Operated
from space, directed energy weapons would, ideally provide a number of
advantages over kinetic energy weapons. As a directed energy beam travels
at the speed of light, interception is essentially instantaneous; this
allows a laser satellite to orbit further away from the earth and cover
larger distances.
Unlike its terrestrial counterpart, a space-based directed energy beam
suffers no refractory effects from the earth’s atmosphere as it travels to
its target. Directed energy weapons in space are likely the best hope for
intercepting a SRBM during its extremely short boost phase. A constellation
of directed energy weapons in orbit would require far few satellites than a
kinetic energy system.
As a practical matter, orbiting a space-based directed energy weapon will
prove difficult. Such a satellite will require a great deal of power,
probably beyond the capability of current solar cells. The great demands
for power could require a power source such as a nuclear reactor, with all
of its attendant technical and political challenges. The most powerful
directed energy weapons today are lasers that require large quantities of
chemical reactants. These satellites would require occasional reactant
replenishment in space, a capability that the MDA must develop if it chooses
to orbit a chemical laser.
Given the difficulty of fitting an effective chemical laser into a Boeing
747-400, it is evident that a space-based chemical laser could have a mass
greater than 60,000 kg.
Although NASA’s erstwhile Saturn V or its yet-to-be-built Ares
V could launch a satellite as massive, no other U.S. launch vehicle in
service or under development is in this class. Such a large satellite could
also prove a tempting ASAT target.
There is reason to believe, however, that present trends in miniaturizing
spacecraft systems will continue. With several more years of research and
technology development effort, the U.S. can ultimately field a laser
satellite powerful enough to engage ballistic missiles, yet small enough to
require a reasonably sized non-nuclear power source and light enough to fall
within the payload constraints of extant launch vehicles. While a
space-based laser (SBL) could be part of the BMDS in a few decades, this is
outside of the timeframe for integration into the BMDS that this paper
addresses.
In March of
1983, and at the urging of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Ronald
Reagan announced his goal of building a shield to defend the U.S. and its
friends from the threat of ballistic missiles in a concept known as the
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). From the outset, SDI concepts featured
space-based weaponry—earning the program the popular moniker of “Star
Wars”—including both lasers and kinetic energy interceptors, as a
centerpiece of the program. Within a few years, the kinetic energy
interceptor was a favorite over lasers in early SDI architectures.
By 1987, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) envisioned
large satellite “garages” housing multiple interceptors, as its “Phase I
Architecture.” Critics said that even these satellites seemed prohibitively
large and expensive—by 1988, estimates of the system’s cost had risen to
$100 billion—as
well as particularly vulnerable to attack by anti-satellite (ASAT)
weaponry.
Dr. Lowell
Wood, of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, proposed a radically different
concept, known as Brilliant Pebbles. Brilliant Pebbles was to
have consisted of a constellation of small kinetic kill vehicles (weighing
only a kilograms each) jacketed by a small support spacecraft that provided
power, attitude control, and other “hotel” services. Each Pebble
was to be fitted with wide field-of-view visual and infrared sensors,
and each would possess the computing power of a Cray supercomputer. The
Brilliant Pebbles system was “network centric” even before the U.S.
military took to using the term, with the entire constellation
electronically connected to determine which Pebble would have the
best shot opportunity at a given ballistic missile threat.
Wood
insisted that a constellation of 100,000 Brilliant Pebbles could
defend the entire U.S. against the worst case Soviet nuclear attack, at a
cost of $100,000 per interceptor (for a total system cost of $10 billion in
1988 dollars); each Pebbles-carrying space launch would have
lofted hundreds of the satellites at once. Moreover, Wood believed that the
U.S. could achieve a reasonable level of protection with only 7,000
interceptors in orbit.
Ostensibly, such small satellites would have been relatively immune to ASAT
attack.
Wood
presented his concept to Lieutenant General James Abrahamson, the first SDIO
director, in late 1987. Abrahamson became convinced Brilliant Pebbles
was superior to the large interceptor “garages” then planned for the
space-based portion of the strategic defense system. While he did not have
enough time remaining to change the Phase I architecture before his tenure
as SDIO director ended, Abrahamson wrote in his “end of tour” report to the
elder President Bush that Brilliant Pebbles, “if aggressively
pursued, could be ready for initial deployment within five years.”
After further review, both the first Bush Administration and Abrahamson’s
successor, Lieutenant General George L. Monahan, Jr., endorsed Brilliant
Pebbles as the new space-based element of the SDI Phase I architecture.
In 1991,
President George H. W. Bush ordered the SDI program scaled back, with the
capability to protect the U.S. against an accidental nuclear launch, or
small-scale attack. This concept, known as “Global Protection Against
Limited Strikes” (GPALS), contained terrestrial interceptors, but still
featured Brilliant Pebbles—with perhaps 700 to 1,000 interceptors—as
a key component.
Brilliant Pebbles remained unpopular with Democrats in Congress, and
by 1992, they had written language into defense authorizations that severely
restricted funding the system. In 1993, President Clinton, who favored a
strict following of the ABM Treaty, cancelled the program.
BRILLIANT PEBBLES
Revisited: Integrating Space-Based BMD into Current U.S. Plans
Is it
possible to revive the Brilliant Pebbles concept and integrate it
with the current BMDS? Dr. Gregory Canavan, a senior fellow with the
Heritage Foundation, thinks so. Canavan maintains that the Missile Defense
Agency (MDA) could update concepts developed for the Brilliant Pebbles
system with sensor, computer, and guidance technologies developed since the
program’s cancellation, developing a space-based interceptor “in two to
three years at a cost of a few percent of the current MDA budget.”
According to
Bradley Graham, Ambassador Henry Cooper, director of SDIO from 1991
to 1992, “characterized the Brilliant Pebbles system of space-based
interceptors, which was under development at the time, as his ‘soundest
program from management and technical perspectives.’ Cooper maintains that
the technology was mature enough that it could have led to a
first-generation space-based defense later in the decade.”
Indeed NASA’s Clementine lunar probe—a mission conducted in
cooperation with BMDO—demonstrated 23 technological advances, particularly
in the areas of sensors and component miniaturization technology, originally
intended for Brilliant Pebbles.
Certainly, further research and development the DOD conducted in fielding
terrestrial elements of such “hit-to-kill” weapons as GBI and SM-3 will find
applicability in a resurrected version of Brilliant Pebbles.
In the near term, the U.S. should integrate kinetic-kill space-based
interceptors (SBI) into the BMDS. The extent practical, the SBI should
leverage technologies and operational concepts and architectures developed
for the original Brilliant Pebbles program. Starting with a small
test bed of a few satellites and limited defensive capability, MDA could use
its spiral development philosophy to evolve the SBI into a boost phase
defense system with global coverage.
Technological Enablers
All
technologies required for a viable SBI system already exist. While
Brilliant Pebbles was to feature computing power of a contemporary
supercomputer, the advances in computing during the fourteen years since
that program’s cancellation, will certainly equip the new SBI with
electronic processing capability vastly superior to Brilliant Pebbles.
The SBI designers should put this processing power to full use. BMDO plans
for Brilliant Pebbles included the use of high capacity data links to
pass data between Pebbles, allowing each to share information with all of
the other Pebbles.
While BMDO
had no experience with a satellite-to-satellite communications involving
numerous spacecraft, the Motorola Iridium communications satellite
system operates such a cross-link today with 72 satellites networked to
operate together; the Iridium experience could prove valuable to a
renewed SBI. At a cost of $5 billion to develop, build, and orbit the
entire constellation, Iridium is proof that it is possible to
mass-produce a large system of small satellites at a relatively low cost.
As with
Brilliant Pebbles, the revived SBI would feature sensors capable of
providing fire control tracking quality without any input from external BMDS
sensors. In fact, based on lessons learned since 1993—in missile defense
programs and in other defense or commercial projects—SBI will have sensors
far more capable than those with which Brilliant Pebbles would have
been equipped. This sensor package, along with its powerful computer
processing capacity and cross-links between SBIs, should not only allow the
constellation to operate with a high degree of autonomy—as was also the
operating mode for Brilliant Pebbles—but will, as well, allow the SBI
constellation to provide significant input to the BMDS as a whole.
The SBI
constellation will pass on its “battlespace awareness” to the Command,
Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC) system and to
terrestrial elements of the BMDS. The SBI constellation may even be able to
supplement or even negate the requirements for the Space Tracking and
Surveillance System (STSS), low-orbiting infrared sensing satellites now
planned by MDA to track missiles and warheads in the mid-course.
Conversely, surface-based sensors such as the Forward-Based X-Band Radar (FBX),
Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX), and Updated Early Warning Radar System (UEWR),
as well as space-based systems like DSP, SBIRS, and STSS, could provide
cueing and tracking data to the SBI constellation by way of the C2BMC
system. Fully integrated, space based and terrestrial elements of the BMDS
become more effective than the sum of their parts.
Equipped
with robust sensors, capable computers, and communication between all
satellites in the SBI constellation, the system would operate in a
semi-autonomous or autonomous mode. While military commanders would grant
the system permission to fire, or would equip the constellation with a set
of criteria upon which to fire automatically –based upon intelligence and
warning indicators—the constellation itself would decide precisely which
satellite (or satellites) would engage the threat, based on which had the
best chance of destroying a given threat.
Another
concern during Brilliant Pebbles was in developing an interceptor
with a propulsion system powerful enough to speed a kill vehicle to speeds
required to intercept ballistic missiles—generally accepted as from four to
eight kilometers per second—yet small and light enough to make Brilliant
Pebbles a viable concept.
Originally, designers considered pressure-fed rocket engines as being the
only type of system capable meeting the size and weight limitations imposed
on a system of small spacecraft. However, no pressure-fed rocket engine
ever demonstrated the power to propel a kill vehicle at the speeds required
to intercept a ballistic missile.
At the time
of Brilliant Pebbles’ development, turbo pump-fed rocket engines were
more powerful than pressure-fed engines, but engineers could not build them
small and light enough to be of practical use in Brilliant Pebbles.
While pressure-fed engines still provide a practical SBI propulsion system,
today’s state of the art in turbo pump-fed rocketry has progressed far
enough since the demise of Brilliant Pebbles to provide the needed
propulsive power.
The number
of individual satellites required to comprise an effective kinetic SBI
system depends on the speed and acceleration of the interceptor, the
satellites’ altitude, and the speed of the threat ballistic missiles.
Interceptors with a high terminal velocity and high rate of acceleration
will cover a larger area, since the interceptors will be able to travel
greater distances in a shorter time. A satellite constellation orbiting at
lower altitudes will likewise have a greater “footprint,” since its
interceptors will have a shorter distance to fly before intercepting their
targets. Conversely, the faster the threat missiles’ velocity and the
greater their rate of acceleration, the smaller the coverage area provided
(if all SBIs are equal). As a result, solid rocket ICBMs require more SBIs
to ensure seamless coverage.
The very
conservative American Physical Society (APS) suggests in a 2003 study that
an objective SBI system would consist of around 700-800 satellites, with a
total constellation mass of 1,000 metric tons, and requiring about 50 space
launches, at a cost of $14 billion (2003 dollars) for launch services alone.
The APS study further stated that a shot doctrine requiring a salvo of two
interceptors fired at a single threat missile would cause this satellite
constellation to more than double in size. The APS study went on to concede
that any reduction in kill vehicle or spacecraft mass would have an enormous
effect on the cost of deploying the entire system.
The
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates an effective defense system is
possible with as few as 368 interceptors, requiring 28 launch vehicles to
orbit.
CBO suggests a SBI system could cost between $31.1 billion and $38.7 billion
(in 2004 dollars) over twenty years of operation, depending upon the
eventual configuration chosen.
CBO further asserted that the ability to defend against solid-propelled
ICBMs would drive up the cost by an additional $30 billion to $40 billion.
The
Independent Working Group for Space and Missile Defense in the 21st
Century (IWG)—an organization sponsored by numerous think tanks including
the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Heritage
Foundation—believes both CBO and APS were too conservative in their
calculations. The IWG suggests that there is even a bias against
space-based missile defenses in the studies of well-respected academic
bodies and government organizations, such as the APS and CBO.
The IWG contends that neither study considered fully advances in
nanotechnology, sensors, and propulsion since the demise of
Brilliant
Pebbles.
Lawrence
Livermore Laboratories’ Dr. Lowell Wood agrees, saying that Genius Sand
interceptors—equipped with kill vehicles weighing in the tens of
grams—should supplant Brilliant Pebbles interceptors,
which would have weighed in the tens of kilograms. While the IWG
suggests no price for its ideal space-based BMD, Wood estimated the U.S.
could deploy his system for $16 billion (FY 2004 dollars).
Dr. Canavan also took issue with the CBO report, stating his belief that
protection against liquid boosters could require interceptors of far lower
mass, as few as 102 satellites, and a life cycle cost of $19.6 billion.
Canavan doubled the number of satellites and the cost for protection against
faster solid-fuelled ICBMs.
While the
APS study assumed a capability to intercept solid rocket missiles, the CBO
numbers assumed only an ability to provide total coverage against slower
liquid-fuelled ICBMs.
CBO admitted that the ability to provide complete coverage against
solid-rocket missiles would cause its estimates—in both numbers of
interceptors and costs—to double. In any case, the SBI would utilize far
fewer interceptors than Brilliant Pebbles because MDA designed the
BMDS to protect against limited attacks by “rogue states,” not a massive
Soviet nuclear missile strike, as was the case during with Cold War
strategic defense systems.
According to
Canavan, another way to reduce the number of interceptors required on orbit
is to concentrate them by limiting their orbital inclination to cover only
the highest latitude of assumed threat nations, rather than providing
pole-to-pole coverage. It seems that, in any case, any SBI constellation
should, given both near term technologies and threats, consist of far fewer
satellites than envisioned in either the SDI or GPALS programs. What’s
more, if the U.S. ever enters a renewed Cold War with a resurgent Russia, or
some other major nuclear power, the Defense Department will only need to
worry about increasing SBI and launch vehicle production rates to build a
thousands-strong constellation of satellites as once envisioned in the SDI
program.
The American
Physical Society stated, in its 2003 study on boost phase missile defense,
that deploying a space-based interceptor system of 1,600 satellites, each
with a mass of 820 kg would require the U.S. to increase its launch capacity
a factor of five or ten.
Other groups argue that an effective space-based missile defense can rely on
satellites of much lower mass, with far fewer spacecraft on orbit—at least
initially.
Still,
launching an operational SBI constellation will likely require considerably
more space lift than the U.S. now possesses. If the U.S. decides to conduct
a full-scale SBI deployment, MDA will need to assess launch requirements,
examining the best means of providing the additional space lift required.
There are a number of options available to produce the launch vehicles
required to deploy the SBI system.
United
Launch Alliance (ULA), the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin
that produces the Delta IV and Atlas V expendable launch vehicles, appears
readily able to increase its production capability.
Other options include emerging space companies, such as Space Exploration
Technologies Inc. and its Falcon launchers, or the services of countries
that would receive protection from the SBI system in return for launching a
portion of the interceptor constellation.
According to
Berman, Cooper, and Pfaltzgraff, “As the anti-satellite test carried out by
China in January amply demonstrated, a growing number of U.S. adversaries
and strategic competitors are seeking to exploit, even dominate, space for
military and commercial purposes. If the United States does not protect its
interests in space — including through the deployment of missile defenses —
we may soon find our security, which is critically dependent on our space
systems, at the mercy of nations that have.”
The Marshall
Institute’s Jeffrey Kueter outlined the use of missile defense systems in a
space control role saying that, “If the international community is truly
worried about the debris-generating effects of ASAT weapons, then it ought
to embrace, indeed demand, development and deployment of boost- phase
missile defenses capable of intercepting ASAT missiles long before they
reach their satellite targets… Combined with a new emphasis on satellite
protection, ground-based replenishment capabilities and space-based missile
defenses could frustrate any attempts to block the peaceful use of space by
America and her allies.”
The Defense
Department’s Joint Publication 3-14: Joint Doctrine for Space Operations
(JP 3-14) says that, “space control operations provide freedom of action in
space for friendly forces, while, when directed, denying it to an adversary,
and include the broad aspect of protection of U.S. and allied space systems
and negation of adversary space systems.” JP 3-14 further defines four
space control missions: surveillance, negation, prevention, and protection.
Since
ballistic missiles fly through space, one can argue that BMD itself is a
specific subset of space control. However, the BMDS, including both
space-based and terrestrial assets, can play a critical role in a broader
U.S. space control doctrine, contributing significantly to at least three of
four space control missions. What follows is an appraisal of some feasible
uses of the BMDS in a space control role; military space professionals will
surely find even more possibilities for the BMDS than this paper imagines.
Surveillance
of space:
Space-based infrared sensors can detect a space launch vehicle and can
perceive a ballistic missile with the same ease. Any radar capable of
tracking warheads in space could do the same for satellites,
supplementing—or even replacing, in an emergency—U.S. satellite tracking
assets.
Protection:
This refers to both active and passive measures taken to protect friendly
space assets from attack, ensuring they remain of use to the U.S. and its
allies.
The United States has the most to lose from other countries deploying an
ASAT. As other countries have less to lose in space, they may be more
tempted to sacrifice their own systems, and rather than devoting resources
to a complex ASAT program, they might be more inclined to make an asymmetric
attack against all U.S. space resources—admittedly destroying their own
satellites in the process—by detonating a nuclear weapon in space.
The
resulting electromagnetic pulse would (after several months, in the case of
some radiation-hardened military satellites) remove all advantage the U.S.
enjoyed in space-based reconnaissance, communications, weather forecasting,
navigation, and ballistic missile defense. The U.S. would suffer
devastating military and economic consequences from such an attack.
Given good
intelligence, space-based BMD (and perhaps terrestrial BMD weapons, as well)
could act as an anti-ASAT system and could destroy any missile used to
launch a nuclear weapon into space. Space-based BMD would not just defend
against ballistic missiles, but could assure U.S. and allied use of space.
Ground-based
space support facilities would be a very logical target for ballistic
missile attack. By protecting these facilities—with either space-based or
terrestrial missile defenses—the BMDS serves an important protection role.
Negation.
This space control mission eliminates the adversary’s use of his own space
assets by disrupting, degrading, or destroying them.
Space-based BMD could intercept enemy satellite launch vehicles, preventing
an opponent the use of space for any military purpose. Further, if
the BMDS can destroy a missile warhead in space, it should not be too great
of a technological stretch to use the system to destroy enemy satellites in
low earth orbit (LEO). (NOTE: That is precisely what happened in early
2008. See postscript to this article.)
Even with compelling evidence that
space-based ballistic missile defenses could be extremely effective, and
with the demise of the ABM Treaty that once outlawed them, the Missile
Defense Agency seems uninterested in developing such a system. Political
opposition to space-based missile defenses continues to remain strong,
vocally arguing that the deployment of an orbiting missile defense will
“weaponize” space.
One could take the view that not only do
ballistic missiles fly through space, but also the U.S., the Soviet Union,
and China have all demonstrated anti-satellite capability; in effect, space
is already weaponized. Those who challenge a space-based BMD, both in the
U.S. and internationally, argue that such defenses will “weaponize” space,
in violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. This is a gross misreading
of the basic principles of the treaty. In fact, the Outer Space Treaty does
not outlaw weapons in space; it prohibits the use of nuclear weapons
in space, and calls for the peaceful use of outer space.
Similar treaties and international laws regarding the seas call for the
peaceful use of the world’s oceans, but no state considers these treaties a
prohibition against sailing its warships in international waters.
Furthermore, the United Nations Charter, Article 51, allows a country the
right of self-defense.
Other opponents will argue that, given the massive military expenditures in
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. can ill afford to spend
additional money on space-based missile defenses that are unproven and
expensive. As many studies have shown, and this paper has explained, there
is little technological risk remaining in a space-based BMD. Further, the
MDA could develop space-based defenses at a reasonable cost. If cost is an
object—and it always is—the U.S. should forgo or delay some terrestrially
based BMD systems to first pay for and field an orbital defense.
Arguments for the technical feasibility, reasonable cost, and legality of
space-based BMD aside, the U.S. seems unlikely to deploy such systems in the
near future shy of some watershed occurrence. Such an event could be a
similar deployment by another nation or a renewed Cold War with a
nuclear-capable competitor. Perhaps the greatest reason the U.S. does not
deploy a space-based defense is because it wishes to avoid the international
outrage the system would undoubtedly evoke.
Should the U.S. elect to deploy space-based missile defenses, international
reactions will vary. Clearly, many nations will embrace the concept,
negotiating with the U.S. to ensure coverage of their territory by its
umbrella. Even some countries appearing outwardly hostile to the system
will gladly accept its protection. In spite of American assurances to the
contrary, Russia and China are likely to react the most loudly, believing
that space-based missile defenses pose a direct threat to their nuclear
deterrent forces. Most difficult to judge is the reaction of the very rogue
nations whose missiles the BMDS aims to counter.
Russia is openly hostile to U.S. BMD. Particularly contentious for Moscow
is its fear that the U.S. will deploy space-based defenses. Surely, Russia
must understand that the U.S. BMDS, even with the addition of 1,000 SBIs,
could do little to counter a massive Russian ICBM attack; simple arithmetic
shows that the majority of Russian missiles would remain unscathed after the
BMDS ran out of ammunition.
Possibly the Russians fear the ASAT
capabilities inherent in, or easily added to, space-based missile defenses.
While Russia deploys far fewer military space assets than the U.S., it is
still the second largest defense satellite operator in the world. As such,
it may fear the satellite negation or launch vehicle attacks made possible
by an orbiting BMD-ASAT system.
Equally possible, Russia hopes to show that it is still an important
counterbalance to the U.S. on the international scene. Russia is likely
also unhappy with what it perceives as U.S. efforts to usurp its role—as the
successor to the Soviet Union—as the dominant power in Eastern Europe. In
Russia’s view, it is certainly the rightful heir to the Soviet position.
This is probably why U.S. diplomats have been unable to allay Russia’s
concerns about U.S. missile defense.
The U.S. must take a different tack to assuage Russia’s opposition to
missile defense in general, and space based defenses in particular. First,
the U.S. should accept Russia’s offer to contribute one of its radar in
Azerbaijan to the BMDS, even if that radar is of limited military value.
Russia aspires for renewed recognition as a player on the global scene;
American diplomats must also find ways to play upon Russian ambition,
without restricting the military value of the BMDS to the U.S.
China has far more reason than
Russia to be concerned about U.S. missile defenses, considering its far
smaller arsenal of long-range ballistic missiles. While the U.S. BMDS today
probably could not overcome a Chinese ballistic missile attack on America,
China undoubtedly understands that further U.S. development of the system,
particularly the deployment of space-based defenses, could negate the
Chinese nuclear deterrent. This is the most likely reason that China
campaigned in the years leading up to the U.S. withdrawal from the accord,
to make the ABM Treaty a multilateral pact. China clearly views missile
defense, in general, as destabilizing. Its recent ASAT tests may be an
indication that China fears the U.S. will indeed deploy a space-based BMD.
In 2002, Sha Zukang, director general of the
Chinese foreign ministry’s Department of Arms Control and Disarmament, made
China’s position unambiguous to then-U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen;
China was strongly opposed to U.S. national missile defense, and felt
particularly threatened by the proposed sale to Taiwan of American theater
missile defenses. Sha advised Cohen that China viewed any U.S. national
missile defense as endangering the credibility of its own nuclear deterrent.
According to Lindsay and O’Hanlon, China
understands that a U.S. space-based boost-phase defense could have
tremendous utility against its nuclear arsenal. Lindsay and O’Hanlon
believe the Chinese could react to a space-based boost interceptor by
helping the North Koreans to build more short-range or intermediate range
weapons, forcing the U.S. to delay developing more space-based weapons in
favor of building more terrestrial terminal phase defenses. As well,
Lindsay and O’Hanlon contend, the Chinese might block U.S. initiatives in
multilateral organizations in an effort to force linkages between its
support for the U.S. proposals and international control of the missile
defense system.
China makes no secret that its ballistic
missile force uses countermeasures and decoys to foil missile defense
systems. The Chinese will certainly work to increase their effectiveness
against space-based defenses.
China may additionally choose to transfer such countermeasures to other
nations, or could build up its strategic missile force in effort to
overwhelm the U.S. BMDS.
The Response
from Developing Nations
The Heritage Foundation sees ballistic
missile defense as a stabilizing influence; it credits the presence of “the
anti-missile defense, limited as it was,” with providing “the basis for
keeping Israel out of the (1991 Persian Gulf) War” even as Iraqi SCUDs
rained down on Israeli cities.
Most observers widely accept that had Israel entered the war, the coalition
crafted by the U.S.—a coalition that included Arab nations—would have
fragmented, significantly complicating American military operations against
Iraq; Arab nations might even have entered the war on the side of Iraq.
The Israeli Gulf War model may not serve as an example for the rest of the
world, however. Nations equipped with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles may
elect to launch those missiles before the U.S. completes its SBI
constellation, detonating a nuclear weapon in space to blind America in
space, or worse. Other nations with ballistic missiles may elect to conduct
a drastic buildup to overwhelm the orbiting SBI system, while others will
turn to China, Russia, or other weapons proliferators for more sophisticated
countermeasures. Perhaps a few will renounce their own ballistic missiles,
seeking protection from the SBI system, rather than trying to defeat it.
International Control of the BMDS?
Dr. Lowell Wood, the conceptual
father of Brilliant Pebbles, still espouses the idea and suggests
that the United States should incorporate modern Brilliant Pebbles
into the BMDS, then turn the entire missile defense system over to
international control. Under Wood’s notion, the BMDS would engage any
launch in the world not conducted with notice to the international
community.
On the surface, this may seem like a reasonable counter to international
objections against BMD in general and space-based BMD in particular.
Still, would the U.S. really spend hundreds of billions of dollars from its
national treasury to produce a defensive capability that it then turned over
to the control of a body governed by nations with interests inimical to the
U.S.? If the United Nations is any model, the U.S. could find its national
security and freedom of action in space subjugated to the will of the
world’s two-bit dictators. There is room, however, for international
cooperation in the BMDS, including the use of space-based assets. The BMDS
can serve as a powerful way to assure U.S. allies; space-based missile
defense will ensure the trust that America’s friends place in it is well
founded.
Several nations also possess the means to build and launch sophisticated
satellites. The U.S. and its European allies, for example, could easily
cooperate by building a number of the New Pebbles or missile tracking
satellites in Europe, launching them on Ariane launchers, and integrating
them with the U.S. space-based BMD network. Depending on examination of its
constitution, Japan might also consider participating, as it already does
with the naval Aegis BMD program. Such cooperation would help the U.S.
defray the costs of a system that would be capable, based on the laws of
orbital mechanics, of protecting allied nations anyway.
While Russia and China might also participate in a space-based
BMD, the U.S. must judge the associated risks of technology transfer to the
likes of Iran and North Korea when it decides to what degree it will embrace
such a move. Regardless, the U.S. must not subordinate its security to the
protests or participation of the international community.
Space-based active defense assets could substantially enhance the layered
protection provided by the currently planned U.S. BMDS, particularly by
adding a viable boost-phase defense segment to the BMDS. Moreover,
space-based missile defenses, acting with their terrestrial counterparts,
can have an important role in assuring America’s freedom of action in space
and in denying the same to its enemies.
The technologies needed to orbit a numerically large constellation of small
kinetic energy interceptors—based largely on the early 1990s Brilliant
Pebbles concept—are mature. Indeed, the U.S. could undoubtedly field
such a system within a decade of choosing to do so, aided not only by
advances in missile defense, but by commercial experience in operating large
satellite constellations such as the Motorola Iridium system. While
the cost of such a system would run into the billions of dollars, the MDA
could still procure a SBI capability within its current budget by
reprioritizing its current programs.
Many Washington policymakers are unwilling to
weather the political controversy that space-based missile defense
generates; indeed such a system will levy a high political and economic
cost. Lawmakers should consider the effects—in both loss of life and damage
to the economy—should even one ballistic missile reach a U.S. city carrying
a nuclear warhead. The weapons used against the Japanese cities Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in 1945 were small weapons by today’s standards, with a yield
of about 20 kilotons.
While estimates on the numbers of deaths caused by the bombings vary
greatly, one estimate claims that 105,000 people died by the end of 1945
from injuries sustained or radiation sickness contracted as a direct result
of the explosions. The combined population of the two cities was about
450,000; the U.S. boasts numerous cities with a far larger populace.
Nuclear weapons are also far more powerful today, with some warheads tens or
hundreds of times more powerful.
Contrast the ramifications of a nuclear explosion with the cost in lives and
economic damage to the U.S. from such catastrophes as Hurricane Katrina in
2005 or the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. Unquestionably, these two calamities alone left a death toll in
the thousands; their combined, long-term impact to the U.S. economy will
easily surpass a trillion dollars. As horrific as these events were, they
pale in comparison to the havoc wreaked by a single nuclear detonation in
any part of the U.S. homeland.
The potential devastation caused by a nuclear explosion in a major U.S. city
today defies the imagination. Compared to the price exacted by a nuclear
detonation in America, even $100 billion to develop space-based missile
defenses seems trivial. Should the BMDS ever prevent such an event, it will
have paid for itself a hundred times over.
The U.S. should consider the BMDS as only one tool among a myriad of
military and diplomatic options, endeavoring to identify and destroy
ballistic missile threats before they leave the ground, and to prevent the
widespread proliferation of missile technology and weapons of mass
destruction. Overall, the world security situation demands the U.S. develop
the BMDS, to include space-based defenses.
First, the Missile Defense Agency should immediately begin
developing a space-based interceptor (SBI) system, loosely based on the
Brilliant Pebbles concept, ensuring full integration with the entire
network of BMDS sensors, weapons, and command and control systems. MDA
should use its present evolutionary, or “spiral,” development philosophy,
first orbiting a small SBI constellation, ranging from 10 to 40
interceptors, that would serve as a technological test bed capable of
limited, emergency anti-missile interception. MDA should set a goal of
deploying the test bed satellites within five years of a go-ahead. This
approach appears to be working well as applied to the present GBI and SM-3
programs.
MDA should initially field a SBI constellation capable of providing boost
phase defense against liquid-fuelled rocket boosters. Liquid-fuelled
missiles are not only slower than solid rockets, representing an easier
technological challenge to intercept, they are also the missile of choice of
rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, and should continue as such for
the foreseeable future. Using lessons learned from the orbiting SBI test
bed, MDA could expand the constellation as required based upon the outcome
of SBI tests and the latest threat assessments from the intelligence
community. The SBI could not only expand in terms of sheer numbers of
missiles of which the system is capable of intercepting, but it should
evolve to intercept solid-fuelled missiles, then to provide robust
mid-course and even limited terminal defense capability.
To free up funding for the SBI system, MDA should be prepared to
reprioritize its acquisitions. MDA may find this money by deferring or
stretching out the development of its KEI and ABL systems. While ABL and
KEI could provide important additional boost phase defenses, which the U.S.
military could deploy to crisis spots across the globe, and the U.S. should
see to it they deploy someday. However, they cannot offer the global
presence and continuous on-station time provided by an SBI constellation.
Hence, the SBI should come before these localized, area or theater
defense systems.
Given the ability of directed energy weapons to engage missile
threats at the speed of light, the U.S. should begin a long-term effort to
develop a practical space-based laser (SBL) capability. As such a
capability might require a very heavy-lift launch vehicle or the ability to
refuel the satellite in orbit, developing a workable SBL may take several
years. Still, MDA should make it a goal to orbit a SBL test bed—with a
real, if limited capability to engage ballistic missile threats—within ten
years of approval to proceed. Research on such a system should not require
more than a few percent of the MDA budget over the next several years.
The U.S. government—to include NASA and the Air Force (as the DOD executive
agent for space)—and industry must redouble its efforts to make space launch
cheaper and more available. While this matter itself merits another paper
entirely, it is worthwhile to mention here a few measures that could drive
launch costs downward. DOD should carefully watch the NASA Commercial
Orbital Transport System (COTS), where NASA will pay companies to
demonstrate a capability to deliver supplies to the International Space
Station. These payments are contingent upon actual performance, and if the
program succeeds, it could serve as a procurement model for DOD.
DOD and NASA should cooperate to represent the government’s combined
launch vehicle needs in single procurements of each type of launch vehicle.
If, for example, the Air Force needs two Atlas V launchers, the National
Reconnaissance Office needs one, MDA needs two, and NASA needs two, the
government should acquire all seven rockets in a single contract.
While this example may represent an oversimplification, it illustrates one
procurement
strategy the U.S. government should take to reduce the unit cost of launch
vehicles.
MDA may wish to use NASA’s projected Ares V launch vehicle, which is an
integral part of the space agency’s plans to return astronauts to the moon,
to launch large SBL satellites. However, both agencies should remember the
lessons from NASA-DOD cooperation on the space shuttle program, where the
requirements of both agencies drove them to a vehicle neither NASA nor DOD
really wanted.
Finally, the U.S. should engage both its allies and competitors to promote
the acceptance of space-based missile and participation in the BMDS, without
constraining legitimate American defense concerns. The U.S. government
should work to convince the American people first, and then the
international community of the merits of space-based missile defenses,
conducting this campaign with as much transparency as possible. Should this
effort to win converts to the missile defense cause fail, however, the U.S.
government must be prepared to continue the program even over the loud howls
of angry protests both at home and abroad. Missile defense from space is
too important to condemn to politics.
POSTSCRIPT:
In early 2008, the United States successfully shot down one of its own
satellites with a Navy SM-3 missile. Since the satellite failed
shortly after launch, it was fully fuelled and, ostensibly, presented a
public danger to almost the entirety of the world’s population.
Predictably, China and Russia took notice of this mission, essentially an ASAT test, although
U.S. Marine Corps General James Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and recently-departed commander of U.S. Strategic Command
insisted the shot was a one-time mission and the U.S. would not
operationally deploy an ASAT capability.
Clearly, though, the distinction
between space weaponry and missile defense is blurring even more. It is
possible that Chinese or Russian responses to the U.S. ASAT test and other
ballistic missile defense initiatives (such as the proposed European
interceptor site—which may possibly even reside on former Soviet territory
such as Lithuania) will ultimately force the U.S. to develop space-based
missile interceptors if the BMDS is to remain effective. While the
author was unaware of such plans when he wrote this paper, he feels it was
an inevitable event and believes the U.S. must consider ballistic
missile defense as part of a larger space control doctrine.
Acronyms and
Abbreviations
