To counter the threat of proliferating ballistic missiles with improved offensive countermeasures, we need cost-effective defenses, well beyond the capability of our current systems. The best way to achieve this goal is with defenses that can intercept attacking ballistic missiles while their rockets are burning in their boost phase, before they can release their decoys that overwhelm our current mid-course defenses that work in outer space. We need to revive initiatives from the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) era that recognized this potential problem and dealt with it. The most cost-effective concepts, space based interceptors, remain controversial—but unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs) may be acceptable as launch platforms for boost-phase interceptors. Happily, that SDI-pioneered technology has survived, at least after a fashion, and could be harnessed to defeat today’s offensive countermeasures. Read Full Story