Arguments against the building of an anti-missile missile.
Eighteen rockets had been shot down today by Israel's "iron dome" counter-missile missile system, Israel said.
But will it ever deploy them itself, and if so, would it ever fire an anti-missile missile if it saw a rocket whizzing past?
The Reagan fantasy of a "Star Wars" anti-missile missile defence system - 30 years later it remains a pipe dream - stepped up economic and military pressure on Moscow.
Some, but not much, reassurance was provided by the later news that the Arrow-2 anti-missile missile, being developed in Israel with American help, had this month intercepted and destroyed a computer-simulated target.For defence boffins who are wrestling with the technical challenge of "hitting a bullet with a bullet", the Arrow's success offered a ray of hope after a run of disappointments.
Then in 1966, Alfred Hitchcock released a Reagan favorite, Torn Curtain, in which American agent Paul Newman works on developing an anti-missile missile.
Shooting at missiles with rapid-firing guns, or anti-missile missiles, can bring them down.
Interceptors (anti-missile missiles) fired from sea or land will probably be too late.
On 26 May 1972, according to released US documents, the embassy suites produced information that was vital to securing the East-West agreement not to use anti-missile missiles.
As Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, surely knows, the anti-missile radar the Czechs are receiving, and the battery of anti-missile missiles that may end up in Poland, are not aimed at Russia.
