From an
engineer's point of view, Custodian is
ignorant of the issues and politics involved in the
ballistic missile defense area. While it may be true that
BMDO is the special child of the
Pentagon, it must be pointed out that it is
BMDO's JOB to investigate
intercept techniques which occur in exo (i.e. post-
boost phase). There are other projects which study the
boost phase problem, such as the Navy Theater Wide (NTW) program, which wasn't mentioned in the other writeup.
There are many issues which present a problem to boost phase intercepts. The foremost problem is that the interceptor site (be it land-based or sea-based) must be physically close to the launch point for boost-phase intercept to be possible. Given the fact that many long-range ballistic missiles can be transported anywhere on a continent on a TEL, this makes quick detection and intercept difficult or impossible for shorter range theater based boost phase interceptors.
I would argue that effective counteremeasures are easy to implement; in my opinion the subject isn't simple. However, I won't argue the fact that BMDO can be shady.