WASHINGTON, D.C. – In just the past few weeks North Korea, on the heels of what it claimed was the test of a hydrogen bomb, has boasted of miniaturizing nuclear warheads to fit on ballistic missiles.
And Iran has reported test-firing two ballistic missiles, apparently to demonstrate it will push forward with its threat program even under the nuclear deal reached last year with the U.S. and other world powers.
North Korea even has claimed to have launched a satellite into orbit, opening up an avenue for the potential deliverance of a nuclear bomb against which experts say the United States has little protection.
In the wake of those developments, a national security expert has called for accelerated development of a space-based anti-ballistic missile system, a plan pursued three decades back.
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Former Ambassador Henry F. Cooper, assistant director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Ronald Reagan and the first director of the Strategic Defensive Initiative under President George H. W. Bush, has called for reinvigorating "Brilliant Pebbles," a space-based defense system initially started under Reagan.
Only through such a system, Cooper told WND, will the United States effectively guard against orbiting satellites that can be nuclear weapons ready to impact targets on earth or detonate in space creating an electromagnetic pulse that can knock out America's vulnerable national grid system and all life-sustaining infrastructures that depend on the grid.
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Cooper's call for such a space-based system has been reinforced recently by the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016, or NDAA, directing the Missile Defense Agency, the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to recreate a space-based defense system.
Such a system, Cooper said, will build a "truly effective ballistic missile defense system."
"We have been down this road before and should draw upon the lessons learned a quarter century ago, before the Clinton administration 'took the stars out of Star Wars,'" Cooper said.
After such a quarter century seeing the vulnerability of the U.S. to an intercontinental ballistic missile threat from Third-World countries on the rise, Cooper said U.S. military leaders now are learning "what we knew during the era of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (that) we need more cost-effective BMD (ballistic missile defense) systems."
"With full funding and the right folks in charge," Cooper said, "I believe BP (Brilliant Pebbles) could begin operations within a few years – target say five after an appropriate team is assembled to work on a crash basis."
Cooper said Defense Secretary Ashton Carter "gets it" in calling for innovation in U.S. defense systems.
Ironically, Carter in 1993 was instrumental in killing Brilliant Pebbles during the Clinton administration when he was assistant secretary of defense for Global Strategic Affairs.
"The proof for space-based defenses in particular will be in (Carter's) follow-through for this important case, which among other things is a way to make up for his part in canceling the effort over two decades ago, and ... 'Go back to the Future,'" Cooper said.
"Perhaps he will find the right place to make up for his role in killing Brilliant Pebbles in 1993 by assuring a meaningful challenge for the private sector to 'Go back to the Future' in building truly effective BMD systems," Cooper said.
Defense experts, including Cooper, say that the U.S. is ill-prepared for a pre-emptive ICBM attack from North Korea or Iran, given recent tests conducted in which missiles launched satellites into space.
On command, these satellites either can deorbit to hit a target on the ground or detonate at a high altitude, creating an EMP and knocking out vital communications and other vulnerable electronics essential for America's critical infrastructure.
In addition to communications, those vital infrastructures that depend on the vulnerable grid include banking and finance, delivery of water and food, transportation, automated control systems that include regulating the flow of oil and natural gas delivery and emergency services.
Cooper estimates that the cost of research, development and deployment of "1,000 Pebbles" and operations would be $20 billion.
Until that happens, however, Cooper told WND that it will be important to field more Aegis missile systems, which can launch missiles either from land or off of a ship.
The Aegis system already has demonstrated the ability to successfully knock out an orbiting object 153 miles in space.
As of now, Cooper said, the U.S. is especially vulnerable to missiles launched by North Korea and Iran over a south polar route. He said the Navy must place more Aegis ships in the Gulf of Mexico to mitigate this threat until the time space-based systems can be deployed.
"Yes, we should make Aegis all it can be and the Block IIA interceptor should be able to take out higher altitude satellites," Cooper said. "So can the Vandenberg (Air Force Base) GBIs (ground-based interceptors) with the right cueing information from forward-based sensors."
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