Brilliant Swarms

Jeffrey Lewis 0:07

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:23

And I am Aaron Stein, president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. And this is our first, I guess, YouTube podcast we're putting together. We're rolling out a new feature for our Arms Control Wonk listeners.

Jeffrey 0:35

I'm posed in front of my real bookshelf. They're not fake. You can touch them. See? They are real books. I've even read some of them.

Aaron 0:46

Some. You didn't stage them or color coordinate them like everybody else does. So it's keeping on brand.

Jeffrey 0:51

Maybe I eventually will get there. I mean, I did pick the corner of the office that was least filthy.

Aaron 0:58

Well, we built a little studio in our office. I'm coming to you from FPRI so you can see our reports here in the background. You know, and it's a beautiful day here in Philadelphia. People always hear me talk about whales out of your office. And so they don't get the whales. Next time we get the ocean view.

Jeffrey 1:13

Yeah, okay. I can see if I can arrange that. I have to clean the window, though. You just get kind of this light layer of pollen. Aaron, what is the segue that you are going to use that's going to get us to our topic du jour?

Aaron 1:32

I guess, you know, like a dirty window with a lot of little dots on it from California rain, you want a lot of dots scattering the future cosmos for space-based missile defense. That's the best I could come up with. We have brilliant pebbles in new form by America's private military contractors.

Jeffrey 1:51

Ah, yes. Brilliant Swarms. So Booz Allen Hamilton has dusted General Obering off. I had no idea that General Obering was still with us, but he is. And he is proposing New Jack Brilliant Pebbles, which we are calling Brilliant Swarms because we went from Smart Rocks to Brilliant Pebbles to Brilliant Swarms. It's all the same fucking thing.

Aaron 2:19

I so I absolutely love smart rocks. I want to go back to that. But I guess they're trying to take advantage of the Trump administration's I guess we're calling it now Golden Dome. A proposal for a lot of money that soon is going to have to be poured into space-based missile defense interceptors all over again. And so they took a stab at calculating what it would look like.

And we had been talking about doing that ourselves. And so we can compare notes.

Jeffrey 2:49

Right. Well, and here I have to give credit to Sam Lair, research assistant, research associate extraordinaire, who he and I sat down with the simple scaling calculations that Edward Teller and Gregory Canavan used back in the day. And Sam executed them in the form of a gorgeous spreadsheet. So we can we can. Plug different numbers in in order to see what matters to the calculation and what doesn't.

But it's a pretty nifty calculation to estimate how big of a constellation in space you need to size it against different potential threats. It's kind of fun.

Aaron 3:37

Well, I think we should explain the concept to begin with, because No matter how many times I even explain it to myself, sometimes you can get a little lost in this in that satellites are falling over the horizon very fast. And therefore, if you want to have something constantly over where you expect a missile to be fired from, you need to have a lot of satellites.

And that's the basic calculation that you're talking about, right?

Jeffrey 4:03

Yeah, that's right. I mean, there are different ways I've seen to do this calculation. I like the Teller Canavan one, which is a little different. The kind of traditional way to do it is to try to calculate, to just sort of imagine your satellite is an orbiting kill radius and just make sure that you have enough of those that overlap.

But what you really... I think the smarter way to do it is to start with your densest area of potential missile launches and calculate the radius of that. And then calculate how many targets you are going to have in that radius. And then you... Calculate the absentee rate of how frequently one of your satellites is over, and you know, you have to adjust for the your satellite having a you know, it's it's got a kill vehicle, and the kill vehicle has a little rocket motor, so it has some acceleration, so it has some kill distance.

And so there is a well-established calculation, which really is just multiplying those numbers together. We can go ahead and put it in the show notes if people want to do the math. The calculation is actually in a Teller and Canavan paper. But really what you end up is putting in the following data. You calculate the velocity of your interceptor, which is how fast it goes out from point A to point B.

You calculate how big of an area you want to defend on the earth, which is just the radius, basically, of the area. Kind of calculating that if you can defend against the densest part of like a silo field, you know, you're going to have, because you basically have global coverage, you're going to get every place else. You need to calculate how long the enemy missile burns.

Aaron 6:14

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 6:15

Because if it burns a teeny tiny little time, you've got to be closer because you have less time to hit it. If it burns a really long time, you can be further away. And you need to calculate how long it takes from the time that the missile starts burning for you to see it, decide you're going to intercept it, and then get that order to the satellite, or if the satellite does that on itself, how long it takes.

That's called release time. So those are the crucial factors. So, for example, the Booz Allen study says about 2,000 satellites would be necessary, 2,000 interceptor satellites. And their numbers are broadly plausible if, for example, you're sizing a defense against China. If you look at one of the Chinese silo fields- Which you found, by the way.

Aaron 7:06

That's another win for your team.

Jeffrey 7:07

That's Decker, though, right? Yeah, that was Decker. Yeah. You know, if you assume that the burnout velocity of the thing is, call it, you know, 10 kilometers per second, which is pretty high. And you say that the silo field is about 28 kilometers in radius. And that you think that the missiles burn out in about 290 seconds.

And that it takes about 30 seconds from the time it starts burning for you to see it and decide you're going to intercept it and shoot. You do get a constellation of about 2,000 satellites.

Aaron 7:57

Yeah. So you can see where the math came from for the Booz Allen. Absolutely. What are they calling? Brilliant swarms.

Jeffrey 8:01

Yeah. Now, 10 kilometers per second is a lot. It's moving. If you burn out at eight kilometers per second to give you a sense of how sensitive that calculation is, then you immediately jump up to 3000 interceptors. So that scales pretty hard. Obviously, if the number of missiles increases, if they make more silos. Actually, that doesn't jump it up so much, but that that can have an effect.

It's also super sensitive to release time. So we picked 30 seconds because it's kind of even. But if it's 45 seconds, you're going to jump from, let's see, I'll go back to the 10 seconds. You know, you're going to jump up by a couple hundred satellites. If it's 60 seconds, if it takes a full minute, You know, you're up to 2,500 satellites.

So the burnout of your interceptor is really, really important. And your release time is really important. And if those numbers aren't ideal, you know, if it's eight kilometers per second and you have a 60 second release time, you end up with like 4,000 satellites instead of 2,000. And that's going to like double your cost.

Aaron 9:22

Right, and so when you say release time, you're talking about the time in which the kill vehicle that's being carried or that is the satellite in question makes the decision, either autonomously or with some sort of communication on the ground, I don't know how that would be possible in 30 seconds, to then use its own velocity to go flying into the ascending rocket as it's going into space.

Jeffrey 9:47

Yeah, that's right. So, you know, if... If it takes a minute for your missile to get up above the clouds and be seen, then you're in trouble. You know, you, you could imagine sometimes people try to massage this by saying like, well, we'll have a rule that, you know, you can only launch things with prior notification. And if you don't, we'll shoot them down.

Now, why the Russians or the Chinese would ever agree to that? I don't know, but

Aaron 10:20

There's a lot of... You got to make a lot of assumptions, right? But okay.

Jeffrey 10:24

Yeah. So you would have to... You have to have some kind of concept of operations so that this system is constantly on. Now, I think... I mean, what is different? And this is now kind of worth discussing, but... In the Brilliant Pebbles day, the problem with this calculation is that you had to launch 2,000 to 4,000 satellites.

Aaron 10:55

Right. And those satellites were both far heavier than what we have today, and the cost of launching them was far greater.

Jeffrey 11:04

Right. And so I think this time you really can put in a 60 or 80 kilogram package an interceptor. That will work. And because of small satellite constellations like Starlink, you really can't imagine having a constellation of two, four, six, 8,000 satellites. That part's not impossible, but it is expensive.

Aaron 11:33

So I think this is worth teasing out even more because the older concepts were like a – what did they call it? It was like a – they called it like a life raft or something along those lines.

Jeffrey 11:44

Yeah, that's right. A life jacket.

Aaron 11:46

A life jacket. That's what it was. Then the kill vehicles were sort of contained in the life jacket. This is a little different, right? They're actually – it's the same basic concept but the way that they're envisioning the kill vehicle from let's say 1988 onwards.

Jeffrey 12:00

To 2025 is different. I think it's worth teasing out as well too. Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, I think, I don't know, would I say the concept is different? I mean, certainly by the end, I think this would look a lot like Brilliant Pebbles, but it's just obviously you're doing it with 30 years better technology. Exactly. but like, I don't know, man, you know, so.

The constellation sizing thing I think is not that complicated or at least that controversial. I mean, obviously if, if you can't get the burnout velocity that you're expecting and if your release time is longer and if, you know, I don't know You know, the Russians get the burn time down to like 180 seconds or the Chinese get the burn time down to 180 seconds.

You know, I can. I can get us up to like 14000 interceptors. Right. So we can it can scale out like really, really fast.

Aaron 13:15

Mm hmm.

Jeffrey 13:17

But let's say that we go with all the most optimistic assumptions, right? The 10 kilometer per second burnout, the 30 second release time, the full 290 second burn, which is I think like way, way, way, way too long. And we are at 2,000 interceptors. They're assuming like a $10 million unit cost.

Aaron 13:46

Well, when we've discussed this privately, that's really the main cost assessment, right? The cost of lift, the cost of lift per kilogram, I guess, or per pound, and the idea of a, let's say, 2,000 to 3,000 constellation, that's Starlink. Okay, we got it. It's the cost of the actual kill vehicle that I don't think they're properly accounting for because I don't think anybody knows what the cost of the kill vehicle is.

Jeffrey 14:12

Well, that's right, because kill vehicles for missile defense interceptors are very expensive.

Aaron 14:21

But let's talk through that, because there is a kill vehicle on the end of the missile defense interceptor, which I think is a good comparison.

Jeffrey 14:29

Yeah, I mean, that's easily... You know, that's like the bulk of the cost for the interceptor. So that's like easily 20, $20 million per kill vehicle. Right. And so, I mean, I know they're imagining that they're going to economize on the kill vehicle, but I mean, do you, these things work together, you know, your ability to, Detect the boosting missile is going to require the better kill vehicle.

And that's going to be more expensive. I assume they're imagining that if they build 2000, they'll be able to get the unit cost down.

Aaron 15:09

Yeah.

Jeffrey 15:12

I could, we actually build 2000 of the KVs, you know, do you have the industrial base? I, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, so I, you know, They think it's $25 billion for the constellation of 2000. I think it's going to be more like $40, $50 billion. By the way, you're going to have to refresh these things every few years.

Aaron 15:40

I mean, I think the estimates are that they would need to be replaced every three to five years. I mean, off the top of my head, but that's the estimates I've seen is that you're seeing a cycle of every three years.

Jeffrey 15:52

So if you make it their $10 million version, right, which I think is too low.

Aaron 15:59

We'll call it the Ford Taurus version because it's made in America, no tariffs.

Jeffrey 16:03

Yeah. And and and you are getting five years of lifetime out of those satellites. Then that's still like three point nine billion dollars a year of just replacement.

Aaron 16:17

I guess the deployment would be that you would stagger them so that you would – let's just – because you can't just do 2,000 and 2,000, right? You need to deploy them in such a way that you incrementally move them off like the Senate. You know what I mean? It's six-year terms, but every two years, people are up for election.

So we'll call this the Senate rules of missile defense. Yeah.

Jeffrey 16:38

But, you know, if it ends up being 25 million apiece and you only get three years, then your annual sustainment cost grows to like 16 billion. So, you know, this is one of those things where it's really affordable if everything breaks right. Yeah. And so I understand why people for the first time are like, hey, we really could do this.

Like, yes, because we really have constellations this big. Yeah. Yeah. But you really have to control cost control for each unit. Because you are multiplying it by two or four or six or 20,000, depending on everything else, you know? And so if just normal defense stuff happens, we're like, well, the burnout of the interceptor is not so great.

And I mean, it's good, but it's not as great as we'd hoped. And well, the release time's a little bit longer than we were hoping. And like, aww. Gee, I don't know. The missiles don't burn quite as long as we thought they did. And it's like, you know, then suddenly your numbers get really, really unfavorable fast.

Aaron 17:54

Well, we should also say that this is just one aspect of that executive order. I mean, that executive order is talking about all aspects of missile defense, and we're just talking about the space-based one, not the fixed sites that they're talking about putting in the United States, not the upgrades made to the current sites. I mean, this is just for one aspect of it, and it's already considerable.

Jeffrey 18:14

Yeah, that's right. And, you know, that then leads to all of the other considerations. But I just think, you know, to a first approximation, I do understand the people who say like, look, SpaceX means and some extent Planet Labs means you can do small satellite constellations at scale. And I think that's that part's right. But you start to realize that.

How sensitive your scale is, and I think especially at the margin. I think of Planet or Starlink are both good examples of this, which is, have you ever used Starlink before? I have not, no. Not knowingly. Works most of the time. Okay. I was at Wilbur Hot Spring a couple of years ago and there was a Starlink connection and it was like pretty good internet most of the time, but sometimes the satellites were not in the optimal position.

Aaron 19:15

Right. Yeah, of course. Well. Well, exactly. I mean, I guess we've all used internet on airplanes, right? It isn't Starlink, but it's the same idea. Sometimes you get real good streaming, sometimes you don't.

Jeffrey 19:27

You know, like Planet, they say they take a picture of the Earth every day, and they take a picture of most of the Earth most every day. And, like, for commercial applications, that's all good enough. If there are big gaps in your coverage, though, your enemy will just shoot through it. So the marginal cost of... Having an exquisite defense, I think, could be quite substantial if you start to lose little advantages.

And that kind of then, I think, moves us into the second conversation, which is all of this assumes our adversaries don't make life harder on us.

Aaron 20:14

Right. And we've talked about this. There are multiple ways. I mean, the obvious one is just to build more. Okay. That's the really simplistic one. The other thing is just to increase the velocity of your missile. And we threw out, I think privately, the example of Sprint, the Cold War era nuclear arm, by the way, interceptor that was named Sprint for a reason because it was really effing fast in terms of getting away from the Earth.

Yeah. Because that will increase the costs, as you were saying in your calculation, about your reaction times, and you'll need more satellites.

Jeffrey 20:53

Yeah. So, you know, the first thing is that we use 290 seconds of burn because that gets us to the quote-unquote correct number. Because you started at 2,000, approximately. You know, the Russians use the Topol as a space launcher. Yeah. And that's like, that's more like 180 seconds of burn. And so if I keep all my calculations the same and just use their assumptions across the board, 180 seconds now jumps my constellation to 5,700 satellites, right?

It more than doubles it. Right. And that, that brings my constellation up to like a $60 billion constellation, not a $25 billion one. And it means the annual cost is now $20 billion a year. It's not a one-time $20 billion cost. It's a, you pay 60 billion and then you pay $20 billion a year forever. And that's, Just modeling it against the missile that I think they have now.

Now it still has some residual capability because, you know, even though the third stage is burned out, it's got a bus and you might be able to shoot at the bus and it's starting to release missiles, but you might get, you know, one or two on the bus. So there might be some advantage, but you already you're back into that, like.

How much defense am I really buying? And it's certainly not leak proof. And then we haven't even gotten to exactly, as you say, like, what if the Russians really or the Chinese really wanted to get their number down?

Aaron 22:42

Right. Exactly. You can try as a way to respond to this, make your missile go faster. I mean, I think that's the easiest way to say it. You just make your missile go faster, which is improvements in your rocket motor.

Jeffrey 22:55

And then there's the other cool thing you could do, which is you could put a nuclear warhead and when you pop up above the clouds, you could detonate it. Wow.

Aaron 23:06

Well, I mean, this is the research that you and I are hoping to do, you know, soon, which is that there's a reason the Russians are looking at putting nuclear weapons in orbit.

Jeffrey 23:16

And when you confront these guys about that, they're like, well, we'll just shoot them down. Like, oh, in peacetime, you're going to start shooting down Russian satellites that you think might have nuclear weapons on them.

Aaron 23:24

Right. The obvious counter to a large satellite constellation is a weapon designed to destroy a large constellation. And the way that you do that, right, is with- Nuclear weapons in orbit.

Jeffrey 23:37

With nuclear weapons in orbit. Or nuclear weapons on fast burn boosters that pop up above the clouds and fry shit. Yeah.

Aaron 23:42

Or both.

Jeffrey 23:43

Yeah.

Aaron 23:44

I mean, you could just do both.

Jeffrey 23:45

And so it just leads- Forkino los dos. Forkino los dos.

Aaron 23:50

We could get with exquisite flight profiles, right? You could depress the trajectory, something along those lines. But you can brute force this in a way that makes this tenuous, right? Right from go. Yep.

Jeffrey 24:07

And by the way, all that assumes that the interceptors don't get messed with in advance, right? Like if the interceptors are passing over China or Russia, do you think the Chinese and the Russians aren't going to light them up with directed energy?

Aaron 24:27

I mean, I would just posit that if the Chinese were to put up a large constellation designed to shoot down our missiles, there would be a lot more than congressional hearings going on about what to do about it. And while I understand that the Chinese and Russians have different forms of governments than we do, they certainly have defense planners who will be tasked with figuring out how to make that go away.

And if two dudes on a podcast are able to come up with some pretty cool ideas right away, their dude sitting in Beijing or Moscow will be able to come up with ideas as well. But I do think... Because it is reflexive in our community to just sort of wish cast us away as it being science fiction.

And I do think it's important to acknowledge that. That the advancements, particularly since 2015 in private sector space, have made the constellations very realistic. Even if it's 5,000, the constellation size is not the issue. Whether it's two, whether it's five, the size of the amount of constellation is not an issue. And I do expect launch costs to continue to come down.

Jeffrey 25:38

The actual- Yeah, I'm using 1,500 kilograms per launch cost, which is

Aaron 25:43

Pretty low. It is low, and you know, we're not going to make this podcast about Elon Musk, but I do expect Starship at some point to work, and that will come down even more. But you know, the the real cost is the ability of whatever contractor is selected to build the kill vehicle. And that's the real – that's the unknowable cost besides all the fancy stuff.

Jeffrey 26:10

I think that's right because if you are – even if it's $10 million per satellite, at 2,000 satellites sized to deal with 120 ICBM silo field, you are spending like $160 million per missile intercepted. Which is a lot.

Aaron 26:35

A lot of people will say it's a good deal, though, because it costs a lot more than that to clean up a nuclear blast.

Jeffrey 26:42

It does, but it does not cost $160 million to put up one more missile. The marginal exchange for the Chinese and the Russians to just build more missiles and or invest in countermeasures. I don't mean like, oh, balloons. I mean like, you know, real countermeasures like nuclear weapons in orbit. Russians love nuclear weapons in orbit. I mean, that marginal cost is so bad.

But you're right. The launch cost and the launch capacity and launch cost is, in fact, I think, a solved problem. And the advocates are not wrong to say that that is a solved problem. It's just that that was the biggest 80s problem on a long list of problems. And yeah, like... Can you really get the cost of those kill vehicles down to 10 million bucks a pop?

I don't know.

Aaron 27:42

Well, so because let's run through.

Jeffrey 27:45

Also at the necessary throughput, like let's, you know, if you have a five year, a five year lifetime and I have 2000 of them up, I have to replace, you know, several hundred of them every year. Right.

Aaron 28:01

And that assumes no accident on launchers either.

Jeffrey 28:06

Yeah. Yeah, because there could be an accident in launch. It does happen every once in a while. It does happen.

Aaron 28:12

It does happen. Yeah. Yeah, no, and then like – I can just imagine congressional hearings. So does it work? Yeah. Well, where'd you cut corners? Well, we wanted this to be good enough, but not perfect. And they're like, wait a minute, you're spending $160 million on something that's good enough, not perfect? We're talking about defense from the homeland here.

Jeffrey 28:30

There is this spectacular line in the Teller-Canavan letter where they calculate the Time they use is not from launch to the first deployment of a warhead. It's from the launch until the last deployment of a warhead, because they're like, well, there's still some warheads on the bus that are worth shooting at, and it's like, okay, but you have sized this so that you're going to miss the ones that are early, and they're like, yeah, there'll be some leakage, it's like, ah.

Some leakage.

Aaron 29:08

It sounds like an incontinence commercial. Do you know what I mean?

Jeffrey 29:10

Oh, Jesus.

Aaron 29:12

Oh my God. Space-based depends. Exactly. You can't have any leakage. The blue liquid's got to stay inside the diaper, you know, but no, I mean, What do you think? I'm not sure, let's say in the next three and a half years, that we'll be in a position to actually execute this. You know, as a real concept of opera?

Well, okay.

Jeffrey 29:43

First is you could do one tomorrow. I mean, tomorrow is a little bit flip, but the Bush administration wanted to do this thing called N fire, which was going to be a space-based interceptor. Yeah. It was going to be a singlet that they were going to do a little test with. And it was really expensive. I looked up the cost the other day.

I don't even remember, but it was more than the, you know, more than the KV. It was like 40 million or $60 million or something. So you could do one. And in this current budgetary environment, you could probably even do 100 because that's good business for the man launching them. And so I don't have any doubt that you could deploy a thin constellation, which, if it were in the right spot, would have some chance at hitting one of these things in boost.

Aaron 30:37

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 30:38

Like, you could do it. Like, you could put up one, and you could wait until it was, you know, over freaking Kodiak, and you could launch a target from Kodiak, and I think the thing could probably hit it. Yeah. Like, I don't doubt you could do that. What I wonder about is, what would the cost of that be?

And practically speaking, how big of a constellation would you need before you really started to feel like this was a good investment in combination with everything else? You know, because it'll be like under layer and other stuff that, you know, maybe would would help with leakage. But even once you do that, right, like, oh, it's technically feasible.

It's just really, really, really expensive.

Aaron 31:28

I don't know what you do about a Russian nuclear weapon in orbit. Unless you develop ground-based anti-satellite weapons yourself, but you know, they're not going to tell you which ones have nuclear weapons in them.

Jeffrey 31:41

No, I mean, no, they wouldn't. And, you know, maybe we will have the exquisite technology to know, but also I think a fast burn booster that pops up above the clouds and nukes your satellites and like, oh, yeah, well, they can defend themselves. We're trying to shoot it down. Like, well, not if you start with a salvo of, you know, a couple hundred of those things and then you follow.

Like, so I just think if I am... If you turn this into a video game, I would always rather play offense, right? I would rather be the one shooting through the defense than I would be the one picking the defense. But that said, you could definitely put a couple hundred of these on orbit and pretend that that's a thin defense layer if you didn't care about money.

Aaron 32:35

Yeah, and these calculations also- Or if you were getting paid the money. We should make clear that we are not being sponsored for this podcast. Although if Booz Allen Hamilton would like to sponsor this podcast, we are open. It is russcontrolwalkatgmail.com. We're also just sizing it to a single field. Right. I always think about the sea-based deterrence of these countries as well.

Yeah.

Jeffrey 32:58

I mean, the argument is, although this gets weird, is if you size it to the densest area, then because you have all the leftover, that stuff will give you adequate defense. But then, of course, the problem is, even if it works, you now have this hole in your defense and that hole is going to drift forever. Yeah.

And then like they can shoot through the hole. So you want things that basically you would want things in different orbital planes. And I, I think, I think as a rough sizing thing, If you can handle the densest area, you're going to have a pretty good defense across the board. So it's not that I think it's crazy.

Like, I think it could significantly attrite their forces. I just think that, A, it would be a really expensive thing to do. And B, it would be an easily countered thing. And so, like, I don't know. On the other hand, I would love, love, love, love to see a Chinese version of Sprint with a high-altitude nuclear warhead on it.

That would be so cool. I mean, terrible for space security, but it would be awesome.

Aaron 34:10

They're not allowed to sponsor this podcast.

Jeffrey 34:12

Have you ever seen Sprint take off? It's amazing. Yes, I have.

Aaron 34:15

Yes, I have.

Jeffrey 34:16

It's amazing.

Aaron 34:17

That thing just halts. It's all ass. That thing just moves. And it's really vintage of its time. The videos, I've watched them on YouTube many times. But now we're revealing too much about ourselves. We like to watch YouTube videos of Sprint burnout times. I mean, that just shows that we need more of a life. I do remember that video, but it's where we're going back to.

Jeffrey 34:43

Indeed.

Aaron 34:45

Do we end it all? I'm trying to come up with a joke about Nirvana's on a plane to talk about different planes to take us off the rails, but it's not working. No, no, no.

Jeffrey 34:53

I think we're full. Look, this is a giant waste of money. This could be awesome when they do it.

Aaron 35:02

We've been talking about this for like six months now. Like, man, we could actually really do the calculations. It's really cool.

Jeffrey 35:08

Well, they're really cool. I mean, I was shocked at how sensitive they are to the burn time of the missile. I mean, that really is the thing that determines everything. So, you know, I guess we would force the Chinese and the Russians to develop a whole new generation of ballistic missiles. That'd be awesome.

Aaron 35:26

Well, then somebody will say, well, that costs them a lot of money. So we're winning the cost exchange ratio. But I think we've hit it. All right. So patreon.com slash ACW podcast where you can see how people like us get together and watch Sprint videos in real time on YouTube at the coolest hangout place on the internet.

It's child safe. Patreon.com slash ACW podcast. $3 if you're a student, $5 if you're not. Booz Allen Hamilton did not sponsor this podcast, but if you want to, call Jeffrey. With that, thanks for joining me on this, I guess, Tuesday afternoon.

Jeffrey 35:58

Good talking to you, Aaron.