Word: shielding
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...risk of inaction will prove far greater. The Pyongyang regime will view its stockpile of missiles and nuclear material as tipping the regional balance in its favor and providing a shield behind which it can pursue its interests with impunity. Worse, North Korea has a long history of selling its advanced weapons to countries in the Middle East, and it operates a black market in other forms of contraband. Like Pakistan's rogue nuclear engineer A.Q. Khan, North Korean officials might be tempted to sell the ingredients of their arsenal to terrorists. Finally, many expect North Korea's failed economy...
...orbiter," said shuttle program manager Wayne Hale. Still, aside from delivering 5,000 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station, the entire shuttle mission will center on the safety of the craft - including experiments conducted by the astronauts on ways they could fix the craft's heat shield if damage to it were to make landing risky...
...Since President Reagan launched the latest generation of U.S. missile defenses in 1983, envisioning an impregnable missile shield over the U.S., the nation has spent $91 billion (with $58 billion more slated to be spent over the next six years) to protect the country from missile attack. But his ambitious hopes to render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete" have been dramatically downsized. Reagan envisioned a network of satellites, sensors and even space-based weapons capable of thwarting a massive missile strike from the Soviet Union or China. But with the Cold War's end, the scale of the threat...
...good thing the threat has diminished, because the technological challenge of building a missile shield has turned out to far more daunting than originally thought. In a series of scripted $100 million tests, 155-pound interceptors have destroyed dummy warheads in just five out of 10 tries between 1999 and 2005. The two most recent tests failed when the boosters designed to lob the interceptors into space failed to launch. After spending a year beefing up quality control, two tests are planned for later this year. Despite the system's shakiness, the White House in 2002 ordered the Pentagon...
...system, however, has failed to impress either its critics or its supporters. Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester for six years until 2001, says the shield is "a scarecrow defense" of unproven value. Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation, a long-time backer, bemoans what he sees as Administration foot-dragging. "They are so scared of test failures," he says, "they're not moving forward as fast as they...