In several recent articles, I have written that Brilliant Pebbles (BP), at least in effect, was the most important Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) concept developed by President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI); was canceled by the Clinton administration for ideological reasons and has been ignored ever since.
If resurrected by President Donald Trump's Great "Gold Dome Initiative" and supported by Congress, it could rapidly and quite affordably quickly begin deployment in space — especially if Elon Musk helps by applying his well-known technical and business expertise.
My view is contrary to numerous so-called experts who over the years have claimed that developing and building modern space-based interceptor systems would require many years and be excessively expensive. At best, they are uninformed ... but I fear they may dominate the current studies of Trump's Gold Dome Initiative.
For example, recall that the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in President Trump's first term (only four years ago) was criticized for claiming we could build such a system for $20 billion.
These critics may not have known that Undersecretary (Dr.) Mike Griffin supported the SDI with major technology contributions while at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and later as Deputy SDI Director for Technology during the era that advanced the Brilliant Pebbles program to become the first SDI concept to be fully approved by the Pentagon's top acquisition executive to enter a formal Demonstration and Validation (DemVal) phase.
His claim was well founded as then illustrated by several articles by key personnel who lived through the formative years that underpin his then 30-year-old estimate:
USAF Retired Lt. General James A. Abrahamson (the first SDI Director who began the Brilliant Pebbles over 30 years ago as a special access program) joined me in two articles. Our July 21, 2017 Wall Street Journal Letter to the Editor rebutting a previous Journal article that claimed greatly exaggerated (by a factor of 5-10) the costs for building space-based interceptors then and our August 14, 2017 Newsmax article further elaborated this important point.
There is little doubt that, were he still alive, the second SDI Director USAF Lt. General George Monahan would have joined us — since he led the efforts involving numerous expert technical reviews that supported Brilliant Pebbles becoming the first SDI effort to be approved by the Pentagon's Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) to enter a DemVal phase.
Earlier, I had joined three others who lived through and well understood the pertinent history, and believed we should replicate that history with technology available four years ago could provide then even more cost-effective space-based defenses, based on the same Brilliant Pebbles approach. See the November 29, 2016 National Review article, "How Trump Can Fulfill Reagan's Defense Vision," co-authored with three other well informed individuals.
Retired Lt. Gen. Malcolm R. O'Neill was my Deputy SDI Director, then the first director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), and subsequently assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology.
A first-rate physicist, Mal also was in charge of Kinetic Interceptor programs on Gen. Abrahamson's SDI watch and in charge of the early most important technology demonstrations undergirding the Brilliant Pebbles approach.
Col. Rowland "Rhip" H. Worrell, USAF (Ret.) was Director of the SDI Brilliant Pebbles Task Force that managed the Brilliant Pebbles acquisition effort narrowing the field from six competing companies to two engaged in a fully approved DemVal program — including validated cost estimates.
Subsequently, Rhip served as Director of the National Test Facility Joint Program Office, and vice commander of the USAF Space Warfare Center.
Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. was president of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA), Inc., and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, and chairman of the now defunct Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, which documented in substantial detail the political and technical issues that derailed the entire SDI effort and especially the sidelining of the most cost-effective product of the SDI era.
To substantiate these claims, I am planning future articles with more detailed background on:
- What was done 30 years ago?
- Why was that technology banished and ignored for 30 years?
- Why should you believe it is relevant today?
- What should be done today?
For this article, I will simply assert that these claims of key individuals testify to my claim that the technology existed over three decades ago in the SDI era, and we should be able to do much better today.
Meanwhile, I urge you to read Don Baucom's history of "The Rise and Fall of Brilliant Pebbles" from the above link to the 2017 article I co-authored with USAF Lt. Gen. Jim Abrahamson, the first SDI Director who began that important effort as a classified program.
Ambassador Henry F. Cooper, a PhD engineer with a broad defense and space national security career, was President Reagan's Chief Defense and Space Negotiator with the Soviet Union and SDI Director during the George H.W. Bush Administration. Read Ambassador Cooper's Reports here.
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