Barack Obama delighted many, including myself, when he told the Polish president that he made “no commitment” to the anti-missile shield. And the reason he cited for opposing it is the reason it is such a detestable project: it will almost certainly never will work.
Though costing taxpayers over a trillion, and being in development for decades, you could count the number of times it’s been tested on two hands, and the number of times its worked on two fingers. And it’s only worked when it knew the destination of the missile. So if it can’t reliably intercept one missile, it’s certainly not going to be able to reliably intercept one with an identical decoy deployed at the same time. Or thirty decoys. Or a thousand. Quite simply, it is infinitely easier to fool the system than it is to make it fool-proof. Swarms of decoy missiles, with the same infrared signature, would render the system would be helpless- and a huge waste of money.
Frankly, I’m not even sure why the Russians are so angry. They need only spend a few million on decoy technology, and we’d have to spend a few hundred billion (and several years) in research to counter it. Or, they could just use a cruise missile, against which the system is powerless. Hell, making the missile shiny (ordinary white paint, for example) reduces effectiveness by 90%. So President-elect Obama questioning the plan was the first breath of fresh air in 8 years for foreign policy progressives.
What's more, offering to scrap the project, in addition to saving us trillions, could be used as a bargaining chip to lure Russia into a more cooperative stance. Perhaps removing it could be framed as an olive branch extended to Russia- at no expense to ourselves. But Russia has a severe inferiority complex, so I’m more expecting a nationalist message from Medvedev. Don’t be surprised if you hear about an “American surrender” if we drop the plans. But in the end we’ll be safer for having spent the money on something that actually works.
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