Demand Cost-Effective Defenses and Stay the Course This Time!
by AMBASSADOR HENRY F. COOPER
August 4, 2016
"There is no upper bound to the cost of a program the sponsor doesn't want to do and doesn't know how to do." ~ Dr. William R. Graham, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Ronald Reagan
Bill Graham is a dear friend and a long-time (over a half-century) colleague in battles with the bureaucracy to overcome this tendency to drive up the cost estimates of systems the "powers that be" don't like and, as a corollary that I would add, to reject the most sensible and cost-effective technical solutions in favor of adhering to alternatives they like even though they are much more expensive and sometimes unworkable.
For example, the picture below recalls an important 1989 White House Situation Room meeting with President Reagan that launched the most important ballistic missile defense (BMD) system concept of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Bill, then serving as President Reagan's Science Advisor, is at the right end of the table. Under the cloak on the table was a full scale model of a Brilliant Pebble, then the highly classified product of creative thinking of a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) team led by Dr. Lowell Wood (leaning up to the Table on the left - next to Dr. Edward Teller) under the sponsorship of USAF Lt. General James A. Abrahamson - on the right next to Bill.
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