“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning from a sunny golden day here in Alexandria, Virginia. We’ve got the daffodils in masse. It’s beautiful here in Washington, D.C. I’m Riki Ellison. I’m the founder and chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. We have one single mission, and that is to make our world and our nation safer through the deployment and the evolution of missile defense. This is our 70th virtual, boost-phase missile defense from space. The timing of this is golden. And we have two of the world and national experts in space defense.
I’m just excited, very excited. As a young kid, way back in 1985, was after our Super Bowl victory, I got hired to work on the Exo-Atmospheric Reentry Interceptor System, ERIS, out of Sunnyvale. And that’s my connection with Mike, going all the way back there on that as he was the genius behind the Clementine experiment and the movement of that first-generational GBI that is now the NGI aspect of it. We have, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Mike Griffin, who has been through the entire generational history of our missile defense, all the way back from SDI, from SDIO, from BMDO, MDA, from Clementine, through all the elements that we’ve gone through. He’s also been remarkable in his courage to stand up to systems as we knew in the past with RKV and being able to tell the truth. And we are excited that he’s here. He also was with us with President Trump as the head of R&E and prior with George W. Bush as the head of NASA.
We also have Lisa here, Dr. Lisa Porter, who is equally the world expert from our perspective, on non-kinetic and left of launch. A lot of that is secret, but this is not just a kinetic energy solution. It is both. And we’re just honored to have her here to speak to us today.
So we are eight days away from the executive order report that is due eight days from now on that. And I think it’s very important that we look at that executive order, specifically the section three, which is an implementation that has this report due in eight days. I believe this is still very fluid. It is going to be fluid even after those eight days. It’s going to be [fluid] going into the DoD. They’re going to be fluid. But there are four key points here that we want to discuss on that plan that was listed by the President.
So the first one is defense of the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next generation aerial attacks from peer, near peer, and rogue adversaries. Can we do that? What’s doable? What’s the cost of that? When can we have that? The third point there is the development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors capable of boost phase intercept. That is huge. Same questions. How much is this? Is this doable? Can it be done?
The fourth point is the development and deployment of capabilities to defeat missile attacks prior to launch and in the boost phase. And the last point, development and deployment of non-kinetic capabilities to augment the kinetic defeat of ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next generational aerial attacks. So that’s the architecture. That’s a big ask in 60 days for anybody to come up with that. And everybody, I think, wants to know if this is real, if this is a ridiculous amount of money. It’s doable. Can we have something in 18 months that says we’re going down this path? And at the end of it, what’s the right architecture, I’d like to go with you, Mike, first to take a shot at some of those questions on this.”
-Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman
“But I want to start out by frankly expressing my concern about the title of this talk, Boost Phase Missile Defense from Space and Boost Phase Interceptors from Space as outlined in the EO. Now, I’m hugely supportive of the EO as, again, an old missile defense guy. And I would remind everybody that in the end, the purpose of defense is to cut some casualties, cut your losses, and to buy time. That perfect defense just gets you back to even. It doesn’t do anything to dissuade the attacker. So let’s keep defense in its proper place. We also need offense. We don’t have the kinds of offense we need by that which I mean long-range kinetic non-nuclear conventional strike. We’re working on it, but that’s a key part of the future because it has to be paired with defense to create an effective deterrent. So let me, having put that card on the table, I want to return to the issue of boost phase defense from space. Most people, when they think about space-based defense, they immediately default to interceptors. Space-based interceptors have, statistically, and this goes all the way back to brilliant pebbles and singlet interceptors, you almost never, by that I mean sub-1% or so, you almost never have a shot from space at an actual ICBM booster. The easiest shot we would have ever had to take would have been against the Russian – Soviet, sorry, SS-18, which was a long burn liquid booster carrying, I think, if I recall correctly, 10 warheads. It was just a monstrous weapon. That flew long enough that you could get a shot at it with not a very high probability, but some probability. Even in the brilliant pebbles days when that architecture was on the table, we were most of the shots you would have would be at the post-boost vehicle. And it’s important to remember that. Not that you wouldn’t take that. You’re happy to have a shot at a post-boost vehicle.”
– Dr. Michael D. Griffin, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Serving under President Donald Trump, Former NASA director under President George Bush
“And we can have a discussion about that, but for now, I want to focus… When people talk about space-based intercept, they really mean interceptors. Interceptors can reach, with good probability, can reach mid-course objects. You have a mid-course object in a 15 or 20 minute flight time, and in that period of time, 20% of a space-based constellation will sweep through the battle space. The problem with mid-course is, as it has been from the earliest days of missile defense, which thing is the RV and which thing is the decoy? I’ll take a minor offshoot. That’s the value of the lower end Aegis and later THAAD defenses, is the decoys have been stripped out. But in the long mid-course phase, your problem is discrimination.
Space-based intercept is a trade. It’s a system trade against, do I want to do that from space, go against a mid-course object? Do I want to do it from space? Do I want to do it from the ground? Do I want to do it from both? Okay. To confuse and confound the enemy and give them more problems to solve, those are legitimate questions to ask. But if you look at the physics of the problem, you can hardly ever get to a shot from space at an ICBM booster. And I will absolutely also put on the table that the probabilities are even lower for submarine launch ballistic missiles, because they just don’t get high enough for long enough. And boost phase defense against a hypersonic is just not possible at all. You’re just not going to get it. It flies too low.”
-Dr. Michael D. Griffin, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Serving under President Donald Trump, Former NASA director under President George Bush
“And I’ll just, just to hammer on a point Mike was ending with, because I think it is really important. The best defense is a good offense. So for those who think we should reallocate our focus only on defense from space at the detriment of having our, or upping our opportunities with Aegis, PAC, THAAD, I think that’s completely misguided, because if you invest in your terminal defense systems, and Aegis in particular, a very impressive system, you’re obviously also investing in the production that we need to accelerate for our offensive capabilities, which has been frankly not nearly impressive enough, let’s say, in the past few years. So I think now you’re seeing so around, not just your traditional incumbents, but a lot of new players who want to contribute to the offensive side. So to me, I look at this EO as a call to action to ensure we have a good offense as well as defense. To Mike’s point, we want to tell them you have, you know, you’re going to have holy terror raining down on you if you try to do anything to us, not just we’re going to sit here and, you know, do our best to defend.”
– Dr. Lisa Porter, Former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering
“I mean, this is a classic team of teams. You put the best people in charge. If you put a four-star who was an equivalent of Rickover in the Navy in charge, and you say, you’re in charge, go get your team and make this happen. That person, by virtue of who they are, will attract the best. They will know who in the MDA, which team of MDA people they’re pulling in. They’re going to know who in the space.
And they’re going to go, guys, step one is let’s figure out what we’re going to go do. And we have to nail that down. And then step two is go do it. This is how you get stuff done in a bureaucracy. And we’ve done it. So I know this is doable. When people ask us, how did you do this and that? We didn’t care about rank. We cared about capability. We cared about who could do what. And we cared about empowering those best people to go get the job done.”
-Dr. Lisa Porter, Former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering
“But I would say with regard to the EO, I think we have to make sure that we do the right things. We’ve emphasized that. Don’t waste the money on the bad stuff. Don’t waste the time on the bad stuff. And there are things we can do in 18 months, experiments, or demonstrations, I should say, on a variety of examples I would just brought up today, that would be quite compelling, I think, to both Russia and China and remind them, you know, we’re not going to sit back on our heels and just admire what you guys are doing. We can do everything you’re doing more. That’s really what we have to make sure that they understand.”
– Dr. Lisa Porter, Former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering
“I would echo what she said. I don’t need to repeat it. Mark was talking about congressional rice bowls and moving money being an impediment. If winning your next election or getting your next promotion for a leader is more important than getting the job done, then we’re doomed. Okay. So there are things where many things we’re buying today for the DoD that are not relevant to a peer conflict with China and Russia in a tripolar world. And it’s not that hard to go through and figure out what the totem pole is and what should come off the bottom in order to create that which needs to be done at the top.”
-Dr. Michael D. Griffin, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Serving under President Donald Trump, Former NASA director under President George Bush
Click here to watch the virtual event
Speakers:
Dr. Michael Griffin, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Serving under President Donald Trump, Former NASA director under President George Bush
Dr. Lisa Porter, Former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering
Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman
Audience Q/A Moderator: Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, MDAA Board of Directors
