October 2, 2018—Back to the Future!

“ . . . If the allied military targets had been spread out, there wouldn’t have been enough Patriots in the world to defend them all. In 15-20 years, when very accurate missiles with mass destruction warheads are available to third world nations, the U.S. will need a regional wide area defense force to duplicate on a grand scale the Patriot’s pivotal role of defanging the Scud.” Lt. Gen. Charles A. Horner, Commander US Central Command, Tactical Air Forces, in Aviation Week, 11 February 1991

I remember very well this “defanging of the Scud,” as then USAF Lt. Gen. Chuck Horner called it — and the role we in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Organization played in making it possible.

Shortly after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, I got a call from long-time friend John Darrah, then Chief Scientist at Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs. John and I had been Senior Scientists at the Air Force Weapons Laboratories leading nuclear weapons effects research and simulation development means to test our strategic systems and their associated command, control and communications (C3) systems — he re. radiation and EMP effects and I re. blast and shock effects.

Among the issues with which we dealt comprehensively was the assessment of the Colorado Springs Cheyenne Mountain headquarters and its subsequent hardening, along with its associated warning and C3 systems. I was quite familiar with the important activities and operations in Colorado Springs, especially since I was a member of the three-man team that assessed what went wrong on the 1979 false alarms that led the commander of our strategic forces to start the engines of our B-52s then on alert to prepare to escape ballistic missiles launched from submarines off our coasts. Happily, that was not necessary.

Shortly after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, John asked for SDI support to help adapt our Defense and Support (DSP) satellite warning system software to provide warning (it turned out via Ma Bell AT&T long lines) to the Patriot Batteries that were to engage Iraqi Scuds launched at Israel and Saudi Arabia. I immediately called several of my program managers and my lawyers (to keep me out of jail) to my office and we scavenged the funds he needed — and that afternoon scientists and engineers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) were in the air on their way to Colorado Springs to support John’s effort.

Moreover on August 2^nd, there existed only 3 or 4 Patriots for testing purposes and, thanks to a visionary Program Manager in Huntsville, Martin Marietta and Raytheon were directed to begin the production of every Patriot used in the Desert Storm’s Patriot-Scud battles in January 1991, which we witnessed via our living room TVs as part of our first “space war,” as subsequently labeled by some.

While there was considerable dispute about how many Patriot intercepts actually occurred, there is no disputing that when American Patriot batteries arrived, our Israeli friends resumed their needed normal activities, permitting them not to be drawn into the war, which would have split the Arab alliance the Bush administration had formed to defeat Hussein. Had Israel overtly entered the war, that would have been a consequential event possibly splitting our Middle East allies. In that sense, Patriot actually accomplished an important strategic mission — whatever its technical merits.

Moreover, that success was very important in reversing the previous congressional cuts to the ballistic missile defense (BMD) budgets (as a “peace dividend,“ because the Cold War allegedly was over) and achieving support for our new SDI initiative for a Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) system that included Theater Missile Defense (TMD) systems, National Missile Defense (NMD) systems and most importantly, in my opinion, the Brilliant Pebbles (BP) Space Based Interceptor (SBI) system.

In June 1992, General Chuck Horner became the fourth commander of the Unified US Space Command, as indicated below, and he brought his Desert Storm lessons learned to his new post, especially in supporting our BP effort. Most notably, he began the Space Warfare Center that extended SDI’s initial Desert Storm efforts to other applications, initially led by then USAF Col. Kip Hunter and with John Darrah’s active engagement.

Past US Space Command Commanders: 1985-2002

I worked closely with many of these commanders in seeking to gain political acceptance for Brilliant Pebbles — even in spite of its cancellation by the Clinton administration during the later days of General Horner’s watch. Click here for last week’s message that argued the price is right to revive these efforts to build a modern BP system, especially after we have been without the constraints of the ABM Treaty that blocked progress until President George W. Bush withdrew from it in 2002.

It remains unclear to me why the Bush-II administration, and especially why Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team, did nothing to revive the BP effort — or even to enable any other program to exploit the key BP technological advances that had been made during the SDI era (1983-93) to support other BMD system activities — particularly to support the Navy’s Aegis BMD efforts.

Notably, the Rumsfeld team completely scuttled the LLNL efforts that had continued to support the Aegis BMD efforts through the Clinton era — after proving out the BP sensor technologies on the award winning Clementine program that had returned to the Moon in 1994 for the first time in a quarter century and obtained 1.8 million frames of data in over a dozen spectral bands to address the issues raised by key “red team” critical reviews during the BP era. No other system since then has accomplished as much.

But apparently no such good deed goes unpunished . . . especially since the Rumsfeld Commission on the threat of ballistic missile attack had made clear in 1998 that such threats existed and were growing.

Also, as implied in the above figure, the Bush-II/Rumsfeld Pentagon terminated the Unified US Space Command in 2002, along with the standup of US Northern Command (NORTHCOM).

Then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and a former commander of US Space Command, USAF General Richard Myers recently voiced his support for its reinstatement directed by the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 (NDAA 19). Click here for a discussion of General Myers’ views, including that he thought it could “obviate the need for a Space Force,” as proposed by President Trump.

Unstated logically has to be that the cancellation on his watch as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was a mistake — leading one to wonder why it happened, especially since a second congressionally chartered commission also had been led by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and had recommended otherwise.

Click here for the full report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security, Space Management and Organization, and note that as Secretary of Defense you would think he would follow his commission’s perspectives. Click here for a January 11, 2001 Space Daily article that had quoted the commission’s warning of a “Space Pearl Harbor” and referred to a number of views of the commission.

In particular, click here for Chapter VI of the commission’s report on “Organizing and Managing for the Future” and note that on pages 87-89 it specifically called for the Commander in Chief of US Space Command to continue in a key role. Yet within another year it was abandoned — why, pray tell?

Moreover, if one quickly reviews this important report of a commission responding to the wishes of then Senator Bob Smith (R-NH) one will find many matters pertinent to the Pentagon’s current efforts to respond to the President Trump’s Space Force Initiative.

And I would argue for its leading edge to be associated with initiating efforts to build space-based interceptors, based on a revived modern Brilliant Pebbles approach and technology. (Senator Smith was also one of BP’s strong supporters during my SDI watch.)

This response would respond positively to initiatives of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 (NDAA 2019) and the recent Defense Appropriation Act signed by President Trump.

Meanwhile the Pentagon is considering President Trump’s Space Force initiative, and there are mixed responses. Click here for a recent Air Force Magazine report that Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), who chairs the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, strongly disagrees with the Air Force’s 5-year $13-billion cost estimates for the Space Force.

Rep. Rogers is an advocate for what I want to see happen, and I agree with him that the Air Force may be overstating the costs. Most important, in my opinion, building a modern Brilliant Pebbles system should receive priority — and there too the advocates, perhaps some in the Air Force, are also exaggerating the cost estimates.

That was certainly the case for building space-based interceptors on my SDI watch, as I discussed last week. Click here for that discussion, including that my predecessor USAF Lt. General George Monahan established a Brilliant Pebbles Task Force working directly for him to pursue the Brilliant Pebbles concept development and validation effort, which I continued throughout my watch as SDI Director.

I have seen this “gold watch” treatment many times before — even while serving in Air Force posts, so I also can believe Rep. Rogers’ skepticism of the Air Force cost estimates for the Space Force. But I have not reviewed what is currently happening in the Pentagon, so I like others wait with some anticipation to see more, preferably sooner than later.

On the other hand, I am most confident that the Pentagon’s top engineer, and my SDI Deputy for Technology during the formative Brilliant Pebbles era, Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin knows what he is talking about when he says a space based interceptor system can be built for less than $20 billion — certainly if it follows the original Brilliant Pebbles approach.

We should get on with this proven approach, even if others have forgotten the past, while others muddle through on what else should be done.

Go “Back to the Future,” indeed!

Bottom Lines.

We should not forget the lessons of the past — including that this is not the”first rodeo” to consider how to prepare to avoid a “Space Pearl Harbor,” as an important Space Commission warned was a threat almost two decades ago — and which from my perspective was apparent over 30 years ago.

To return to my opening for this message, Gen. Chuck Horner was absolutely right on the heels of Desert Storm — and we have been dawdling far too long. As Undersecretary Griffin has in effect said, we are playing “catch-up” with Russia and especially China.

The U.S. ASAP needs a wide area defense force to duplicate on a grand scale the Patriot’s pivotal role of defanging the Scud in Desert Storm — and that system should be based in space. And a modern Brilliant Pebbles is an answer to be built as soon as possible, whatever becomes the organizational solution for the President’s Space Force.

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

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