The USS Lake Erie launches an interceptor in an earlier missile defense test

Code-named FTM-22, the test was one more step towards an anti-missile system that could make North Korea or Iran think twice before launching their relatively small arsenals of ballistic missiles. And that’s the principal reason for the missile defense program: to deter those two countries.

But China’s infamous Second Artillery Force commands, by the Pentagon’s public estimate, more than 1,100 short-ranged ballistic missiles (SRBMs), not counting smaller numbers of longer-ranged types. A single Aegis destroyer can carry at most 96 Standard Missiles in its launchers, and the Navy has four of them upgraded to do BMD, with another five in the current program of record. That math means that even if all nine were deployed in the Western Pacific (logistically unlikely) and all 864 Standards hit their targets (simply impossible), at least 300 Chinese missiles would get through.

“Nobody’s really tried to shoot down salvos of missiles at this point,” said Heritage Foundation fellow Dean Cheng. “It’s an interesting question what that would even look like.”

So the bad news is that there’s no missile defense system in existence that can stop a mass ballistic missile attack. The good news is they may not have to, because there are lots of ways to stop a missile “left of launch” — before it ever leaves the ground.

Setting aside the strategic context for a moment, there’s no denying that this latest test was technically impressive. Initial press releases from both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon claimed this was their systems’ highest-altitude intercept ever, but Lockheed’s Ballistic Missile Defense director, Nick Bucci, walked that back in a call with press this morning: Based on detailed post-mission analysis, he said, “Last night’s intercept was just shy of our highest intercept, which was FTM-21.”

FTM-21 was the September test in which the Erie used its Aegis data to launch two Standard interceptors at the same target. That kind of “double tap” is a common way to make sure you kill the target, and testing the ability to control two missiles at once was well worth doing. In that case the first interceptor hit just fine. This time, in FTM-22, they fired just one missile and still got the kill.

Bucci declined to say which test was harder, saying each was difficult in different ways. FTM-21 shot down a short-range ballistic missile – similar to those aimed at Taiwan– while FTM-22 shot down a “medium-range” missile with a range between 1,000 and 3,000 kilometers (625 to 1,875 miles). Arguably more important than the type of missile, however, was that each intercept came after the warhead had already separated from its booster in a cloud of radar-baffling clutter that the Aegis-Standard combo still managed to see through.

Meanwhile, aboard the Lake Erie, Navy personnel operated the entire system without contractor help. Most important of all for realism, while the crew knew an “enemy” missile would be launching sometime – hardly implausible in a major crisis – they did not know when, requiring them to perform a “no notice” response.

The third and last test, scheduled for early 2014, will up the ante even more. They’ll fire multiple Standard Missiles at multiple incoming targets. How many? “More than one” was all Bucci would say. If that test succeeds as well, Aegis BMD 4.0.2 will have completed its operational test and evaluation phase and be ready to deploy on Navy ships.

But even upgrading all 84 Aegis ships for BMD still gives you, at maximum, 8,468 Standard interceptors, and by the time you’re done, China’s Second Artillery may well have more ballistic missiles to launch than that. (Also, it’s logistically impossible to get all 84 underway at the same time, strategically unsound to commit them all to the same theater, and tactically stupid to load their launchers exclusively with defensive missiles and no offensive ones, plus the Chinese have cruise missiles that BMD doesn’t deal with). So what’s our hope in an all-out Pacific war?

The answer is that BMD isn’t our only line of defense. If an enemy missile gets through, the target ship or base can still try to jam its “terminal guidance” systems so it misses. Far better, though, is to blind the missile before it locks on to its target, and best of all to disable it before it can even launch. The military calls this “breaking the kill chain.” If any one step of the attack fails, the chain breaks and the strike misses. This is a central concept of the Navy-Air Force idea of “Air-Sea Battle.”

Admittedly, airstrikes on the Chinese mainland to take out the missile launchers would escalate the conflict — but the Navy’s most senior admiral, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Greenert, emphasizes the “non-kinetic” aspects of Air-Sea Battle.” In other words, the focus is not on shooting down the incoming missile or even bombing the launch site, but on scrambling the enemy’s entire system with electronic warfare and cyber attacks.

Before a missile can even launch, its commanders need to know roughly where the target is. That data usually comes from long-range radars which can be blinded by jamming – or hacked before the war even starts so they give false readings, in which case the enemy may never figure out what’s wrong. Then that targeting data has to get to the launch site. Land-based radars can connect over fiber optic cables, but ships at sea and, even more so, satellites in space – by far the longest-ranged sensors available – have to rely on long-range transmissions which can, again, be jammed. You can also jam or hack the receivers at the launch site so the missile crews never get the information, or scramble their command-and-control network so the order to fire never gets through.

So the clash of attacking and defending missiles is just one small part of a much larger war, a largely invisible conflict waged by electrons moving through the air and cyberspace. Which side would win? Between the constant proof of China’s hacking skills and US hints of secret cyber-attack capabilities, it’s impossible to tell – not just for us civilians but for the commanders and policymakers on either side. Let’s hope we never find out.

Edited 4:45 pm