By Sam Black, CDI Research Assistant

On May 25, 2007, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) conducted a long-awaited missile test of its ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) portion of the missile defense system.  Or, at least, it was supposed to.  The GMD, which is the mainstay of the U.S. layered, multi-part missile defense architecture, has been plagued with failure in the past, having successfully completed just six of its last 11 intercept attempts.[i]  This most recent test, which was delayed from May 24 due to bad weather, was designated a “no test” when the target missile “failed to reach the defended area.”[ii]

MDA plans to repeat the test this summer, at which time it probably hopes to laud the effectiveness of the system by successfully demonstrating its capabilities.  However, the apparent lack of a test did not prevent the MDA from drawing any conclusions about its system.  According to Reuters,

The failed test underscored the need of the U.S. to install 10 interceptors in Poland and a tracking radar station in the Czech Republic as a defense against potential missile attack from Iran, [MDA spokesman Rick] Lehner said.  It showed that any missiles that Iran launched could similarly go astray and land in Europe even if Europe was not Iran's target, he added.[iii]

This conclusion seems more than a bit strange.  The test apparently shows that the United States cannot even muster a working target missile, let alone arrange for its vaunted missile defense system to destroy it.  Yet, the failure of a technology that the United States has supposedly mastered, a ballistic missile, is supposed to justify the deployment of a weapon that hasn’t been demonstrated in any way?  The proposed interceptors for Europe have not been developed, much less demonstrated. And if the U.S. GMD system is supposed to be able to defend against an Iranian missile that failed in a similar way to the U.S. target, shouldn’t the GMD interceptor have been able to shoot down the wonky target missile during the test?  Doesn’t this really show that the current GMD system isn’t designed to handle a situation in which a missile doesn’t reach the “defended area”? So, on what basis does the failed test prove that the non-existent European interceptors would be able to handle a misguided Iranian missile?  All of these questions need to be answered if Mr. Lehner’s statements are to be accepted.

This desperate attempt to characterize a failed attempt as justification for its multibillion-dollar plan to place missile defense interceptors in Europe is embarrassing, and adds more static to an already disingenuous debate.  In reality, even a successful test last week wouldn’t have demonstrated the efficacy of the proposed Polish interceptor site.  This is because the interceptors to be deployed there are a two-stage variant of the three-stage interceptors deployed at Vandenberg Air Force Base.  If MDA wants to convince skeptics that GMD really works, they need to stop making statements that are more likely to be quoted by comics than members of Congress. 

[i] Victoria Samson, “Flight Tests for Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) System,” December 7, 2006, http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/gmd%20ift2.pdf. 

[ii] Missile Defense Agency, “Missile Defense Test a “No Test,” MDA Press Release, May 25, 2007.

[iii] Jim Wolf, “U.S. Scraps Missile Defense Test as Target Goes Astray,” Reuters, May 25, 2007.