July 28, 2020—Go Back to the Future with ASATs and Global Defenses

DoD is upgrading 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 had this potential!!! So, we are reportedly taking the first step of the Heritage Foundation’s 1995 Team B Recommendations for a Global Defense. When, oh when, will we take the second and go to space?

Reports on recent Russian tests of antisatellite systems suggest they are new capabilities. Click here for the most comprehensive of these recent reports, W.J. Hennigan and Spencer Lowell’s June 10, 2020 Time Magazine article “America Really Does Have a Space Force. We Went Inside to See What It does.”

This pertinent article suggests that this truly important threat to our vital space systems is relatively new; and that President Trump’s Space Force is actively addressing it. This is a false impression, on both counts.

General John “Jay” Raymond, Commander of the U.S. Space Force, reportedly said, “Russia is developing on-orbit capabilities that seek to exploit our reliance on space-based systems.” He also reported that, in February 2017, Russia had released an unreported projectile. And he also indicated that China is training “specialized units” to “blast apart objects in orbit” and that both nations have deployed ground-based systems to disable our satellites.

To be sure, this growing threat from Russia and China (and potentially from North Korea and Iran) is not only to our military capabilities. For example, if our Global Positioning System (GPS) system were taken down, all manner of military, civil and personal systems would be rendered inoperable.

How are your map-reading skills? That is, if you still have road maps? Most folks I know rely on GPS to find their way around our cities…never mind around the nation.

However, understand that this is not a new threat!

For example, Russia’s forerunner Soviet Union was first known to begin developing and testing what is referred to as “co-orbital” anti-satellite “ASAT” systems in the late 1960s. These ASATs could “snuggle” up to other orbital systems and spy on or attack other space systems — or fire projectiles at other targets in space, as recently suggested by the above linked Time Magazine article as being a new threat.

I am well acquainted with these threats because I oversaw early development of our air-launched ASAT system in the late 1970s and early 1980s — to be launched from an F-15 to hit in space low altitude satellites. This program was initiated by one of the last of President Ford’s Directives, if not his last, and carried throughout the Carter administration as a “limited access” compartmented program.

As this R&D effort matured, we saw illustrated what is a continuing serious political impedance that limits our ability to develop needed capabilities — now our U.S. Space Force Capabilities — to protect our national security interests in space. Often these constraints are included in the agenda of an international “Arms Control Community,” actively supported by many influential U.S. partners.

For example, the Air Force was planning to test its developing F-15 ASAT capability in 1983-84, and congress balked — Senator Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.) successfully amended the National Defense Authorization Act for 1985 blocking its testing in space until the Reagan Administration provided a Report to Congress on a Comprehensive Ban on ASATs.

Then in the State Department, I co-chaired the interagency group that produced that report emphasizing how such arms control agreements are completely unverifiable — still true today. President Reagan approved our report and subsequently our testimony satisfied congress at the time; we proceeded with that important program; the system was successfully demonstrated in September 1986, by impacting at about 15,000 mph a one-ton operational satellite at 345 miles above the Earth.

Click here for a recent discussion of the history of ASATs, including this important F-15 ASAT that was discontinued for purely political reasons. Notably, this recent article begins by mentioning India’s entre into the ASAT world, as the fourth nation to conduct an ASAT test. (The other three are the USA, Russia and China. Also, note that any nation or terrorist that can reach space with nuclear armed missiles has a de facto ASAT capability.)

In any case, our F-15 ASAT test certainly got the Soviets’ attention as I can attest from my dealing with the Soviet negotiators in Geneva.

(Note: this test almost 35 years ago also implicitly demonstrated an inherent capability of shooting down an attacking ICBM in outer space. Moreover, with the right technology an appropriately located F-15 with the right interceptor could shoot down an attacking missile in its nearby boost phase, while its rockets still burn as it rises from its launcher.)

Not only did this 1986 test demonstrate technology that the Soviets could not then match, but it gave us leverage that led to the verifiable Immediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) and Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) Treaties, President Ronald Reagan’s top priority — without additional limitations on his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Regrettably, the Clinton administration and Democrats in Congress subsequently accomplished what the Soviets alone could not — when Defense Secretary Les Aspin “took the stars out of Star Wars” in early 1993—and those important efforts have remained dormant ever since, while the key technologies have advanced (including especially in Russia and China) through subsequent Democrat and Republican administrations — and now including under President Donald Trump.

Moreover, Congress and the Clinton administration blocked additional programs for future ASAT testing — no doubt believing that Arms Control and diplomacy would protect our important systems in space and elsewhere.

Click here for my April 24, 2020 Newsmax discussion as part of the background leading to the conclusion that the current “powers that be,” especially our US Space Command, should “Avoid a Space Arms Control Ruse!”

General Raymond then had observed that Russia’s April 15, 2020 anti-satellite (ASAT) test showed “the threats to U.S. and allied space systems are real, serious and growing.” I there also emphasized that such ASAT capabilities can be achieved with numerous available long-range ballistic missiles.

Most importantly, I emphasized that General Raymond also correctly stated Russia’s real reason for its test: Its “hypocritical advocacy of outer space arms control proposals designed to restrict the capabilities of the United States while clearly having no intention of halting their counterspace weapons programs.”

Indeed, such was long practiced by the Soviets, and now by Russia’s current leaders. Unfortunately, many in the international arms control community are willing to go along with this charade and seek to limit our capabilities while doing so — foolishly believing that it we do so, Russia (and others) will follow our unilateral example.

These issues are particularly pertinent as a U.S. delegation began meetings yesterday to initiate new discussions in Vienna in a so-called Space Security Exchange (SSE) with Russia, the first since 2013. Click here for an advance discussion on these “discussions” intended to “help advance the cause of setting responsible norms of behavior” in space operations and “avoid misperceptions and miscalculations about on-orbit activities.”

This objective sounds good, as far as it goes — but as everyone who has ever dealt with the Soviets (and Russians) knows, the Devil is in the details. So, we’ll stand by for future reports.

Meanwhile, I’ll stick to the main points in this message, and suggest that you click here for my June 18, 2020 message reporting that the Navy’s Aegis system demonstrated in 2008 the inherent ASAT capability of its first generation ballistic missile defense (BMD) interceptor as President George W. Bush’s system of choice to shoot down a dying satellite that threatened personnel below. Click here for a short video report on that important “Burnt Frost” event. Today’s more advanced Aegis BMD system can do even better.

While I recommend full consideration of the issues discussed in my June 18, 2020 message, I want to emphasize again serious questions about why it is taking so long for the U.S. “powers that be” to recognize:

The potential role the Aegis BMD system can play in our homeland defense and other strategically important missions; and
The requirement for truly effective space-based defense systems.

Consider a few more memories from my direct involvement with these issues over the past 35 years — and especially note how “politically correct” matters have dominated important national security initiatives to protect the American People.

I first recognized the potential of the Navy’s Aegis system during my early 1990 independent review of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, and it became a major priority for me after he asked me 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 a space-based component — especially Brilliant Pebbles. Click here for the annotated February 12, 1991 Pentagon press briefing by then 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 Navy’s 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 of what clearly promised to be an important global capability because most of the earth’s surface is water — and accessible by our Aegis ships.

It was 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 the development of this important system even for TMD capability.

Regrettably, that initial constraint weighed against the development of what I consider to be today’s most reliable and cost-effective deployed ballistic missile system, now operational on about 40 Aegis Cruisers and Destroyers around the world — though still restricted to a TMD role — until now.

To illustrate the difficulties that have blocked progress, consider our effort to build the most-cost effective truly effective BMD systems in 1994, after the House leadership moved to the Republican side of the aisle, led by legislators who shared President Reagan’s SDI vision — and after the Clinton administration had gutted the SDI efforts among its initial actions in early 1993.

Shortly after the 1994 election, Dr. Lowell Wood (from Livermore National Laboratories and the prime mover behind SDI’s Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor concept) and I met with then Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY) to urge that a “Team B,” distinct from the continuing Clinton administration, be established at the Heritage Foundation to help lay plans for such a revival, especially in view of Newt Gingrich’s leadership as our new Speaker. Jack, in turn, persuaded Heritage 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. The initial Missile Defense Study Team are given below along with our 1995 report cover.

Our main conclusion and recommendation was that the United States needed a “Global Defense” to be deployed first at sea and then in space. Our studies had emphasized that these were the most cost-effective ways to deploy BMD system to protect the American people and our overseas troops, friends and allies.

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 have fit with Russian President Boris 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 1998 and 1999 Heritage Team B reports, we urged that the ABM Treaty be declared “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 recommended “’first from the sea, then from space” approach to 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.

Our recommendations had made their way into the Republican Platforms for the 1996 and 2000 elections. But we were to be disappointed in both cases. We lost the Presidency in 1996, and we saw no revival of the key SDI programs that had led to “Brilliant Pebbles” during the administration of President George W. Bush — though thankfully he did withdraw from the ABM Treaty that had blocked all truly effective BMD systems.

And 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 regrettably only for TMD applications, despite inherent Aegis BMD capabilities to provide homeland defense capabilities — faster and for less money than ground-based BMD systems that have been the focus of our homeland defense efforts.

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 during Bush-43 even though the Navy’s BMD program office detailed studies had demonstrated how those technologies could enable a much lighter Aegis BMD kill vehicle and provide a much greater defense footprint than was then the George W. Bush Administration’s “school solution.”

An exceptional team of engineers and scientists had space qualified those technologies in the mid-1990s on the Clementine Mission conceived and 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. (A replica now hangs on the Smithsonian next to the Apollo Lunar Lander.)

Lack of Pentagon support during the George W. Bush, or Bush-43, administration put even continuing such important 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 sea-based homeland defense, much less expensive and more effective than the ground-based defense that became the Bush-43 hallmark. It also could 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 about 40 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 the Pentagon leaders wanted (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 — and Japan has considered Aegis Ashore 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 was chosen by President George 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. William’s and I have advocated since our participation on the Heritage Team B efforts of the 1990s. Better late than never, I suppose.

Perhaps 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 will direct his Space Force to revive the companion space-based defense system advocated by the Heritage Foundation’s Team B in 1995. The private sector has made clear that today’s technology is available to do so, as I emphasized in numerous Newsmax articles that you can review by clicking here.

Bottom Lines

For decades, we have known how to build the most cost-effective ballistic missile defenses to protect the American People and our overseas troops, friends and allies.

But we have not applied that knowledge effectively — and instead have built more costly, less effective BMD systems.

It is long past time for President Trump to direct his Space Force and our best engineers to return to the agenda pursued by President Ronald Reagan and his Strategic Defense Initiative.

And we should avoid the siren call of arms control.

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 man-made 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.

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