1ac heg Advantage Scenario 1 is Leadership

Mandates

General O’REILLY. Yes. Challenges and problems associated with past satellite development programs indicate that a stable baseline and risk reduction is necessary to improving development timelines. Developing prototypes prior to making production decisions will ensure that proper Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) are achieved, thereby improving our development timelines. The PTSS acquisition strategy is to develop a prototype system with Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory before awarding production development contracts to industry. Additionally, we will award contracts to several industry participants during concept development and exploration to insure the prototype can be readily produced by industry. Industry engagement during the prototyping phase will greatly improve the level of understanding by the contractors and reduce risk for PTSS production. This partnership between industry and the scientific community will ensure our understanding of requirements before we award production development contracts. The MDA also intends to leverage heritage, high TRL space system components for the PTSS. This approach focuses on component reuse and integration and minimizes the need for new technology development and custom design which will drive costs up and increase development timelines.

Mr. LANGEVIN. What actions is MDA pursing to ensure the program establishes a realistic baseline and only uses mature technology? What technology and other lessons learned is the PTSS program taking from the STSS demonstration satellites? Finally, can you explain why MDA is planning to acquire a satellite capability when the Air Force has the primary expertise for space systems?

General O’REILLY. Challenges associated with past satellite development programs indicate that a stable baseline is necessary to improve development timelines. To that end, MDA will establish the requirements baseline upfront and early and discourage future growth without operational necessity. MDA also intends to leverage heritage, high Technology Readiness Level components and subsystems for the PTSS. This approach focuses on component reuse and integration and minimizes the need for new technology development that may drive costs up and increase development timelines.

The remarks about economic feasibility should be borne in mind, as they will surface prominently later in this history of Brilliant Pebbles (BP), a space-based, kinetic kill interceptor that was part of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program. During its brief life span, Brilliant Pebbles became the central element of the SDI program. From their orbits around the earth, BP interceptors were to be capable of destroying Soviet ICBMs during their boost phase, eliminating their multiple warheads and decoys before these could be dispersed. In this way, a single Brilliant Pebbles interceptor could destroy as many as ten Soviet warheads. This pivotal role makes the BP story crucial to the broader history of the SDI program.

But the technology was clearly established, supporting the Pentagon’s approved acquisition plan that each of the pebbles would operate autonomously because each carried the equivalent of a Cray-1 computer and could perform its own calculations for trajectory and targeting analysis. Each also had its own navigation sensors, allowing it to determine its location and the location of its neighbors – as well as to detect and track the target ballistic missiles and calculate a good approximation of what its neighbors saw.15 These pebbles would act as sensor platforms until all or part of the constellation was authorized to intercept hostile missiles. In fact, their infrared sensors provided the warning and tracking capability needed to alert the Brilliant Pebbles constellation, enabling it to intercept ballistic missiles in the boost and subsequent phases of flight. The constellation would provide a redundant and, for some applications, superior capability to the geosynchronous Defense Support Program satellites used since the early 1970s as a key element of the U.S. Early Warning and Tactical Assessment system. Their small size, meanwhile, made them difficult to target, while their relatively low cost made them easy to replace.

The autonomy of Brilliant Pebbles interceptors in detecting launch and undertaking interception complicated the use of countermeasures against their command and control. And because of the number of interceptors deployed in space, these defenses would have multiple opportunities for interception, thus increasing their chances of a successful intercept in either the boost or midcourse phase, or even high in the Earth’s atmosphere during reentry in the terminal phase. These characteristics stand in contrast to the current GMD interceptors, which may not provide more than one independent intercept opportunity.
Why BP is uniquely important

- Pebble can attack both strategic and ballistic missiles

- BP provides protection

- more autonomous and doesn’t have to rely on other systems

Baucom 9- Donald R. Baucom is The Missile Defense Agency’s historian and he directed the Air Power Research Institute at Maxwell AFB. His writings on the SDI won the Organization of American Historians’ Leopold Prize in History. Appendix in Report chaired by Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr. is Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies The Fletcher School, Tufts University President, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and Dr. William R. Van Cleave is Professor Emeritus Department of Defense and Strategic Studies Missouri State University, with Ambassador Henry F. Cooper Chairman, High Frontier former Director Strategic Defense Initiative Organization former Chief U.S. Negotiator to the Geneva Defense and Space Talks, published by Institute for Foreign policy task force in 2009, most recently published in the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Volume 29, Number 2, September 2004, 145-190, Appendix D: “The Rise and Fall of Brilliant Pebbles” in the report “Missile Defense, the Space Relationship, & the Twenty-First Century” The Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, www.ifpa.org/pdf/IWG2009.pdf p. D29
As fully articulated in SDIO’s May 1991 report to Congress, the new GPALS architecture would include four major components: a ground-based national missile defense system to protect the United States, a ground- and sea-based system to defend deployed U.S. forces and the forces and peoples of American allies, a space-based system (Brilliant Pebbles) that could protect any point on the globe against a limited missile attack, and a battle management/command and control system that integrated the other three components into a coherent, synergistic system. Of the three defensive components, Brilliant Pebbles was the most important, since it “would provide global detection of an attack” and was to be capable of destroying both strategic and theater ballistic missiles, provided the latter traveled a distance that exceeded six hundred kilometers. A later fact sheet would put the case for BP as follows:

The role of Brilliant Pebbles is vital to the GPALS mission. BP will provide global protection against ballistic missiles. While on orbit, a BP will be able to detect a hostile missile launch, decide whether or not to engage the target, and destroy the target by colliding with it. Once given intercept authority from man-in-the-loop, BP will do all of this autonomously and will communicate with other BPs to coordinate which Pebble will engage which target. The Brilliant Pebbles program represents more than an alternate design for a space-based interceptor. First, BP is a different architectural concept for the space-based segment and incorporates distributed operations, autonomy, and reduced dependence on other system operations.56 This was the state of the GPALS architecture as members of Congress began their deliberations on the authorization and appropriation bills for fiscal year 1992. As they did, images of Gulf War missile attacks were still fresh in their minds. Their efforts produced the Missile Defense Act (MDA) of 1991 that became law in November 1991.