September 25, 2018—The SBI Price is Right!

The September 19, 2018 Washington Times published an article, entitled “Toward a Cost-Effective Ballistic Missile Defense,” by Rowland H. (Rhip) Worrell and me, which reviewed facts to back-up Undersecretary of Defense Michael Griffin’s claim that a space-based defense could be deployed for less than $20-billion.

Click here for that article that has prompted a couple of important responses, elaborated in this message along with my reactions. The first was a letter to the Washington Times Editor under the title, “Rebuild Missile Defense,” by an old friend Stanley Orman, who as the Director General for United Kingdom cooperated closely with the first three directors of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI): USAF Lt. Generals James Abrahamson and George Monahan and yours truly.

Click here for Stanley’s letter that began by noting that he agreed that “the only effective ABM defense would have to be space-based.” After reviewing his reasons for that view based on a 1991 book he authored, he correctly noted that “a Global Orbiting Defense System was the only effective way of meeting the objectives of effective missile defense.”

(As I have previously noted that also was the conclusion of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Project Defender some sixty years ago.)

Stanley then correctly noted that “the Senate Armed Services Committee [SASC] rejected the concept then and has refused to reconsider it since. . . . Instead, the SDI organization morphed into BMDO and then MDA, concentrating on ground- and sea-based defensive systems that offer only partial effectiveness against limited numbers of attacking missiles.”

Absolutely true, at least up until the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 (NDAA 2019). It directed the Pentagon to provide a plan to build a Space Based Interceptor (SBI) system. And now we await the associated National Defense Appropriations Act see if Congress provides funds in 2019 actually to begin a program to build such a defense. The last I heard the Senate Appropriators were not providing funds for such an effort, as was mandated by Senator Ted Cruz’s amendment to the NDAA 2019.

Stanley notes that “If President Trump were less harassed by “fake news” he might have the time to review the BMD situation. Sadly, as things now stand we will continue to ignore evidence that has been obvious for close to three decades, and remain vulnerable to nuclear attacks.”

Amen to that!

And toward that end, consider again the main points from Rhip’s and my recent Washington Times article, in a slightly modified order:

We began by asserting that the United States needs a credible, practical, cost-effective ballistic missile defense (BMD), which a space-based interceptor (SBI) system would best provide.
We then observed our belief that the Pentagon’s top engineer and a former colleague of ours when we all worked together in President Ronald Regan Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) agree. Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin says he doesn’t understand why some think such a system would be too expensive, since 1,000 SBIs would cost less than $20 billion — for a global defense capability.
We noted that there had been much higher cost estimates by members of the National Academy of Sciences, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Arms Control Community, but our views were based on the most valid, comprehensive cost estimates from President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), with which we — like Mike Griffin — witnessed being made for a space-based interceptor (SBI) concept called Brilliant Pebbles (BP).
BP was designed to intercept ballistic missiles in their boost phase while their rockets still burn, before they can release their decoys and other countermeasures — and throughout their flight, including when re-entering the atmosphere. That’s better than anything we have today and could have been built for much less than we have spent on all basing modes other than in space.
The first three SDI Directors viewed BP as the most important product of their combined watch (1983-93). Nevertheless, BP was scuttled in 1993 for political reasons, even though it promised more than 90 percent probability of killing all of up to 200 attacking re-entry vehicles — the number then controlled by a Russian submarine commander.
Its fully validated cost estimate was $10 billion in 1988 dollars (about $20 billion in 2018 dollars) for concept definition and validation, development, deployment and 20 years operation of 1,000 Brilliant Pebbles — consistent with Mike Griffin’s assertion.
Rhip and I then reviewed the basis for our confidence in those cost estimates that had been scrubbed by a number of 1989 reviews that enabled BP to become the first SDI system formally approved by the Pentagon’s acquisition authorities for concept definition and validation. In 1989, Rhip — then the BP Task Force program manager—shepherded BP through those technical and costing reviews.

We then adapted a brief summary of key factors from SDI historian Donald Baucom’s “The Rise and Fall of Brilliant Pebbles” in The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Volume 29, Number 2, Summer 2004, pp 143-190. Click here for his important historical record that includes a 1988-89 “season of studies” of BP concepts and system components that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) physicists and engineers invented to exploit 1988-90 technology, during the watch of First SDI Director James A. Abrahamson.

The season of studies occurred during the watch of Second SDI Director USAF Lt. General George Monahan’s Watch under the close supervision of then BP Program Manager USAF Colonel Rhip Worrell (also my co-author of our recent Washington Times article), consider:

First SDI Director Gen. James A. Abrahamson’s 1989 end-of-tour report endorsed LNLL’s BP model as key to an effective, affordable SBI architecture. He concluded, “This concept should be tested within the next two years and, if aggressively pursued, could be ready for initial deployment within 5 years.”
President George H.W. Bush’s June 1989 National Security Directive 14 concluded SDI goals remained “sound” and emphasized “promising concepts for effective boost-phase defenses, for example, ‘Brilliant Pebbles.’” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney commissioned me to lead an independent review to assure NSD-14 goals were met — with input from several technical feasibility studies, Red/Blue Team evaluations to judge how BP would deal with potential offensive countermeasures, and “bottom-up” cost estimates.
A 1989 study by JASON, including America’s top scientists advising government agencies, concluded BP had no technological “showstoppers” or fatal flaws; it could be produced using then current technology; its concept of autonomous interceptor operation might require no additional space sensors since “the extra constellation size needed is likely to be less costly than the central battle manager” and avoids reliance on a few hard-to-defend essential components.
A Defense Science Board Task Force met six times to review BP with various other groups, including JASON, identified areas for possible improvement, and found no fundamental flaws.
Two Red-Blue Team interactive countermeasures exercises concluded BP faced no special problems. (BP sensors assuring additional survivability were “space-qualified” by the 1994 award-winning Clementine mission to the Moon, providing 1.8 million frames of data — more than the Apollo program — and discovering water in the polar regions.)
Following Defense Acquisition Board reviews, the top Defense Acquisition Executive approved the integrated SDI concept including BP. President Bush’s Jan. 29, 1991, State of the Union address noted SDI was refocused on providing protection from limited ballistic missile strikes — whatever their source, a to deal with “any future threat to the United States, to our forces overseas, and to our friends and allies.”
On Feb. 12, 1991, Assistant Secretary of Defense Steve Hadley and yours truly briefed the press that BP was expected to cost $10 billion in 1988 dollars, including 20 years operations — about $20 billion today — as Mike Griffin said

Finally, I want to comment on an important set of questions I received from a friend, because of their more general pertinence. They relate to a perceived lack of specificity that could lead to doubts of the veracity of both Mike Griffin’s and my claims of such low cost estimates. Specifically, fair questions were on the following costs or elements of costs:

Cost of missiles to launch satellites into orbit — how many over what time?
Cost of the launch facility (minor)
Cost of kill vehicle or satellite
How many to cover what threats over what geography — persistent or intermittent coverage?
Personnel costs –O&M Costs?

My response was that our Washington Times article gave the scrubbed cost estimates by a host of fully qualified folks 30 years ago. One of the most important reviews impacting costs was the JASON review, per the following highlighted comment.

“A 1989 study by JASON, including America’s top scientists advising government agencies, concluded BP had no technological “showstoppers” or fatal flaws; it could be produced using then current technology; its concept of autonomous interceptor operation might require no additional space sensors since “the extra constellation size needed is likely to be less costly than the central battle manager” and avoids reliance on a few hard-to-defend essential components.”

This is one of the main reasons for choosing BP concepts over previous SBI concepts that were committed to a centralized battle manager and the BP Task Force (led by Rhip Worrell) was formed within the SDI to assure this more cost-effective approach was followed. Moreover, previous SBI plans led by the Air Force were to have a major cadre of hundreds of battle managers as staff, essentially to put junior officers in charge of joy sticks for each SBI. The BP concept had a much smaller percentage of that manning requirement, a concept that was later demonstrated by the initial Iridium deployment/station keeping, which proved out the BP BM concept, actually based on the early BP studies.

These important political factors were reported in our 2004 and 2009 Independent Working Group (IWG) reports and subsequently ignored. Click here for the 2009 report and consider Chapter 4 in particular, which discusses the political biases that have guided our missile defense programs, to the detriment of the security of the American people.

Note from the JASON comments, BP required no space-based sensor support — my February 1991 SDI press briefing charts noted this reality by including the space-based sensors as adjuncts to the GBI/TMD systems. This was another major potential cost savings since BP, if deployed, could provide that important information to other homeland and theater BMD systems/components. (Note: We are still today seeking a space-based sensor system to accomplish this objective. Why not a modern BP?)

Moreover, the previous SBI concepts had been committed to a Battlestar Gallactica concept (multiple interceptors deployed on relatively few heavy satellite garages) that would have required a new space launch capability — which I viewed to be what the Air Force wanted as an ulterior motive. Instead we used Atlas — as I recall we included costs for launching 11 Atlas rockets to account for the possibility of losing one from a launch failure in deploying 1000 interceptors (~100 BPs at a time) — a conservative estimate, given the then past Atlas record.

BP was the kill vehicle — as I recall the contractor estimates were about $1 million/deployed BP on station — e.g., $1Billion for 1000 BPs (1988 dollars) . . . Including its associated garage. And there were five competing contractors, but the competition eliminated Boeing, Raytheon and Rockwell — and the primary cost estimates were made by the surviving Concept Definition/Validation contractors, TRW-Hughes and Martin Marietta, and the Pentagon’s independent cost estimators.

A quarter century ago, this mature system/technology effort was gutted for political reasons, and any such effort has since remained dormant for the same reason, while other more expensive, much less effective, BMD systems have received — and continue to receive — all the funding.

Finally, click here for last week’s High Frontier message that gave more details, including links to my 2000 letter to the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Senator John Warner (with copies to all the other congressional Principals) disputing then Defense Secretary Cohen’s incorrect representation to the SASC that the Bush-41 administration had chosen GBI as the less expensive more effective defense concept.

It was the Democrats in Congress and the Clintonistas who mandated the scuttling the entire SDI effort . . . while completely gutting the residual BP effort.

Bottom Lines.

Space based defenses are the most effective defenses we can build. While there may be doubts by the uninformed of the costs, we understood 30 years how to build a cost-effective space-based interceptor system—and smart folks can reinvent those initiatives. Today’s technology should make even more effective defenses possible, and for less expense.

Congressional initiatives strongly support studying development of boost-phase intercept capabilities, but as yet have provided no funding to go beyond studies.

If President Trump can get beyond the clear efforts to undercut his innovative initiatives in other areas, he should consider how to press the Pentagon into a more responsive effort. Ronald Reagan did, and without his active involvement, SDI would not have happened. The Pentagon’s top engineer, Mike Griffin, can link back to those happier days.

By working constructively with Capitol Hill friends, President Trump can “kick start” his Space Force with a sound SBI initiative to reinvent a modern BP system — and help frame his Space Force initiative.

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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