American technology is a miniaturization is literally incredible to most of us who enjoy its benefits. The fantastic simultaneous reduction in size, weight, and cost of computers over the last ten years has been exciting to watch, a thrill to use, and easy on the pocketbook.
What we have witnessed in consumer electronics has been taking place in strategic weaponry, too. The most stunning example of this progression is in the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) area, where Star Wars has been miniaturized into Brilliant Pebbles. It parallels our progress from the old heavy main frame computer to the lap-top PC.
Brilliant Pebbles is the name given to the small, lightweight vehicles that can be deployed in space to protect American from attack by enemy or terrorist missiles. Nothing could be more important for our government to do than to defend our people and our property with the most modern technology.
Each Brilliant Pebble will measure about three feet long and weight about 100 pounds when fully fueled. Its “brains” are in silicon chip as powerful as a super computer, and its “eyes” are in an innovative wide-angle optical sensor.
Each Brilliant Pebble’s computer “brain” is capable of guiding the Pebble to its target, namely, an enemy missile traveling through space toward America. The plan is to position about 7,000 of these Brilliant Pebbles in space at a cost of $10 billion for the Pebbles themselves, $11 billion for a separate surveillance satellite system for backup telecommunications and independent validation of any attack warning, and $4 billion for the command and control capability.
These cost estimates were made by Lieut. General James A. Abrahamson in his final report. He recently retired as head of Ronald Reagan’s SDI program.
The development of defense technology since President Reagan announced his commitment to SDI in 1983 has surprised its supporters and confounded its critics. Just a few short years ago, the prevailing wisdom was that SDI’s “smart rocks” would each weigh hundreds of pounds, and the first “smart rock” used in a successful experiment in June 1984 weighed more than a ton.
The most excited part about the Brilliant Pebbles is that it makes a real defense positively practical. General Abrahamson estimates that it can be ready for deployment in two years and fully deployed in five years.
The second most exciting part about Brilliant Pebbles is that it has totally demolished the argument that SDI would be too expensive to deploy. Brilliant Pebbles offers us the way to cut defense spending while increasing our defense.
When Defense Secretary Dick Cheney announced that he would seek only $4.6 billion in spending for research and development of SDI in fiscal 1990, the New York Times headlined the story “Bush Plans to Cut Reagan Requests for Key Weapons; Star Wars Shift.” The fact is that the reduction in costs was caused by the exciting new breakthroughs in SDI technology, not by any lack of enthusiasm on the part of Secretary Cheney or President Bush.
SDI supporters prefer President Bush’s wholehearted support for $4.6 billion to any half-hearted support for a larger figure. Instead of building costly, cumbersome systems, we can now build swarms of small, cheap, “brainy” rockets that can locate and, with deadly accuracy, destroy enemy missiles by force of impacts.
Despite the exciting and newsworthy advances that have made Brilliant Pebbles the obvious and preferred defense plan of the future, the news media are giving more column inches and TV minutes to a $40-$50 billion offensive nuclear system called Midgetman. That weapon is aptly named: it is a midget when it comes to providing any defense.
Midgetman, a small, single-warhead ICBM riding around our highways on trucks, is being used as a political fall guy by those who don’t want America to have any defensive system that can shoot down attacking missiles. Midgetman is the last hurrah of those who advocate Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).
Midgetman does nothing to defend Americans from attack, and almost nothing to deter the Soviets or terrorists from attacking us. We can’t afford to buy midgets (which are “dumb,” slow, and very costly) when instead we could buy Brilliant Pebbles (which are “smart,” fast, and inexpensive).
Brilliant Pebbles are not only smart vehicles but are brilliant politics, too, because they will give us a quality defense that is available and affordable. Only dumb politics stands in the way of giving America the defense we need.
