Yesterday’s successful missile intercept is making the headlines today. But deeper investigation reveals that this is really no big deal.

The Aegis SMD system is basically just a ship-borne version of the well-developed Patriot PAC-3 system, and has been effective is about a half-dozen tests before this one. It’s nice to know that our fleet defense capabilities will soon be ratcheted-up a notch. But the success of the Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI), the system which will defend the homeland, has been hit-or-miss (pun most certainly intended). Much of the technology is the same between SMD, PAC-3 and GBI. But the GBI program appears to me to have some engineering management issues.