Brilliant Pebbles
Brilliant Pebbles was a space-based ballistic missile defense (BMD) system proposed by Lowell Wood and Edward Teller of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 1987, near the end of the Cold War. The system would consist of thousands of small satellites, each with missiles similar to conventional heat seeking missiles, placed in low Earth orbit constellations so that hundreds would be above the Soviet Union at all times. If the Soviets launched their ICBM fleet, the pebbles would detect their rocket motors using infrared seekers and collide with them. Because the pebble strikes the ICBM before the latter could release its warheads, each pebble could destroy several warheads with one shot.
Brilliant Pebbles is named as a play on "Smart Rocks," a concept promoted by Daniel O. Graham under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Smart Rocks envisioned at least 423 large orbital battle stations equipped with powerful sensors and carrying numerous small missiles. The Air Force states this was not possible due to limited space lift capabilities at the time. Edward Teller dismissed the idea as "outlandish" and vulnerable to anti-satellite attacks. But after their own Excalibur —an X-ray laser system powered by a nuclear warhead— failed critical tests, Teller and Lowell Wood risked losing out on the SDIO program. When SDIO realized the various directed energy weapons were nowhere near use, they revisited missile-based concepts akin to Smart Rocks. Wood introduced "Pebbles," proposing that advances in sensors and microprocessors allowed missiles to operate independently without central stations, solving many of the problems with Smart Rocks.
To intercept missiles promptly, the autonomous pebbles fly in low Earth orbit. Because of these orbit's high velocities, the pebbles are over their targets only for a brief period. Consequently, many thousands of pebbles evenly distributed around the Earth are necessary to ensure sufficient coverage. Critics contend that this global distribution renders the majority of satellites ineffective during a conflict, thereby making the system less efficient compared to localized or regional missile defense systems.
Pebbles replaced Rocks as the baseline SDI design and in 1991 it was ordered into production and became the "crowning achievement of the Strategic Defense Initiative". By this time the Soviet Union was collapsing and the perceived threat changed to shorter-range theatre ballistic missiles. Pebbles was modified, but doing so raised its weight and cost; the original design called for around 10,000 missiles and would cost $10 to $20 billion, but by 1990 the cost for 4,600 had ballooned to $55 billion. Fighting in Congress through the early 1990s led to Pebbles' cancellation in 1993, but elements of the concept re-emerged with the Space Development Agency in 2019, and later in 2025 with the Golden Dome.
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