Stagnant Bureaucracy Hinders Building Space-Based Defenses

My last two Newsmax articles reviewed my personal involvement over six decades in studying and leading efforts to protect our nation against ballistic missile attack.

My primary conclusions were:

• President Trump’s Golden Dome offers the first opportunity to deploy truly effective defenses since President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) sought that outcome, and . . .
• Space-based defenses should receive top priority in these efforts, given that space potentially enables the greatest visibility and operational reach — depending on the speed of intercept operations.

I asserted that initiating operations by the end of President Donald Trump’s administration is possible with the funding in the Reconciliation Bill that Congress is considering: $25-billion for 2026 and $195-billion over the next five years.

Moreover, I emphasized that $25 billion should be enough to begin deploying space-based interceptors before the end of the president’s term, and the rest should be invested in research and devlopment on space-based

Directed Energy (DE) systems, most specifically on space-based high energy lasers.

Accomplishing the first objective simply means exploiting current technology to accomplish what SDI demonstrated was feasible three decades ago, now with more capable modern technology . . . that capability should

include an ability to counter current generation "Boost-Glide" hypersonic missiles in the upper atmosphere.

And it would clear the way for viably managing a more complex space-based defense system.

But space-based high energy laser systems are needed to achieve greater and more extensive early capability, because anything they can see can be intercepted at light-speed . . . effectively instantaneously.

While SDI efforts began such studies, they were disheveled when then Defense Secretary Les Aspin “Took the stars out of Star Wars,” also previously discussed along with a brief review of other SDI innovative efforts that also were abandoned.

That capability should defeat even threats from inexpensive attacking drones, if they are not below clouds and can’t be seen from space. Airborne or ground-based laser defenses are effective in that case, as shown by Israel’s “Iron Beam” that was recently employed to shoot down attacking drones.

That current capability should be — and no doubt will be — further developed to enable greater capability.

Moreover, that "Iron Beam" effectiveness to shoot attacking drone attacks with currently available high energy laser technology should be scalable to the power levels needed for space-based lasers.

Thus, President Trump should seek a space-based Golden Global Dome, employing that much improved laser technology that may take somewhat longer to develop than space-based interceptors.

Longer, but I believe, from my brief review with some DE system experts, within a decade.

Finally, I again observe that the major obstacle to reaching his Golden Global Dome objective is bureaucratic not technological.

This is not a new concern, and assigning this important task to an entirely new organization deserves very serious consideration to assure rapid innovation, as implicitly suggested by my May 13 Newsmax opinion column.

Indeed, it was just such considerations that led the "Fletcher" Defense Technologies Study Team, composed of a cross-section of the nation’s most competent technologists, to recommend SDI as an entirely new organization to manage President Reagan’s initiative in his March 23,1983 speech rather than assign that important task to existing organizations.

And as I earlier recalled, SDI’s second Director, USAF LGen. George Monahan, fired the Air Force from managing the Brilliant Pebbles effort and formed a Brilliant Pebbles Task Force to manage that innovative effort . . . reporting directly to him.

Given how bureaucracies mature and grow old, forming a new (carefully selected) Golden Dome organization is worth considering today.

There have been advances in technology in the quarter century since my watch as SDI Director — and many worthy accomplishments, but the limitations of stagnating bureaucracies are unchanged.

Henry F. Cooper, a Ph.D. engineer was Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative during the GHW Bush administration and Ambassador and Chief U.S. Negotiator at the Geneva Defense and Space Talks during the Reagan administration. Read More of Dr. Cooper's Reports - Here.