Some dreams never die.
Enthusiasm for deploying a full-scale shield against incoming ballistic missiles waned by the late 1980s in the face of widespread technical failures and the initiation of the first significant reductions of U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals. Although the political fortunes of missile defenses have changed dramatically, the technical, economic, and strategic drawbacks of deploying such a system remain. Larger problems, such as dealing with hundreds or thousands of decoy warheads, have barely been addressed. Meanwhile, major components of the overall missile defense effort have experienced massive cost overruns. And U.S. pronouncements about deploying defenses have sparked bitter denunciations by officials in Beijing and Moscow, setting the stage for what could become a new nuclear arms race.