Note: This essay was written two or three weeks before the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. It's included here to provide historical perspective. Before it happened, I don't think anyone really took the idea of an attack on a major US city very seriously. Unfortunately, that included the American Defense community and the White House. 1 September 2001 Dateline Madrid-- President Bush's new favorite toy may be useless against the types of weapons which rogue nations would most likely fire at the United States. The trouble seems to be that our Missile Defense System is more comfortable when aimed at the kind of high-tech, super accurate weapons that we would build, rather than the clunky, thrown-together missiles that our enemies can afford to manufacture. Rather than spinning like tops to ensure precise targeting, these low-budget missile would tend to tumble, making them far less accurate. Of course, when nuclear weapons are involved, accuracy isn't always the first priority. "If you fire at New York, it means you might not get Central Park," a federal weapons expert said. "You might get the Jersey side or Queens. But no matter what, you're going to get enough of the metro area that New Yorkers will be unhappy." A spokesman for the Bush administration pointed out that New Yorkers always seem to be unhappy about something. "I mean, really, there's just no pleasing those people, you know?" Critics say the antimissile program is ignoring an intractable problem. "Tumbling is a terribly big deal," said Dr. Theodore A. Postol, an arms expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology critical of some antimissile systems. "It's totally unpredictable, a wild card. It makes it much harder to know what to look for." The same Bush spokesman, who refused to give his name, downplayed the significance of tumbling. "Forget Tumbling!", he replied, "I'm sick of hearing about tumbling! Look, if those bastards even manage to get something off the ground, it'll be a miracle. We'll probably have to leak some of our technology to them, just so they can appear to present a plausible threat. If they can get one damn missile over here, I won't care if it tumbles, wobbles, or dances a f***ing jig. I'll be down at the DOD, swigging champagne and kissing everybody in sight!" Dr. Nira Schwartz, a senior engineer in 1995 and 1996 at TRW, a military contractor, was asked to do computer simulations in which a kill vehicle was tested against 200 types of enemy decoys and warheads, including tumblers. The kill vehicle always failed to distinguish between tumbling warheads and decoys, Dr. Schwartz said in an interview. By this time, the Bush spokesman had sobered up enough to realize he was talking to a member of the press, and refused further comment. He also refused to pick up the tab.
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Essays