“Blackjack, in summary, is turning the corner from our phase one exploration of what type of commercial technology we can use to leverage the entire military utility of P-LEO, hopefully disruptive approaches to constellations and network architectures, [and] space mesh networks of the future.” ~ DARPA Blackjack Project Manager Paul “Rusty” Thomas

Click here for the source of this this quotation, in “How Project Blackjack is turning the corner,” by Nathan Stout in C4ISRNet, June 26, 2020.

I am intrigued by this plan for creative, rapid deployments of proliferated low earth orbit (P-LEO) satellites by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — especially that these creative cutting edge technology demonstrations are, within the next year or so, to be conducted in concert with the Space Development Agency (SDA) and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and integrated into their more formal development activities.

These demonstrations have been orchestrated by Dr. Michael Griffin, the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USDRE). It is very important that this important activity continue after Dr. Griffin departs the scene in a couple of weeks.

This is a matter of concern to me because of a likely scramble to undermine a number of his initiatives that have given me considerable hope that Department of Defense (DoD) activities might return to the innovative era of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) that I was privileged to lead during the George H.W. Bush administration.

In my most recent two Newsmax articles, I first noted that hope and within a week stated great concern when I learned Dr. Griffin was leaving his post — jeopardizing the restoration of those SDI realities. Click here and here for those June 18 and 25 articles that I include in full below after first discussing several aspects of Nathan Stout’s important article (linked above) that indicates the Blackjack project will restore at least some of my original hope.

Project Manager Paul “Rusty” Thomas says Blackjack is turning the corner as DARPA prepares to launch risk reduction payloads later this year. (DARPA)

I encourage you to read the entire C4ISR article (via the above link); I just want to summarize a few important related facts that encourage me to return to a hopeful perspective for future space defenses.

First, it is a great idea for DARPA to play a significant role in making such a feature possible. After all, it was DARPA’s early predecessor in its 1960 Project Defender that concluded space-based defenses were the most effective way to provide an effective ballistic missile defense (BMD) — though DARPA concluded that then-current technology would not enable such a defense.
Second, as the three Directors of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) concluded three decades ago, we are well beyond the time when technology has advanced to where such an effective space-based defense is possible — the main problem was and until today has been political, not technological. Click here for Don Baucom’s “The Rise and Fall of Brilliant Pebbles,” which discusses that history and the SDI political qauntlet that ended their efforts toward meeting the Project Defender goal.
Third, Blackjack experimental efforts, beginning with near-term emphasis on 2020-22 demonstrations, are not intended to transition directly into acquisition efforts — that is not DARPA’s business. Rather, Blackstart seeks to accelerate SDA and MDA efforts to develop truly effective, on-orbit, netted satellite systems, initially for space-based sensors according to public records. But those developments also could, and I believe should, lead to space-based interceptor systems.
Fourth, Nathan Strout’s important interview of Blackjack Project Manager Paul “Rusty” Thomas suggested several very important revelations, encouraging me to believe that things are not as bad as my second Newsmax article below indicated. I encourage you to read this entire interview, and consider the following observations that I would make based on Thomas’ bottom lines:
- Blackstart emphasizes links to the commercial sector, which as my regular readers know, involves members who are much more innovative than their government counterparts. Not the least of those are Elon Musk’s SpaceX activities that are rapidly deploying numerous low-altitude satellites to provide world-wide cellular operations. Their current constellation includes about 600 such satellites that have been deployed at ~60-per-launch rate via reusable launchers. And their objective is 12,000 as I recall it. If Thomas can wed Blackjack to those efforts (as his interview suggests is his plan) it could be very beneficial for subsequently building space-based defenses, hopefully in the near future.
- Thomas has a long heritage in thinking about such systems, especially given his early activities with Motorola and its efforts that led to Iridium — a very successful proliferated communications system that is now being upgraded in its second-generation deployment (after 18 or so years of successful operations) to continue supporting key military operations. And Thomas also notes that he worked with Teledesic, which was supported by Bill Gates but did not make the cut as a cellular phone network for the private sector, because it was more expensive than proliferating cell towers that now dot the countryside except in rural areas — Elon Musk via SpaceX initiatives intends to reverse that situation with today’s more advanced 5G technology. That background should also help Thomas et al to invent innovative proliferated space-based defenses. And DARPA is already linked to the key players to advance that innovation when — I hope not if — they occur.
- I’d simply note that this initiative provides a sense of closure for some of my long-time pursuits, especially with the Independent Working Group (IWG) activities during the George W. Bush years. Click here for our most recent (2009) IWG Report and consider especially several appendices that specifically address why space-based defenses should be the goal of our missile defenses of the future — as the most cost-effective defenses possible with then existing technology. Consider especially Appendix I, “The Legacy of Brilliant Pebbles, Clementine, and Iridium for Future Space-Based Missile Defenses.”

The comprehensive 2009 IWG report addresses the technical and political hurdles that we judged had to be overcome — regrettably many of the same hurdles still inhibit progress toward obtaining the most cost-effective defenses. Thomas’ stated initiatives and hopes encourage me to think that maybe, just maybe, our recommendations will finally be taken into account.

With that hopeful perspective, you might review my two Newsmax articles below — the first is a hopeful assessment of the SDA’s potential role as a disrupter of the stagnating normal Pentagon acquisition process, and the second gives my major concern upon learning that Mike Griffin was resigning his USDRE post . In my view he was the glue that held things together.

Now as noted above, Thomas’ DARPA Blackjack effort restores some of that hope. We’ll see what happens….

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Let Space Development Agency Flourish as ‘Constructive Disrupter’

By Henry F. Cooper , Newsmax, Thursday, 18 June 2020 09:34 AM https://www.newsmax.com/henryfcooper/sda-pentagon-spacex/2020/06/18/id/972836/

The June 15, 2020 Space News carried the most hopeful article that I’ve read in years, that we may develop and deploy truly effective space defenses!

Derek Tournear, Mike Griffin, and Lisa Porter aptly titled their very important article “The Space Development Agency must be a constructive disrupter!”

They persuasively explained why the Space Development Agency (SDA) must be allowed to operate outside of the Pentagon’s legacy acquisition systems until it has had time to innovate, flourish, and deliver — particularly in providing the nation’s future civil and military space systems.

To be truly effective, a Space Force requires more than a new military service that just rearranges the longstanding players on the field — it requires new innovative players to compete with other nations committed to achieving a dominant role in space — and, as I have argued previously, with whom we are playing “catch-up” as these authors also well understand.

The Pentagon spends billions and takes well over a decade to develop and deploy its major satellite systems. For example, the Air Force is still trying to build a space-based sensor system conceived over 30 years ago, before my watch as Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Director.

Make no mistake, our ability to provide needed warfare capabilities depends on acquiring and maintaining superior space systems to identify and defeat threats that modern technology will surely enable.

And their threatening capabilities are growing.

As Defense Secretary Mark Esper recently stated, “dominance in space will require a whole-of-government approach to maintain U.S. technological superiority and leadership. This means we must out-compete, out-innovate, and out-hustle everyone else.”

I believe Secretary Esper’s well justified objective requires space-based interceptors, not only to serve as a sensor adjunct to ground-, sea-, and air-based interceptors, as is currently planned to counter the hypersonics threat.

Our budding Space Force needs an enterprising and innovative spirit to build affordable, effective space systems to defeat already evident threats to all we hold dear. That would meet the SDA “disruptive” challenge described by Tournear, Griffin and Porter!

They describe this approach as “disruptive” because the SDA is intended not to employ the Pentagon’s usual stagnating acquisition process.

On my SDI watch, I bitterly complained in writing to the Pentagon’s top Acquisition Executive as we overcame the gauntlet of administrative hurdles (involving numerous reviews by a myriad of Pentagon officials and a room full of their review reports) — to initiate the demonstration and validation (DemVal) phase of the formal acquisition process for the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

I was not surprised when Israel deployed its Arrow system a decade before THAAD even though they both began at the same time, on my SDI watch. I was pleased to attend a celebration of [Arrow’s] operational deployment at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, while THAAD was being chastised by Congress and given another development chance after numerous delays and test failures. Its operational capability was eventually achieved —after the Pentagon’s usual fits and starts.

Hopefully, the SDA can adopt a process more like the Israelis — since we are playing technological catch-up, especially with China, in “militarizing space.”

The SDA should adopt the approach of President Reagan’s SDI, which I was privileged to lead, after defending it to the Soviet negotiators in Geneva — where we gained enormous negotiating leverage from its widely publicized technological advances against which the Soviets could not compete.

As Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said when we hosted her to review our SDI progress in Colorado Springs in 1990, “SDI ended the Cold War without firing a shot.”

The Soviets knew that our technology was real during the SDI era (1983-93). So, they sought to end the competition. They got their wish when the Clinton administration “took the stars out of Star Wars” as Defense Secretary Les Aspin boasted in early 1993.

Neither Democrat nor Republican administrations have yet revived the SDI pace.

Russia and China well understand that fact, and their technological advances now threaten us. SDA can reverse this history.

Russia and China no doubt will oppose SDA’s “disruptive approach,” just as the Soviet Union opposed Ronald Reagan’s SDI during the Cold War — and no doubt the “arms control” community will oppose our advances in space just like during the SDI era.

As previously argued, the “powers that be” must resist this arms control siren call and help the SDA rapidly make up this inherited deficiency and advance President Trump’s Space Force.

Meeting this challenge is urgent as our envoy Marshal Billingslea begins arms control talks with Russian and Chinese counterparts.

Meanwhile, we should exploit advancing technology in the private sector, as SpaceX demonstrated in placing American astronauts in orbit to join others on the International Space Station — as a stepping stone to return to the Moon, on the way to the first mission to Mars.

Since the Shuttle was retired in 2011 — until the recent SpaceX launch, we relied on Russian technology to carry our astronauts into orbit.

This was the first new U.S. launch since Shuttle’s 1981 mission.

Marc Thiessen applauded this SpaceX’s achievement in his June 1, 2020 article in The Washington Post, “SpaceX’s success is one small step for man, one giant leap for civilization,” a paraphrase of Neil Armstrong’s famous comment to the World as he took his first step on the Moon. Thiessen’s reference to the “giant leap for civilization” pointed to the benefits of our private sector as compared to the government’s lethargy.

This SpaceX mission exploited another important technological achievement, one that began with President Reagan’s SDI and is now common practice for SpaceX. About nine minutes into its mission, after launching the astronauts toward orbit, the Falcon 9 booster returned to Earth, landing upright on a “drone ship” in the Atlantic Ocean, in what has become routine to “stick” a landing.

That rocket now can be refurbished and reused, significantly lowering the cost of getting to orbit. Simply stated, it is cheaper to reuse an old rocket than to build a new one.

This idea was first demonstrated by the Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) SDI effort, and now is proving it is cheaper to reuse rockets than to buy new ones.

As Thiessen argued, such innovation is making America a leader again. And as I wrote a year ago, SpaceX is now clearly demonstrating it has an opportunity to revive the best of the SDI era!

Last week, SpaceX launched another 60 Starlink internet satellites into low earth orbit, increasing the total number of internet satellites to nearly 500.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, this week announced his plans for additional launches every couple of weeks for the rest of the year, intended ultimately to provide worldwide coverage.

The first stage landed upright at sea to “top off” the mission by “sticking” that rocket for its fifth consecutive landing — to be prepared to support more future launches.

This is the kind of technology and innovation that the SDA should pursue to build key Space Force systems. In particular, the Space Force should include a modern Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor system — the most cost-effective ballistic missile defense (BMD) system considered by the SDI efforts, based on technology available in the 1980s-90s.

That effort exploited technology then existing in the private sector. With today’s technology, SDA can build a modern Brilliant Pebbles for even less expense—as I have long argued.

During the SDI era, the top Pentagon acquisition authorities estimated that about $20 billion in today’s dollars could develop, deploy and operate 1000 Brilliant Pebbles for 20 years. Should be less today!

That’s a worthy challenge for SDA to beat as a Constructive Disrupter! You think?

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Space Development Agency’s Swan Song?

By Henry F. Cooper , Newsmax, Thursday, 25 June 2020 04:47 https://www.newsmax.com/henryfcooper/griffin-porter-sda-sdi/2020/06/25/id/974207/

Just last week, my June 18, 2020 Newsmax article applauded the June 15, 2020 Space News article that “The Space Development Agency Must Be a Constructive Disrupter” as the most hopeful article I had read in years.

I am saddened to report that my optimism has been undermined because two of the three co-authors have resigned their important positions, from which they could have helped enforce “disruptive” initiatives the third author, SDA Director Dr. Derek Tournear, hopefully, will still seek.

But on July 15, the other co-authors — the Undersecretary for Research Engineering (USDRE) and his Deputy, Drs. Mike Griffin and Lisa Porter, are leaving their posts from which they could have continued their advocacy with significant effect.

The loss of their advocacy likely will be felt immediately as Pentagon “powers that be” reinforce their efforts to undermine the president’s objectives, while China advances its reach into space as it seeks to replace the dominant global power of the United States.

Loss of SDA efforts will assuredly accelerate that process.

Now, at best, they can make limited contributions in the private sector.

I hope they will seek ways to contribute, but the rules for former senior officials limit their supportive efforts in this critically important area they have led.

While I do not know Dr. Porter, her reputation is impeccable and the fact that she is joining Mike Griffin in a new venture speaks volumes about her capabilities. I believe President Trump will feel the loss of both.

I have known Mike Griffin for decades and would urgently advise President Trump that he is losing the needed vital service of one of the most competent technologists I have known—especially when it comes to matters important to advancing the president’s vitally important Space Force.

When I was President Ronald Reagan’s Defense and Space Negotiator defending his vital Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in our negotiations with the Soviet Union, Mike — then at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory—conducted some of the most impressive early SDI space experiments.

One of the most important, well over 30 years ago, demonstrated an ability to track and intercept attacking boosting rockets in space — as I recall, that achievement made Time Magazine and certainly impressed our Soviet counterparts, giving us important negotiating leverage. They could not match that capability—at that time.

Then Mike joined the SDI and continued his important technical work. He eventually rose to be Deputy SDI Director for Technology — a post where he was serving when I became SDIO Director in 1990.

I was sorry to see him return to the private sector, but pleased that he later served as NASA Administrator — and after successful private and public sector leadership roles returned to government in his current USDRE post. Since leaving SDI, he has advised Directors of follow-on agencies to the SDI, including the current Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which now reports to USDRE along with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the SDA.

In short, losing Mike will, in my opinion, have very consequential negative effects as Congress and others in the Pentagon seek to redirect funding and programs away from the president’s Space Force — mostly to serve parochial interests.

For example, politically motivated interests will detract from ever building truly cost-effective space defenses toward building more ground-based defenses — the most costly, least effective ways to defeat the growing global threat of ballistic missile attack. As previously reviewed many times, this is an uphill fight.

As argued last week, an effective “disruptive” SDA role would be key to success. I hope I am wrong, but from where I sit losing the contributions of Drs. Griffin and Porter within the Pentagon likely heralds a swan song for the SDA.

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Bottom Lines.

For 60 years, we have known that space-based defenses are the best way to provide a global defense capability to defend against ballistic missile attack. And thirty years ago the SDI was demonstrating then available technology to take the first step in that direction via Brilliant Pebbles. But that effort and associated technology were scuttled in early 1993 by the Clinton administration for political reasons, and has not since been revived even though the antiballistic missile (ABM) treaty no longer exists to inhibit progress toward that end.

Today’s technology can enable rapid development of a modern Brilliant Pebbles capability. While uncertainties exist about whether the Trump administration will take advantage of those possibilities, there are hopeful signs that maybe, just maybe, the Pentagon is awakening to the possibility that President Ronald Reagan’s vision of a truly effective space defense can and will be built.

Last week, I was concerned that the Trump administration was withdrawing its support for efforts to build such space-based defenses. While I remain uncertain, I now am more hopeful because of DARPA’s Blackjack initiative.

Stay tuned.

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