Podcast: Brilliant Pebbles Are Back

Robert Wall:

Welcome to the Check 6 Podcast. Attentive listeners will remember a few months ago our Cold War Comeback episode where we discussed the revival of ground-launched cruise missiles. Today we bring you a similar topic, one where the future evokes the past as we explore the Trump administration's first meaningful action on defense modernization, the executive order on missile defense or what has been referred to as Iron Dome for America. 

Here to talk to you about that are Brian Everstine Aviation Weeks Pentagon editor and Steve Trimble, our senior defense editor. I'm Robert Wall Aviation Weeks executive editor for Defense and Space. When this order came out, build as Iron Dome for America, one thing we knew right away was it would not be Iron Dome, the Israeli anti rocket system that has been highly effective, but is also quite short range, so it's not really applicable to the American context. So the question really has been: what would the administration pursue? And I have to say the executive order has a lot more detail than some people initially expected. Brian, why don't you talk our listeners through what's in it. 

Brian Everstine:

Hi. Yeah. So this all happened on January 27th, which really was Pete Hegseth the new defense secretary’s first day over at the Pentagon. He hinted at this during a brief interaction with reporters on the front steps of the river entrance. And the order came amid Trump's first flurry of defense related orders. So it mixed in with some ending DEI orders, COVID vaccine mandated related things. There was this order on Iron Dome for America. 

So as you alluded to, despite some snide remarks, the order goes far beyond the scope of the original Iron Dome. It calls on the Pentagon to start with a report within about two months outlining an approach to protect against ballistic hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and other next generation aerial attacks, both from rogue adversaries, but mostly more importantly from pure adversaries such as China and Russia. The order couples up speeding up some existing efforts such as missile defense agencies, hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor layer, and the space development agency's ongoing proliferated war fighter space architecture.

But it notably presses for some new or increased efforts such as developing SDA's custody layer, new capabilities of defeating missile attacks prior to launch. But I think what we will talk the most about here are two main prongs of the effort, such as developing an underlayer and terminal phase intercept defeat, what they're calling a counter-attack, and obviously the most attention grabbing is developing and deploying space-based interceptors that are capable of boost phase intercept. 

And all of this is really expected to start quite soon. The order calls on the Pentagon to put a plan together submitted before the fiscal 2026 budget is finalized. So just a matter of a few months. 

Robert Wall:

I mean, it's really quite massive. I mean, if you think about it and if we think about what the money is that goes behind this, but it's also kind of quite interesting because space-based interceptors are as old really as the concept of advanced national missile defense. So Steve, what was your take? And take us down the Brilliant Pebbles plot path for a second. Would you please? 

Steve Trimble:

Sure, yes, and I mean there is a nostalgic quality to this. I remember being in the library as an adolescent reading aviation week reading about this kind of thing. And so it definitely rings a bell for me historically. But yeah, so this idea is not new. If you go back to the 1960s, project Defender by DARPA actually recommended this approach and said it was technically feasible even then financially problematic. In 1984, President Reagan announces the Strategic defense Initiative, which was pejoratively nicknamed Star Wars in the 1980s. 

A piece of that, well, the main piece in fact was it went through several evolutions. It began as not as Brilliant Pebbles, but as Smart Rocks, which is how you eventually get to Brilliant pebbles. And Smart Rocks was really interesting because I mean, these were battle stations, like 400 orbiting battle stations, 20 tons each because the idea was you didn't have the microelectronics and the processing capability to put that on the missiles themselves.

So you put them in these sort of garages that had all these sensors that could detect the warheads in midcourse and feed that targeting information to the missiles, which wouldn't have any sensors on them or processing capability to target themselves. But they could receive this information from the battle station and head towards that target. But launching 400 or so battle stations each 20 tons, including the, you add the interceptors, you add the sensors, it's going to be really expensive. In fact, they went from like 40 billion estimate in the 1980s to a hundred billion estimate. So I mean, this is starting to get really unaffordable. 

They looked at some other concepts. I mean, Edward Teller, the famous Manhattan Project scientist, he was advising Reagan on this, and he had this idea for this really ambitious concept called Excalibur, which he would detonate nuclear device and then focus the X-ray energy into laser beams that could individually target these warheads. They soon discovered that was completely infeasible to do, at least back then, probably even now. And then Lowell Wood at MIT Lincoln Laboratory came up with this idea saying actually microelectronics are sophisticated enough that we can miniaturize them and just we don't need these battle stations anymore under smart rocks. So instead of these big rocks, Smart Rocks, we're going to have even smarter or Brilliant Pebbles, small things, four feet long.

They would be housed in what they called a life jacket, which would maintain their power levels, their telemetry with ground stations and also be a bit more aerodynamic. So their lift even, there's not much drag at those altitudes, but there's a little bit, but it would just maintain their altitude, or sorry, their orbit for a bit longer and then launch in response autonomously to a missile attack. The belief at the time was that that was technically feasible. I mean, the JASONS looked at it in the late 1980s and said, this actually can work. I mean, there's nothing scientifically or technologically that is beyond this. In fact, it's using very mature technologies for the most part. The problem was there were two, well, probably three problems. One was the launch costs were exorbitant back then, I think about 18,500 kilograms per pound to launch into space in the early 1990s.

That's about $1,500 per kilogram today. So it's an order of magnitude less big deal. The second issue was kind of a policy issue as well as even ground-based interceptors at the time violated the ABM Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with the Soviets in the early 1970s. We withdrew from that treaty in the early 2000s under President George W. Bush, but still, launch costs remained a big problem. 

So that brings us kind of where we are today, where the pieces of Star Wars that exist today, our ground-based interceptor, GBI, that was part of Star Wars, but there's 44 of these interceptors that we have stationed in Alaska that are there to defend against a launch of a limited attack by a rogue nation, specifically North Korea is what we're talking about. But today, North Korea has about 80 to 200 nuclear warheads as assessed by the US intelligence community that can overwhelm that defense.

And that's why we're coming up with Next-Generation Interceptor. But on top of that, China now is in the process of building out their nuclear arsenal, a triad with potentially up to a thousand ground-based ICBMs. And of course Russia still has their arsenal of about 1,500 nuclear warheads or nuclear systems with even more warheads and obviously a lot of tactical nuclear weapons at shorter ranges. And not only that, you also have this proliferation of conventional missiles, which we never saw during the Cold War and hypersonic missiles. So the idea is we've seen what Israel has been doing with conventional attacks of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, mortars. They have this system called Iron Dome that's a big part of that, although that's for the shorter range threats. They have this multilayered system with Arrow and David Slay also incorporated into that. And we've deployed Thaad as well as a theater system to augment Arrow. And we've seen how effective that's been in the last two years. 

So obviously President Trump here is taking the cue from that and saying, we can do something like that. And when you think about it from the idea of space-based, this is kind of like Iron Dome in space. These interceptors would be probably very small, not unlike the Tamir Missile they use in Iron Dome, very different from Tamir, but in size and sophistication, probably not that much different. 

Robert Wall:

Brian, you've been following obviously the missile defense portfolio, as has Steve, quite closely the last few years. As you look at what they announced here over the last few days, separate maybe from the space-based part, what will require new programs or what is maybe already in process either as a development program or at least has been something they've been talking about pursuing? 

Brian Everstine:

Well, the main new part is the space-based interceptor. A lot of the other sensing seems to be acceleration or expansion of existing programs. I mentioned MDA’s HBTSS, SDA’s tracking layer, and it seems like there's been kind of a hangup within the Space Force of trying to take on some of this work. It gets into sort of the debate between the military and the intelligence community on doing space-based ISR. We're seeing that a lot on the push for shifting MTI from aircraft to space and talking to some experts here in Washington. It seems like Trump is kind of putting his thumb on the scale and giving the Space Force some of more leeway, some more authority to take on some of this role away from the IC by picking up what the SDA is trying to do. 

Robert Wall:

I mean, as Steve has pointed out in prior podcast, not a huge surprise necessarily that we see as such a space focus this time around. Right. 

Brian Everstine:

No, I mean, it's been something that's been in the works. I mean, Trump created the Space Force. It's a big priority. He really likes, obviously likes his legacy there. And one thing that'll be interesting to see is how the MDA can really put this under its wing. It's been kind of limited in its acquisition authorities in getting enough money within the building. Interestingly, this comes as the MDA’'s overall charter is being rewritten and looking on to bring on some new acquisition authorities, bringing on what some of the services have been able to do with things like the Rapid capabilities office to procure things more quickly. So it's an open question if under these new authorities they'll have what they need to get some of this done. 

Robert Wall:

Yeah, interesting. Steve, just kind of curious from your perspective, if you look at all this, I mean, you alluded already to the launch costs of course, but what would you say is meaningfully different this time? I mean, why should we believe that it could work this time if that's what we believe? 

Steve Trimble:

So it was always technically feasible, and obviously we have to see the details of what the architecture they use to find out exactly how feasible this one will be, as well as how much it's going to cost, right? And that's still an open question about how much it's going to cost the impact on deterrence, and that's another question that it has to be worked out. When we withdrew from the ABM treaty, Russia said that's what provoked them to start their nuclear modernization as well as invest in hypersonic capabilities as well as some of these other things that we've seen, like the Poseidon torpedo and things like that. 

Now, another thing that's different is this emphasis on some of these space sensors that Brian was talking about. One of the big things that you have to do with this is it's not just tracking the missile after they've launched. You have to know where they are before they've launched. And with mobile systems, that's really, really difficult and has plagued our ability to do that for decades. But that's what that custody layer, which is called out in Trump's executive order, that we're going to invest in this custody layer, which is something that has been on the back burner for Space Development Agency. They have the tracking layer, which is about tracking missiles once they've launched. Custody layer is about keeping track of them before they've launched. Right.

Robert Wall:

Steve, are you saying we need Brilliant Eyes along with Brilliant Pebbles?

Steve Trimble:

That's amazing. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. Yes, man, that feels very Cold War all of a sudden. So yes. And so there's that element as well as H-B-T-S-S, which has also been the SDA, the Space Development Agency has got the tracking layer. Well, what that's doing is deploying this proliferated constellation of sensors that have this wide field of view. So you don't need as many to cover the globe. And I remember when we interviewed Derek tinier about this in 2020, he said, it's an open question whether or not a wide field of view sensor's going to have the sensitivity and the resolution to actually target warhead's in midcourse. And I don't know where they are with that now. I mean, a lot of those kinds of details often get very classified, but that's why Missile Defense Agency was in parallel working on the Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor.

H-B-T-S-S sometimes called Habits or Hobbit, even though MDA doesn't like it when you do that. But that's got a medium field of view sensor and with a Gimbal system that Gimbal allows it to expand its view, but it's more sensitive, it's higher resolution. It's believed to be or expected anyway, to be more effective at acquiring targets and tracking them to give them that weapons quality track. So you can have launch on engage versus launch on remote, which is another technical part of this, but that's a big part of it. And if they can get that done, that makes the feasibility of these interceptors significantly greater. 

Robert Wall:

I mean, as both have alluded to, I mean obviously the U.S. has invested billions over decades into this field and as fielded systems now we have for, as you mentioned, we have the more shorter range systems that add an SM three for the Navy. What happens? Are they just out of vogue now or what's their role in this, if at all? 

Steve Trimble:

So that's for that appears to be what's being called for under this so-called underlay. The overlayer is the executive order also talks about deploying an underlay of ground-based and theater area interceptors to counter what they called counter value attacks. And that's an important term because in sort of nuclear, in nuclear warfare terminology, that is talking about targeting civilian populations, major cities, not military targets, but major cities. So in that sense, you'd have missile defense batteries around Washington dc We do have nasals against air attacks from cruise missiles or aircraft in DC already, but this would be against ballistic attacks, probably aimed at shooting down any leakers that aren't hit by the, and so then you're talking about Thad, maybe you're talking about SM-3 with Aegis Ashore, but deployed around major cities around the country, it sounds like. Now that can be very expensive. I mean a single Patriot battery is about a billion dollars. That is even more, Aegis Ashore is several billion dollars. So you're talking and not to mention the sensor network and the command and control apparatus that would have to take place for that to work. That could be probably even more expensive than the, depending on what they decide they need to defend. 

Robert Wall:

Let's briefly, at least before we wrap it up, talk about some of the inherent challenges, technical and otherwise. For example, one thing comes to mind already the US has kind of a shortage. You could ask argue of missile motors to meet current demands, and now that demand could be going up. So you could see a supply chain bottleneck right there that needs to be addressed and that'll probably slow any effort. What do you guys see either in that vein, political hurdles? Obviously there's the funding question. 

Brian Everstine:

Yeah, the funding I think is somewhat stands out the most. And talking to some of the experts around here, hearing numbers starting at 20 billion, possibly getting up to 25 billion. 20 billion came from the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance here. Todd Harrison, a EI put out an estimate of up to 27 billion just for the interceptors. And I think one important thing to point out is this is coming as the military is spending so much on offensive ballistic missiles. We have Sentinel, we have the rest of the nuclear tribe all just taking so much, it's eating all the services launch on funding. So that I think is the biggest immediate priority to get over the industry. The space industry seems, I don't know if stretch is the right word, but there's a very healthy demand with what SDA is trying to do on proliferated Leo, trying to just meet what they're trying to do just on the PWSA. So there's a lot of components there. 

Steve Trimble:

And I would just add to that, I do think the political element of this is going to be a constraint, and I'm certainly not picking sides in it. I mean, the counter argument to doing this has always been that these kinds of strategic types of missile defenses are inherently destabilizing. That is what led to the ABM Treaty in the early 1970s when both sides agreed that if we shouldn't even try to defend ourselves and rely on mutually assured destruction for our protection. And that's been a huge debate. It was a debate during Star Wars and the SDI initiative. It was a debate when we withdrew from the ABM treaty. Obviously that does appear to have spurred Russia to do something. If we implement this, there will definitely be a counter by Russia, China, maybe others to address this and develop some way of countering it possibly by increasing the volume to make it even harder to shoot everything down. That's how these things work. And that discussion is is probably going to heat up the most over the next few years. Even beyond the funding issues, 

Brian Everstine:

There has been already some support a little bit. We saw Senator Wicker, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee talk a little bit in support of this. I mean, we have a one party control in Washington that is very early in the Trump administration, very eager to get on his good side. So I think we'll see some movement, at least in initial markups to push this forward depending on what the Pentagon does produce. 

Robert Wall:

Makes sense. Well, listen, let me go briefly back to one question inspired by Iron Dome here. The Israelis have Iron Dome. They've relied on the Tamir interceptor. They now have realized that even though that is a relatively low-cost interceptor, it still costs a lot more than a lot of the target it’s going after. So they're now introducing Iron Beam, a laser to shoot down these rockets and mortars more affordably. So I guess the logical question, where does space-based laser fit in the Iron Dome for America? 

Steve Trimble:

Well, it is mentioned in the executive order that we need to work on directed energy as well. I suspect it's not going to be a space-based laser because the physics there are very challenging to generate the power in orbit to make a useful beam. That's why Teller was looking at this nuclear detonation device in space, which has a whole lot of other issues when you start talking about nuclear detonations in space. But on the ground, supplementing theater-based defenses, ground-based high energy lasers, probably extreme power levels is probably what they're talking about and looking at doing is very difficult. Also, extremely expensive. High energy lasers are way more expensive than people realize, I think sometimes. And if there's a cloud, if there's wind shear turbulence in the air between where the laser is and where the incoming missile is, those are all problems that lasers are still trying to overcome. But it does seem that that's going to be part of this in some way. Again, though, the details are going to be very significant in terms of where they are and how they augment the kinetic component of this defense system. 

Robert Wall:

Well, let's wrap it there. I'm sure there's going to be lots more to talk about on this topic in the months and years to come. Really interesting to see how it makes it into the next budget drop and how all that develops. So lots to chew on, as I said, for years to come probably on this. 

So thank you, Steve. Special thanks to Brian who has pulled an all-nighter because of the tragic developments in DC with the crash, the collision of the airliner with the Black Hark. So Brian, thanks for all the work this week on Iron Dome for America and this horrible accident. And also thanks to our podcast producer guy Fernieyhough, for putting all this together. 

And of course, as always, thanks to your listeners for checking in with us and come back for a future episode of Check six 

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