Interestingly, two of the most vocal of critics of missile defense -- MIT's Professor Theodore Postol and IBM's Richard Garwin -- have been recently sighted recommending that AEGIS ships be adapted for sea-based missile defenses precisely to address this mission.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Critics' Study Makes Case for 'Layered' Missile Defense

Ronald Kadish (USAF), said the United States would need a layered type of defense across a broad front to address an evolving missile threat.

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Even Bush used most of the words he devoted to missile defense in a keynote address in Bucharest to underline that the plan is not intended as a threat to Russia.

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But the immediate commencement of deployment of limited missile defenses at sea offers a way to buy the nation time to begin to address the current threat, while evolving, improving, and augmenting the systems first deployed on an emergency basis.

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Kadish declared that such a layered system, comprised over time of a range of systems to address an evolving threat, would likely utilize sea- and space-based missile defense "layers" to complement and add robustness to the ground-based capability he is preparing for deployment in Alaska.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Critics' Study Makes Case for 'Layered' Missile Defense

Amazingly, some of those same people -- including Spurgeon Keeney , president of the Arms Control Association and Mary Elizabeth Hoinkes , a former U.S. Arms Control Agency lawyer, who are quoted in today's Washington Post -- are sharply critical of even these modest efforts to understand and begin to address the threat that they purport to regard as a serious one (at least when opposing missile defenses).

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy