7..10.00
Try, Try Again

6.27.00
“Ownership Is Freedom”

6.23.00
Gore the Rich-Basher

6.16.00
Co-Opt City

6.12.00
Reform, Part II

6.09.00
Bipartisan with a Vengeance

6.08.00
What’s Wrong with the Gore Ads?

6.01.00
The Unbearable Lightness of Being W.

ast weekend may not have featured the sound of an interceptor crashing into a missile over the Pacific, but if you listened closely enough you could at least hear champagne corks going off. Missile-defense critics are gleeful at the failure of the latest interceptor test. It proves once again, they insist, the folly of "Star Wars."

The test failure will certainly create a political headache for proponents of missile defense, but there are several things to keep in mind as the barrage of criticism of the proposed system mounts.

First, tests rarely are complete failures or successes. If there were an actual missile streaking toward the United States, a failure like the one over the weekend would be catastrophic — as the denizens of Los Angles or some other unlucky locale would be able to testify. But in a test, useful information that moves a program forward can be gleaned even from a miscue.

Second, critics of missile defense have lately insisted that the test was so "rigged" it would be an inevitable success. Time magazine devoted a long article to making this argument in last week's issue. The point of this line of reasoning is to evaluate missile-defense tests on a bizarre curve so that even perfection gets a failing grade.

As it turns out, getting two objects to collide at 15,000 mph is extremely difficult, and the progress toward creating a system that can do it reliably will be stop-and-go. Last weekend's test had plenty of "stop," but there was also some "go."

First, the bad news. The interceptor failed to separate from its second-stage booster, making a successful intercept of the target impossible (in effect, the interceptor was saddled with a cumbersome trailer it couldn't get rid of). This is a major mistake, but has its bright side. The booster is relatively low-tech, and doesn't involve the more innovative parts of the missile-defense program.

The booster used in the test is the same one that powers the Minuteman missile — so it has been deployed successfully hundreds and hundreds of times. In fact, the booster worked fine in the four tests immediately prior to this one. Also, the Minuteman booster is just a stand-in for a new booster that is being developed for use in the final system.

The most important thing to note about the booster failure is that it was a booster failure — and the interceptor didn't get a chance to shows its stuff, never got in the "end game" as they say. But other parts of the system did get a chance to perform. Here are some returns from the test that you are unlikely to hear about in the media:

—The X-band radar — the prototype of the radar that will eventually be built in the Aleutians and be responsible for tracking incoming missiles — turned in a fine performance, detecting the target earlier and farther out than had been predicted.

—The Battle Management/Command, Control, Communications system (or BM/C3 for the acronym-obsessed) that is the software that tells each part of the system what to do performed well.

—The various connections between the system worked — for instance, the X-band radar successfully relayed its information to the interceptor.

—The test prior to this one failed when the sensors on the interceptor blacked out five seconds before it was set to collide with the target. The sensors had overheated, a product of essentially a plumbing problem. Indications from the latest test are that this problem was corrected (again, this is what testing is all about).

There was one other interesting failure over the weekend. The Mylar balloon that was supposed to serve as a decoy didn't deploy properly. Missile-defense critics like MIT's Ted Postol always assume that a hostile state much less technically proficient than the U.S. will be able to deploy dozens of these balloons without a glitch to foil any American defensive system. Well, it turns out not to be so easy.

Last weekend's test isn't an argument for abandoning missile-defense, any more than early failures in the space program should have prompted us to give up the idea of a moon shot. It just means going back to the drawing board and testing again — which, in any case, has been the plan all along.

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