I found this link to Brilliant Pebbles, it is my view, that the best means for missle defense is space based. Basically, the Reagan Adminstration and the Bush Sr. Adminstration were on the right path and on the way to deploying this system. If the Bush Jr. Adminstration is smart, they will resurrect this program. Here is the link:
Brilliant Pebbles
Country: USA
Basing: Space
Status: Terminated
Details
Brilliant Pebbles, the top anti-missile program of the Reagan and the first Bush administrations, was an attempt to deploy a 4,000-satellite constellation in low-Earth orbit that would fire high-velocity, watermelon-sized projectiles at long-range ballistic missiles launched from anywhere in the world. Although the program was eliminated by the Clinton Administration, the concept of Brilliant Pebbles remains among the most effective means of ballistic missile defense.
In the early 1980s, scientists Edward Teller, Lowell Wood, and Gregory Canavan began gaming out a new missile defense concept known as “Smart Rocks” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Smart Rocks involved deploying thousands of tiny rocket-propelled canisters in orbit, each capable of ramming itself into an incoming ballistic missile. Following their initial war games, Teller, Wood, and Canavan successfully persuaded President Ronald Reagan that a robust constellation of Smart Rocks interceptors would provide a strong defense against nuclear attack.
On March 23, 1983, Reagan announced his bold vision for an impenetrable missile defense shield that would render nuclear warheads impotent and obsolete: “I call upon the scientific community in this country, who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace.” From the very beginning, Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) viewed space-based weapons such as X-ray lasers, chemical lasers, particle-beam weapons, and kinetic kill vehicles as the best way to destroy large numbers of incoming Soviet warheads.
Smart Rocks was upgraded in 1988 and renamed “Brilliant Pebbles.” In addition to eliminating incoming nuclear warheads, each component of the 4,000-satellite constellation was designed to protect U.S. space-based assets, attack its Soviet counterparts, or sacrifice itself in a one-time spy mission. The interceptor satellites would be controlled from the ground, but would also have the ability to communicate among themselves and attack their targets autonomously. At a projected cost of $11 billion for the first 1,000 interceptors, Brilliant Pebbles presented a cost-efficient means of countering the Soviet menace.
Brilliant Pebbles made significant progress between 1988 and 1990, and received enthusiastic support from the Bush I Administration. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney referred to Brilliant Pebbles as the White House’s “number one project,” and the program received generous funding even as other SDI initiatives were phased out. In March 1990, George Monahan, Director of SDI, announced that Brilliant Pebbles would be the first-deployed U.S. missile defense system. His successor, Henry F. Cooper, streamlined the Brilliant Pebbles contractor team to two companies, TRW-Hughes and Martin Marietta, and lobbied aggressively on Capitol Hill for more funding and support.
In 1991, following several years of inner turmoil, the Soviet Union imploded. Despite the end of the Cold War, Brilliant Pebbles remained an essential part of the U.S. missile defense architecture. That same year, computer simulations demonstrated that, if it had been deployed during the Persian Gulf War, Brilliant Pebbles would have shot down every Scud missile launched by Saddam Hussein, including the salvo attack on Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Following the Middle East crisis, Brilliant Pebbles was enhanced to give its interceptors the ability to swoop down into the atmosphere, thus improving its overall effectiveness against Scuds and cruise missiles.
In 1993, however, the Clinton Administration delivered a severe blow to U.S. missile defense by systematically eliminating Brilliant Pebbles through a series of budget cuts. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin stated his objective as “taking the star out of Star Wars.” The Administration did more than just that: it slashed missile defense funding across the board and replaced SDI with the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). Yet the technology itself would continue to be tested, for a short time: one year later, NASA launched a deep-space probe known as “Clementine,” which had been built using first-generation Brilliant Pebbles technology. Clementine successfully mapped the entire surface of the Moon. The mission, which cost $80 million, effectively “space qualified” Brilliant Pebbles’ hardware. All the same, no steps were taken by the Clinton Administration to resurrect the program.
Brilliant Pebbles remained on the shelf and out of the public eye until 2002, when President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the 1972 ABM Treaty. At first, many believed that Bush II planned to resurrect Brilliant Pebbles, which had been the focus of his father’s anti-missile program. Instead, the Missile Defense Agency (BMDO’s successor) concentrated its efforts on “hit-to-kill” ground-based defenses, such as the 20 interceptors that will be deployed at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in late 2004. Little attention was paid to space-based defenses, although MDA’s Near Field Infrared Experiment (NFIRE), scheduled for launch in the summer of 2004, recently shifted the national debate back to Brilliant Pebbles-like interceptors.
In any event, the concept of Brilliant Pebbles remains among the most efficient and cost-effective means of defending the U.S. against nuclear, chemical, and biological warheads.
http://www.missilethreat.com/systems/bp_usa.html