One of the recent focuses of President Bush's stump speeches in America's heartland has been to fulfill his 2000 election promise to field a missile defense system. This may make good politics in a Presidential election, especially for a nation at war. But, deploying a weapon system before it works is bad policy by any scientific measure.

The National Missile Defense system is an old idea first proposed at the height of the Cold War. It is envisioned to provide a multi-layered defense of the entire United States from a relatively small number of intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads.

Promoting his plans for a missile shield, this week the President said, “We say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world, 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down.'” Unfortunately, even though the administration has forged ahead with the system over the past 2 ½ years, severe technological obstacles have yet to be overcome and it still can't hit the broad side of a barn. The deployment of even a basic ground-based midcourse system by next month would fail to protect the United States against missiles fired from Iraq, Iran, Libya, China, or Russia. Still, the administration wants to keep to its plan to deploy eight interceptors in Alaska and California next month, even though they have been mired with operational testing failures.

In fact, there is no real proof that Americans have gotten any return on the billions of dollars that we've poured into this system. The land-based portion of the system alone is expected to cost over $70 billion. The entire package may total more than $200 billion, not even including anticipated cost overruns as a consequence of delays. Just this year, our nation is spending $10.7 billion on this system – the greatest single year project request ever by the Pentagon. And, that's saying a lot.

Pumping more money into the program right now will only increase the likelihood of failure. There are also major concerns that deployment of a missile defense system could ignite an arms race and pave the way for development of space based weapons.

Realistically, an effective deployment could not be accomplished for decades, and the program is already behind schedule. For instance, the missile defense system can't tell the difference between a missile and a balloon. In order to hide this not-so-minor detail and put the kibosh on any demands of accountability, the Pentagon is trying to classify project testing results and budget data.
Classifying the fact that there is no fiscal argument or technical evidence that can be used to make this billion dollar pig fly is a disservice to our nation. Likewise, deployment of such an expensive, yet unproven system will drain national security of funds that could instead be directed to programs that will actually deter attacks in the near future. The Pentagon needs to reverse the growing trend of secrecy and nondisclosure regarding the billions of dollars being spent on this controversial program.

President Bush has also criticized Senator John Kerry for not wanting to deploy missile defense until it actually works. While a system that worked could be worth having, eliminating operational spending on missile defense or postponing it until it ready for prime time would allow these precious billions of dollars to be allocated to our troops and for equipment in Iraq. Let's prioritize more pressing national security threats while we continue to develop a missile shield, but hold off on deploying until we know it actually works.