One gunslinger draws a gun and pulls the trigger, sending a bullet speeding toward his arch-enemy standing at the other end of the corral. From a nearby rooftop, a third maverick tries to save his friend by firing his own gun to intercept the enemy bullet in mid-flight. For the rooftop maverick, the answer to this question must be no.
Human reflexes are just too slow.
For lifetime bureaucrats who administer the nation's missile defense program, the answer is an emphatic yes. These visionaries promise that as long as the budget appropriations keep rolling in to support expensive research, a reliable shield against ballistic missiles will become a reality in the near future. A cursory glance at missile defense testing data, however, reveals a dismal technical record of failure. Things have gotten so bad that the Clinton Administration's favorite missile defense system just failed its fifth straight test in the desert. In large part, missile defense programs have been kept afloat by deceptive campaigns to distort test results and squash public criticism through strategic deception, abuse of the classification system, and intimidation.