August 14, 2018—It’s the Law-of-the-Land!

“I’ve made my own preliminary cost estimates… and I can’t figure out a way to make them (space-based interceptors) cost as much as some of the numbers I’ve seen tossed around the media (like) many tens of billions of dollars.” ($67 to $109 billion is commonly cited). ~ Dr. Michael Griffin, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering

Yesterday at Fort Drum in New York, President Trump signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 (NDAA 2019) making it the “Law-of-the-Land.”

Most press accounts of his accompanying speech are focused on how much more money is going to defense — and what programs will receive substantially greater funding. But some at least noted his concurrent advocacy for a Space Force to counter a growing threat that the Pentagon’s current programs have not been countering.

Notably, the President emphasized, “Our foreign competitors and adversaries have already begun weaponizing space, developing new technologies to disrupt vital communications, blind satellites.”

Furthermore, he emphasized that it is not enough to merely have a U.S. presence in space but American dominance is needed — which is why, Vice President Pence outlined his Space Force proposal last week, calling for the Pentagon to stand up a U.S. Space Force by 2020. Click here for a brief summary of the Vice President’s speech with additional pertinent links.

I think that this NDAA’s most important provisions deal with the innovation that will flow from our future ability to defend the nation against attacks through or from space and to prevail against other nations that already are pursuing programs that make space a domain for warfare.

Click here for my message last week, which discussed many of these factors in some detail, especially in the context of reviving Brilliant Pebbles (BP) space-based interceptor (SBI) system.

As the first four directors of what is now called the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) have agreed, it was the most cost-effective product of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), curtailed by congressional opposition, scuttled in early 1993 by the Clinton administration and left dormant ever since by both Democrat and Republication administrations.

Moreover, it was the first ballistic missile defense (BMD) system to gain full approval of the Pentagon’s acquisition authorities to enter a formal demonstration validation (DemVal) program in 1989 under the second SDI Director, USAF LGEN George Monahan. And its revival can provide a leading edge to President Trump’s Space Force that is now being (hopefully) constructively considered by the Pentagon leadership.

Certainly, the above introductory quote from a press interview over the weekend with Dr. Michael Griffin, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, is a breath of fresh air — an authoritative senior Pentagon official’s response to the plethora of alleged BMD experts who have claimed such a system would be enormously costly. Click here and here for informative articles on Dr. Griffin’s views.

Mike’s bottom line is that success “is not a technology challenge. It is a policy-decision making challenge” Hear, hear!

And click here for a report on MDA Director LGEN Sam Greaves’ statement at the same Huntsville conference that he is not averse to building space based defenses. He said that “We are developing options to pursue that capability if the nation decides that is what we should be doing . . . Congress has already written some language that would push us, direct us, guide us in that area, so it’s part of the overall suite of activities we are pursuing as part of our portfolio.”

I believe that these studies will be positive because, as Mike should recall, of the results of the 1989 cost estimates following a variety of competent authoritative technical, policy and program costing reviews. They estimated $10 billion in 1988 dollars (now about $20-billilon in current dollars) to research, develop, deploy and operate for 20 years a constellation of 1000 BPs.

Mike was a SDI technology leader when BP was selected to become the first SDI concept to enter its formal DemVal phase in 1990 . . . 28 years ago. That was its status when I became SDI Director in the summer of 1990.

Click here for the January 1991 Pentagon press briefing that then Assistant Defense Secretary for International Security Policy Steve Hadley and I gave announcing President George H.W. Bush’s support for the new direction of the SDI toward protecting America and our overseas troops, friends and allies against limited strikes — to which we then referred as Global Defense Against Limited Strikes (GPALS). (Rotate clockwise for easy reading.)

Now consider a little more history that is a pertinent precedent for today’s activities, including the need for a separate service to support the research, development and operations of our needed future space programs .

President Ronald Reagan’s advocacy for space based defenses was central to his strategic vision, and by direction his administration’s subsequent policies, programs and arms control positions. I like to say that my job for five years in Geneva was to find creative ways to say “Nyet!” to the Soviet efforts to block, delay and end the President’s SDI.

Indeed, our insistence on that position, and President Reagan’s evident top priority when he walked out of the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, led to our ultimate success in achieving the arms control treaties that he wanted to reduce nuclear arms.

But congress and others among “the arms control elite” exercised significant resistance to President Reagan’s interest in space-based BMD systems — and of course the Soviets tried to leverage that resistance in their negotiations and public diplomacy policies and activities.

Moreover, there were technical difficulties impeding SDI efforts to meet the so-called Nitze criteria — demanding as a matter of U.S. policy that any new BMD system had to be survivable against direct attack and be “cost-effective at the margin” — i.e., that before they could be deployed that each new defensive element would have to coast less than the efforts to attack it.

Congress had made this NItze criteria the “law of the land,” no doubt seeking to restrain any serious effort to actually build a missile defense system for the American people. Such was the dominant support for the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with the Soviet Union that made it a virtue to keep the American people vulnerable to ballistic missile attack.

I vividly recall Dr. Edward Teller visiting me in Geneva in 1988 and inviting me to visit Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to review their efforts with the first system — Brilliant Pebbles — that he believed could meet the very significant Nitze Criteria challenge. I did and was most impressed!

I then went directly to Los Angeles and met with the Commander and key members of Air Force Space and Missile Organization, which was in charge of SDI research and development on space-based BMD systems — and particularly space-based interceptors (SBIs). They refused to visit LLNL.

So … I, among others, began urging that the SDI form a Brilliant Pebbles Task Force, reporting directly to the SDI Director rather than through the Air Force, to assure that LLNL’s innovative program would make its way into the Pentagon’s formal acquisition effort, while exploiting LLNL’s approach to employing cutting edge technology, based primarily on commercially off the shelf technology (COTS) rather than the products of the Pentagon’s, primarily Air Force, R&D efforts.

Meanwhile, congressional Democrats were exercising their usual contrary interest in blocking almost anything supporting President Reagan’s SDI agenda — which they early had labeled “Star Wars” to reflect their view that his vision was a fantasy. In particular, the House and Senate Arms Services Committees (the HASC and SASC) passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 1989 (NDAA 1989) that cut the SDI funding for R&D on space based BMD systems — and that would have meant cutting the then “special access” classified program pursuing Brilliant Pebbles.

So . . . our White House friends loyal to President Reagan’s interests invited our LLNL friends to brief the President on Brilliant Pebbles; see below. Afterward, President Reagan vetoed the NDAA 1989, and I’m personally persuaded that Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA)and Representative Les Aspin (WI) — chairmen of the SASC and HASC — never forgave us for that affront and every chance they got afterward they supported efforts to curtail BP research and ultimately to gut the program with the arrival of President Clinton. Then Defense Secretary Les Aspin memorably said he “took the stars out of Star Wars.” These events were summarized on the left side of the following viewgraph illustrating the Brilliant Pebbles “coming out” briefing that led President Reagan to veto the NDAA 1989.

A full scale model of a Brilliant Pebble was under the cloak in the middle of the table, because at that time it was still classified. Note its size and the fact that it included a complete suite of sensors and was commanded by a small computer then with the power of a Cray-1 supercomputer (that filled a rather large room) to manage the full BP constellation operations, including automated battle management decision-making.

No big deal today with the commonly available computers we carry around in our pockets. More discussion for a future time, including the fact that BP sensors could have performed the space-based warning and tracking mission still needed for today’s less capable BMD systems that have cost the taxpayer many times the anticipated cost to develop, deploy and operate a Brilliant Pebbles constellation that we could have had long before now, protecting America and our overseas troops, friends and allies.

I shared the history summarized on the left of the above chart with others in a Huntsville meeting over this past weekend to address how concerned Alabamians can undertake initiatives to protect themselves against electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat to the electric power grid, given the dysfunctional Federal Government efforts to protect the electric power grid. Coincidentally, our meeting was just next door from where Mike Griffin was concurrently making his important comments that space based interceptors were needed, doable and affordable.

Having effective BMD systems is important to deal with the EMP threat, especially in the near term when our electric grid will remain vulnerable whatever we do. It would be best for the defenses to be there ASAP.

Note in the above photograph, just beyond Dr. Edward Teller on the left is Dr. Lowell Wood, the inventor of the Brilliant Pebbles concept and for 17 years a member of the EMP Commission, until the Congress in an incredibly stupid action dissolved it last year. At the end of the table on the right, next to the first SDI Director LGEN Jim Abrahamson, is Dr. William R. Graham, President Reagan’s Science Advisor and Chairman of the EMP Commission for 17 years. And on the right looking away was Vice President George H.W. Bush, who as President later accepted my recommendations for redirecting the SDI architecture and appointed me as the third SDI Director.

So, we now have very hopeful signs that a modern Brilliant Pebbles can take advantage current technology even more advanced in the past 30-years to build more effective defenses for much less money than we quite credibly projected 30 years ago.

The President wants a Space Force, and Defense Secretary Mattis has announced that he now supports it . . . after previously writing his opposition — and surely others in the Defense Department will follow.

Moreover, the NDAA-2019 mandates that the Pentagon provide a plan for such a SBI system within the next year. A return to a modern Brilliant Pebbles I hope.

It’s now the “Law-of-the-Land.” And that’s the good news for this week. Stay tuned!!!

Bottom Lines.

I believe that directives from Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin can and will prod the Pentagon to be more innovative than it has been in the past 30 years, especially to fully exploit space based defenses.

And I believe that the President’s steady intent to form a new Space Force will be enormously helpful in reinforcing Griffin’s and LGEN Greaves’ efforts. I would urge that a competent and independent Brilliant Pebbles Task Force reporting to LGEN Greaves be formed to revive a modern Brilliant Pebbles, an objective I believe Mike Griffin will strongly support.

Important congressional initiatives strongly support the timely development of boost-phase intercept capabilities, based initially on aircraft and, as soon as possible, then in space — which can be a Brilliant Pebbles worldwide mission like one no other BMD system can provide.

By working constructively toward such operational capabilities under these congressional directives, the Pentagon can “kick start” President Trump’s Space Force — and by the end of his second term help dominate space as is his stated objective.

Stay tuned for Pentagon reports to congress on the Missile Defense Review and the game plan for a Space Force.

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

Click here to make a tax deductible gift. If you prefer to mail a check, Please send it High Frontier, 20 F Street 7^th Floor, Washington, DC 20001.

E-Mail Message 180814