Early in President Trump’s first term, Retired USAF Lt. General Jim Abrahamson joined this writer in urging a revival of America’s space-based defense initiatives.
As the two surviving directors of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), we knew the possibility of truly effective space-based defense had been positively evaluated and to some extent demonstrated during our watch.
President Trump had indicated he intended to increase funding for developing and deploying our ballistic missile defense (BMD).
We were gratified with early developments and especially when, on Dec. 20, 2019, he signed the National Defense Authorization Act establishing the U.S. Space Force — the sixth branch of the U.S. military under the secretary of the Air Force, like the U.S. Marines being under the Secretary of the Navy.
Perhaps that bureaucratic arrangement should be reconsidered, because of the conflicted interests of those who want a true Space Force, which will be needed in the future — and not as an extension of Air Force missions.
That bureaucratic impedance has been evident from the outset of studies responding to President Reagan’s March 23, 1983 address calling for what became the SDI effort.
Indeed, his SDI would likely have been strangled in the crib had he not selected a senior well qualified technical individual (Gen. Abrahamson), who reported to the secretary of defense and then, in effect, the president.
These conditions made the SDI immune from Air Force interference.
And the second SDI Director, USAF Lt. Gen. George Monahan, fired the Air Force from leading the nation’s space-based interceptor development efforts, because they refused to exploit the private sector’s cutting-edge technology that was outpacing those the Air Force insisted on developing.
No doubt, a reason that neither of the first two SDI Directors were awarded a fourth star, had to do with this bureaucratic impedance that also inhibited their SDI efforts — overlain by congressional opposition to SDI, especially as related to the arms control community that opposed any defense of the American people beyond a single ground-based interceptor site, as permitted by the 1972 ABM Treaty.
Elon Musk surely must be familiar with such bureaucratic impedance, which he can help President Trump avoid while focusing on the best technical solutions to protect the American people.
In any case, I hope the president’s "Gold Dome Initiative" will accomplish at least the objectives that Gen. Abrahamson and I foresaw on our watch over three decades ago . . . perhaps with a vision for even more effective technological initiatives than we foresaw.
But what we do now should at least accomplish the truly effective defenses for the American people that we foresaw. We emphasized that space-based defenses, initially based on "hit-to-kill" interceptors and then space-based “directed energy” (e.g., laser) systems, could provide the needed defense.
Now, there are claims that missile defenses will have a difficult time defeating the hypersonic threat, being pursued by Rusia and China.
Wrong!
Since my watch as SDI Director, many U.S. and foreign intercepts of hypersonic spacecraft and vehicles have been successfully accomplished. This writer is advised that six generations of computing technology have enabled hypersonic intercepts — ranging from the routine to the difficult.
To overcome the entrenched bias, as Daniel Gallington and I wrote over two years ago, we must adopt entrepreneurial approaches and "reinvent" the SDI ways of yesteryear to counter the emerging hypersonic threat . . . with space-based hit-to-kill interceptors in the near-term and later with space-based directed energy defenses (e.g., lasers).
On Oct. 21, 2021, I wrote about our playing catch-up with Russia’s and China’s hypersonic missile capabilities. My bottom line still stands:
"There is absolutely no reason for the United States to be behind in dealing with the Hypersonics Threat. But the powers that be must remove the arbitrary constraints that have limited U.S. development efforts for years."
Hopefully, the responses to President Trump’s Jan. 27, 2025 executive order to establish an Iron Dome for America will properly consider this history, including the confusion and obstruction regarding past efforts, and fully employ a more realistic evaluation of both near-term and far-term space-based defenses.
They are the best way to protect the American people — and our allies globally.
Ambassador Henry F. Cooper, a PhD engineerswith a broad defense and national security career, was President Ronald Reagan’s Chief Defense and Space Negotiator with the Soviet Union and Strategic Defense Initiator Director during the George H.W. Bush administration. Read Ambassador Cooper’s Reports — Here.
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