July 26, 2006 :: UPI :: Analysis
Philip Coyle, senior advisor at the Center for Defense Information, was recently quoted in the UPI on the issue of space-based missile defenses and in particular, the Brilliant Pebbles defense system. “The idea was that a small satellite with good brain [sic] that would see enemy missiles and dash off after it, hit it and knock it down,” he said, but noted that such a concept would have required numerous satellites, perhaps as many as 1,000 to be effective. “You can’t have one interceptor parked over North Korea,” he argued. “You need another to take its place.” Coyle also questioned the monetary feasibility of the program. “It would be, by all measures, very expensive. And it’s still problematic as to whether it would work. They’ve been projecting [costs] for at least 20 years and it doesn’t seem to happen.”
Would Brilliant Pebbles work? Coyle does not mention that Brilliant Pebbles had successfully completed its simulation stage and was ready to move to the proof-of-concept, prototype, and performance testing stages when it was effectively starved of funding as the Clinton administration came to power. Nor does he mention that in 1994 NASA launched a deep-space probe mission known as “Clementine,” constructed with first-generation Brilliant Pebbles hardware. The mission, which cost $80 million, effectively “space-qualified” Brilliant Pebbles technology, even though the missile defense program had already been eliminated.
Would Brilliant Pebbles be too expensive? The newly released report by the Independent Working Group entitled Missile Defense, the Space Relationship and the Twenty-First Century—the report cited by the UPI piece—puts the total cost of a 1,000-satellite constellation of Brilliant Pebbles at $16 billion, based on the fully approved Defense Acquisition Board plan from 1991. The figure includes the costs of developing, testing, deploying, and operating Brilliant Pebbles over a 20-year period using a low-to-moderate risk, event-driven acquisition schedule. Many would agree that $16 billion dollars is a small price to pay for the protection of the U.S. and its allies from ballistic missile attack and nuclear devastation. (Article)
» Read the 2007 report: The Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, the Space Relationship, and the Twenty-First Century (8 MB)
» More stories on: Allies, Policy, Space-Based Systems
» Missile system details for: Brilliant Pebbles
