Missile defense: what role in era of terror?

No one underestimates the difficulty of "hitting a bullet with a bullet," which describes the technological challenge of missile defense, especially when split-second decisions need to be made during the fog of war.

As the invasion to oust the regime of Saddam Hussein got under way in March 2003, shorter-range US Patriot missiles nailed several Iraqi rockets headed for advancing coalition forces. But Patriots also mistakenly shot down a US Navy jet and a British fighter, killing the allied pilots. And countering ICBMs, which can reach US targets from halfway around the world in just 30 minutes, is far tougher - especially if an attacker also launches a bunch of decoys, as expected.

Critics liken the rush to deploy expensive ballistic missile defenses at a time when the threat as well as technology is changing to rewriting architectural plans in the middle of building a house. And they say the nine tests so far (five of which succeeded) were set up - "rigged," some say - to virtually assure success.

"A system is being deployed that certainly doesn't have any credible capability," says retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, former head of the Strategic Command, which includes all US nuclear forces. "I cannot recall any military system being deployed in such a manner."

Other critics point out that the system being deployed in Alaska and California lacks certain crucial elements, including the necessary radar, the proper satellite constellations, and the ability of the "kill vehicle" interceptors to discriminate between potential targets at a closure rate of more than 15,000 miles per hour.

"This is like deploying a new military jet fighter with no wings, no tail, and no landing gear," says Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's former head of weapons testing, now an adviser to the private Center for Defense Information in Washington.

Whether the administration's relative optimism about the potential for a US missile-defense system will continue to apply to this country's old communist adversary is another matter. Russian military officials announced earlier this year that they are developing a "revolutionary" intercontinental weapon. Rather than being ballistic (unpowered once it's left the booster rocket), this new type of warhead would be powered by a supersonic combustion ramjet allowing it to maneuver to the target.

This design may be as untested as the more fanciful aspects of star wars, such as space-based lasers.

But even proponents of ballistic missile defense say there are other things to worry about. The Bush administration, says missile defense supporter Thompson at the Lexington Institute, "has been nearly blind" to the danger of low-flying cruise missiles proliferating around the world. According to the Pentagon, nine countries will be producing land-attack cruise missiles over the next 10 years, many of them for export.

"The nation needs a balanced defensive posture, which means taking the growing cruise-missile danger seriously, even as we move to counter the more visible threat of ballistic missiles," says Thompson.

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