By Neil the Ethical Werewolf It’s easy to understand why people support the Star Wars anti-missile program. It promises to save us from deadly missiles by using exciting technology to shoot them down in midair. This sounds really awesome, and would be a significant reason for trying to set it up, if it worked. The trouble is that it doesn’t work, and there’s no sign that it’ll ever be close to working. Fred Kaplan summarized the state of anti-missile technology in a 2004 article:
In the past six years of flight tests, here is what the Pentagon's missile-defense agency has demonstrated: A missile can hit another missile in mid-air as long as a) the operators know exactly where the target missile has come from and where it's going; b) the target missile is flying at a slower-than-normal speed; c) it's transmitting a special beam that exaggerates its radar signature, thus making it easier to track; d) only one target missile has been launched; and e) the "attack" happens in daylight.
