clinton administration in 1993, the fundamental policy reverted from one favorable to ballistic missile defenses and protecting the American people from missile attack back to one that placed primary reliance on mutual assured destruction (MAD) as Dr. Pry argued. And the Clinton administration was adamant about it — claiming, as had the Soviets throughout the Reagan-GHW Bush years, that the ABM Treaty was the cornerstone of stability.

It certainly was not because of cost considerations or technology considerations. And it was quite deliberate as was made clear by the White House spokesman, NSC staffer Robert Bell who was responsible for missile defense matters. He explained why President Bill Clinton used his temporary (it turned out un-Constitutional) Line Item Veto to kill a follow on to the award winning Clementine mission that returned to the Moon for the first time in a quarter century, mapping its surface in 13 spectral bands — more data than the entire Apollo program as noted earlier. He aptly said, it was a “Star Wars” technology application — indeed Clementine validated the Brilliant Pebbles sensor suite required to satisfy the above mentioned Red-Blue (measure-countermeasure) studies from Baucom’s “season of studies.”

I’ll follow up in another message to discuss this important mission which earned its team awards from NASA and the National Academy of Sciences — and an honored place in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC.

When President George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002, I hoped in vain that his administration would also return to the most cost-effective concept developed during the SDI era (1983-93), Brilliant Pebbles. Alas, it did not; and instead invested in the most expensive defense concepts — as discussed by the Independent Working Group during that period. Click here for those 2007 and 2008 IWG reports. Notably with respect to costs, note the following from the IWG analysis. (I think the 1989 date should have been 1990 or 1991 dollars. In any case, all these early estimates inflate to about $20 billion now. )

Why Revive BP Today?

And now after another eight years (the Obama administration), it is finally recognized that our currently deployed defense concepts are not responsive to the offensive countermeasures that composed the gauntlet successfully run by Brilliant Pebbles in Baucom’s “season of studies” over a quarter century ago, as discussed above.

And the concerns are growing, especially given Russian behavior and especially Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s claims about his new missiles and hypersonic vehicles.

From its outset, Brilliant Pebbles, launched from their orbits around the earth, were designed to be capable of destroying Soviet ICBMs during their boost phase, eliminating their multiple warheads and decoys before these could be dispersed. In this way, a single Brilliant Pebbles interceptor could destroy as many as ten or more Soviet warheads carried on their large ICBMs like the SS-18, or SATAN I.

Thus, BP supported our arms control agenda, especially our START efforts to reduce/eliminate the multiple warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). But that agenda was reversed during the Obama years, and now Russia’s SATAN II ICBM is basically a replacement/upgrade of the original Soviet SS-18 that 30-years ago carried 10 reentry vehicles and potentially could have carried up to 40.

Reviving BP efforts could support President Trump’s diplomatic interests in dealing with President Putin, just as it did President Reagan’s in dealing with Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders. It could also provide options to counter the hypersonic threat.

So there are both policy and technical reasons for reviving effective Brilliant Pebbles, now with much more modern technology, developed by the private sector while our defense programs appear to have ignored the implications of such developments.

So, What To Do Now?

The first thing to accomplish is to remove Brilliant Pebbles from the dust bin of History, where then Defense Secretary Les Aspin memorably placed it in early 1993 when claiming to “take the stars out of Star Wars.”

The Clinton administration not only cancelled the Brilliant Pebbles effort but also purged all remnant underpinning SDI technology from the missile defense efforts that were permitted to continue under the effort renamed Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), while dispersing the contractor and government laboratory teams that had worked on the underlying technology that made that concept viable.

As did Lowell Wood, we need to return to the design constructs summarized above (and more completely in Don Baucom’s excellent history) and employed by the LLNL team of yesteryear. That the private sector has advanced these constructs if obvious from a brief review of the news.

For example, consider last week’s report that the FCC has approved a SpaceX plan to launch 4,425 “small” broadband satellites within the next decade — a telecommunications application to make money. This initiative is reminiscent of previous commercial efforts that exploited Brilliant Pebbles’ concepts and technology more directly — the residue of which is the Iridium communications system supporting national security missions, now being modernized.

Click here for a discussion of SpaceX plans to begin launching operational satellites as early as 2019 (that’s next year folks), with the goal of reaching the full capacity of 4,425 satellites in 2024. (I’d like only a thousand BPs by then.) The FCC approval just requires SpaceX to launch 50 percent of the satellites by March 2024, and all of them by March 2027.

A great team is forming in the Pentagon to revive the best of the SDI era and move beyond those advances, based on all that has happened since it ended a quarter century ago. The pending Missile Defense Review will tell the tale! Stay tuned . . .

What can you do?

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