September 18, 2018—Time’s a-Wasting….

“So far, the only promising [boost phase] defense system concept has been a space based or satellite borne interceptor. Such a system requires many thousands of interceptors in space, but at a given instant only a small fraction will be in a position to attack. The economic feasibility of such systems is heavily dependent upon equipment reliability and upon enemy countermeasures.” ~ Harold N. Beveridge in his 1960 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ‘Project Defender” report to the Director of Research and Engineering

Thus, since the earliest of studies of how best to defend against ballistic missile attack we have known that the most effective ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems would be based in space. As Beveridge stated in a preceding sentence, “A ballistic missile is more vulnerable in its propulsion or boost phase than in any subsequent part of its trajectory. At the same time, its identity is most difficult to conceal. These circumstances immediately suggest an early intercept system as an ideal solution to the defense problem.”

Unfortunately in the 1960s, enemy missiles were inaccessible during their “boost phase,” and BMD systems being considered were ground based interceptors armed with nuclear weapons to shoot down attacking missiles above the atmosphere or as they approached their targets. I well recall these days, when at Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) I was involved in designing the “Nike Hercules” and “Nike Zeus” ground based BMD systems. Space-based defenses were considered to be in the distant future.

A major design concern was protecting against nuclear weapons effects, even in outer space as we were learning in studies and testing led by the Defense Atomic Support Agency — including those made public by electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects of the 1962 South Pacific Starfish Prime high altitude nuclear test that caused significant damage to electrical infrastructure 800-900 miles away in Hawaii. It also led to the loss of most of our satellites, including our first telecommunications satellite, Telstar, on which I also worked at Bell Labs.

Such dangerous effects could result from either attacking nuclear armed missiles or defending nuclear armed interceptors. On the other hand, non-nuclear defenses that can shoot down attacking ballistic missiles in space before they can be detonated obviously would be of great value.

Thus, a major objective of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was to build non-nuclear BMD systems, particularly for being based in space to shoot down attacking ballistic missiles in their boost phase before they can release their attacking nuclear weapons — and when the debris might fall back on the attacking state.

We have developed, proven and deployed our “hit to kill” technology on today’s missile defense systems, but are still without a boost phase intercept capability. Thus, we still have a concern about enemy nuclear detonations in space that we cannot defend against with high confidence.

This boost phase intercept objective motivated appropriate studies and experiments, and in fact the technical community found a solution … a space-based boost phase intercept system; but the political “powers that be” blocked the most important development of the SDI era, from 1983-1993, and have kept it “out of consideration” ever since. Click here for Retired USAF Colonel Donald Baucom’s 2004 history of this period in his “Rise and Fall of Brilliant Pebbles.”

The “Brilliant Pebbles,” or BP, story is important today because no previous administration of either party has since sought to revive any aspect of that important program, viewed by the first four directors of what is today called the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) as the most important BMD concept that emerged from the SDI era. Baucom’s history should be required reading for all who want to understand how and why BP fell from favor, at least to avoid a repeat performance, since false claims continue to block progress.

Click here for an important 1992 report to congress discussing the merits of this most important effort, dormant for a quarter century, Illustrated below is a Figure from page 20 showing that, for example, the BP system with 1000 space based interceptors could intercept North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) beginning in their boost phase and throughout their further flight until after they begin their reentry into the atmosphere over the United States. Over a hundred independent intercept opportunities would be provided.

Numerous intercept opportunities against even relatively short range ballistic missiles would also be provided. This now completely open source report is worth reading if you wish to understand the concepts we were pursuing 30 years ago, still pertinent I would claim for today’s most serious consideration.

Click here for links to my previous messages on this important BP effort, and note that recent events may signal a revival in conjunction with 1) President Donald Trump’s proposed “Space Force, separate from and equal to the Air Force,” and particularly, the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 (NDAA-2019) that directs the Pentagon to report back within a year with at least a definitive plan to build a space based interceptor (SBI) system and, if funded, to begin building it.

As of this time, my information is that the Defense Appropriations Act Conference has not included funding to begin a serious acquisition program for such a SBI defense, as included at the behest of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). However, the Pentagon has been directed by congress to conduct a serious study on doing so. So stand by.

I am also advised that a key part of the reason for this delay is the long-standing myth that effective ground based defenses can be built faster for less money. Perhaps the most important source of this myth was Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen’s 2000 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that welcomed that bias.

Click here for my letter to the then Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Authorization and Appropriations Committees of Congress disputing Secretary Cohen and illustrating in detail the fallacy of his claims, including with explicit information on the BP efforts with which I was, and am, most familiar. Consider just a few:

I wrote to correct the record, relative to Defense Secretary Cohen’s testimony that the technical basis for emphasizing ground based missile defenses was made in 1991 by the Bush Administration. Not so, that choice was forced by then Chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees — and enforced by extreme measures contrary to technical realities by the Clinton administration in 1993, as then Defense Secretary Les Aspin bragged in 1993, when he “took the stars out of Star Wars.”
In my early 1990 independent review for President G.H.W. Bush and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, BP concepts were technically mature and ready for formal development, an assessment supported by independent reviews of the Defense Science Board, the JASONs and other technical groups. Furthermore, because of the global coverage of such space systems, it was clear that BP would be the lowest cost and the most militarily effective means of defending both the United States and our overseas troops, friends and allies. It could provide intercept opportunities against attacking ballistic missiles beginning as early as in their boost-phase, throughout their exo-atmospheric mid-course phase, and even into their high-altitude endo-atmospheric reentry phase. [An architecture consisting only of ground-based defenses would clearly be a prohibitively expensive way to attempt to provide such global defensive coverage, then and now.]
Focused R&D on BP was begun in 1987 by LtGen Jim Abrahamson, the first SDIO Director. It was formally designated the “first to deploy” component of American strategic defenses by my immediate predecessor as SDIO Director, LtGen George Monahan, and so announced in a Pentagon press conference which he convened in March 1990—roughly simultaneously with my independent report to Secretary Cheney. Ground-based defenses were then assigned to a follower role. Moreover, their programmatic success was expected to be dependent on widespread adoption of the cutting-edge technology being exploited by BP — an expectation which, regrettably, has never been realized.
LtGen Monahan established a BP Task Force within the SDIO to manage the weapons system acquisition. Beginning in about May 1990 slightly before I became SDI Director, a competition narrowed the contractor teams to two: ones led by TRW/Hughes and by Martin Marietta. In addition to my supervision as the Acquisition Executive for all missile defense programs, this acquisition process was under the Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) oversight. With the approval of the Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition Executive, BP became SDIO’s first approved Major Defense Acquisition Program (MDAP) in 1991. Had this program been allowed to continue, the 20-year life cycle cost of 1000 BPs was then expected to be about $11 billion in 1991 dollars (or $10 billion in 1988 dollars as briefed to the press in January 1991 — and about $20 billion in today’s inflated dollars). If we had been provided the needed enabling policy (freedom from Article V of the ABM Treaty) and necessary funding, I anticipated that first generation BPs could have achieved initial defensive capability as early as in 1996.
The ground-based defense segment was not firmed up to anything like an equivalent status until well over a year later, and our progress was interlaced with the heated debate on Capitol Hill that led to the Missile Defense Act of 1991. Under intense Congressional pressure, memorably articulated to me personally by then SASC Chairman Senator Sam Nunn, I very reluctantly agreed to remove Brilliant Pebbles from its eminently deserved acquisition program status in 1992; in return for a Congressional commitment to begin deployment of a ground-based system “by 1996 or as soon as technologically possible” and, within the same statute, a formal promise that Brilliant Pebbles would receive “robust funding” as a technology demonstration program. Removing Brilliant Pebbles from its leading role most definitely was not a free will decision by the Bush Administration, contrary to Secretary Cohen’s testimony. And of course, Congress and the Clinton administration completely scuttled the entire BMD effort. Even the ground-based BMD system acquisition program received major cuts as the Clinton returned to the ABM Treaty and mutual vulnerability with the Soviet Union as the “cornerstone of strategic stability.”

There is more in my letter worth recalling.

In my opinion, it is absurd to claim, as apparently some in congress (and especially in the senate) still do, that ground based BMD systems can be deployed to match the protection that a modern BP system could provide — for equivalent funding or on anything like the same time frame.

Moreover, we should be following the original BP pattern at an accelerated pace to build as soon as possible SBIs employing today’s commercially available technology, following the BP pattern the SDI pursued 30-years ago. Today’s technology should enable a less expensive system than the Pentagon’s independent cost estimators gave for development, testing deployment and operations for 20-years — $20-billion in today’s dollars.

Indeed, today, the costs should be less, given the technological advances of and growing acceptance of and applications for small satellites—e.g., click here for last Sunday’s Washington Post article “Defense giants bet big on small satellites.”

Why not for defending the American People, pray tell????

I would emphasize that today’s BP program management plan should revive a BP Task Force with the same dedication to success as was the original one. A BP Task Force, reporting directly to the SDI Director was then a necessary innovation because the Air Force resisted adapting its approach to exploit the innovative ideas then advocated by the physicists and engineers of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

Perhaps the Pentagon, under directives from Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin, will be more innovative, but I can attest that the acquisition and service (including the Air Force) bureaucracy during my watch constituted major impedance against innovation. And as the plans for President Trump’s Space Force unfold, those new conditions may help, but recent reports that Pentagon’s response to the President’s Space Force initiative will include a recommendation for a new Space Command still within the Air Force.

Thus, I would argue that reviving a competent and independent Brilliant Pebbles Task Force would aid efforts to revive Brilliant Pebbles, an objective I believe Mike Griffin will strongly support. After all, as my SDI Deputy for Technology he did; and his previous contributions at the Applied Physics Laboratory and in supporting all MDA Directors have aided immeasurably to my confidence that, with President Trump’s interest and support, we can indeed revive the rapid development of a modern Brilliant Pebbles.

Bottom Lines.

Congressional initiatives strongly support studying and developing boost-phase intercept capabilities, based initially on aircraft and, as soon as possible, in space. But the support is not by any means universal and some apparently still think SBIs would not be cost-effective and are blocking SBI development activities.

By working constructively toward such operational capabilities under these congressional directives, the Pentagon can “kick start” needed development activities especially in the context of President Trump’s Space Force — and by the end of his second term help dominate space as is his stated objective.

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

DARPA studies 60 years ago identified space-based interceptors as the way to achieve the best defenses — and now we have the technology to do the job. Time’s a-wasting!!!

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