Ret. Air Force Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell is most definitely correct in his February 4 Air and Space Force Magazine article "Air and Missile Defense for the US is an Absolute Imperative," which also correctly notes that the building blocks already exist for President Donald Trump's executive order calling for an "Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield for America" to protect against "ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks."
Indeed, as I noted my January 31 Newsmax article, Trump's "Iron Dome" should revive development efforts from President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI ) era.
While most folks think SDI focused its efforts on space-based defenses, it actually fostered ballistic missile defenses for all basing modes ... and against ballistic missiles of all ranges. Note that article also referred to an August 24, 2017 article, that I co-authored with Dale Teitz, calling for air- and space-based missile defenses.
And SDI also pioneered ground- and sea-based defenses. Indeed, on my watch as SDI Director, we supported the Army's Patriots used in the 1991 Gulf War ... actually, every "then-untested" Patriot employed in the Gulf War was manufactured by Raytheon and Martin Marietta between early August 1990 (when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait) and the early June 1991 Gulf War.
From its very beginning, the SDI efforts included research and development on ground-based defenses for the American people, initially the only very limited homeland missile defenses allowed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.
Its prohibitions held sway until December 13, 2001, when President George W. Bush withdrew from the treaty. But there was no serious development effort for homeland missile defenses of any other basing mode — and even what was done was kept limited.
Moreover, the Aegis BMD system had an inherent capability to defend against international-range ballistic missiles, but it was not given an associated mission. That inherent capability was demonstrated in 2008 when the president selected it to shoot down a dying dangerous satellite. (See the six-minute video and discussion in my associated November 20, 2020 Newsmax article.)
So, the Navy's now mature Aegis BMD effort provides a sound missile defense capability in sea-based and ground-based modes. In effect, it provides a global missile defense capability ... all in spite of considerable political opposition along the way. It should be complemented with effective air and space-based defenses.
And SDI successor efforts have continued and expanded U.S. support to Israel in its air and missile defense efforts. So, it's quite appropriate for Trump to adopt their "Iron Dome" label for the panoply of missile defense systems to protect the American people.
Meanwhile, the ever-present naysayers repeat the anti-missile defense arguments of the 1980s SDI era — especially those based in space. In effect, they argue in opposition to defending against nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, however-based: 1) It's dangerous, 2) It will not work, 3) It's too expensive; and/or 4) It's not needed anyway.
Such familiar arguments were unpersuasive to Reagan, who actually was appalled to learn that the only option the scientific community provided him to deal with the nuclear-armed Soviet threat was the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) "mutual suicide" strategy of the Cold War.
So, he challenged the scientific community to provide defensive capabilities to support more rational strategic planning — hence his SDI. The recent Congressionally directed Strategic Review seems to buy into Reagan's perspective, though many reports seem timid about highlighting the space-based possibilities and, in my view, its preeminent possibilities.
The Soviets on my negotiating watch with them in Geneva during the Reagan years understood space-based defenses were viable, they just couldn't then compete with U.S. technology -and especially our engineering expertise. That's why we got substantial negotiating leverage in our negotiations with them, leading to the first-ever major reductions in offensive nuclear forces.
Today, the world is even more complex, with China joining Russia as a more "peer" nuclear-armed enemy and even nuclear-armed serious and less predictable threatening nations — e.g., North Korea and potentially Iran. (Years ago, Iran participated in North Korea's underground nuclear testing and tested an international-range ballistic missile.)
We live in a truly dangerous time — more dangerous than any other of my lifetime, and I recall World War II and what we did in those days, when Civil Defense was managed in concert with other defense activities by the Department of War, which morphed into the Department of Defense. And today we lack a serious Civil Defense program.
We need the much more effective, globally capable, missile defenses that can quite affordably be deployed in space!
Henry F. Cooper, a PhD engineer with a broad defense and national security career, was President Reagan's Chief Defense and Space Negotiator with the Soviet Union and Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Director during the George H.W. Bush Administration. Read Ambassador Cooper's Reports here.