DALE McFEATTERS May your house be safe from missiles

Sometime this fall, the Bush administration will announce with some fanfare that we now have a ballistic missile defense system, cocked and loaded, in Alaska. Cynics say the announcement will come before the election, but surely the White House isn't that cynical. Playing politics with national security? Nah.
A national missile-defense shield was a big deal in 2000, a longstanding plank in the Republican platform and a campaign pledge by George W. Bush. Where you stood on missile defense was a matter more of theology than science; you either believed in it or you didn't. You would either leave us naked to nameless enemies or you favored immediate deployment of a missile-defense system.
The fact that we didn't have such a system -- and if we did it might not work -- was brushed aside in the debate. With six really neat-looking white missiles going into silos in Alaska, it can be said we have a system. And it can also be said it's really expensive: more than $100 billion.
What can't be said is that it works. According to experts interviewed by missile-defense author and Washington Post reporter Bradley Graham, the system may be only 20 percent effective, meaning that 8 out of 10 missiles would get through. Not exactly what you have in mind when you think of the word "shield."
What we do know, based on the limited testing to date, is that given enough advance notice, five of eight times an interceptor from Guam was able to hit a missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. So, yes, we can protect Guam, sort of, from well-publicized attacks.
The missile geeks really eat this stuff up. And who can blame them? What red-blooded American, especially of the male persuasion, wouldn't love to shoot stuff off and blow stuff up -- and all on the government tab.
The technology is marvelous, but the concept is basic Stone Age. The bad guys launch a ballistic missile at us. An interceptor missile fires out of its hole in Alaska, locates the enemy missile in space and launches a kill vehicle. Admit it, "kill vehicle" is a cool name. The kill vehicle destroys the missile by kinetic energy. In other words, we've basically hit it with a 120-pound rock.
X-band radar station
The trick is to identify the missile and to sort out the decoys for which we need a massive X-band radar station (X-band. Kill vehicle. As we say, too cool.) and a network of sophisticated new spotting satellites to replace the Cold War-era early-warning satellites we have now. Graham writes that the radar is still at least a year away and that the satellite network is still under development.
This is like buying a car with the dealer promising to send you the engine "when it comes in."
The missile-defense system is supposed to protect us from enemies including Iraq, Iran and North Korea, all of whom were supposed to have sophisticated, hitch-free, long-range ballistic missile programs under way. At the outset, the missile-defense advocates admitted that the system would be useless against missile powers like Russia and China, which could outsmart it or overwhelm it.
As for the others, Iraq's program turned out to be some junk rusting in the sand. Iran has some short- and medium-range missiles, but it also has the U.S. military sitting right next door and in a really foul mood. We don't see the ayatollahs picking a fight anytime soon.
That leaves North Korea and the nut who runs it. While Kim Jong Il makes bellicose noises, being a hereditary dictator he probably has a more well-honed sense of self-preservation than most. He surely has mulled the unhappy consequences of launching a missile or two at a U.S. target.
Kim does have a missile program, but considering the frequency with which stuff blows up in North Korea, you have to wonder how good it really is. In its last test of a long-range rocket six years ago, North Korea failed to put a satellite in orbit, but did narrowly miss Japan.
When the Bush administration proudly announces its missile-defense system, keep in mind the old blessing: "May this house be safe from tigers."
"But there are no tigers within 10,000 miles of here."
"See, it's working."
Scripps Howard News Service