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 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.
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