Mr Walker found the deaths had been "entirely avoidable" and blamed a series of "glaring failures" that led the plane to be labelled as a hostile missile.

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The Scowcroft National Security Council on which Condeleeza Rice had the Soviet portfolio during Bush I was hostile to efforts to deploy missile defenses from 1989 to 1983.

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On the Chinese side, however, the response was noncommittal on some issues, but still overwhelmingly hostile to U.S. missile defense.

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That potentially devastating prospect may serve as a further disincentive to a hostile power's launching the missile in the first place.

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"South Korea's military is on high alert to prepare for any hostile acts from the North following the guided-missile launches today, " defense ministry spokesman Mr. Kim said.

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One, as Mr Bush has argued, is to build limited missile defences which, if they could be made to work reliably (still far from clear), could help prevent a hostile regime bent on bother from miscalculating that a threat of a missile strike on New York or Los Angeles, or possibly London, Paris, Berlin or Tokyo, could make aggression pay.

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Aegis began as a sea-based defense against hostile aircraft, but over three decades has evolved to become the most versatile missile-defense system in the world, due in no small part to the fact that destroyers and cruisers hosting the system can get wherever they need to be quickly.

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