Missile defense: what role in era of terror?

In an age when weapons of mass destruction can be slipped into the United States in a cargo container or even a suitcase, is Ronald Reagan's 1983 dream of building an umbrella against long-range enemy missiles passé? Or is it a necessary screen against the possibility of North Korea or another rogue state tossing a nuclear-tipped rocket our way?

As the US moves ahead with testing and deployment of the system, new questions are swirling about the merits of pursuing such a costly program in a time of war and increased demand for defense dollars.

The debate comes amid enduring skepticism about the technological feasibility of erecting an effective shield. In December, the US missile defense program suffered another test failure when the rocket carrying the "kill vehicle" meant to destroy an incoming mock enemy warhead shut down before launch from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

Pentagon officials, who attributed it to an "unknown anomaly," downplayed the failure. But critics point out it is part of a pattern - four of the system's nine major tests have been unsuccessful.

Yet the Bush administration doggedly keeps pushing the program. The administration has steadily increased funding for missile defense, although the Pentagon may trim that in coming years in order to pay for the expensive ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And it's pushed ahead with deployment in Alaska and California even though some experts say key components are far from finished.

Early in his first term, Mr. Bush also pulled the US out of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. The ABM Treaty restricted such defenses on the theory that this would slow down the nuclear arms race by maintaining a kind of standoff known as "mutual assured destruction."

The geopolitical landscape and the threat environment are very different from when Mr. Reagan launched his Strategic Defense Initiative (quickly dubbed "star wars"), startling allied nations as well as potential adversaries.

"Missile defense is gradually outgrowing the ideological disputes of the past," says national security analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. The threat has become more diverse and less predictable, he says. At the same time, he adds, having to deal with a handful of relatively primitive weapons from a few rogue states, rather than masses of multiwarhead missiles from the former Soviet Union, means "this mission looks doable."

"The scale of likely threats is so modest that even the thin defense being built in Alaska and California may be sufficient to dissuade some problem-states from pursuing long-range ballistic missiles," says Dr. Thompson.

Others see an even greater need.

"China has developed a whole new generation of mobile ICBMs capable of hitting the US," says Baker Spring, a national security analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "And hostile governments, such as North Korea and Iran, continue to develop and produce ballistic missiles capable of inflicting real damage upon American soil."

Failure to counter such threats militarily, some advocates say, could undercut this country's military and diplomatic position in a dangerous world. Sen. Jon Kyl (R) of Arizona, a leading congressional proponent of missile defense, warns of "blackmail intended to freeze us into inaction by the very threat of missile attack."

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