March 31, 2020—Good, Bad and Ugly!

“There are a million warnings out there on a million serious things. We add one: Everything works — and will continue to work — as long as we have electricity. It’s what keeps the lights on, the oxygen flowing, the information going. Everything is the grid, the grid, the grid.” (Emphasis added) ~ Peggy Noonan in the March 21-22, 2020 Wall Street Journal

As those who regularly read my messages know, Peggy’s point is very much on target!

And President Trump “got it” early on and following significant interagency activities led by his National Security Council Staff, his March 26, 2019 Executive Order directed the federal government to develop a whole of government response to rectify the grid’s vulnerabilities, especially to the existential threat posed by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the nation’s electric power grid. Furthermore, his Executive Order was reinforced and strengthened when on December 10, 2019 he signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020 — NDAA (2020), because it included an important amendment advanced by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who chairs the Senate Committee that oversee the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

That was “The Good,” as far as it goes.

But, as I understand the situation, the federal bureaucracy is delinquent in meeting the “due-dates” for delivering on the action items in these directives from the president and congress.

Too bad not many people apparently understand that fact — or else the “powers that be” would not be so lethargic in responding to these directives, now exacerbated by the all too real national crisis of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Furthermore, as far as I know, there are no funds directed to address this important vulnerability in the $2.2 trillion appropriated by congress and signed into law last Friday.

My last three High Frontier messages emphasized that the COVID-19 pandemic threatens those relatively few key operators of the nation’s electric power grid. Without them, the grid could go down. Click here, here and here to review those messages.

And that’s the “The Bad.”

Now for “The Ugly.”

Click here for an important Newsmax article by my colleague Dr. Peter Vincent Pry discussing how we have arrived at this dangerous state, even though a very competent Congressional Commission has given the “powers that be” ample warning, beginning almost two decades ago.

Indeed, that Commission consistently warned that an EMP attack could shut down the electric power grid indefinitely and the result could be the death of up to 90-percent of the American population due to starvation, disease and societal collapse! That’s without the complications of COVID-19.

Moreover, EMP Commissioners have pointed out that Russia, China, North Korea and Iran include such EMP attack strategies in their military doctrine. And these folks are allied against us. (I suspect Iran is a nuclear threat, because I believe the Mullahs may have obtained one or more nuclear weapons that could be carried on Iranian satellites and detonated over the United States.)

As Dr. Pry concludes, “The strategy of pretending to do something, but really doing nothing, and then throwing money at the threat when it happens, will get millions of Americans killed when there is an EMP.” He was writing about the federal government’s lethargic bureaucratic response to President Trump’s Executive Order issued a year ago.

And what if that attack strategy were executed during our efforts to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic — which may persist for months?

Note that Chinese spokesmen recently suggested that China was considering EMP attacks on our ships in the South China Sea. Rattling the cage, you think? Click here for Bill Gertz’s Washington Times article reporting on that threat.

With such thoughts in mind, I am particularly concerned about China’s alliances with the other three nuclear powers who threaten the United States.

And remember Wuhan, China is where COVID-19 began, situated next to a couple of bio-warfare laboratories.

Then after concealing and denying the existence of that spreading pandemic for months, the Chinese initiated a major propaganda-disinformation campaign, blaming the pandemic on the United States. Classic communist tactics, that apparently work with some who ought to know better.

As reported by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham on their Fox News programs last evening, even a spokesman for the World Health Organization “sucked-up” to China and joined others in denying this reality. And even some in our congress claim such reports are “racist” and resist calling out China on these factual realities.

We must beware of alleged friendship with China, even as President Trump seeks sound agreements with China’s President Xi Jinping that are in our interests.

As one who spent five years during the Cold War at the negotiating table with representatives of the former Soviet Union, I know we can pursue our interests in such negotiations with the representatives of a sworn enemy nation, especially an enemy that threatens our very existence.

And we showed that such negotiations can succeed. So, will they with China? Since we have for years not paid attention to their growing threat to us.

It is well known that China has for decades pursued strategies to replace the United States as the dominant world power.

That’s why China took control of both ends of the Panama Canal decades ago and offered appealing agreements to leading American industries — initially, and then stole the technological expertise developed by American companies and used cheap Chinese labor and foolish American policies to run our companies out of business.

Thus, the Chinese have advanced to become the source of many key advanced technological products important to Americans — ironically, for example, over 90-percent of our important pharmaceuticals. Some important to combating COVID-19.

China is now a primary economic challenger to the United States, seeking to prevail in military sectors, as well. That reality is why I included the two chess pieces on the introductory photo above.

China should be respected for its ingenuity, but with due skepticism of its alleged peaceful intentions and caution in dealing with them. As Ronald Reagan often famously said, “Trust, but Verify!”

So, I am particularly concerned that the current efforts to deal with valid concerns associated with COVID-19 that apparently do not fully address the threats to our national grid, including the possibility of an EMP attack. Perhaps not directly from China, but from one of China’s allies.

That indeed is “The Ugly.”

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And by the way, there is also a “Good, Bad and Ugly” story associated with our Missile Defense programs, which I wrote about last week in the below Newsmax article.

The ugly aspects of that story undercut our ability to take down in their boost phase threatening ballistic missiles of a variety of ranges — up to intercontinental range ballistic missiles (ICBMs). And that includes near term hypersonic threats, including from China, that are touted to be a top priority challenge for the Pentagon.

I just had to include as a transition the below photo of Clint Eastwood in the regalia he wore in “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” back in the day.

Ballistic Missile Defense Story Is Good, Bad, and Ugly

By Henry F. Cooper , Newsmax, Friday, 27 March 2020 04:40 PM https://www.newsmax.com/henryfcooper/bmd-thaad-sdi-abm/2020/03/27/id/960286/

Without saying so, Loren Thompson’s March 23, 2020 Forbes article implicitly described “the good, the bad and the ugly” of the Pentagon’s current ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans and programs.

His title emphasized that the theater high altitude area defense (THAAD) system can be important to protecting the U.S. homeland. Since I was the missile defense acquisition executive that launched THAAD in 1992, that was a gratifying assessment.

However, I never considered THAAD to be a homeland defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Indeed, that capability was then banned by the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with the Soviet Union.

THAAD was conceived to be a mobile Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system, capable of intercepting shorter- range theater ballistic missiles (TBMs) as they approached their targets — above and high in the atmosphere.

Using that “terminal defense” capability to defend against longer-range missiles is a welcome, but not that great an, extension of THAAD’s original goal. But it is good to employ THAAD that way.

Thompson also noted that the Aegis BMD system, based on many of our destroyers and cruisers — and also in an Aegis Ashore ground-based mode, can provide intercept long-range ballistic missiles above the atmosphere. Right!

In fact, this capability was demonstrated in the February 20, 2008 Burnt Frost event, when it was the “system-of-choice” to execute President George W. Bush’s objective of shooting down of a threatening satellite that was flying faster than an ICBM.

Thompson’s complimentary reference to Aegis BMD also was gratifying, because then (and since retired) Vice Admiral J.D. Williams as the Deputy CNO for Naval Warfare in 1991 convinced then Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Frank Kelso to take SDI money (that I recommended) to begin the Aegis BMD program.

Even though we recognized Aegis BMD system could have an ability to shoot down ICBMs, I insisted with Admiral Kelso that the Navy only develop it as a TMD system — otherwise arms control advocates would have blocked it because Article V of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty banned the development, testing and deployment of space-based, sea-based and mobile land-based ABM systems.

Limiting Aegis BMD to be a TMD system was justifiable for such “political reasons” while the ABM Treaty existed, but President George W. Bush withdrew from it in 2002 — and ADM Williams and I have argued to no avail ever since for the full exploitation of the Aegis BMD inherent capability to help defend the U.S. homeland. Thompson’s observation that such an application is a “no brainer” is most welcome.

Note the ABM Treaty Article V constraint also blocked giving THAAD an ABM capability — a constraint that has prevailed since 2002 — some 18 years.

That we are finally considering sea-based and mobile land-based defenses to defend the U.S. homeland is most welcome. That’s “the good.”

Next, I’d observe that Thompson correctly indicated these developments to help complement our current ground-based homeland defense would be helpful because “overwhelming” our current ground-based homeland defense “wouldn’t be hard today.”

Given that condition, it is unclear why Thompson seems to support investing a lot of money in “improving” that inadequate capability and building a new very expensive ground-based interceptor (GBI). How would such interceptors at our current GBI sites defend the entire U.S. homeland?

As SDI Director, I also included an expensive GBI system in my architecture. It was the only homeland defense system concept permitted by the ABM Treaty to develop, test and deploy to protect the American homeland.

In those days, the political debate focused on where a single GBI site might be deployed, via an amended Treaty. Or possibly more than a single GBI site. Our architecture considered that several — up to six as I recall — sites would be required to defend the continental United States.

So . . . are we prepared to build such an expensive multi-site GBI homeland defense today? I think not.

Even though we have been free of the ABM Treaty for eighteen (18) years, we still seem blind to the fact that there are more cost-effective ways to defend the American people.

That’s “the bad.”

These land-based and sea-based BMD systems were included in President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but still missing is the most important product of the SDI era — 1984-93, which was launched by Reagan’s famous speech 37 years ago, last Monday.

I am most familiar with that important history, since I defended those SDI efforts in our negotiations with the Soviet Union for five years, and subsequently managed them until the Clinton administration ended Reagan’s vision and scuttled the most important SDI efforts in early 1993.

Among those abandoned SDI concepts were its most cost-effective products — e.g., a space-based BMD system called “Brilliant Pebbles” that employed what was then quite advanced technology — at the cutting edge of state-of-the-art computation, sensing and propulsion capabilities. Those concepts remained abandoned through subsequent administrations, to the best of my knowledge also within the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, the technology is being exploited by the private sector and others. Our adversaries have imported (stolen?) our best SDI technology and are employing it in their space systems today. And we are not even playing “catch-up” while China in particular exploits that technology and chants, with accompanying “crocodile tears” that we not deploy “weapons in space.”

The arms control community echoes that feigned statement of alarm.

And that’s “the ugly.”

So far, the Trump administration has not given sway to the arms control siren call. President Trump also should direct his administration to revive the best of the SDI era technology — as the surviving SDI Directors recommended three years ago. We could have not only more effective defenses, it would also save a lot of money.

Stay tuned to see whether he or congress pays any serious attention to this important matter.

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Bottom Lines.

As we hunker down to maintain the safety of our families and all we hold dear, we should remember Peggy Noonan’s comment, “Everything works — and will continue to work — as long as we have electricity. It’s what keeps the lights on, the oxygen flowing, the information going. Everything is the grid, the grid, the grid.” (Emphasis added)

And we should not forget that our adversaries can exploit these global pandemic dangers, even while they themselves are under its threat. Some may even be prepared to accept the consequences to take advantage of our apparent, growing vulnerabilities.

COVID-19 coupled with an EMP attack could result in the death of most Americans.

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst!

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.

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