June 25, 2019—Are the “Stars” Aligning for Space Defense?

Claims that the President’s Space Force proposal is in trouble are much overstated. Indeed, what is unfolding has many precedents in history where success proceeds in a “one-step-backward” and “two-steps-forward” manner. Indeed, maybe we are watching the development of a supportive alignment for founding major steps toward the President’s stated Space Force objective — including a role for space based defenses.

Last Friday, Newsmax published my most recent article, repeated in full below. It drew from the fact that the new Acting Secretary of my favorite service in which I proudly served, the U.S. Air Force, had recently overtly favored President Trump’s Space Force initiative—which is a most welcome change from his predecessor, who actively opposed the President’s objective before it was formally announced and obstructed its formation after the President directed his administration to proceed.

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Space Force Must Include Interceptors

By Henry F. Cooper, Newsmax, Friday, 21 June 2019 01:40 PM (https://www.newsmax.com/henryfcooper/brilliant-pebbles-sdi/2019/06/21/id/921504/)

Good News. Defense News reports that, unlike the previous Air Force Secretary, currently Acting Secretary Matt Donovan supports President Trump’s Space Force initiative. And there’s potentially more good news associated with his arrival.

Several of my recent articles have lamented that my favorite service was slow-rolling President Trump’s Space Force initiative — in spite of support given by many former USAF and other leaders — witness a May 23, 2019 open letter by 43 of us saying it was prime time to make it so.

Even though Previous Undersecretary Donovan is only acting as Secretary, his advocacy is most welcome, and there are hopeful signals that the rumored Secretary to be nominated by President Trump, former Aerospace Corporation Chairwoman Barbara Barrett, will also be supportive.

Moreover, Donovan is quoted as wanting “to build a mesh network of inter-networked communications satellites, that’s absolutely foundational with what we’re trying to do with our advanced battle management system, which will lead us to multi-domain command and control.”

At the recent Paris Air Show, he also noted his support for the new Space Development Agency (SDA) — opposed by the former Air Force Secretary—and its head Dr. Fred Kennedy, as well as Kennedy’s boss Dr. Mike Griffin, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

From my perspective, these are very good signs, indeed — if Donovan and his follow Air Force leaders follow through.

I hope they will extend this advocacy for small satellite sensor constellations to reviving the most cost-effective product of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) —called “Brilliant Pebbles.”

It was a network of numerous small satellites with onboard sensors, computers and also the means of propulsion to provide a global ballistic missile defense capability, including to intercept long-range ballistic missiles in their boost phase.

The sensor suite was to be sufficiently capable also to contribute tracking, discrimination and battle management information to support all other ballistic missile systems, wherever based—on land, at sea or in the air.

Even then — 30 years ago, the rapidly advancing capabilities of small hand-held computers with the capability of a Cray-1 super-computer could manage such a constellation of highly maneuverable, light-weight satellites to identify and track multiple ballistic missiles launches and plot an essentially optimum intercept strategy against complex attacks from anywhere in the world to anywhere else more than a few hundred miles away.

Today, children play with such small inexpensive computers!

And other technology has advanced through multiple development cycles. So this potential is available for any nation that seeks it. In a very real sense, applying this technology is among those where the Pentagon is playing “catch-up” with others who also understand this potential.

As previously reported, the Pentagon’s top Acquisition authority in 1990 approved a Demonstration and Validation (DemVal) program, conducted by two contractor teams (down selected from a competition of five) that could have produced such a capability before the end of the 1990s—had the then “powers that be” permitted it to continue.

In 1989-90, the “Brilliant Pebbles” system passed rigorous technical reviews by some of the nation’s top scientists and engineers, and the Pentagon’s top costing expert (independent of SDI) estimated research, development, testing, deployment, and 20 years of operation of a constellation of 1000 small very capable space-based interceptors would cost $10 billion in 1988 dollars (about $20 billion in today’s dollars).

That system could have defeated at attack of 200 reentry vehicles (including salvo launches) with a probability of over 95-percent. But in spite of this impressive promised capability, the Democrats in congress and the Clinton administration killed “Brilliant Pebbles” and related efforts in early 1993, and no subsequent administration has sought their revival—until now!

This history was discussed in 2001 by Dr. Donald Baucom, the SDI Historian who lived through that era, and should be, but may not be, well known. Even the then recently elected George W. Bush administration did not take steps to exploit that then cutting edge technology, which has continued to advance as is now evidenced by advances in our private sector and no doubt exploited by others including our adversaries.

Mike Griffin also was there during much of this important formative stage as the Deputy SDI Director for Technology—so he knows where the important skeletons are buried. This background knowledge no doubt is also a source of at least some his open ridicule of outrageously expensive cost estimates expounded by many uninformed critics.

Hopefully, Mike and Fred Kennedy can find a way to help Donald Trump reinstate the best products of Ronald Reagan’s SDI — that would be a real tribute to the Gipper!

SpaceX is already well on the way to providing the needed technology. Perhaps Elon Musk just needs a little nudge for the private sector to make it happen.

Hope springs eternal!

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Note my applause last Friday for the fact that the Space Development Agency (SDA), and particularly that its leader Dr. Fred Kennedy, would be playing a critically supportive role in exploiting technology being advanced primarily in the private sector.

Imagine my concern when reading a Saturday report that Dr. Kennedy would be leaving that important post. Click here for that Defense News report that offered no explanation for his decision to leave at this critically important time.

Notably, it also explained that he had outlived the previously main opponent of the SDA, former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson. It also observed, significantly, that John Stopher would be removed from his post at the behest of Air Force leaders who wanted to break from Wilson’s space policies. Stopher reportedly had been Secretary Wilson’s top advisor on space, an opponent of SDA, a principal in framing Wilson’s public comments on the space enterprise reorganization, and a dominant force in slow-rolling the President’s Space Force-related policies.

Hmmmmm.

Then click here for yesterday morning’s Breaking Defense article headlining that “New SDA Head Kennedy Quits; Turmoil Erupts in DoD Space.” I am impressed by some of its fine print that quoted DoD spokesperson Heather Babb as saying that Kennedy was stepping down from the role he had played on a “detail” assignment from his post at the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) to which he was returning.

The following figure illustrates his notional SDA vision for exploiting the most advanced current technology (primarily drawn from the private sector). Since I didn’t hear his briefing, I can’t fully interpret it or his intentions. But I can imagine a space defense role . . . can’t you? Hmmmmmm . . . .

Space Development Agency’s Fred Kennedy’s notional space architecture

Since Kennedy’s previous DARPA post as Director of its “Tactical Technology Office” was where he first advocated for what is likely to remain SDA’s primary focus, I wonder if there is not more to this move than at first meets the eye.

Hmmmmmmmmm . . .

Recall that DARPA studies in the 1960s found that space-based interceptors would be the most effective way to protect against ballistic missiles (including with “boost-phase interceptors”) — a key problem was that then existing technology would not enable building such a defense.

As indicated (again) in my above Newsmax article, Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was on the verge of demonstrating those needed defenses 30-years ago. But the Clinton administration gutted that program, and no administration since has revived such an effort — until Donald Trump’s.

So, what role will Fred Kennedy now play, again from DARPA, in the continuing Space Force saga — reaching a critical stage in congress as the House and Senate Armed Services Committees ponder the future of the President’s initiatives? Reports suggest the current debate is not about whether there will be a Space Force, but what will be its details — for now, within the Air Force. What role will today’s DARPA play in realizing the vision of its studies a half century ago?

And recall that DARPA, like the SDA, reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Dr. Mike Griffin — who was there, as SDI’s Deputy Director for Technology, when we learned that technology 30 years ago had advanced to a stage from which it could enable the most cost-effective missile defense then considered viable.

Hmmmmm . . . .

There is now apparently at least agreement that the Space Force will exist and should reside within the Air Force — at least initially — like the Marines reports to the Secretary of Defense through the Secretary of the Navy. Stay tuned for the details.

The long term Space Force perspective might be framed by considering the long-standing arrangement of the Marines within the Department of the Navy — whereas the U.S. Air Corps existed for decades before and through World War II before it become a separate service, as was President Trump’s original proposal for the Space Force.

Click here for my April 23, 2019 discussion of important aspects of that history that lead me to doubt the leadership of my favorite service — though Acting Secretary Matt Donovan and associated ongoing housecleaning now offer hope that a change is in the making.

But that message also reminded my readers of the important role of Billy Mitchell, who was perhaps the most important, and certainly a most revered, advocate of air power long before that importance was made apparent by the detailed failures that he predicted years in advance of Pearl Harbor — and the obvious strategic importance of the Army Air Corps in World war II that indelibly justified the decision to form a separate U.S. Air Force, consummated in 1947.

Hopefully, we won’t have to experience an analogous “Pearl Harbor” for space before we see the need for a separate Space Force, as President Trump originally envisioned. We won’t have years to recover from such a mistake today.

So, stay tuned indeed!

Bottom Lines:

High Frontier will certainly press the “powers that be” to support President Trump’s stated vision and will do all we can to see it implemented by his administration — including a revival of Ronald Reagan’s original SDI vision that has been dormant for almost three decades.

We will watch, with no small expectation, the continuing congressional efforts to underwrite whatever emerges from the unfolding Pentagon realities of determining what currently available technology can accomplish and what the powers that be decide to do.

Not the least of these considerations will be pending confirmation hearings for new Defense Secretary and his Deputy — as well as the new Secretary of the Army and others.

This evolution could lead to a most important demonstration of the President’s “Art of the Deal!”

Stay Tuned.

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