A top U.S. defense acknowledged the system couldn't have protected against Tuesday’s unprecedented terrorist attacks, but said the tragedy doesn't undermine the rationale for such system.official negotiating with Russia on a proposed missile defense plan. A missile defense system is designed to intercept missiles. If airplanes hit the World Trade Center, that's not what a missile defense system is designed to protect US against. Under secretary of defense Douglas Feith said at a news conference as the first details emerged of the plane crashes at the World Trade Center in New York.
Still, Feith argued the missile defense system was a necessary part of larger American plans to safeguard national security.
I don't think that it's fair to say a system designed for a specific purpose is flawed because it doesn't do something it's not designed to do, he said. J.D. Crouch II, the assistant U.S. secretary of defense for international security policy who was also in Moscow for the negotiations, said the United States was trying to deal with a range of threats and that a missile attack could be far deadlier than Tuesday’s plane hijackings.
A missile launched at New York would cause much more damage, he said.
Bureau Report