i'm glad that missle defense is such a priority right now...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - An important test of the United States' emerging missile-defense system ended in an $85 million failure early today as an interceptor rocket failed to launch as scheduled from the Marshall Islands, the Pentagon said.

A target rocket carrying a mock warhead was successfully launched from Kodiak, Alaska. But the interceptor, which was to have gone aloft 16 minutes later and picked off the target 100 miles over the earth, automatically shut down instead because of "an unknown anomaly," the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency said.