June 18, 2019—First from the Sea, then from Space!

DoD is evaluating the Aegis BMD system’s SM-3 Block IIA interceptor and its command, control system to intercept ICBMs. It’s about time, since even the Block IB demonstrated this inherent potential in 2008!!! Finally, we seem to be taking steps to realize the vision and recommendations of the Heritage Foundation’s 1995 Team B.

Click here for the Congressional Research Services June 7, 2019 report, “Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Program: Background and Issues for Congress,“ which reports on the status and issues that Congress will likely consider for future legislation.

While I recommend full consideration of the issues discussed in this potentially important report, my message this week dwells on the above observation — that leads one to wonder why it has taken so long to recognize the important role that Aegis BMD system can play in our homeland defense.

I first recognized the potential of the Navy’s Aegis system during my early 1990 independent review of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) for then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, and it became a major priority for me after he asked me to become SDI Director and execute my March 1990 recommendations for refocusing the SDI program into what became the Global Defense Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) initiative.

Its focus on a global defense for the first time combined the roles of both Theater Missile Defense (TMD) and National Missile Defense (NMD) (or Homeland Defense) basing concepts, along with space-based components — particularly the Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor system.

Click here for the annotated February 12, 1991 Pentagon press briefing by the Assistant Defense Secretary for International Security Policy, Stephen J. Hadley, and myself after President George H.W. Bush approved this new approach. (Rotate the pages for ease of reading the annotated language.)

The proposed Aegis BMD system (then called Aegis TMD) was to be a TMD system. Otherwise, the ABM Treaty’s Article V would have blocked even the testing of the concept that clearly promised to be an important global capability, because most of the earth’s surface is water — and accessible by our Aegis ships.

It has long been clear to Vice Admiral J.D. Williams, then Director of Naval Warfare, and me that a defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) was an inherent capability if/when we were free to develop it. But we advised then CNO Admiral Frank Kelso that he must not permit the Navy to exploit that inherent capability, because the ABM Treaty would block even the testing of this important system, even for TMD capability.

Regrettably, that initial constraint has weighed until recently against the development of what I consider to be today’s most reliable and cost-effective ballistic missile defense system, now operational around the world on about 40 Aegis Cruisers and Destroyers, though still restricted to a TMD role — even after President George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002.

Just to emphasize the difficulties that have blocked progress, consider our efforts to rectify the situation after the Clinton administration gutted the SDI program in early 1993, beginning in late 1994 when the House Republicans achieved majority status for the first time in a generation. The new Republican leadership had shared President Reagan’s SDI vision — and we sought, successfully it turned out, to get their support in redirecting the focus during the latter stages of the Clinton administration.

Dr. Lowell Wood (from Livermore National Laboratories and the prime mover behind SDI’s Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor concept) and I traveled to Philadelphia to meet (on the margins of a conference of the new House members) with Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY) to urge that a “Team B” be established at the Heritage Foundation to help lay plans for such a revival, especially in view of Newt Gingrich’s leadership as Speaker.

Jack, in turn, persuaded the Heritage Foundation’s President Dr. Edwin Feulner to establish such a team, which I was privileged to lead for the next several years as a Heritage Visiting Fellow, to map future technically advanced possibilities for our friends in congress and elsewhere to pursue. The initial Missile Defense Study Team is given below along with a picture of our 1995 report cover. (Note that the current Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Michael Griffin, was a member of this Heritage Team B. I trust that Mike retains our vision from a quarter century ago — actually from three decades ago, and is now armed with even more advanced technology to make it happen!)

We argued that we should never give the Russians a “veto” over our missile defense programs; and urged the Clinton administration in its negotiations with Russia to pursue a cooperative program that ultimately would include space-based defenses. This would fit with Yeltsin’s January 1991 call that we work together to build a “Joint Global Defense” for the world community, subsequently abandoned by both the U.S. and Russia. In our subsequent 1998 and 1999 reports, we called for the U.S. to declare the ABM Treaty to be “null and void” in the absence of our treaty partner, the Soviet Union, and “to build the best missile defenses that technology permits.”

We also again repeated our observation that our recommended “’first from the sea, then from space” approach would create the most effective, complete and responsible global defense system for the United States.” This never happened during the remainder of the Clinton administration, and we were gratified when President George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002 — and thought we were on our way to realizing our long sought objective.

But we were to be disappointed. We saw no revival of the key SDI programs that had led to “Brilliant Pebbles.” However, thanks to the efforts of then Assistant Defense Secretary J.D. Crouch and his Deputy Keith Payne, President Bush directed that Aegis BMD system development efforts be continued — but still only for TMD applications, despite its inherent capabilities to provide homeland defense capabilities, especially after President Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty and its former constraints that had blocked such development.

Moreover, key efforts for Aegis BMD to include key SDI technologies pioneered in its Brilliant Pebbles program under Presidents Reagan and Bush-41 were cancelled even though detailed studies by the Navy’s BMD program office had demonstrated during the latter days of the Clinton administration that those technologies could enable a much lighter Aegis BMD kill vehicle and provide a much greater defense footprint than was then Bush-43’s “school solution.”

An exceptional team of engineers and scientists had space qualified those technologies in the mid-1990s on the Clementine Mission initiated as one of my last acts as SDI Director. That mission employed scavenged Brilliant Pebbles sensors and other technology from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and under program integration leadership from the Naval Research Laboratory, returned to the Moon in the mid-1990s for the first time in a quarter century, mapped the entire Moon’s surface in over a million frames of data in 13-spectral bands, discovered water in the polar regions, and received awards from NASA and the National Academy of Sciences.

Lack of Pentagon support during the George W. Bush, or Bush-43, administration put even continuing such research and development out of business and dispersed the technical team that had pioneered this important work, Illustrating again that “no good deed goes unpunished” when it comes to building truly effective defenses.

That same technological capability not only would have enabled a viable more capable sea-based homeland defense, much less expensive and more effective than the ground-based defense that became the Bush-43 hallmark. In my opinion, it also would have set the stage for reviving the Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor program — development of which was no longer constrained in any way after 2002 by the subsequently defunct ABM Treaty. And it would have revitalized our Heritage Team B recommendation “First from the sea, then from space.”

Thanks to support from our Japanese allies — including significant funding, the Navy’s BMD program has developed the systems now deployed on several of their Aegis BMD ships and more than 35 of ours. They demanded that the Standard Missile-3 interceptor fit in the existing Aegis infrastructure rather than develop a new larger diameter interceptor as some of Pentagon leaders wanted (but not the U.S. Navy) — otherwise the cost of those programs would have escalated and the Navy would no doubt have abandoned the program.

Land based versions, called Aegis Ashore are operational in Romania and Poland. Japan is buying sites to help defend against North Korean ballistic missiles, and others are interested in following suit, including the possibility of deploying Aegis Ashore BMD systems — composed of key Aegis system components deployed on land. (We also should be deploying Aegis Ashore sites on our military bases around the Gulf of Mexico and perhaps along our East and West Coasts. )

Notably in 2008, the first generation Aegis BMD system (with the then initially tested SM-3 IB) was chosen by President G.W. Bush as the best system for shooting down a dying National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite, indicating again the inherent capability of the Aegis BMD system to perform a homeland defense mission, a mission finally being considered in the Trump administration plans. Satellites move at a comparable velocity to that of ICBMs.

So there was no need to wait for the SM-3 Block IIA to achieve an ability to shoot down ICBMs — as VADM J.D. Williams and I have advocated since our participation on the Heritage Team B efforts of the 1990s.

Better late than never, I suppose. And we are finally seeing the promises of President-elect Trump from his September 2016 speech in Philadelphia:

“We propose to rebuild the key tools of missile defense, starting with the Navy cruisers that are the foundation of our missile defense capabilities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. As we expand our Navy toward the goal of 350 ships, we will also procure additional modern destroyers that are designed to handle the missile defense mission in the coming years.”

And I hope that he is showing the way toward reviving the companion space-based defense system advocated by the Heritage Foundation’s Team B in 1995. The private sector is making clear that the technology is available to do so, as I emphasized in two recent Newsmax Articles. Click here for last week’s message that included the first, and the second is included in this week’s message, in full below.

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Talk, Studies Won’t Bring Needed Space Force

By Henry F. Cooper , Newsmax, Wednesday, 12 June 2019 11:16 AM Current | Bio | Archive https://www.newsmax.com/henryfcooper/command-sdi-reagan-unified/2019/06/12/id/920003/

As we watch the U.S. House and Senate thrash out the future of President Trump’s Space Force Initiative, it is hard to avoid wondering why it has taken so long to have such a debate about this critically important matter.

Certainly, since I served as the Air Force (USAF) deputy assistant secretary for strategic and space systems from 1979 to 82, I’ve been an advocate for space-based systems to support and conduct both defensive and offensive military operations.

Moreover, ignorance is displayed by current claims that we are taking a significant “new” step in establishing a Unified Space Command. But USAF Gen. Robert T. Herres became the first commander of USSPACECOM in 1985. He was followed by seven other USAF generals (who were duel hatted as also the Commander of Air Force Space Command), until that unified command was abolished in 2002.

Such was the perceived value of that command which is now so explicitly applauded as something new — after almost an 18 year hiatus.

Will its future role be different this time?

The current debate in Congress and among the military services casts doubt on its future role. Not least of those resisting the president’s advocacy for a separate Space Force is the United States Air Force, my favorite service as a former USAF officer.

That resistance was led by no less than former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, now slated to be president of the University of Texas in El Paso.

But the legacy of her resistance lives on as major “studies are being pursued,” which at a minimum should have previously been accomplished by the Air Force long ago — that was surely its role in hosting most of the Pentagon’s key space programs.

These matters were the subject of a June 11, 2019 article by the Editors of National Defense Magazine, “Editor’s Notes: Time for a Bold New Space Architecture.”

As it makes clear, needed is action — not more talk and studies, as is what the bureaucracy usually does as a stalling tactic—toward revamping the Pentagon’s space operations and supporting infrastructure, especially within but certainly not limited to the Air Force.

At least the importance of having that debate is finally being recognized by our leaders who at long last are beginning to see space as a military domain, not simply a place for basing adjuncts to support our “real” military forces based on land, at sea and in the air.

General Benard (Bennie) A. Schriever, the Father of USAF Space systems after whom is named Schriever AFB in Colorado Springs, was bridled in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the political leaders in those days after his speeches asserting this rather obvious future space military role. I discussed these matters with him many times when he was a key advisor to President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Those negatively biased conditions of the 50s and 60s grew, especially among those who mistakenly have believed—and still believe—that arms control can protect our military systems. This view has left us with potentially vulnerable systems that can be countered by our enemies today.

So, the Pentagon is playing “catch-up” with some growing threats, as has been observed by Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin — and I know Mike knows whereof he speaks.

While I could point to many places for innovation, I again echo previous messages that we need again to exploit technology that has been advanced by the private sector to build truly cost-effective space-based defenses, after the pattern that was clearly demonstrated during by President Reagan’s SDI efforts.

SpaceX and others are pursuing these technologies for commercial purposes — and they should also be applied to build needed space-based sensors and interceptors for military purposes, as is included in the mission of the new Space Development Agency (SDA)— itself a focus of debate among the “powers that be.”

The new SDA Director, Dr. Fred Kennedy, stated at last week’s Space Symposium in Colorado Springs that past efforts had been marked by “profound and pathological risk aversion.” At least . . . I would say.

Kennedy also noted that we should have considered exploiting large numbers of small satellites 20-years ago.

Hear, hear! I would only add that his timing is a bit off. The SDI efforts did just that, 30-years ago.

Moreover, the Pentagon’s most senior acquisition executive in 1990 approved a Demonstration and Validation (DemVal) effort that down-selected from five to two contractor teams to evaluate the potential for such a system — its name was Brilliant Pebbles and was based on exploiting cutting edge technology then advancing in the private sector.

Regrettably, the Clinton administration gutted that important effort as one of its first acts in 1993. But it was a good idea then—and is a good idea now. Hopefully, future related efforts this time will fare better in current debates about the President’s Space Force initiative.

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My preferred title was “Stumbling toward Space Defense” … and I hope it will be a positive stumbling. In any case, we finally have reason to hope that maybe, just maybe, our quarter century old Heritage Team B recommendations are being followed this time: A global defense,

“First from the sea and then from space.”

Bottom Lines:

High Frontier will certainly press the “powers that be” to support President Trump’s stated vision and we will do all we can to see it implemented by his administration — including a revival of Ronald Reagan’s original SDI vision that has been dormant for almost three decades.

We are watching the continuing congressional debates that will underwrite whatever it to emerge from the unfolding realities of what currently available technology can accomplish and what the powers that be decide to do. We will keep you informed.

Stay Tuned.

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