We give the mis­sile defense pro­gram a pretty hard time around here, espe­cially when they don’t even man­age to pass their own dumbed-​​down tests. So give the Star Wars crowd some credit: one of their inter­cep­tors suc­cess­fully downed a mock war­head on Thursday. It’s “the fifth suc­cess in six such tests of the fledg­ling U.S. anti-​​missile shield’s sea-​​based leg,” accord­ing to Reuters. The ground-​​based com­po­nent of the mis­sile shield has, obvi­ously, not per­formed nearly as well.
The tar­get rocket was fired from the U.S. Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, Kauai, and was hit a few min­utes later from a Standard Missile-​​3 inter­cep­tor fired from the USS Lake Erie guided mis­sile cruiser. The ship used the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Weapon System to track the tar­get. By year’s end, the U.S. Navy wants 18 ships equipped with the sys­tem, Defense Daily notes.
“Last fall,” Reuters observes, “the Japan-​​based Arleigh Burke-​​class destroyer Curtis Wilbur became the first com­po­nent of the anti-​​missile shield to be put on patrol in the Sea of Japan to guard against North Korean attack.“
Philip Coyle, the Pentagon’s for­mer chief of test­ing and eval­u­a­tion and a nor­mally vicious skep­tic of the mis­sile defense sys­tem, was muted in his reac­tions to yesterday’s test. But he did have this to say:

I assume that the inter­cept took place so soon after inter­cep­tor launch — just two min­utes — because they wanted to demon­strate the capa­bil­ity inter­cept a short range enemy mis­sile, and at rel­a­tively close range from the launch­ing Aegis ship. Depending on the actual geom­e­try and con­di­tions, such tests can be highly scripted to be suc­cess­ful on such a short time scale. 

THERE’S MORE: Canada decided yes­ter­day not to join in the American anti-​​missile effort. And that elicited a rather odd reponse from U.S. ambas­sador Paul Cellucci: “We sim­ply can­not under­stand why Canada would in effect give up its sov­er­eignty its seat at the table to decide what to do about a mis­sile that might be com­ing towards Canada.“
Right. Canada makes its own deci­sions about how best to spend its money and defend its cit­i­zens. And that means it’s giv­ing up its sov­er­eignty. Whatever you say, Paul.
(thanks to RC for the pointer)
AND MORE: “What the U.S. Ambassador is say­ing is that the U.S. has arro­gated to itself the right to invade Canada’s air­space in order to fire at an incom­ing mis­sile that may be aimed at Canada, the U.S., or Mexico, even if Canada objects to such an action,” Defense Tech Dad Tom Shachtman says over on the forum. “This in effect negates Canadian sov­er­eignty over its own air­space.“
Jeff Quinton points out that a retired Canadian gen­eral has just made a sim­i­lar point — that, as Jeff puts it, “NORAD/​Northern Command… are set up to pro­vide secu­rity for the whole con­ti­nent and that Canada could be shut out of the plan­ning process.”

“Canadians will not have any par­tic­i­pa­tion in the actual decision-​​making or the rules of engage­ment or any­thing to do with bal­lis­tic mis­sile defence,” lieutenant-​​general George MacDonald, the for­mer vice-​​chief of defence staff and now a con­sul­tant, tells the National Post. “We will sim­ply be feed­ing the system.”

AND MORE: “Prime Minister Paul Martin said Canada must be con­sulted before the U.S. decides to fire on mis­siles that enter Canadian air­space, despite Ottawa’s refusal to par­tic­i­pate in America’s mis­sile defence pro­gram,” the CBC reports.

“I don’t think that any­one expected that there would be any other fin­ger on a but­ton than the Americans,” Martin said Friday, a day after his deci­sion not to join the pro­gram.
“But in terms of Canadian air­space, yes we would expect to be con­sulted. This is our air­space. We’re a sov­er­eign nation. And you don’t intrude on a sov­er­eign nation’s air­space with­out seek­ing per­mis­sion,” Martin said.