Early in President Trump’s first term, Retired USAF Lt. General Jim Abrahamson and I urged 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 cost-effective space-based defense had been positively evaluated by numerous competent technical reviews and to some extent demonstrated during our watch, now over three decades ago.
Also, I’m certain that the second SDI Director, USAF Lt. General George Monahan, would have joined us.
Abe and I were gratified with early developments in President Trump’s first term, especially when, on Dec. 20, 2019, he signed the National Defense Authorization Act establishing the U.S. Space Force.
But that important initiative has not escaped the long-standing bureaucratic impedance against space-based defenses, evident since the initial responses to President Ronald Reagan’s March 23,1983 calling for what became the SDI effort.
Indeed, SDI would likely have been strangled in the crib had it not been led by a senior well-qualified technical individual (Gen. Abrahamson), who reported directly to the Secretary of Defense and then, in effect, President Reagan.
But these conditions did not make SDI efforts immune from Air Force (and other) interference.
Moreover, SDI Director Monahan fired Air Force Space Command (in Los Angeles) 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.
I think this condition is even more true today . . . and I think Elon Musk would confirm my view, since his many development activities so demonstrate.
Because of that bureaucratic resistance, General Monahan established a Brilliant Pebbles Task Force reporting directly to himself, the SDI Director. And I continued that important arrangement on my SDI watch.
See the April 7,2025 Newsmax article (I co-authored it, with Retired USAF Col. Roland H. “Rhip” Worrell, who commanded that BP Task Force), recommending that the Golden Dome exploit that BP heritage.
Based on what I know of the disbursed management of today’s efforts, that same SDI management approach should be revived to direct the President Trump’s Golden Dome efforts.
Moreover, that revived effort should seek the same objective sought in Ronald Reagan’s SDI effort . . . as I argued in my March 23, 2023 article, which includes elaborating links that, among other things, illustrate space-based defenses should be cost-effective.
With that fact in mind, overall Golden Dome leadership should not be in Huntsville with its well-known bias toward building massively expensive ground-based defenses, the most-expensive, least-effective way to defend large areas of the U.S. and its allies globally.
And based on my experience, I would not entrust this effort to the Los Angeles Air Force Space Systems Command, either.
As noted above, Gen. Monahan fired them because they refused then to exploit advanced technology in the private sector.
Such bureaucratic impedance strongly inhibited yesteryear’s SDI efforts — especially as overlain by congressional opposition to SDI, 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.
That fact led me to emphasize Theater Missile Defenses because they were not limited by the ABM Treaty.
And especially following the successful Patriot role in the Gulf War, that also led to the Navy’s Aegis BMD systems at sea and on land and the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) . . . defenses that now can support the Golden Dome.
Very similar politically inhibiting conditions seem to continue today, especially as key leadership has been passed to individuals and organizations that apparently are opposed to developing space-based defenses.
I had hoped the president’s “Golden Dome Initiative” would accomplish at least the objectives that we SDI Directors foresaw over three decades ago . . . perhaps with even more effective technological initiatives.
Regrettably, this is not what I see happening . . . I understand 80% is planned to support surface-based defenses.
What we do now should at least seek the truly most effective defenses for the American people that we foresaw, while resisting the entrenched bureaucratic impendence.
To overcome already entrenched biases, Daniel Gallington and wrote four years ago that we were already playing “catch-up” with Russia’s and China’s hypersonic missile technology programs and should “reinvent” the SDI ways of yesteryear to counter those existing and rapidly emerging threats.
We have not done so since then, and we urgently need space-based hit-to-kill interceptors in the near-term followed as quickly as possible with space-based directed energy defenses (e.g., lasers).
I believe the first stage can begin deployment and operations during President Trump’s term for the bulk of already appropriated Golden Dome funding, and the rest of the planned effort should be invested in developing space-based lasers as the long-term objective. But not with the current management and apparent biases.
But from what I have learned, current plans schedule the bulk of appropriated “Golden Dome” funds to ground-based defenses, with only minor amount on funding for space-based defenses that can provide global coverage (including against current generation hypersonic threats) to us and our friends and allies, which should be our top priority, as discussed in my Feb. 21, 2025 Newsmax article.
In my view, apparent current plans need major revision.
See also.
Ambassador Henry F. Cooper, a PhD engineers with 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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