Tag: brilliant pebbles

Brilliant pebbles

Space is a dangerous place

On By gyonas3 Comments

The trouble with good ideas…

Brilliant pebbles are a really good idea, at least some scientists think so. No one doubts that the technology exists now to deploy thousands of small missiles (called brilliant pebbles) permanently orbiting the planet. These missiles coupled to an extensive space based satellite sensor constellation could automatically go after and intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles shortly after they lift off in their very visible boost phase. Burning boosters are very vulnerable to a high velocity collision with even a light object, and the boosters would come crashing down together with their lethal payloads possibly not even far from their launch area. Assuming that the sensors are operational and not spoofed, the automated decision process is reliable and most of the so called pebbles are in good working order, this low earth orbiting cloud of defensive missiles would greatly contribute to our defense against the ever greater proliferation of ballistic missiles and some of these might even have nuke payloads.

Some cost estimates of this defense investment do not seem unreasonable … but wait for the rest of the story. Any competent adversary who had counted on achieving a convincing threat would not be so happy with our deployment and would know far in advance about our plans and observe our deployment process. They might complain about our “militarization of space” and even threaten to put a stop to our bad behavior before we got too far into our plan. They might even do something nasty just to get our attention, and they might even use anti-satellite methods to harass and even destroy our early deployments. They might even start deploying their own missile constellation to tag along closely with our defensive missiles, and we might tell them to stop that and ask them to back off.  If we hurry up and get going before they can do too much, we could get our convincing defensive capability in place and declare our ownership of space and not allow further deployments of means to attack our purely defensive missiles. They might then turn their military investments to high power lasers on the ground that could over a period of time harass, blind and destroy our missiles and sensors. It turns out that low earth space orbits can be a very dangerous place if ground based high power lasers exist, but wait there are clouds that could get in the way, so they might not have the freedom of action they desire.

Another approach to laser deployment could be on high altitude aircraft that could operate above the clouds and conveniently track and shoot up at satellites. The laser power supplies would be chemicals that would have to be replenished, but there could be multiple aircraft, and the adversary could take their time to mess up our deployment. But wait there would be more to this story since we could attack the large, slow and vulnerable aircraft with our advanced fighter planes and their lasers that shoot toward satellites would provide them with no protection, so they might use their own advanced fighter planes to attack ours. By then we might have our own high power lasers on our fighter planes and we could defeat their lower power lasers, while they try to use their anti-satellite missiles against our purely defensive pebbles.

But wait, they might not be ready to start a space/air shooting war and instead attack our extensive but very vulnerable electric grid using their cyber weapons, which would trigger our own cyber-attack on their command, control, communications, intelligence (c3i). They might then try to destroy our c3i so we would no longer be able to manage the rapidly deteriorating chaos of our purely defensive pebbles. Somebody might even try to nuke somebody, or maybe their terrorist buddies could dump biological agents in a few of our cities, since nobody is managing the chaos, and things might get really messy real fast. Oh well, brilliant pebbles seemed like a good idea.

Boost Phase Intercept (BPI) with high power lasers could defeat North Korean missiles

On By gyonas6 Comments

In order to achieve an effective defense against an all-out ICBM attack from the Soviet Union, the Fletcher Study, that in 1983 created the plan for the SDI, reported that Boost Phase Intercept would be needed. I explore this in great detail in my new book “Death Rays and Delusions” available now at Amazon.com. We believed the midcourse and terminal phases could overwhelm the defense with countermeasures if a large fraction of the boosters were not destroyed. Burning boosters provided a bright target that was easy to find and the thin missile skin made them relatively easy to kill. Missile vulnerability was demonstrated with a high power laser directed at a mock-up of a booster subjected to its acceleration and pressure stresses. The test was described by one of the technical skeptics as a “strapped down chicken test.”

Laser destruction of liquid fueled booster
Laser destruction of liquid fueled booster

Although the booster was very vulnerable to attack, intercepting the booster required deployment of either space based missiles or lasers. The lasers were far off in the future, and the numbers of missiles appeared to require a prohibitively large launch capability, unless the missiles were miniaturized, eventually resulting in the “Brilliant Pebbles” concept. This concept was seriously pursued for five years and then canceled when the Soviet threat disappeared in the ‘90s. Small interceptor missiles, however, did appear to provide a realistic path to BPI based on advancing missile technology.

The preferred approach in 1985, however, was the ground based laser (GBL) with only relay mirrors in space, and substantial efforts were begun to develop enormous free electron lasers to produce beams of the required power and wave length. A significant development was the invention of optics that could correct for sources of beam distortion. A remaining problem was the need for multiple high altitude locations to deal with clouds. In addition, the laser technology and physics did not cooperate, and for want of a laser, the GBL was dropped, but development of aircraft based lasers continued.

laser relay
Artists concept of space based laser relay mirrors http://spie.org/newsroom/4853-did-adaptive-optics-end-the-cold-war?SSO=1

Chemical lasers on 747s enjoyed $5 billion of support for dealing with the evolving North Korean ICBM threat, but the concept was dropped by the Secretary of Defense as impractical, expensive and easily defeated. So the quest for a laser remained until recently with the development of short wave length, efficient, rugged, light weight, fiber lasers. Such lasers could be based on aircraft and be used to directly intercept boosters or relayed from space or possibly drone based mirrors to their targets. Nevertheless, this development is still many years away. So what about the near future? With the recent North Korea tests of a very high yield nuclear device and an  ICBM, the threat demands that we get very serious about deployment of an effective missile defense.

For short range defeat of boosters launched from North Korea, it is possible to utilize aircraft based very fast small missiles, and drone platforms have been proposed, as outlined in this column: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/military/guest-voices/sd-me-herman-northkorea-defense-20170816-story.html. So BPI, which was from the beginning of the SDI thought to be desirable or even necessary, seems to be emerging based on drone based fast missiles,  and could evolve eventually to laser weapons. To learn more, check out “Death Rays and Delusions” now available on Amazon.com.