Projectile Dysfunction

On May 25, a target rocket that was to follow a designated path so an interceptor rocket could hit it came up short: it failed to reach the area that the interceptor rocket (with a dummy warhead) was to defend, so the interceptor rocket wasn’t launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But wait! This doesn’t go down in the books as a failed test! The Missile Defense Agency considers this a “no test” because no new information was generated. But isn’t this failure new information in its own right? Not to our military. Lt. Gen. Henry Obering III, director of the missile agency overseeing the test, said “We were not able to get the target downrange far enough to present a threat to the system. It fell well short of the intended area. The system never had a chance to recognize it as a threat, and so did not respond to the target.” In other words, unless an intended target follows the designated path, the interceptor system will fail to pick up the missile and destroy it. That’s comforting. Moreover, the system might not even work in poor weather! You cannot make this stuff up.

The Pentagon generally – and with this missile system in particular – has a long history of staged tests. Any successful tests of this system have depended on the interceptor missile and the target rocket being programmed to follow a preordained path to collide with one another. Who out there believes anyone sending a missile our way would provide us with the coordinates so we could shoot it down? The only thing more far-fetched than believing that is the notion that this missile shield is needed at all. It’s a boondoggle.

A whopping $8.9 billion is being requested by the Bush administration for FY2008 towards this system, on top of the several billion already spent. While medal-festooned generals play with their billion dollar toys, our ports and borders are still inadequately defended, military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are underfunded and under-equipped, and returning veterans and their families are subjected to unnerving red tape, inadequate medical and mental care, and tremendously destructive financial burdens. Our national healthcare system teeters on the brink of disaster, our educational system approaches atrophy, our infrastructure is in dire need of refurbishment at the local, state and national levels, and our energy situation remains untenable, but the missile system hawks – obsessed with ‘getting it up’ – will not relent in their goal of fielding this ridiculous “defense system,” regardless of the test results.

And it’s not only we Americans who will bear the burden of this Rube Goldberg system: Europeans will suffer as well, as the Bush administration places either missiles or tracking devices on Russia’s doorstep in Poland and the Czech Republic. Despite the assurances from the Bush administration that Russia has nothing to fear by this “defensive” system, Russia is justifiably annoyed by its proximity. Would we be any less concerned if Russia deployed a “defensive” missile system in, for example, Cuba? Does anyone in the White House recall a little something known as The Cuban Missile Crisis? President Putin has openly stated that deploying this system on the European continent is pushing Europe into a revived Cold War. All the Bush administration can do is offer lukewarm assurances that Russia has nothing to fear, while, from the Russian perspective, deploying a “defensive” system in Europe clearly provides the deploying countries protection for offensive actions. Russia’s concern is reasonable; Bush’s plaintive pleas that President Putin should simply trust him are embarrassing and naïve. The likelihood that Poland and the Czech Republic will vote to have facets of the system deployed on their soil are great, but it remains to be seen if other European countries will act collectively to prevent a ratcheting-up of such Cold War-like gambits.

Based on the most recent tests, however, it doesn’t seem as if the system will be much of threat – or of much use – to anyone. Like Reagan’s “Star Wars” debacle, this missile defense system, too, will fizzle. But not before billions of dollars are lost in the stratosphere and the chill winds of a new Cold War are blowing across Europe.
(Copyright 2007 by Joe Lake. Originally published in Pulse of the Twin Cities weekly, June 2007)