No Deadline

Blank check. Doesn't have to work. Nice deal. Contractor heaven. Army Times (07.22.05):

"The Pentagon agency charged with developing an anti-missile system to protect the United States is not facing any deadlines to fix all the bugs in the system before it can be ready for service.

Asked if senior Pentagon leaders or the White House had set a deadline for the system to be ready, the MDA’s director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry 'Trey' Obering, said, 'I’ve not been given a date that says this is the date the system has to be fully operational.'"

No deadline set to fix missile defense system

"Instead, the system as it exists today — nine ground-based interceptors, radar and command-and-control centers — is being switched back and forth between alert status and time off for fixing problems, he said."

So they can turn it on and off now?

NTI: Global Security Newswire (01.14.05), via the ACW ("What we have here is a failure to operate"):

"Having missed Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 [2004] deadlines for activating components of the ground-based national missile defense ordered by President George W. Bush, U.S. military officials now say may never declare the system operational."

Missile Defense Activation Date Remains Uncertain

Another confidence-inspiring quote, from the Washington Post (07.22.05), again via the ACW:

"'We have a better than zero chance of successfully intercepting, I believe, an inbound warhead,' Obering said. 'That confidence will improve over time.'"

U.S. Missile Defense Being Expanded, General Says

The ACW comments, "It is also irrefutably true that, if a warhead is incoming, and I am standing quite near to its impact point, and I threw a golf ball at it, I have a better than zero chance of hitting it and causing it to fail to explode."

On that note, the Post notes the Pentagon wants to expand the system "to address potential threats from the Middle East and China, and from ship-borne missiles off America's coast...."

So instead of not working against threats from North Korea, they want it to not work against threats from the Middle East and China too?

As to ship-borne, short-range ballistic missiles, the Pentagon's concern comes from an experiment they did. They launched one from a ship, and found "'it was not hard to do'."