Space Based Interceptors:
Still Not a Good Idea

Teresa Hitchens and Victoria Samson

Clothing designers know that fashion is cyclical-styles ebb and flow in popularity, but they keep coming back. Oddly enough, this maxim is starting to seem true for national security too. The same enemies, areas of conflict, and weapons programs keep resurfacing, which sometimes is understandable. In other cases, however, it seems unfathomable why certain programs continue to receive political and financial support. Space-based missile defense is one of the latter cases. It was originally conceived by the Reagan administration in the 1980s as part of an impenetrable bubble that was to protect the United States against an onslaught of missiles from the Soviet Union. Today, the Pentagon is once again examining the basing of interceptors in space as part of its overall missile defense program, despite continuing scientific and engineering challenges-as well as prohibitive costs-to developing and deploying on-orbit weapons for this, or any other, mission.

The Bush Administration's own version of "Star Wars" indicates that the United States is ready to abandon its decades-long policy of restraint regarding the weaponization of space. Even more worrisome, the current U.S. administration is pursuing the elusive and dangerous policy goal of dominating space in the absence of a serious public debate about the ramifications for U.S. security and global stability.

Theresa Hitchens is Vice President of the Center for Defense Information. She also serves on the Editorial Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a member of Women in International Security and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Victoria Samson is a research associate at the Center for Defense Information and was Senior Policy Associate at the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers.