08-07-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Why Did ‘Brilliant Pebbles' Fail to Launch?
I applaud J.D. Crouch II's op-ed 'The Case for Space Defense' (June 30) and agree with most of his review of key elements of the U.S.'s missile-defense history. He loses me, however, when he writes that in 1990 'managing even a few dozen satellites was daunting,' that 'onboard computing capabilities were limited' and that 'the deployment cost for 1,000 satellites was estimated at $23 billion in 2025 dollars.'
Eight years ago, I wrote a letter in these pages with Lt. Gen. James A. Abrahamson ('Space-Based Defense Is Best, and Cheapest'). We were both directors of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative and noted that the Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptors were much more feasible than their detractors suggested at the time. The technology was the first formally Pentagon-approved SDI program, with an estimated cost of $10 billion in 1988 dollars for concept definition, development, testing, deployment and 20 years of operation of 1,000 Brilliant Pebbles. That wasn't expensive, we noted, 'especially since this system . . . was designed to intercept attacking ballistic missiles in their boost phase while their rockets still burn, before they can release their decoys and other countermeasures.'
