"Chemical Lasers Are Out, Solid-State Lasers Failed Too": Former SDI Chief Engineer Dr. Andrew Motes on Three Decades of Directed Energy Failures and Why Space-to-Space Combat Defines the Next World War

The weapon would have worked. The Soviet Union collapsed. So they canceled the program.

That's the part of the Star Wars story nobody tells you. In 1993, Brilliant Pebbles was ready for deployment: kinetic energy weapons that could knock incoming missiles out of the sky using nothing more sophisticated than ball bearings and physics. The technology wasn't difficult. However, the enemy had already fallen.

But here's what Dr. R. Andrew Motes learned in a classified meeting when he was 36 years old, serving as Chief of the Brilliant Eyes Satellite Program Engineering Office: the real mission was never just stopping missiles. It was bankrupting the Soviet economy by forcing them into an arms race they couldn't win. Ambassador Henry Cooper, who directed SDI, told him directly. Six months later, the Soviet Union collapsed. Mission accomplished. Program terminated.

That was just the beginning of a pattern Motes would watch repeat for three decades.

The 747 with a megawatt-class chemical laser (essentially "a bomb with wings") that couldn't be safely deployed near combat zones. The Navy's 100-kilowatt-class solid-state system that worked in testing but, according to unofficial reports, achieved embarrassingly short range at sea level. The hundreds of  millions spent on airborne platforms, all defeated by things as mundane as technical complexity, atmospheric turbulence, and system weight. Program after program, technically feasible but nearly useless operationally.

Motes didn't just observe these failures. He wrote the textbook on high-power fiber lasers that became the Bible for laser weapon development. He created laser simulation software the State Department classified as critical weapons technology. He spent two years thinking like a terrorist, finding low-tech attack vectors against American infrastructure. (He was building a kit airplane with a bomb when 9/11 happened. The terrorists just chose an even simpler method.)

Now he watches new proposals for space-based defense and wonders if anyone learned anything. Three decades of directed energy weapons development taught him one brutal lesson: complexity kills deployment. But the story of why these programs failed reveals something deeper about how America wages technological warfare, and why we might be repeating the exact same mistakes as threats multiply in orbit.

China maneuvers satellites within meters of American reconnaissance assets right now. A single detonation could trigger debris cascades that render entire orbital zones unusable for decades. Hypersonic missiles with unpredictable trajectories make traditional missile defense obsolete. And the fundamental problem remains unsolved: how do you defend satellites against an enemy determined to destroy them?

Some of the barriers that killed chemical lasers three decades ago are killing solid-state lasers today. However, the technology that has, so far, failed as a weapon will succeed as space communications infrastructure. And the threats aren't exotic. They become obvious once you think like the enemy.

The question is whether we'll figure out what actually works before the shooting starts.

You worked on SDI, THEL, and ABL (three major directed energy programs across three decades). I recently interviewed Ambassador Cooper, SDI Director during your time on the program. He argued Brilliant Pebbles was "killed for political, not technological reasons." From your technical perspective, what actually prevented these programs from deployment (politics or physics)?

"Ambassador Cooper is absolutely right. It was canceled for political reasons in 1993 under Clinton." But understanding why requires understanding how the technology evolved. "Originally, the program was going to use a laser weapon to take out the reentry vehicles. At the time, the only laser that could put out that much power was a chemical laser. We envisioned putting a chemical laser on a satellite."

Chemical lasers work like controlled explosions that produce light instead of fire. They mix highly toxic substances like hydrogen fluoride or deuterium fluoride, channeling the explosive energy into a beam. It’s like strapping a miniature rocket engine that shoots light instead of flame, powerful, but volatile and impossible to refuel once it’s in orbit. “That turned out to be far more difficult than anyone anticipated,” Motes recalls. “First, you’d run out of fuel quickly and need some way to refuel it. Second, there was significant vibration from the pumps and other components, and lasers don’t tolerate vibrations well. This made aiming extremely difficult. Then there’s the fact that the chemicals themselves are very dangerous. Getting all this into space would be hazardous to humans.”

The program pivoted to something much simpler. "Eventually the concept evolved into a kinetic energy weapon. One approach was the shotgun effect: throw out a bunch of ball bearings in the direction the reentry vehicle was traveling. When one strikes it, it either penetrates or damages the vehicle enough that it destroys itself on reentry." Kinetic energy weapons rely on basic physics: mass times de-acceleration equals impact force, and objects in motion tend to remain in motion. At orbital velocities of 7,000+ meters per second, even a ball bearing carries enough energy to punch through steel. No explosives, no fuel, no complex guidance systems. Just physics.

By the time Clinton canceled it, the technology worked. "It was very low-tech and practical. That was the concept when it was canceled. I completely agree with Ambassador Cooper. It was canceled for political reasons." Motes explains the strategic context most people miss. "Sometimes I call it Star Wars because everybody knows that term. It was really a tool in Reagan's toolbox for collapsing the Soviet economy."

He remembers the moment this became clear. "I was in a meeting with Ambassador Cooper when I was about 36. I was Chief of the Brilliant Eyes Satellite Program Engineering Office, and he told me personally that our real objective with the Star Wars program was to destroy the Soviet economy." The logic was elegant. "I quickly figured out how that would work. If the Soviets believed we were going to be successful, they'd be forced to pump massive resources into it, which they couldn't afford. We would have bankrupted them."

This mirrors the strategy that won the Cold War without firing a shot. The Soviet Union spent itself into collapse trying to match American military technology advances. Reagan's defense buildup forced Moscow to choose between feeding its people and matching America's military spending. They chose military spending. The economy collapsed. History proved the strategy correct. "About six months after he told me that, it actually happened. That's when the Soviet Union collapsed. I believe I actually helped destroy Soviet communism. It’s life-affirming when you realize that you helped change World history."

The cancellation followed naturally from success. "After the Soviet Union collapsed, one of the reasons for the Star Wars program's existence disappeared. The purpose of destroying the Soviet economy didn't exist anymore.” Motes sketches Clinton's calculation. "Clinton must have assumed that Russia was a wounded animal. They didn't have the power they had before when leading the Soviet Union. He didn't think we needed to be afraid of them anymore, afraid of their nuclear weapons. That helped Clinton decide we didn't need to spend the money anymore."

The pattern would repeat throughout Motes' career: strategic success makes programs look unnecessary, so they get canceled. The technology works, the mission succeeds, but the program dies anyway. Meanwhile, the next generation of directed energy weapons was already taking shape.

You're currently simulating blue lasers against hypersonic missiles. What's changed since the SDI era that makes directed energy viable now? And what barriers remain that no one wants to admit?

Motes immediately clarifies his role. "I don't conduct research on blue lasers. A friend wanted to show people that blue lasers are just as viable as any other laser for weapon applications. He asked me to run the simulation, and to convince me, he offered to make me a co-author on his paper. I did it for him at no charge. With my software, I could complete it in about an hour. I did it for him and his company, and he published it." The caveat matters. "I'm retired, so I'm cautioning you not to connect me too closely with ongoing directed energy research."

Motes has strong opinions about what changed after SDI ended. "After the SDI program, people mostly lost interest in chemical lasers, except for the Airborne Laser. For some reason, they thought we couldn't put one on a satellite, but we could put one on an airplane." The Airborne Laser mounted a megawatt-class chemical laser on a modified Boeing 747. The aircraft could theoretically shoot down ballistic missiles during their boost phase, when the rocket motors made them easy to track. Tests showed it could work. But operational deployment revealed fatal flaws. The engineering reality defeated the concept. "It had to be a very large airplane. It had to be a 747. Even then, after I worked on it (I was a big believer in the program and worked on it for several years), I started to realize the concept didn't make sense. Chemical lasers are very dangerous, even before you fire them. The Airborne Laser used a copper-oxygen-iodine laser with very hazardous materials."

Flying the Airborne Laser was like strapping a chemistry lab filled with rocket fuel to a 747. The chemicals are more hazardous than gasoline, and you're deliberately reacting them together at 30,000 feet to generate energy. "To fly that airplane was like flying a bomb with wings. It's difficult to deploy that anywhere close to a combat situation. You'd have to fly far off just to get to your area of responsibility. But it worked. It was tested and it worked, but it was extremely complex and very expensive."

Motes' engineering philosophy emerges clearly. "Even as an engineer and physicist who enjoys designing complex systems, I don't believe in deploying complex systems. There are too many failure modes, and they're too difficult to maintain." The conclusion became inevitable. "Even the chemical laser weapon didn't make sense. Somebody in Washington finally wised up and said we're wasting our money. That's hard for me to say because I was part of the program. But I agree with the decision."

His verdict on chemical lasers carries the weight of decades of experience. "Chemical lasers are completely out. We will never build a laser weapon based on chemical lasers. It's not going to happen." With chemical lasers definitively eliminated, the government turned to what seemed like a more promising alternative: solid-state lasers.

Solid-state lasers use electrical power instead of chemical reactions. No toxic fuel, no vibration from pumps, easier to maintain. You can power them with diesel generators, which are already standard in combat zones. The technology sounds perfect. "They run off electricity and you can generate electricity from diesel. That makes sense. Combat situations always have plenty of diesel fuel available for tanks and trucks. It's already on hand. No problem deploying diesel."

But fundamental physics creates new problems. "The problem I saw with solid-state lasers is they don't put out much power, and they're not very efficient. Right now, the most efficient solid-state laser is a fiber laser, 30 to 40 percent efficient, which is actually quite good for solid-state. But it's still not good enough. If you want to output 100 kilowatts, you're going to have to generate almost 300 kilowatts. Only 100 kilowatts goes out as laser light, but 200 kilowatts gets generated as heat." That’s a thermal nightmare. It’s like running forty kitchen ovens inside a metal box and wondering why it’s getting hot. Engineers can’t just open a window – every degree of excess heat threatens the system’s survival in the field.

"Now you have to have a large cooler for the system. You end up with a very large system if you want tactical utility, enough power to be tactically useful, somewhere between 100 to 200 kilowatts. That's difficult to achieve even with a solid-state laser." The complexity keeps growing. "The other issue is they're very complex. It wouldn't be too complex if you didn't have to deal with the fact that when you're shooting a laser through air, it gets distorted significantly."

Motes offers a familiar example of atmospheric turbulence. "You remember driving down the highway on a hot summer day and looking down the highway and seeing a car maybe a mile away. It's distorted and seems to move in and out of focus. That's the kind of distortion you get with a laser beam through the atmosphere." Hot air rises, cold air sinks, creating pockets of different density that bend light like a funhouse mirror. Your eyes see this as shimmering heat waves. A laser sees it as constantly shifting distortion that destroys focus.

"You find it very difficult to focus the beam on target, which means you have to have a very complex system for phase front correction. Now you're talking about a system that's very complex and very expensive. Put that in a combat situation where soldiers need to maintain it, and it's not going to happen."

Motes was losing faith in the entire concept. "I'm starting to lose confidence in the whole concept of laser weapons. It's just too difficult to do through the atmosphere, especially on the ocean." The Navy seemed like the ideal customer. "The Navy made sense because they have plenty of power to generate on the ship, and they can strap it down to the ship with a lot of room. It can be a big, heavy system, all strapped down with minimal vibrations. It made sense for them to be the first to deploy this." Yet physics intervened again. "The atmospheric conditions at sea level are even worse than they are on land. My understanding is that they found the limited range of the weapon degraded its usefulness."

The Navy's AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System (LaWS) was installed on USS Ponce in 2014 for field testing in the Persian Gulf. The 30-kilowatt system successfully engaged drones and small boats during its deployment from 2014 to 2017, demonstrating the technology could work in operational conditions. However, LaWS never entered mass production due to operational problems including bulky capacitors with long charge times, difficulty tracking small targets, and problems producing a single synchronized beam from its six emitters. When USS Ponce was decommissioned in 2017, the LaWS system was moved to USS Portland for continued testing, but was ultimately replaced by the more advanced High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system.

The story repeats itself. Three decades after SDI, the fundamental problems persist. Atmospheric distortion remains unsolved. Thermal management remains unsolved. Complexity remains unsolved. The same barriers that killed chemical lasers continue killing solid-state lasers. But there's one environment where these barriers simply don't exist.

Lasers will transform space operations, just not as weapons. "Laser communications is the technology of the future for space-based systems," Motes says with conviction. "Let's say you have a 1,000-pound RF transmitter on a satellite. I can probably bring that down to a couple of pounds for a laser communication system, and it would require much less power."

Free-space optical communication uses lasers to transmit data through vacuum. No atmosphere means no scattering, allowing extremely narrow beams that are hard to intercept and require minimal power. "The future of space communications is laser technology, laser communication. You can take that to the bank. A lot of people are starting to realize it. A lot of companies are investing in that. NASA itself has said that's the future of space communication, especially deep-space communications."

But Motes sees a path forward for weapons if the research priorities change. "If laser weapons are to become viable in the future, solid-state lasers must become more efficient. One area of research needed is to increase the efficiency of solid-state lasers." The technology exists. The physics works. What's missing is a breakthrough in efficiency that reduces thermal loads to manageable levels.

The irony is perfect. Laser weapons through the atmosphere? Decades of failure. Laser communications in space? The technology that will enable everything from deep space missions to orbital data centers. Same physics. Different environment. Completely different outcomes. But even atmospheric weapons might work if someone solves the efficiency problem that's plagued solid-state systems since the beginning.

Your PhD combined laser physics with navigation and control theory (exactly what space-based defense requires). How do the targeting lessons from ABL and THEL apply to defending against anti-satellite weapons and orbital threats today?

Motes worked with Israeli defense on THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) twenty years ago. "I worked with the Israelis on that. That was a chemical laser using deuterium fluoride, another very hazardous chemical. It was canceled for the same reason other laser programs were canceled. Chemical lasers don't make sense." Israel's current Iron Beam system represents the evolution from chemical to solid-state technology. "If they continue to develop a laser weapon, it's probably a solid-state laser. Probably a fiber laser. I anticipated early on that fiber lasers would become the weapon of choice, so I wrote the textbook on high-power fiber lasers. Now it's used globally as the standard reference for developing solid-state laser weapons."

Fiber lasers use optical fibers doped with rare-earth elements, like ytterbium or erbium. Pump light excites these atoms along the fiber length, and they emit coherent laser light that gets amplified as it travels. Think of it like a fluorescent tube where every atom along the length adds more light to the beam, except instead of random glow, you get a tightly focused, high-power laser.

Motes sketches what Iron Beam likely involves. "It's probably about a 100-kilowatt laser, solid-state. Again, you have the problem with generating significant heat, which means you have to cool the laser before you can fire it again. Of course, this limits the duty cycle. You can't just keep firing continuously. You fire, then recharge and dissipate the heat before firing again."

This is the critical operational limitation. A machine gun fires until the ammo runs out. A laser fires until it overheats – then must cool before firing again. Against a missile swarm, those cooling gaps are fatal. The weapon goes silent exactly when you need continuous fire. "When you're dealing with a swarm of missiles like Israelis have to deal with, it doesn't make much sense. It can be one of the elements in your defensive system, but it can't be the only one."

But everything changes when you remove atmosphere from the equation, which is why Motes sees space as the real future for directed energy weapons. “Lasers make a lot more sense as a weapon in space because you don’t have to deal with the atmosphere,” Motes says. “I’m talking about space-to-space defense.” The physics are clean. No turbulence, no heat distortion, no air to scatter light. It’s like turning off the fog machine at a concert: the beam finally cuts perfectly through the dark. “It’s almost an ideal weapon for space-to-space combat,” he adds. “If you know where another satellite is going to attack from, it doesn’t even have to be high power. It can be just strong enough to blind the sensors.”

In a vacuum, those same physics become nearly perfect. With no air to absorb or distort the beam, a laser’s effective range is limited mainly by diffraction and distance. “If you know where another satellite is going to attack from, you don’t need megawatts,” he explains. “A relatively modest laser can blind optical sensors long enough to render a spacecraft useless.” Think of shining a flashlight into a camera lens from a few feet away – you don’t destroy the camera, but the glare makes it functionally blind.

This is the elegant solution. You don't need megawatts to destroy a satellite. You just need enough power to permanently damage or temporarily blind its optical sensors. A satellite that can't see is a satellite that can't function. The implications for space security are profound: the technology barrier for attacking orbital assets keeps dropping while the cost of defending them keeps rising. And the adversaries aren't hypothetical – they're already maneuvering into position.

SpaceX has made launch affordable, your HeWoP-F simulation software costs a fraction of legacy defense tools, and you're doing professional weapon simulations as an independent consultant. Could a small nation (or even a well-funded non-state actor) realistically develop space-based directed energy capabilities outside traditional defense channels? What does this mean for space security?

"If they can, and I think they can. If you put a small laser on board, it could even be a commercial laser. The only trick then is doing pointing and tracking. You could purchase a laser off the shelf and put it on your satellite." Commercial lasers powerful enough to damage sensors are readily available. The technology isn't exotic anymore. Any university with a decent physics department has lasers that could blind satellite sensors. "We should be very worried about that. It doesn't take a highly sophisticated country to do that anymore."

Motes has thought deeply about asymmetric threats. "I worked for two years as a red team analyst. My job was to figure out ways to attack the United States using very low technology." This was pre-9/11 red teaming. The job was thinking like America's enemies, finding vulnerabilities nobody had considered. "When 9/11 happened, I was working on a concept where terrorists were purchasing Titan Tornado kit airplanes, putting bombs on them, and flying them into buildings. We assumed they would do it remotely, not manned. We were building one to see how difficult it would be when 9/11 happened."

The terrorists chose an even simpler method. "We canceled the program then because we realized they'd just fly the airplane into the building. They wouldn't do it remotely." The lesson stuck with Motes. "To defeat an enemy, you need to think like the enemy. That was our entire job—to pretend to be the enemy and think like them, so the U.S. military could figure out ways to defend against those low-tech solutions."

The pattern holds in space. Low-tech solutions defeat high-tech defenses more often than anyone admits. A $100 drone can take out a million-dollar radar system. A commercial laser mounted on a small satellite can blind a billion-dollar spy satellite. The proliferation risk extends beyond nations. Non-state actors with sufficient funding could acquire these capabilities, yet space security still assumes only nations can threaten orbital assets. That assumption is becoming dangerously outdated.

You've written 20+ books and created HeWoP-F simulation software used for laser weapon design. When defense contractors or DoD come to you with proposed systems, what's the gap between their PowerPoint claims and what your simulations reveal actually works?

Motes sells licenses for his simulation software, though not as many as you might expect. "Foreign governments are very interested in my software, but not the US government. The US government spent probably $100 million developing their own codes, and they want to use those. I wrote my own code in my spare time at home after leaving government service. My code uses a completely different and faster mathematical method for propagating laser beams through the atmosphere with turbulence."

His customers remain discreet. "Even my customers who buy it don't tell me much about their laser systems. It makes sense, so I know very little about their systems." But he knows who's interested. "The interesting thing is that I know all the countries that are interested in building directed energy weapons, because they've all approached me." They learned about his code by reading his books on laser beam probation simulation methods.

The State Department controls who can access the technology. "I go through the State Department before selling to any other country because the State Department has declared my code to be critical US weapons technology. Anytime I want to sell a license to another country, I go through them and get approval first."

Motes maintains standards. "I don't sell to just anyone. I won't sell to anyone who I consider an enemy, or not a good ally. I totally refuse.

The technical gap between claims and reality appears in another of his books. "In the book I wrote on designing laser weapons, I show how close you can get by just using equations. But then I take the same design and run it through my simulation and get more refined values. It turns out that final numbers are very close regardless. Which means that you can just use basic equations to get very close to a solution on a laser weapon without using a simulation." This is both reassuring and concerning. Reassuring because the physics works the way the equations predict. Concerning because anyone with basic physics knowledge and a calculator can design a functional laser weapon.

"There's enough information out there in books for people to design laser weapons. It may take them a month or two without the simulation, but they can get really close to a solution if they take the time." The barrier to entry keeps dropping. Sophisticated simulation software helps, but the fundamentals are accessible to anyone with technical training. The gap between PowerPoint and reality exists, but it's smaller than most people assume. The real constraints come from engineering implementation, not theoretical design.

Which raises the question: if the physics is well understood and the design tools are widely available, why do these programs keep failing? Are we learning from past mistakes, or simply repeating them with newer technology?

You retired from federal service in 2012 after watching billions spent on programs that never deployed. Looking at today's half-trillion-dollar Iron Dome proposals and renewed airborne laser programs, are we repeating the exact same mistakes, or have we actually learned from SDI, THEL, and ABL?

"One lesson we learned was don't use chemical weapons. But another lesson we need to learn is don't try to put a laser weapon on an aircraft. The issue of atmospheric turbulence is magnified 100 times on an airplane." He spent years trying to prevent this mistake. "I spent years telling the government not to spend money putting lasers on aircraft anymore, but they did anyway, and wasted hundreds of millions of dollars. None of them were ever deployed, which I told them would happen." The frustration shows. "I know that sounds a bit egotistical, but it's just the truth. I'm a taxpayer, and I hate to see them wasting my money on airborne laser weapons that aren't going to work." Current programs face similar problems. "I think trying to develop an Iron Dome for the USA is going to be really expensive and probably ineffective."

The reason centers on hypersonic missiles. "It's not just the speed of those weapons that makes them difficult to take out. It's the fact that they're maneuverable. They don't follow a ballistic trajectory. The reason we can shoot a missile out of the sky with another missile is because we can predict its trajectory. We solve the equation of motion and say it's going to be here two minutes in the future, and we shoot for that position."

“A hypersonic missile has aerodynamic control surfaces – you can’t predict where it’s going to be in the future. It’s impossible to take out with a kinetic-energy weapon,” Motes explains. It’s the difference between intercepting a basketball shot and catching a hummingbird. It’s moving fast, darting unpredictably, and you only get one chance to react. “That’s what makes defending against them so difficult.”

The defensive problem remains unsolved. "Bringing that back to weapons, or defensive weapons, it's very hard to answer because it's going to be so hard to defend satellites. We need to get intelligent people in a room and start brainstorming, because right now I can't think of a really good way to defend satellites against an enemy. We need new ideas."

China is maneuvering satellites within meters of American reconnaissance assets right now. You spent two years as a red team analyst thinking like a terrorist to find low-tech attack vectors against US infrastructure. From that perspective, what's the simplest, most accessible way an adversary could trigger a Kessler cascade that renders orbital space unusable for decades?

Motes knows Paul Szymanski, the strategist who has spent decades developing space warfare doctrine. "I know him. He has dedicated his life to convincing people that we need to protect our assets in space. Because the next World War will start in space." The logic seems obvious once stated. "Just think about it. All of our banking, basically communication, goes through satellites. Much of our military communication goes through satellites. So if they can take out our communication satellites, observation satellites, they take out our warfighting capability." That makes satellites the first target in any future conflict.

Since retiring in 2012, Motes no longer receives classified briefings, but he pays close attention to public information. "I don't get the classified briefings I used to get, but I'd be very afraid of Chinese capabilities in space. Just from non-classified information I'm seeing online, I think we've been observing Chinese satellites moving around, maneuvering in space close to US satellites to get information about them." Chinese satellites conduct close-approach operations. "They probably have cameras on board, looking at our satellites to see if they can figure out what ours are, whether they're commercial or military."

The attack methods require minimal sophistication. "If you can easily get close to another satellite, you can just detonate a bomb on your satellite and take them both out." Motes offers one defensive measure, though it has limits. "Having a laser on board just to blind the enemy satellites might be a good approach first, because if you blind them, hopefully it gives you time to dodge them." But defensive maneuvers only work if you see the attack coming. The real nightmare scenario doesn't involve precision strikes at all, it's about creating a cascading chain reaction.

What concerns Motes most is the Kessler Syndrome, a catastrophic feedback loop where destroying one satellite produces debris that destroys others, producing even more debris. "Here's something you should be concerned with. SpaceX has thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit. One could easily be destroyed. If I were an enemy and I really wanted to destroy a whole bunch of satellites at one time, even if it takes out my own satellites, I'd take out one of the Starlink satellites, blow it up, create thousands of tiny pieces of shrapnel. They take out other satellites." Each collision multiplies the threat until entire orbital zones become unusable. "Eventually they're all gone, including your own. But that's one way to take out all of our satellites."

The precedent exists. China's 2007 anti-satellite test generated more than 3,000 pieces of trackable debris. "They can do that for sure." The danger isn't limited to deliberate attacks. "That can happen by accident. We have a lot of meteors. One of those satellites could be taken out by a meteor, and the same thing could happen. It wouldn't have to be very large. It could be the size of a golf ball, and you can't detect that coming."

Space is full of objects traveling at orbital velocities. A paint chip carries enough kinetic energy to damage solar panels. A bolt can punch through aluminum. A golf-ball-sized rock can destroy a satellite completely. And we can't see them coming. The defense problem remains fundamentally unsolved. Motes has no good answers, and nobody else seems to either. The next World War will start in space. We're not ready for it.

Beyond weapons development, Motes has dedicated his retirement to democratizing space knowledge. "I write satellite orbit simulation software for educational purposes. There’s no charge, you download it for free. It's also a companion for my book on orbital mechanics." He gets pushback for his approach. "I'm getting pushback from the experts in orbital mechanics on my book because I showed that you can teach it at a high school level. I think they just love hearing the phrase, 'It ain't rocket science.' It makes them sound smart."

Motes demonstrated otherwise. "My latest book on orbital mechanics uses a revolutionary new technique for teaching the subject that uses very little mathematics." The resistance reveals what he's challenging: the gatekeeping that keeps complex subjects inaccessible. Making advanced concepts understandable without heavy math threatens the mystique. But it also opens doors for the next generation of engineers who might solve the problems Motes' generation couldn't.

Author's Analysis

Scenario 1: The Accidental Cascade

A golf-ball-sized meteor (untrackable, undetectable) impacts a Starlink satellite at 17,000 mph during routine operations. The satellite disintegrates into thousands of fragments. Each piece becomes a projectile traveling at orbital velocity. Within two hours, the debris field expands. Fragments impact three neighboring satellites. Those collisions spawn more debris. The cascade accelerates.

By hour twelve, tracking systems register 47 new collision events. Ground controllers try emergency maneuvers on nearby satellites, but orbital mechanics move slowly. You can't dodge in space like in movies. Course corrections take hours to plan, more hours to execute. The debris field doesn't wait for your response.

By hour 48, low Earth orbit becomes unusable. Every satellite in the debris field's path faces certain destruction. GPS goes dark. Communications constellations fail. Earth observation satellites go silent. The damage isn't reversible. Orbital mechanics dictate that debris will persist for decades, possibly centuries depending on altitude. Nobody attacked anyone. A random rock ended humanity's access to orbital space.

Who pays for this? How do you restart a space program when launching anything into that debris field means suicide? What happens to your smartphone when GPS dies permanently? What happens to global shipping, to precision agriculture, to aviation, to financial systems that depend on GPS timestamps?

Motes spent decades designing weapons. This scenario doesn't require weapons. Just physics.

Scenario 2: The First-Mover Advantage

Taiwan tensions escalate. China wants to move fast enough that American reinforcements can't arrive. But American surveillance satellites watch everything. Troop movements. Ship deployments. Supply staging. The satellites see it all in real-time, giving American and allied forces hours or days of warning.

So China doesn't invade first. They blind the satellites.

Pre-positioned Chinese satellites, already maneuvering near American reconnaissance assets for months, activate low-power commercial lasers. Not powerful enough to destroy. Just enough to permanently damage optical sensors. The satellites still orbit. They still transmit. They just can't see anything. At the same time, GPS satellites experience "technical difficulties." Timing signals become unreliable. Position data degrades.

American military communications depend on satellite links. Those links start dropping. Not all at once (that would be too obvious). Just enough to create confusion, delay responses, force commanders to rely on slower, less secure alternatives.

By the time anyone realizes it's a coordinated attack and not technical failures, Chinese forces are moving. American satellites can't provide reconnaissance. GPS-guided weapons can't hit targets precisely. Coordination between Pacific forces becomes difficult. The invasion happens faster than satellite-based early warning could have enabled a response.

China didn't fire missiles at satellites. They didn't create debris. They used commercially available lasers that any university physics department owns. The blinding happened slowly enough that each incident looked like equipment failure until the pattern became undeniable. By then, the window for responding had closed.

Does the U.S. escalate to active defense of remaining satellites, risking debris cascades? Do they accept temporary blindness and hope terrestrial forces can respond without space-based intelligence? Do they retaliate against Chinese satellites, triggering the cascade they feared? How do you prove, legally and diplomatically, that sensor failures were enemy attacks and not equipment age?

Motes designed laser systems for decades. He knows exactly how much power you need to blind a sensor. It's not much. Those systems are commercially available now.

Scenario 3: The Non-State Actor

A well-funded terrorist organization (not a nation-state, just a group with access to cryptocurrency and patience) decides American orbital assets are legitimate targets. They don't build their own satellites. They contract with a commercial launch provider. The satellite goes up as a "communications relay" or "earth observation platform." Completely legal. Paperwork filed. Inspections passed.

Once in orbit, the satellite maneuvers close to American military reconnaissance satellites. Nobody can stop it. There's no traffic control in space. No rules about maintaining distance. No enforcement mechanism even if rules existed. The satellite positions itself within meters of a billion-dollar surveillance platform.

The terrorist organization spent maybe $50 million on the launch and satellite. Probably less. They have a simple explosive charge. Nothing sophisticated. Just enough to destroy both satellites (theirs and the American one). They accept the loss of their assets. That's the point. Asymmetric warfare. They trade $50 million to destroy American assets worth billions.

The explosion creates a debris field. That debris impacts other satellites. Those impacts create more debris. The cascade starts. Not because a nation-state attacked. Because a non-state actor with sufficient funding and patience exploited the complete absence of orbital security rules.

Does the U.S. retaliate? Against whom? The satellite was registered to a shell company in a country with minimal oversight. The funding came through cryptocurrency. The terrorist organization claims credit but operates from territories where military strikes would violate sovereignty or risk escalation. Traditional deterrence doesn't work when the enemy has no orbital assets to lose and accepts martyrdom.

How do you prevent the next attack? Inspect every commercial satellite before launch? That kills the commercial space industry. Deploy active defense systems that can shoot down approaching satellites? That creates the debris problem you were trying to avoid. Accept that orbital assets are vulnerable and can't be defended?

Motes spent two years thinking like a terrorist. He was building a kit airplane with a bomb when 9/11 proved terrorists pick simpler methods. The space version is simpler still: buy commercial access, position near target, detonate. The barriers to entry keep dropping.

Scenario 4: The Slow Squeeze

No dramatic attack. No sudden cascade. Just steady, patient degradation. China continues maneuvering satellites close to American assets. They photograph everything. Map every component. Identify every vulnerability. They don't attack. They just watch. Occasionally, satellites experience "anomalies." Sensors malfunction. Batteries drain faster than predicted. Solar panels underperform. Could be age. Could be radiation. Could be targeted attacks using systems so low-power they leave no evidence.

American satellite operators respond with more inspection satellites. Those satellites need protection too. More satellites, more complexity, more potential failure points. The costs escalate. Each replacement satellite costs hundreds of millions or billions. Each launch carries risk. The orbital environment degrades slowly as both sides add more satellites, creating more potential collision scenarios.

Private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin democratize space access. More nations launch satellites. More companies offer commercial access. The orbital environment becomes crowded. Collision risks increase not from attacks but from sheer density. Debris from one accidental collision threatens everyone's satellites.

Traditional deterrence assumes you can retaliate against enemy assets. But what if the adversary accepts mutual vulnerability? What if they calculate that America depends more on satellites than they do? What if they're willing to sacrifice their orbital assets to blind American capabilities because their military can fight without satellites better than American forces can?

No one fires the first shot. The conflict never becomes "war" by traditional definitions. It's just steady pressure, increasing vulnerability, rising costs, and no clear path to security. You can't win. You can't de-escalate. You can't even clearly identify when peace ends and conflict begins.

What's the exit strategy from a slow-motion disaster where every solution creates new problems? Do you accept vulnerability and redesign military operations to work without satellites? Do you deploy active defenses knowing they might trigger cascades? Do you pursue arms control treaties with adversaries who might not honor them?

Motes doesn't have answers. Nobody does. But he's certain about one thing: atmospheric laser weapons won't solve this. Three decades proved that. The next World War starts in space, and we're still arguing about whether to put lasers on airplanes.

In Summary

Four scenarios. Four different paths to the same outcome. In every case, the fundamental problem persists: we don't know how to defend satellites against determined adversaries. We can't stop accidents from cascading. We can't prevent commercial access from enabling attacks. We can't maintain control as orbital space becomes contested.

Motes spent his career watching programs fail because complexity killed deployment. Now he watches complexity in space grow exponentially while defensive options shrink. Chemical lasers failed. Solid-state lasers have failed so far. Kinetic interceptors create the debris problem they're meant to solve. Active defense triggers cascades. Passive defense means accepting vulnerability.

What scenario are we actually preparing for? What happens when the shooting starts and we realize we're not ready?

About Dr. R. Andrew (Andy) Motes

Dr. R. Andrew (Andy) Motes has over 50 years of experience as an electronic technician, engineer, and physicist. He received his BS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Arkansas in 1978; his MS degree in Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1979 with a specialty in air and spacecraft Navigation, Guidance, and Control theory; and his PhD in 1987 from the University of New Mexico with a specialty in laser physics and electro-optics. All his degrees were earned while serving in the US Air Force. Among many other programs, he worked on President Reagan's SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars") program, the Army's THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) program, the Air Force's ABL (Airborne Laser) program, and NASA's Next Generation Space Communications Relay program. He has been licensed to practice engineering in multiple states including New Mexico, Colorado, and Arkansas. He has written more than 20 books, many scientific journal and magazine articles, and nine commercial educational software packages that include the award winning and best-selling software called School-Mom and more recently a free 3D satellite orbit simulator and space mission designer for the Windows OS. He taught Astronautical Engineering and control theory at the US Air Force Academy, Physics and Electronic Design at John Brown University, retired from the US Air Force Reserves in 2007 at the rank of Colonel, and retired from federal civil service at the Air Force Research Laboratory in 2012. Many of his books have been written since retirement.

Resources:

• Free Satellite Orbit Simulator Software - A tool for learning orbital mechanics and space mission design
• Introduction to High-Power Fiber Lasers published by the Directed Energy Professional Society – Dr. Motes' textbook on high-power fiber lasers, used globally as a standard reference for developing solid-state laser weapons
• Basic Laser Weapon System Design - A guide to common-sense laser weapon system design
• Alan Burgess & Dr. Andrew Motes - YouTube tutorials for the free SOS satellite orbit simulator and basic orbital mechanics. 

For more information, reach out to Andrew at ANDYMOTES@msn.com.