Brief History: Missile Defense

President Barack Obama’s announcement on Sept. 17 that he was scrapping plans for a long-range-missile shield in Europe prompted a fervor normally reserved for theological discussion. Critics assailed his alternative–smaller, sea-based interceptors to counter the immediate threat from Iran–as a concession to Russia, which had seen the U.S. stronghold near its borders as directed at its own arsenal.

A viable missile-defense system has long been the holy grail of U.S. military planners. One of the earliest national strategies, conceived during the Johnson Administration and based on research begun under Dwight Eisenhower, called for nuclear-tipped rockets that could head off an incoming missile by exploding in its path. A day after Richard Nixon unveiled the first operational version, known as Safeguard, Congress shut it down, citing costs and a general reluctance to scatter warheads across the country. In 1983, Ronald Reagan called for a nonnuclear approach, inevitably nicknamed Star Wars, that would destroy missiles from space using yet-to-be-developed particle beams and lasers. It was followed in 1988 by a plan for thousands of small satellites, dubbed Brilliant Pebbles, to detect and destroy enemy missiles by ramming into them. The program received nearly $100 billion in funding before the Soviet Union collapsed, taking the rationale for such a project with it.

Missile defense continues to ebb and flow with the perceptions of nuclear threat. Since 2002, the Pentagon has pumped more than $60 billion into new antimissile missiles now on guard against North Korean launches in the Pacific. But the system–likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet–too often fails what are essentially open-book tests. That it could annihilate an actual warhead is still an article of faith.