To be fair, the overwhelming majority of missile tests succeed. Our missile defense system has been proven successful in most cases, including simulations involving North Korea launching strikes against our homeland. So missile defense remains an important part of the common defense and should continue to be funded.

But this isn’t the best news possible. It may be the first attempt at neutralizing a missile strike from Iran, but time is sort of running out here. Ahmadinejad is promising a shock to the world on February 11th and the Pentagon is building up defenses in the region. We may be some time off from Iran being able to strike a major American city, but the sooner we fix this problem the better.

WASHINGTON, Feb 1 (Reuters) – A U.S. attempt to shoot down a ballistic missile mimicking an attack from Iran failed after a malfunction in a radar built by Raytheon Co, the Defense Department said.

The abortive test over the Pacific Ocean coincided with a Pentagon report that Iran had expanded its ballistic missile capabilities and posed a “significant” threat to U.S. and allied forces in the Middle East region.

The Missile Defense Agency said that in Sunday’s test both the target missile, fired from Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, and the interceptor, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, had performed normally.

“However, the Sea-Based X-band radar did not perform as expected,” the agency said on its web site. Officials will investigate the cause of the failure to intercept, it said.

The Sea-Based X-band radar would be this sucker right here. It’s basically a converted semi-submersible oil platform with an advanced radar system intended to detect incoming ballistic missiles. It’s considered a reliable defense against incoming missiles, though clearly something went wrong in this particular exercise.

Evidently we need more practice when it comes to stopping missiles originating in Iran. We’ve understandably been concentrating on North Korean threats, as the DPRK is already a nuclear with missiles capable of reaching our territory and interests. But now some attention clearly needs to shifted to the Middle East’s greatest agitator.