What appears to be an impossible task based on what is going on in the Middle East, shooting down fast-moving rocket missiles and obliterating their launching sites might actually be readily accomplished by technology that may be already available.

All missiles launched from the ground must, somewhere during their flight, move along a curved line. The precise motion parameters: arc, direction, and velocity could be quickly determined via visible light, infra-red, or radar detectors mounted on many small computerized unmanned aircraft already flitting about. The information, instantaneously fed to unmanned missile-carrying aircraft that were also already on the scene, would immediately trigger the firing of several small, lethal defensive missiles programmed to reach and destroy the attacking offensive rocket before it reached its target.

Preventing the defensive missiles from hitting the offensive one at or close enough to the target to wreak even more destruction- could be accomplished by programming the airborne motion-detector computers not to order the firing of defensive rockets unless the computations indicated there was no chance of a tragic error.

Similarly, taking out an attack missile-launcher can be done by small, unmanned computerized aircraft using the motion parameters of the offensive attack missile to quickly locate the precise site from which the attack rocket was launched. Passing this information immediately to the unmanned missile-carrying defensive aircraft would trigger the firing of several missiles simultaneously that could blanket the launch sites before the launcher devices could be removed.

During World War-II, Nazi radio-detector direction finders located and captured Allied secret agents behind the German lines usually within two weeks of their being parachuted in --- and we were ordered never to allow our agents to transmit messages more than 20 minutes at a time. How much more sophisticated has detection equipment become 60 years later!

(Julian Kane was an OSS Radio operator in World War II.)