June 9, 2020—Innovate the National Guard while Shooting for the Moon . . .

“Regardless of the argument over who is most responsible for the riots, state and municipal authorities must resolve to bring peace back to their streets, with the assistance of the National Guard as warranted.” ~ National Review Editors In “First, Restore Order”

Choosing today’s subject for my message was a challenge, given many important things that have recently been front and center. The riots in our streets stimulated in the wake of demonstrations that responded to George Floyd’s apparent murder have been very consequential — prompting the Governors of some states to call for National Guard operations to support local police. We have had over 30,000 Guardsmen serving in at least 30 States around the nation to support our citizens in this current crisis.

And while I don’t want to detract from their important focused concerns, I want to discuss an even more important innovative role for the National Guard to play in protecting our electric power grid, a role that is yet to be recognized and supported.

But first, I want to briefly emphasize the important fact that for the first time in almost a decade, America has launched astronauts into orbit using American Rockets, demonstrating the kind of innovative thinking that America also needs to protect the nation’s grid.

Finally, as I considered what to write about, I remembered that last Saturday, June 6, was the 76^th anniversary of D-Day, when as an eight year old farm boy I along with my family listened to the radio reports of that day’s historic event, without which we likely would not have won World War II. But I am even more concerned about what we must do to protect our freedom today and be worthy of that trust they gave to us.

Click here for last year’s message that includes a well-deserved timeless tribute to those of the “greatest generation” who gave their lives that day to keep us free — and click here for an hour-long excellent recent Normandy Institute historical tribute, which is well worth your time.

Also, please take the time read my complete following message about keeping America safe and free today, and stay with me to the end!

Innovation is Making America a Leader in Space Again!

SpaceX is returning Americans to space with American made rockets resulting from important private sector initiatives by Elon Musk, Founder and CEO of SpaceX. Click here for Marc Thiessen’s June 1, 2020 Washington Post Op-Ed: “SpaceX’s success is one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism,” appropriately applauding Musk’s achievements that illustrate the benefits of our private sector as compared to the government’s lethargy.

After their Falcon 9 rose from the same launch pad used by their Apollo predecessors, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode the “Dragon Capsule” into space on the first new American-made space transportation system since 1981, when the Shuttle first lifted off. And they are now slated to spend the next several weeks circling Earth on the International Space Station. Click here for Marina Koren’s May 31, 2020 summary in The Atlantic of this historic docking event.

This mission demonstrates that we can again deliver major systems into space using American propulsion technology — rather than Russian technology upon which we had become dependent over a decade ago. Moreover, SpaceX exploited another of their important technological achievements, one that began with President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and is now common practice for SpaceX.

About nine minutes into its mission, after letting go of the capsule, the Falcon 9 booster returned to Earth, landing upright on a “drone ship” in the Atlantic Ocean, as illustrated below. It has become routine to see a Falcon 9 “stick” a landing, still an important engineering feat. That rocket now can be refurbished and reused, demonstrating the now proven idea of significantly lowering the cost of getting to orbit. Simply stated, it’s cheaper to reuse an old rocket than to build an entirely new one.

This now common feat gives me a personal sense of pride in that this was the latest achievement of the Single-Stage-to-Orbit (SSTO) advances that I championed as SDI Director in the early 1990s. Jess Sponable, who from his SDI post led that SSTO effort, called Elon Musk to congratulate him after SpaceX’s first “Grasshopper” demonstration in 2014, he responded: “Thanks, just continuing the great work of the DC-X project!”

Click here for my tribute to Bill Gaubatz who was the first champion of that initial step to what was just accomplished, which was called the Delta Clipper-X (DC-X). Subsequently, it was also named the Clipper Graham after LGEN Danny Graham — High Frontier’s Founder, after NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin gave Danny NASA’s top award for his initiative in persuading the powers-that-be to initiate the SSTO effort. That High Frontier message also included a link to one of the DC-X flights.

Click here for a four-year old discussion of this important SpaceX capability but with an additional aspiration that, given the lethargy of the Obama administration, could be demonstrated by reviving the most important ballistic missile defense (BMD) capability conceived and initiated in the SDI era (1983-93).

To concurrently emphasize this point, click here for a discussion of last week’s SpaceX second launch of a recovered Falcon 9 first stage in placing in orbit another 60 Starlink low-altitude satellites, now totaling 480 broadband internet satellites of a planned network to provide high-bandwidth, reliable internet connectivity particularly in underserved areas where terrestrial networks either aren’t present or don’t offer high-speed connections.

That June 4 launch marked the 10-year anniversary of the first Falcon 9 rocket launch. When we also count the much more historic first SpaceX human spaceflight mission, that week marked the completion of quite an impressive SpaceX decade. Furthermore, click here for May 16, 2020 Business Insider discussion of Elon Musk’s aspirations for the completed Starlink system ultimately for 12,000 low-altitude satellites.

That will be more than an order-of-magnitude larger constellation than the 1000 Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptors we planned to place in low-earth orbit in 1990 — and we anticipated that it would cost only $20 billion (in today’s dollars) to develop, deploy and operate that system for 20-years. Click here for links to 60 or so of my previous messages that referred to Brilliant Pebbles, which was by far the most cost-effective ballistic missile defense (BMD) system of the SDI era (1983-93).

Thus, my hope is that the private sector will take on the exploitation of today’s cutting edge technology to build a modern Brilliant Pebbles — a theme I have repeated so far without success in the Trump administration, even while much more is being spent on more costly, less effective BMD systems.

Today’s technology should enable an even more cost-effective, world-wide defense capability of intercepting threatening ballistic missiles beginning in their boost phase, as they rise from their launchers anywhere on earth to attack a target more than a couple of hundred miles away.

“We’re really looking to be a customer to SpaceX and to other companies in the future,” NASA’s Deputy Administrator, Jim Morhard, said recently. “And that’s what we’re trying to do is to create and expand — really expand the economy in low-earth orbit.”

So, the age of commercial spaceflight has now dawned. Why not also to defend Americans and our overseas troops, friends and allies?

And in the wake of delivering into space NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, Elon Musk emphasized his longer-term interest to return to the Moon as a stepping-stone to Mars. Click here for a June 8 Daily Mail article reporting that Elon Musk told the SpaceX employees that Starship is now their top priority to take them there!

I hope Elon Musk will also consider leading the way to build a modern Brilliant Pebbles system, which appears to be beyond the capabilities of a hapless Pentagon focused on building much more expensive, less effective ballistic missile defense systems.

We Need National Guard Innovation to Protect the Grid!

Now, I want to turn to my second main message for today . . . that has to do with the National Guard and a mission I have long advocated, with little success. I’m hopeful that the following comment by General O’Shaughnessy signals a change from the past situation:

“Leading complex multi-combatant command operations across multiple domains demonstrates our readiness to defend our homeland regardless of COVID-19.” ~ Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, NORTHCOM Commander

Understand the Problem!

Click here for my description of the situation over two years ago in my February 27, 2018 message, which pressed for publication of the important reports of the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack — generally referred to as the EMP Commission.

Regrettably, I must report that little has happened to improve the situation.

This situation illustrates the wisdom in Ronald Reagan’s comment that the most terrifying words in the English Language are: “I’m here from the government, and I’m here to help!”

Indeed, I will repeat some of that still pertinent 2018 message to emphasize the continuing lethargy of the federal bureaucracy when it comes to any observable innovation in addressing what is actually an existential threat. Perhaps the private sector and the National Guard can provide needed innovation that stems from a greater role for local and state authorities — at least, in my view, it is worth trying that approach.

As I have reported in my messages for five years, I believe we can best counter the existential EMP threat by focusing on protecting the grid and other critical civil infrastructure “from the bottom-up,” beginning at the local level in conjunction with nation’s 2000-3000 electric energy companies that are responsible for the Bulk Power and Distribution Grid. But we must confront the resistance that is embedded in the federal bureaucracy.

To illustrate how little the federal establishment has moved, consider my message two years ago that quoted from observations by EMP Commission Chairman Dr. William R. Graham in his April 20, 2018 letter to then Secretary of Energy Rick Perry:

Nuclear EMP is the ultimate cyber weapon in the military doctrines and plans of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran for Combined Arms Cyber Warfare that they see as a decisive new Revolution in Military Affairs.
Protecting the grid from the worst threat — nuclear EMP attack — can also mitigate lesser threats, including from natural EMP from solar storms, non-nuclear EMP from radiofrequency weapons, cyber-attacks, physical sabotage and severe weather.
State electric grids can be “islanded” by installation of surge arrestors, blocking devices, Faraday cages, and other devices to protect individual states, even though they may be part of a larger regional electric grid, from a prolonged catastrophic blackout. For example, Texas State Senator Bob Hall has introduced legislation to harden the Texas Electric Grid.
The Commission is profoundly concerned that the 2014 Obama administration intelligence community assessment of nuclear EMP is profoundly erroneous, and perhaps the worst ever produced on EMP, and that has been used to thwart efforts to protect the nation against nuclear EMP by dismissing the threat, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (A major concern is that this condition still exists.)
The Commission is very concerned over misleading and erroneous studies by the North American Electric Reliability Cooperation (NERC) and others that grossly underestimate the natural EMP threat from solar storms, and dangerously, have become the basis for grossly inadequate standards for EMP/GMD protection approved by the Obama administration’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
The Commission is also concerned over misleading and erroneous studies recently completed by industry’s Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), in cooperation with Obama administration holdovers in the Department of Energy (DOE), that grossly underestimate the nuclear EMP threat.

Click here for Dr. Graham’s complete letter and sobering observations that provide key information for those charged with assessing and responding to the current vulnerabilities in the management and execution of efforts to provide a viable electric power grid.

Dr. Graham never received any response from Energy Secretary Perry, or senior DOE staff, regarding his succinctly stated concerns. Nor from other alleged responsible government officials that he also informed of such critically important facts, largely being ignored. And as best I can determine his concerns still describe the current situation. Moreover, the EMP Commission was abolished by actions of the Congress in 2018, and its reports were only partially distributed by the governmental “powers that be.”

Click here for links to all the EMP Commission’s open source reports, from a webpage initiated and maintained by Dr. Graham. (The Feds did not maintain a webpage to provide that information to the American people.)

Meanwhile, Presidential Executive Orders and Congressional Legislation have charged the DOE to lead in innovatively dealing with this existential threat that, as Dr. Graham observed, is posed by the military doctrine of Russia, China, North and Korea. However, Congress disbanded the EMP Commission in an act of utter stupidity two years ago, while giving a leading role in dealing with the EMP threat to the DOE. And the DOE laboratories appear to be focused on “reinventing the wheel,” mastered by the Department of Defense (DoD) decades ago and then permitted to atrophy.

Wouldn’t it make much more sense to build on the well-researched methods pioneered decades ago by the DoD and applied to protect our most important military systems: our intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), strategic bombers and their supporting command, control and communications (C3) systems that assure the President can command those strategic systems in the face of an EMP attack?

With that thought mind, click here for my December 5, 2017 discussion of Dr. Graham’s then recent video presentation to many local and state officials and concerned citizens at the National Guard Headquarters on Capitol Hill and around the nation. He began this “Dupont Summit” briefing by discussing the high altitude nuclear test data available as benchmarks to guide our understanding of EMP, as he well understands as one of the original technical investigators in the early 1960s, seeking to understand the “surprise” from our high altitude tests in the South Pacific.

In particular, the Starfish Prime test was for years our primary direct source of information, which demonstrated damage/destruction of half our satellites and even electric systems about 900 miles away in Hawaii. (That era’s vacuum tube electronics was relatively hard to those EMP effects — today’s electronics would have suffered much greater damage.)

The results surprised our nation’s best scientists at the time — and the theory explaining the results was subsequently developed by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Air Force Weapons Laboratory (where as USAF Lieutenants, Bill Graham and I were heavily involved in understanding nuclear weapons effects and how to protect against them), the Physics Division of the RAND Corporation and subsequently R&D Associates (RDA), where I again joined Bill in continuing to help the Defense Department protect our strategic forces against nuclear weapons effects.

Among other things we learned that these effects could be produced by much smaller yield nuclear explosions than the 1.4 megaton Starfish Prime device — e.g., by much smaller, lighter weapons with yields of only 10 kilotons or so, not unlike the yields of North Korean underground nuclear tests years ago.

In those days, the vulnerabilities of our strategic systems to EMP — and our efforts to rectify those vulnerabilities were highly classified, unavailable to the private sector — including those designing and operating critical civil infrastructure such as the electric power grid.

But today, key information is still being withheld (quite irresponsibly in my opinion) from those in the private sector needing it to harden the electric power grid (and other critical infrastructure) to nuclear weapons effects — though it has long been declassified. Bill made this point explicitly clear as discussed in my April 20, 2018 message linked above.

In particular he referenced an almost 40-year old report by Gerry Schlegel, another colleague from the Air Force Weapons Laboratory and R&D Associates, which was published on 31 March 1983 and declassified on September 12, 2017, at least for “U.S. Government Agencies and their contractors” — but astonishingly not for the engineers responsible for designing, deploying, operating, maintaining, and upgrading our critical civil infrastructure, especially the electric power grid.

Other requests were required to be “referred” to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which was withholding important unclassified information from those who need it to protect the electric power grid

According to Dr. Graham over three years ago, at least two such overclassified reports included what should be unclassified analyses including data from the 1961 Soviet/Russian high altitude tests, that were better instrumented than were our “hurry up” tests following the Soviet abrogation of the 1958 Atmospheric Nuclear Test Moratorium. We obtained these data a quarter century ago, in the early 1990s after the end of the Cold War, and is reported in reports on his above referenced webpage at http://www.firstempcommission.org/ .

So why have they been withheld from those engineers who need them to protect our critical civil infrastructure???? And why is there still controversy about employing those well-known lessons — including by our adversaries?

Dr. Graham suggested in his 2017 Dupont Summit briefing that the private sector should request copies of these key reports via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Fine, but why should this have been required? Who is hiding what from whom?

So, why were other related EMP Commission reports stalled by classification reviews? An excuse for the DOE Laboratories at best to “reinvent the wheel?” . . . Now without the benefit of nuclear testing? What phony nonsensical precautions!

Note that Russian General Officers told EMP Commissioners over a decade ago that Russia had “accidentally” passed to North Korea how to build low yield “Super EMP weapons” — connect the dots! And that we still withhold from private sector engineers key information on how to protect the electric power grid against effects that North Korea claims to be a “strategic goal!”

Some have taken comfort from the fact that many of North Korea’s nuclear tests involved low-yield weapons. Why so??? Could they not be testing their designs of Super EMP weapons? And could they pass them to their ally, Iran???

And why were those who first mastered these important matters “matured out” and “mustered out” of the mix of those available to work on this important, actually existential threat, issue?

The EMP Commissioners, who served for 17 years without compensation, were the best and most competent source of guidance for those currently charged with the responsibility of dealing with the existential threats to the electric power grid. But they were stupidly and summarily dismissed by the National Defense Authorization Act for 2018 at the initiative of Congressional staffers, some now in senior executive branch positions.

Origin of the Lake Wylie Pilot Study.

Such political/bureaucratic difficulties led me to conclude several years ago that I would never see major progress in dealing with the EMP existential threat in my lifetime, especially if the current conditions remain — and they have gotten worse, in part for the above reasons.

Since I could see no prospect for meaningful improvement, I decided to try a different approach and work the problem from the “bottom up” . . . literally.

Click here for my May 4, 2017 testimony to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee which defines my pertinent views that still exist and which guide my assessments and recommendations.

I have no confidence that we will ever harden the entire grid, so I believe we have to establish priorities — I give top priority to assuring the safety and viability of our 97 nuclear power plants that produce about 20-percent of the nation’s electricity, and half the electricity of my home state South Carolina. Thus, I believe our top priority is to build protected “islands” around our nuclear power plants.
To assure the viability of the nuclear power plants, we must first assure their cooling water systems are viable in an indefinite grid shutdown to avoid Fukushima-like disasters.
We must assure that sufficient generating and loading conditions provided by the surrounding “island” in the grid — and linked with other critically important elements of the grid — are available to restart the nuclear power plants — and other power plants, which will shut down to protect themselves if the grid goes down.
I don’t believe anything that isn’t regularly tested and subjected to independent critical review — effective design and deployment is not enough; truly effective testing and maintenance are major challenges.
Accomplishing these objectives requires considerable emergency management cooperation at the local level — without which there is little hope for most citizens who today depend on electricity for life-line services in our “just-in-time” economy.

As discussed in my written and verbal testimony to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I have no confidence that the currently dysfunctional institutions in Washington will ever deal effectively with this truly existential threat to our country.

Instead, I decided to seek to work toward solutions at the local level, from the “bottom up.” I am working with colleagues at Duke Energy — one of the nation’s largest electric power companies, if not the largest, on a project we call the “Lake Wylie Pilot Study.” (I’m working pro bono so there would be no appearance of conflicting interests.)

Click here for links to numerous messages over the past four years dealing with our Lake Wylie Pilot Study, which has matured to the stage where we can confidently say we know how to protect the Distribution Grid of Rock Hill and York County and that the cost for doing so is quite affordable. I believe we can confidently claim this is so.

In short, we have used the same methods that the Department of Defense has used for decades to protect our most important military systems and estimate that the cost for protecting the most important components of the York County civil infrastructure is less than $100-per-York County citizen—i.e., less than a typical family pays monthly for hearth insurance.

These Issues are Not Hypothetical!

Consider several recent reports on these issues and the important role that the National Guard can and should play in validating this claim:

Click here for my Aprils 28, 2020 message for a perspective on how such an initiative would logically fit in a COVID-19 Phase-4 initiative focused on improving our critical infrastructure.
Click here for my May 19, 2020 message that argued one of the key elements of such an initiative should be to begin again developing our own large transformers here is this country. Certainly, we should cease purchasing them from China; they should be manufactured at home, here in the United States.
Click h ere for Rebecca Smith’s May 27, 2020 informative Wall Street Journal article, “U.S. Seizer of Chinese-Built Transformer Raises Spector of Closer Scrutiny,” reporting that an over 250 ton Chinese transformer arrived by ship at the Port of Houston last summer en route to an electrical substation in Colorado that funnels electricity to Denver — and that it was diverted to Sandia National Laboratories presumably for evaluation and hopefully testing. Shocking!!!
And click here for Joe Weiss’ concurrent May 27, 2020 message for an update on his views about the cyber threat to such critically important components — several hundred of which we have reportedly purchased from China in the past several years.

Click here for an important reference that 200 large transformers have been purchased from China during the past decade. This April 25, 2019 E&E News article quoted Charles Durant, deputy director of counterintelligence at the Department of Energy (DOE). Blake Sobczak and Peter Behr aptly titled their important article: ”China and America’s 400 ton electric albatross.”

As Weiss has written, these large transformers, if compromised by installed “backdoor” electronics as suggested by Rebecca Smith’s article, manual or automatic devices could trigger threatening loading conditions and consequent voltage fluctuations could lead to failures of controllers, voltage regulators, and other control system devices with no apparent indication — ultimately leading to major failures of the grid. Click here for his recent discussion of this condition, that should be considered in the context of Rebecca Smith’s important Wall Street Journal article.

These reports reflect an unacceptable ignorance of the threats to our electric power grid, upon which our very survival depends. After reading the above articles by Rebecca Smith and Joe Weiss, one should be convinced that it’s impossible to stand down and permit our adversaries to have free access to the United States.

It would be prudent, to say the least, to build such critical civil infrastructure components in the United States.

President Trump’s recent Executive Order is intended to address such concerns, and the “proof will be in the pudding!” I hope the “powers that be” will give us a chance to do so!

Empower the National Guard!

Empowering the National Guard to deal with this issue would be an important step in addressing the President’s concerns.

My April 28, 2020 message (linked to above) indicated the South Carolina National Guard needs $30 million to be shared with the key Rock Hill and York County authorities to validate the Rock Hill/York County estimates and to develop a game plan to extend those lessons-learned throughout South and North Carolina and the nation.

Key to such development would be to extend the role of the Civil Support Teams (CSTs) that exist in every state (most states have one CST, but New York, California and Florida have two). The CSTs are manned by the National Guard and operate under the Adjutants General of the United States.

If validated, our initial York County cost estimates suggest that protecting the Nation’s Distribution Grid to protect the 330 million folks living here would be $33 billion, plus the operating costs of the SCTs in our fifty states.

The thus funded York County “bottom-up” plan would include developing and extending a more general plan to protect effective operations of the grid under all hazards, and especially from a second and even a third wave of COVID-19 before a vaccine is ready. Specific objectives would include to:

Protect nuclear power plants and especially their spent fuel pools by ensuring that the nuclear reactors remain safe in a blackout, and can be restarted to provide power, even if the electric power grid fails.
Protect critical parts of the electric grid to assure the viability of top priority infrastructure, including vital water-wastewater operations and essential emergency management communications.
Tie via the National Guard to other pilot studies such as in San Antonio, Texas, including military bases and key community operations — in concert with national and state regulatory authorities and in conjunction with major energy companies like Duke Energy, a key Lake Wylie Pilot Study partner from the beginning.

Bottom Lines.

Elon Musk has demonstrated that American ingenuity is alive and well — and SpaceX is making American proud! We need that same spirit to overcome the federal stagnation and protect the nation’s electric power grid against the existential EMP threat, posed by the Military Doctrine of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran!

If only we could get Elon Musk to invest in technology to protect our electric power grid! His initiative and creative spirit would provide a boon to protecting our most critical infrastructure!

In any case, with needed support, our Lake Wylie Pilot Study can demonstrate how to accomplish that objective. Given that reality, I often quote Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who notably closed an important hearing by observing:

“We have known about the existential threat posed by electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) for decades. Because most people are either unaware of the danger, or view these as very low probability events, there has not been sufficient public pressure to take effective action to mitigate these threats. Instead, we establish commissions and study panels, conduct research, and develop plans to develop strategies. It is way past time to stop admiring this problem, and actually begin to do something concrete to protect our vulnerable electrical grid, control systems, and the ever-increasing array of electronic devices our society has become dependent upon.”

Amen to that! And with support from congress with appropriations to “Fix the Grid” from the bottom up, we (with support from the South Carolina’s Adjutant General and in concert with the National Guard) could be well on our way with funds to enable our Lake Wylie Pilot Study to play a needed key innovative role. This would be the “concrete” plan that Senator Johnson has urged us to pursue.

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

Click here to make a tax deductible gift. If you prefer to mail a check, Please send it High Frontier, 20 F Street 7^th Floor, Washington, DC 20001.

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