I was encouraged to see a September-October Air and Space Forces Magazine article indicating that U.S. Space Command is seeking Space Superiority with so-called “SmallSats,” which I think requires an intercept capability.
But after reading it, I was greatly disappointed.
In the first place, U.S. Space Command apparently refers to SmallSats as being up to 1000 kilograms, about 2200 pounds or slightly over a ton.
It mentioned nothing about a defensive intercept capability. That’s small?!
Clearly, folks today are on a different wavelength than was Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) three decades ago, which pioneered much smaller space-based sensors and interceptors. And I’m concerned that something important has been lost.
As my March 23, 2023 article, "Ronald Reagan's Vision for Defenses Still the Right One" emphasized, Reagan had it right.
We should return to his vision.
It emphasized the important role of space-based defenses, a concept that captured the creative genius of America’s scientific community.
They responded with cutting edge technological initiatives, some seemingly now forgotten.
In particular, Brilliant Pebbles, and associated development activities, three decades ago clearly promised — and SDI was developing — already maturing technology in the private sector. Technology which could affordably support a constellation of numerous 100-pound highly maneuverable satellites not only to warn of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) set to attack the U.S., but also shoot them down, doing so in their "boost phase" — when their rockets still burn and they are highly vulnerable.
That miniature sensor technology was space-qualified on an important joint SDI-NASA Clementine mission that returned to the Moon for the first time in a quarter century, and among other things discovered H2O (ice) in the Moon’s polar regions.
And Brilliant Pebbles miniature thrusters for maneuverability were also then tested.
Without a doubt, such Brilliant Pebbles could also have defended themselves and other U.S. space assets, including today’s over 20-times larger, no doubt much more expensive, so-called SmallSats.
As Don Baucomb pointed out in his "Rise and Fall of Brilliant Pebbles," the Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA) in the 1960s concluded such a lightweight space-based boost-phase intercept capability would someday be possible.
And three decades ago, the SDI efforts proved that technology was then available.
For a link to SDI Historian Baucomb’s important documentation of these facts, see a ink in the above referenced claim that Reagan had it right.
So, today our leaders recognize the problems of undefended systems in orbit, as illustrated by the recent Aviation Week article, "Why Orbital Maneuvering Is Top Of Mind At U.S. Space Command."
This article suggested that improved "maneuver operations" are needed as the primary means of needed defense.
But with no defensive intercept capability?
Reported was that Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, warned at a late September Defense in Space Conference in London, "We now face concurrent and accelerating threats in, from and to space."
He and others called for greater investment in "dynamic space operations" to monitor spacecraft in nonstandard orbits better to thwart a potential adversary’s ability to track, target, disable, or defeat friendly assets.
Among these others, France is pursuing in-orbit maneuvering systems to safeguard its satellites, and Germany is considering similar efforts. A strategy which sounds like the legacy of a fighter pilot perspective.
There are, however, suggestions that there will be included the many benefits of modern Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Brilliant Pebbles was simply three-decades ahead — that’s what made them "brilliant."
Now, I have no issue with such planning, but I believe that effective military space operations also require intercept capabilities, and I know such a capability is possible, because the SDI pioneered systems with such potential capabilities.
Today’s technology should enable much more capable systems.
Regrettably, those efforts were annulled for political reasons three decades ago.
I fear that Space Command is continuing to abide by that political restraint.
As SDI’s first Director, now Retired USAF Lt. General James Abrahamson (who began our initial Brilliant Pebbles effort), joined me seven years ago in writing that, "America Must Revive Space-Based Defense Initiatives."
Enough already! We simply shouldn’t let China get there first.
Ambassador Henry F. Cooper was President Ronald Reagan’s Chief Defense and Space Negotiator with the Soviet Union and President George H.W. Bush’s SDI Director. Read Ambassador Cooper's Reports — Here.
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