March 26, 2019—Mr. President: Adopt Reagan’s SDI Vision!

Saturday was the 36^th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s memorable speech launching his famed Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a day that many of us older folks concerned about the nation’s national security recall with great admiration for the most memorable and revered president of my lifetime.

Thus, I wrote a Newsmax article remembering that important event, published last Friday. Click here for that article, supplemented below with additional important details.

My most important observation was that if the most cost-effective product of the SDI era (1983-93) had been pursued as planned and funded for 1993 and afterward, we now would not be playing “catch-up” in countering the hypervelocity threat. If, if, if ….

But the Clinton administration canceled in early 1993 that program demonstrating technology that could be used to build a most important space-based interceptor system, called Brilliant Pebbles — along with other important SDI programs, for political not technical reasons. This was clear from the Pentagon’s after-action reviews previously discussed in my recollections of Reagan’s SDI speech. Click here for several messages that recall that background.

As then Defense Secretary Les Aspin boasted, he “took the stars out of Star Wars.”

“Star Wars” was the label invented by the most vocal opponents of Reagan’s SDI effort almost immediately after his March 23, 1983 speech. In the wake of the then recent Star Wars movie, they intended to suggest that SDI, especially Reagan’s interest in space based defenses, was all a fantasy.

Aspin was just taking action on the effort he had at best weakly supported as Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) during the SDI era (1983-93).

No doubt, that he gave us any support at all was because we got enormous negotiating leverage from our SDI efforts in our arms control talks with the Soviet Union, in which our priority goal was reducing offensive strategic nuclear arms. I discussed these matters with him when he visited us in Geneva, during my time as Reagan’s Chief Negotiator in our Defense and Space Talks with the Soviet Union.

And his skepticism was still evident in my discussions with him as SDI Director during the George H.W. Bush administration, even as the Soviet Union was breaking up and as Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin proposed that we take advantage of Russian technology and work together to build a Joint Global Defense.

Click here for my most recent reference to and discussion of that important event, written in remembering one of the best events (from my perspective) of the Bush-41 administration, scuttled by the Clinton administration and not revived since — at least not until President Trump’s current efforts, perhaps to be associated with his Space Force initiative if an again-reluctant Congress goes along.

In any case, remember that as Reagan’s most important partner during the SDI era, Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, later observed, “President Reagan’s SDI and his commitment to continue it ended the Cold War without firing a shot.”

She was referring to when Reagan walked out of the October 1986 Reykjavik Summit because Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev demanded that our space technology demonstrations be limited to the laboratory — ending the most effective SDI technology efforts.

What the Soviets were not able to do, the Democrats accomplished in the first months of the Clinton administration, thanks especially to Defense Secretary Les Aspin and his Pentagon colleagues who purged the team that had pursued SDI during the Reagan-George H.W. Bush administrations, as well as the most important programs they had pursued.

Click here for my recent discussion of how the Pentagon “powers that be” turned upside down the logical best arrangement of our research and development activities that should have given top priority to building space-based defenses, whereas they gave top priority to funding the least effective, most expensive BMD systems.

No subsequent administration until President Trump did anything to reverse that bias and resurrect that most important Brilliant Pebbles effort that had passed numerous technical reviews — by inside and outside government experts. In 1992, we were at the stage where within five years we could have demonstrated our ability to deploy on-orbit our initial Brilliant Pebbles, except for the constraints of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

We had two contractor teams working toward that end, following a 1989-90 “season of technical reviews” that validated the technology of that era. Moreover, that review also validated cost estimates for developing, deploying and operating for 20 years a constellation of 1000 Brilliant Pebbles, $10 Billion in 1988 dollars or about $20 billion in today’s dollars — much, much, much less than the Pentagon has since spent on much less effective ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems.

And by the way, that sound estimate was far less than those made by today’s alleged, though obviously less informed, “experts,” some of whom have claimed over $100 Billion would be now required.

Click here for an August 14, 2017 Newsmax article that Retired USAF Lt. General James A. Abrahamson (the first SDI Director who began the Brilliant Pebbles program) and I wrote contradicting these claims — and also consider its important linked references.

Were he still alive, I am certain that the second SDI Director, USAF Lt. Gen. George Monahan, would have joined us, since he shepherded Brilliant Pebbles through the rigorous season of in-depth critical reviews that led to it becoming the first SDI concept that the Pentagon’s top Acquisition Authorities approved to enter a formal Demonstration and Validation (DemVal) phase.

(THAAD entered its DemVal phase next, in early 1992 as I recall — and the Nation’s first SDI-designed ground-based interceptor homeland BMD system also did later that year; and the arriving Clinton Pentagon authorities directed the Army’s Huntsville authorities to return the contractor’s proposals to them, unopened. Such was their opposition to SDI and Reagan’s priority on protecting the American people — and their commitment to continuing Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD, as the “cornerstone of strategic stability.” THAAD was OK because it was only a Theater Missile Defense system, you see.)

Our article also provided links to a number of other important references that backed-up our well-justified claim and argued that President Trump should revive that most important SDI initiative.

But the most cost-effective product of the SDI era is still being poorly funded (if at all) by current Pentagon plans known to me, let alone what might be expected to pass muster with expected congressional opposition to the Pentagon’s anemic proposed budget for the new Space Development Agency.

The Pentagon apparently is seeking in 2020 for the Space Development Agency about a third of what a reluctant congress actually appropriated for my Brilliant Pebbles program for 1993 — before Secretary Aspin gutted it, as noted above. (That $300 Million would correspond to over $500 Million today.)

Such opposition may result from those skeptical of President Trump’s Space Force proposal — this while they agree with the Trump administration that meeting the hypersonic threat posed especially by Russia and China deserves high priority. This growing threat is acknowledged to hold at risk some of our most important systems, not to mention the American people, since it is acknowledged that our existing BMD systems cannot defeat it.

See below for Northrop Grumman’s concept art of a potential architecture for defending against hypersonic missiles. On the left is what is called a “boost glide” hypersonic threat missile. Its payload, possibly carrying a nuclear weapon, is launched on a ballistic missile, and then as it reaches the upper atmosphere maneuvers at very high velocity (Mach 20) in a way that can out-maneuver our current BMD systems, perhaps as depicted on the right. That’s the challenge.

But if we could shoot it down in its “boost phase” while it is rising from its launch pad (on the left), we could meet that challenge. Brilliant Pebbles could have accomplished that objective.

Click here for the recent Defense News article from which I copied the above figure and in which the hypersonic threat is discussed — while noting that the Pentagon is giving higher priority to building our own offensive hypersonic capabilities to catch up with the threat rather than defending against that threat — and implying that this trend continues as far into the future as the eye can see.

It also again repeats the above mentioned ridiculously high cost estimates for space-based interceptors. Apparently some folks never learn.

Regardless, it seems clear to me that we should be investing more in developing the means to shoot down an attacking hypersonic missile while its rockets are boosting shortly after it leaves its launch pad (also illustrated on the left) long before it can reach an altitude to maneuver while “gliding” in the upper atmosphere.

We should again place a high priority on developing as quickly as possible boost phase intercept (BPI) capabilities. Such a BPI capability has long been recognized (at least since DARPA’s studies in the 1960s) as an important objective that should be pursued by our BMD development programs.

Developing BPI capabilities certainly was a priority in the SDI era (a983-93), but apparently was forgotten by our BMD development activities afterward — perhaps until recently. There now are some efforts, which I have also advocated — e.g., click here, to develop airborne capabilities to be launched from fighter aircraft and from unpiloted air vehicle (UAVs), or drones.

But the above article implies that even these efforts are not being pursued with an appropriate priority. We were also pursuing such technology demonstrations in the SDI era, but those efforts also ended during the Clinton era. I root for a revived effort! And we also need to return to Reagan’s vision for building space-based defenses!

Very important and impressive early SDI technology demonstrations were associated with space-based interceptors, and they gave us great negotiating leverage in our arms control talks with the Soviet Union. Particularly notable was the September 1986 Delta 180 experiment (a month before the Reykjavik Summit that dramatically changed the dynamics of our negotiations) by demonstrating key technology needed to intercept a boosting missile in space.

I mention this important experiment because it was conceived by a young PhD aerospace engineer, Michael Griffin, then at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), later Deputy SDI Director for Technology and now the Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering seeking to defeat the hypersonic threat. So he understands that it takes to shoot down a boosting missile. And he is in a position to “take us back to the future” if the powers that be want to go there.

Hello, President Trump????

Moreover, had we continued Reagan’s SDI visionary efforts, which I was also privileged to lead during the George H.W. Bush administration, I have no doubt we would have long ago developed the capability to defeat the hypersonic threat Mike is now confronting.

Again, imagine what might be accomplished by space-based interceptors, rather than just the space-based sensors shown in the above figure.

By the way, the Brilliant Pebbles system we were pursuing in 1992 also could have carried a suite of sensors to accomplish the same role performed by our dedicated space-based sensor system designs — perhaps even with greater capability.

Those sensors then under early development actually were space-qualified on the award-winning Clementine mission that returned to the Moon for the first time in a quarter century and mapped its surface in about 1.8 million frames of data in 13 spectral bands— more data than obtained in the entire Apollo program and discovering water (Ice) in the polar regions of the Moon. A model hangs in Washington’s Smithsonian next to the Apollo Lunar Lander.

If we proceed in seeking space-based defenses today, we can again expect considerable political opposition, especially from Russia — an echo of Soviet claims during the Cold War when they opposed Reagan’s SDI agenda, even while they operated the world’s only ballistic missile defenses.

While considering their complaints, remember that, almost from the beginning of that era, the Soviets planned to violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which limited them to a single site, a nuclear-armed Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) still operating today near Moscow, so far as I know. As was the case in most if not all of their arms control agreements, the Soviets violated the ABM Treaty — e.g., by deploying components in violation of its explicit terms as well as subverting its constraints by giving its air defense systems a nationwide ABM capability.

As was the case with President Reagan, the only way now to expect success in negotiations with Russia is to negotiate from a position of strength. President Trump seems intent on doing just that.

Establishing a program to develop space based interceptors again could be just the ticket for accomplishing our current negotiating objectives with Russia.

Click here for my brief review on the 35^th anniversary of Reagan’s SDI speech of aspects of Reagan’s reversal of the “hollow army” and other degraded national security efforts that he inherited. President Trump also inherited a deeply degraded national security capability due to inadequate finding for over a decade.

We knew how to intercept ballistic missiles in their boost phase in the late 1980s and early 1990s — and now we should revive such programs — ASAP! The Pentagon is again in Reagan’s shadow, seeking to build truly effective space-based defenses, but so far apparently with an anemic budget.

Bottom Lines.

Had we been allowed to continue SDI almost 30-years ago, we no doubt would have demonstrated technology for a space-based Brilliant Pebbles constellation that could intercept ballistic missiles in their boost phase, in outer space, and high in the atmosphere during their reentry phase.

It could have countered today’s first generation “boost-glide” hypersonic threat to which we now are playing “catch-up.” Moreover, it might have deterred the development of that hypervelocity threat.

With President Trump’s support — like that Reagan gave SDI — and necessary funding, Undersecretary Mike Griffin can lead us out of the shadows to “go back to the future!”

Stay tuned!

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