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two big video screens in the Pentagon conference room a little after
11 p.m. Saturday night were showing a green-and-white blotchy pattern,
like when the cable goes out on your TV at home.
Except the reporters and the handful of Pentagon officials in the
room were transfixed by the fuzzy screen, as if the test pattern
were more interesting than any TV program. In fact, this static
was the program.
Roughly 150 miles above the earth, an interceptor was hurtling toward
an ICBM, the two rockets approaching each other at a speed 5-to-10
times that of a tank round.
If the interceptor hit the target, it would be an enormous boost
for a missile-defense program that may help preserve America's ability
to act in the world, and perhaps even one day save its cities from
nuclear destruction. If not, well, let's just say Carl Levin and
Vladimir Putin would be smiling.
So, everyone stared into the green-and-white fuzz as if it were
one of those trick paintings you see at cheesy gift shops, paintings
with a seemingly random pattern that turns into a unicorn or something
if you look at it long enough. The image was from a heat sensor
on a plane, and everyone was looking for a white flash that would
mean a hit.
The blotchy pattern bristled with white and green spots, a psychedelic
nothingness, until it finally flashed white and went dark, to the
cheers of mission control, which we could hear over an intercom.
The video switched to the command room on the tiny island where
the interceptor was launched, where officers in camouflage and civilian
clothes stood up from their seats and slapped and shook hands and
hugged.
If missile defense weren't caught up in such a partisan fight, it
would be considered one of the great technological adventures of
the age — like the moon shot, except with the future of America's
security possibly at stake.
Saturday night's test vindicated the approach of Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld to missile defense, proved that the basic technology
is workable, and demonstrated how America's best scientific and
engineering minds can still wrestle to the ground almost any technological
problem.
Observing it all from the Pentagon was almost like watching an Austin
Powers knock-off, with the alternating images of guys sitting at
long rows of computer consoles and two rockets at different launch
pads. We heard the scratchy rocket chatter that we all remember
from the great lunar and space-shuttle launches — "T-minus
seven and holding, do you copy?"
The target was launched from the Vandenberg Air Force base in California,
5,000-miles away from the Kwajalein atoll in the middle of the Pacific,
where the interceptor would launch about 25 minutes later. The target
ICBM took off in a bright orange plume of flame. The interceptor
launched with almost no flash — some debris just flew off it,
and it shot into the sky in a hurry.
Then, we watched them via telemetry, which produced an image of
dotted lines of the sort you see broadcast in the cabin of transatlantic
airplane flights, tracking how far you are from London or someplace.
The target was a long red line arching over the globe, the interceptor
a shorter green line inching toward it.
We couldn't know it at the time, but the interceptor, a snub-nosed
thing of about 120 pounds, was marching through the test checklist
nearly perfectly, on its way to a hit almost exactly when it was
expected. A truly impressive performance (although all the details
of the test won't be fully analyzed for weeks).
Critics have still found something to complain about. They argue
that the interceptor had been programmed with information about
how the target would look different from the decoy that was deployed
from the ICBM — too easy!
But in a real-world situation the United States will of course have
information about characteristics of possible incoming targets (the
same way the silhouettes of enemy airplanes are provided to anti-aircraft
batteries). Missile-defense critics will never be satisfied, no
matter what: A deployed system could shoot down three North Korean
missiles, and they would say it's "unworkable" because it hadn't
shot down 300 Russian missiles.
But Saturday night's test validates Rumsfeld's strategy of making
it a priority to pursue aggressively the most-advanced, ground-based
part of a system, while generously funding the other technologies
needed for a fully layered defense.
Pentagon officials emphasize that Saturday night was just one more
test on a long road to an operational system, but the road will
now be a little smoother politically — that was the message
from 150 miles above the earth Saturday night.
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