“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 Read Full Story
“Although the program was cancelled due to opposition in Congress, and lack of interest during the Clinton Administration, the aerospace technology developed utilized a combination of essentially off-the-shelf commercial and military technology that is still available to U.S. aerospace development.” ~ Donald H. Baucom, The Rise and Fall of Brilliant Pebbles Read Full Story
In a June 18, 2018 speech to the National Space Council, President Trump stated, “I’m hereby directing the Department of Defense and the Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces . . . separate but equal from the Air Force. That’s a big statement.” Then he asked Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Got it?” General Dunford replied, “We got it.” Read Full Story
“To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.” ~Sir Winston Churchill. Read Full Story
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” ~ Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the then highly classified Manhattan Project, quoting from the Bhagaved-Gita Hindu Scripture, upon witnessing the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945 in Alamogordo, NM. Read Full Story
“Through my entire career I have watched the space enterprise struggle with integration in the [space] multidomain. You watch the chief of staff and many of the generals try to figure out how to seamlessly stitch the space community into a networked architecture. In my opinion, that will [be] harder at first to figure out. What does a ‘Space Force’ look like? What are the primary missions?” Col. Russell Teehan, Director of the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate and Commander of Phillips Research Site, Kirtland AFB, NM at the NewSpace conference, Seattle, June 26, 2018 Read Full Story
As most Americans enjoy a holiday week and especially as we join in tomorrow’s festivities of our Independence Day celebrations, we need to renew the pledges made by those who proposed the Declaration of Independence some 242 years ago — again to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” to assure the birthright given to us by the Founders is passed to future Americans. Not least is to prepare for and counter today’s existential threats posed by the current forces of tyranny. Read Full Story
“Someday, not too distant; there can come streaking out of somewhere (We won’t be able to hear it, it will come so fast.) some kind of gadget with an explosive so powerful that one projectile will be able to wipe out completely this city of Washington. . . . I think we will meet the attack alright [sic] and, of course, in the air. But I’ll tell you one thing, there won’t be a …pilot in the sky! That attack will be met by machines guided not by human brains, but by devices conjured up by human brains.” ~ General Henry H. Arnold, 1943 Read Full Story
“Protecting and defending the national electric grid and other critical infrastructures from cyber and EMP could be accomplished at reasonable cost and minimal disruption to the present systems that comprise U.S. critical infrastructure. This is commensurate with Trump Administration plans to repair and improve U.S. infrastructures, increase their reliability, and strengthen homeland defense and military capability. Continued failure to address the U.S. vulnerability to EMP generated by a high-altitude nuclear weapon invites such an attack.” ~Recently released July 2017 EMP Commission Executive Report.” Read Full Story
The first four Directors of what is now the Missile Defense Agency believed we knew how to build a cost-effective space-based interceptor system called Brilliant Pebbles 30 years ago. Moreover, Brilliant Pebbles became the first product of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to enter a formal Demonstration and Validation program, approved in 1990 by the Pentagon’s top acquisition executive. The fully vetted by the Pentagon cost estimators, in conjunction with outside expert critical reviews, estimated the cost for development, deployment and operations of 1000 space based interceptors for 20 years to be $20 billion in today’s dollars. We need to “go back to the future!” with today’s more advanced technology which should lead to lower costs. Read Full Story
We will be adding key policy briefs as we progress.