Abstract
The mother of all faith-based government programs was Star Wars. It soured Republicans on science and on scientists who would explain in excruciating detail why developing a defensive umbrella to protect the United States from nuclear attack was nigh on impossible. By the Bush II administration, Republicans learned to banish critical investigation and make willingness to share in wishful thinking the litmus test of loyalty.
Anyway, Star Wars, a.k.a. the Strategic Defense Initiative, variously morphed into Ballistic Missile Defense, Global Missile Defense, and National Missile Defense, and is now just plain Missile Defense. Over 22 years the program's expensive toys included Brilliant Eyes and Brilliant Pebbles (nifty animations, if not actual systems), the very scary X-ray pumped laser, the airborne laser, the ground-based laser, an assortment of kinetic-kill programs, and more, all to inform the Boost Phase Intercept, the Midcourse Intercept, the God-Knows-Where-in-Flight Intercept, and so on.
Finally, last September, with little or no fanfare, the first five ballistic missile interceptors–the be-all and end-all of the first $80-90 billion spent–were planted in the ground at Fort Greely, Alaska.
Looking back on Ronald Reagan's 1983 speech announcing the pursuit of a defensive shield against ballistic missiles, it doesn't read like the statement we all remember pooh-poohing as science fiction. Reagan used no foolish phrases; he simply told us the impossible wouldn't be easy–that it would require the development of as-yet-undevised technologies, years of effort, and enormous amounts of treasure. (Compared to the political discourse of recent years, Reagan's speech could be confused with classical oratory.)
Missile defense remained an expensive bore and continuing joke in the 1990s. The Clinton administration compromised with the True Believers by focusing on practicality, allowing the program to go forward to the degree that actual progress was being made–or seemed to be (tests were routinely rigged).
It was left to George W. Bush to make possible last September's installation of the first phase of the “Ground-Based Midcourse Defense,” for his administration supplied the critical missing step in the missile defense story: abandoning the idea that the system would need to work.
Over the course of Bush's first term, the system was shielded from annoying realities. For instance, when tests went badly (intercepts failed), the results were declared classified. The interceptor type that has been deployed has never been tested–it wasn't ready when the last flight test was conducted. The radar that was supposed to accompany the system still isn't ready.
But never mind. Star Wars was supposed to counter a Soviet attack, and there is no Soviet Union left to mount an attack. And far from fearing Russia's nuclear weapons, in January 2000 American strategists actually urged the Kremlin to keep them.
The missile defense installed in Alaska is now supposed to protect the United States from attack by North Korea.
So maybe it's all right that the interceptors are unlikely to work. North Korea's supposedly threatening but never-tested missile, the Taepodong 2, probably won't work either.