Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is using a ball game to instruct Web surfers about national missile defense, but agency critics say the game fails as an analogy of a missile interception and is no fun.

The game involves throwing two “synthetic foam (or equivalent) soft-sided balls” at each other ― one designated “the target missile” and the other “the interceptor” ― to illustrate that “missile defense is very difficult to accomplish.” The instructions feature diagrams illustrating boost-phase, midcourse and terminal-phase interceptions.

The agency posted instructions for playing the game about a year ago as part of a redesign of its Web site, according to MDA spokesman Chris Taylor, “just for the casual Web surfer.”

“We frankly have thought, as we redesign the Web, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to put some things out there for a younger audience and people that surf the Web?’” Taylor said.

GlobalSecurity.org Director John Pike said the simple game illustrates that the United States has been spending far too much on less cost-effective missile defense activities.

“I’m surprised they didn’t have the video game [Missile Command]. As long as they’re having games, that’s a good one,” Pike added.

The game is “silly,” said Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security Program Co-Director David Wright, because the agency’s analogy with missile defense does not hold up.

“The reason that intercepting in ballistic missile defense is hard is not for the reason this simple experiment is hard,” he said.

The game fails to illustrate key issues faced by missile defense developers, Wright said. For starters, “there’s no guidance on the [interceptor] ball,” he said. In addition, the shape and size of target ball are known, the target has no countermeasures and the interceptor does not need to maneuver in difficult atmospheric re-entry conditions, Wright said.

“So the actual missile defense problem is in some ways more difficult … than this problem because of all those things, but it’s a very different set of reasons than what this illustrates. So it seems to me that this little thing that they’re trying to talk about here just sort of misses the point from a physical point of view,” Wright said.

MDA spokesman Taylor suggested the agency created the game in part to keep up with Web site features produced by other U.S. agencies.

“You look at the NASA Web site, and you look at all the stuff they’ve got, and it’s like, ‘Wow,’” he said.

A five-launch Global Security Newswire test of the game resulted in four misses and one midcourse hit that failed to significantly alter the path of the target.

Said GlobalSecurity.org’s Pike of MDA’s bid to spruce up its site, “They’ve got too much time on their hands. I mean, it’s not even a good game.”