March
15, 2002 10:30 a.m. The
Next Test
Missile
defense faces a new hurdle tonight.
here's
a missile-defense test scheduled for tonight, and the stakes have never
been lower.
That's because the Pentagon,
over the course of five previous tests, has built a body of evidence showing
that national-missile-defense technology can in fact succeed. The kill vehicles
hit their targets in three of the five tests; the two failures were the
result of low-tech blunders that reveal almost nothing about the ultimate
feasibility of missile defense. It's becoming ever more clear that missile
defense will be a part of our future, if only we sustain the political will
to deploy it.
The enemies of missile
defense no doubt have prepared two separate sets of talking points for
this evening's result. If the intercept fails, they will crow about how
missile defense can't possibly be made to work. If it succeeds, they will
say the test was too easy.
In reality, tonight's
experiment is the most complicated one the Pentagon has yet conducted.
Not only will the interceptor have to hit a target traveling at head-spinning
speed in outer space, it will also have to distinguish its target from
three balloon decoys trying to throw off its sensors. In previous tests,
the interceptor has faced only a single decoy.
Success tonight would
mean that missile defense will proceed toward full operational capability
in the real world, with a rudimentary system in place sometime in 2004.
Failure probably would guarantee missile defense an embarrassing spot
on the front page of Saturday newspapers all over the country. (Why are
test failures more newsworthy than the successes?) It wouldn't be a disaster,
though. Missile-defense specialists learn valuable information from each
trial, including the ones that don't conclude with a big bang.
Perhaps most important,
however, is the post-9/11 political environment. Even before Osama bin
Laden became a household name, Americans were not too receptive to the
claims of arms-control cultists suggesting that the world isn't a dangerous
place and we don't need to defend ourselves from rogue states. They're
even less receptive now. And all the chicken-little arguments about the
destabilizing effects of canceling the ABM treaty have materialized into
nothing. Last year, President Bush notified Russia that we're pulling
out, and the Russians didn't do much more than shrug.
A direct hit somewhere
high above the Pacific Ocean would be preferable to any other result tonight.
That much is obvious. No matter what happens, however, the consensus for
missile defense has been building for a long time and it will continue
to grow.
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
here's
a missile-defense test scheduled for tonight, and the stakes have never
been lower.
