Why We Must Expedite 'Brilliant Pebbles' Space Defense

In their March 27, 2025 Defense News article, Chuck de Caro and John Warden argued that the proposed "Golden Dome" will not be ready to stop a Chinese attack on the U.S.

Perhaps that is true if the Golden Dome proceeds according to the Pentagon's regular acquisition procedures.

But if the Pentagon were to adopt the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) accelerated processes followed over three decades ago, a modern "Brilliant Pebbles" space-based interceptor system could quickly begin countering pending attack scenarios ... perhaps within 2-3 years.

After all, SDI's first Director, USAF Lt. General James A. Abrahamson, in his January 1989 End-of-Tour Report strongly endorsed Brilliant Pebbles (then under classified exploration by a small expert Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories team) and observed "BP" could be tested within two years and, if expedited, deployment could begin in five years for a total cost of $25 Billion for a full constellation of several thousand Brilliant Pebbles.

Abe's successor, USAF Lt. General George Monahan, brought Brilliant Pebbles into the public arena and subjected the concept (and its exploitation of then commercially available technology) to multiple detailed critical reviews ... all passed with flying colors.

Perhaps most notably, the JASON (a group of the nation's top scientists) found that there were "no show-stoppers" or conceptual fatal flaws with applying then-available technology, though a better system could be produced a couple of years later. That was over three decades ago.

Gen. Monahan oversaw those critical reviews, which included the critical Defense Acquisition Board review that included cost and effectiveness evaluation, against existing and projected responsive threat scenarios, BP entered the Pentagon's formal Demonstration and Validation stage, involving a variety of demonstration experiments ... though short of formal "testing" because that was then banned by the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

That is where major political problems began, because anything that threatened the Arms Control community became a major obstacle to maintaining a viable Demonstration and Validation program, especially as senior Senate and House leaders explicitly opposed even research that appeared to threaten the arms control agenda, and the ABM Treaty in particular.

And the end came with the arrival of the Clinton administration. Immediately after taking office Secretary of Defense Les Aspin "Took the Stars out of Star Wars." And senior White House officials even blocked subsequent potentially important space missions because they exploited "SDI technology."

We should have gotten over these attitudes after President George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002, but neither that administration nor subsequent ones have sought to exploit space-based defenses ... until the opportunity now with President Trump's "Golden Dome Initiative."

Hopefully, we will see a revival of a Brilliant Pebbles concept with modern technology and an operational capability within 2-3 years. Stay tuned!

Ambassador Henry F. Cooper was President Reagan's Defense and Space negotiator with the Soviet Union and President George H.W. Bush's SDI Director, and USAF Ret. Colonel Rowland H. "Rhip" Worrell was the Brilliant Pebbles Task Force Director, the National Test Facility Joint Program Office Director and the USAF Space Warfare Center Vice Commander. Read Ambassador Cooper's Reports here.