A National Missile Defense System, formerly known as Star Wars, seems on its way to early deployment, whether it works or not. President-elect Bush is all for it, and the key national security team he has selected seem unquestioningly in support – with one possible exception.

The project has had a long and troubled history. Frances Fitzgerald, in her book “Way Out There in the Blue,” tells how a small cult of government and industrial enthusiasts promoted the idea for half a century. They worked against the technical puzzle of how to “hit a bullet with a bullet,” as well as astronomical costs and distrust by allied governments.

President Reagan gave himself and some of his supporters a thrill with his dream of an anti-missile shield and an end to nuclear warfare. But his Strategic Defense Initiative, immediately renamed “Star Wars” by skeptical critics, lost steam in a struggle between dreamers and pragmatists.

Through the Clinton administration, which went along reluctantly in the face of increasing Republican pressure, the United States has spent $60 million on research and development of a system that has failed repeatedly in tests and still shows no real prospect of working 100 percent. Ninety-nine percent would not be good enough, since one enemy missile that got through could mean the destruction of, say, Chicago.

President-elect Bush, however, brings a new determination to missile defense. His choices of Dick Cheney as vice president, Colin Powell as secretary of state, and Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser can be counted on as enthusiastic backers for a fresh version of Star Wars.

Most commentators have been too quick to include Donald H. Rumsfeld, the nominee for secretary of defense, as an all-out supporter. Mr. Bush, in announcing the selection, stressed a determination to develop a missile defense system and recalled Mr. Rumsfeld’s chairmanship of a bipartisan commission two years ago, on missile threats.

The New York Times observed, incorrectly, that the Rumsford commission had “concluded that the building of a national missile defense was essential to defend the United States against ballistic missile attacks.” The Washington Post made the same error in commenting on the Rumsfeld appointment.

Actually, the Rumsfeld commission concluded only that American intelligence agencies had underestimated the threat of future missile attack from North Korea, Iran and Iraq. The commission was not asked to recommend a specific military response to this danger and did not do so. Far from being an automatic supporter of any weapons proposal, Mr. Rumsfeld can be counted on to insist on careful development and adequate testing. Henry Kissinger, as national security adviser in the Nixon and Ford years, often sparred with Mr. Rumsfeld. Mr. Kissinger, in his memoirs, called Mr. Rumsfeld a “skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat,” who “thwarted new diplomatic initiatives or military moves by a rigorous insistence on bureaucratic procedures and playing the devil’s advocate with respect to every new proposal.”

Additional background information on Mr. Rumsfeld comes from a respected physicist and arms control specialist, Richard L. Garwin, Mr. Garwin, who served on the 1998 commission, emphasizes that the commission “did not have the duty or the time to look at whether American could defend itself effectively against any missiles – long-range or short-range – launched by these hostile nations.” He said he expected Mr. Rumsfeld to be “an informed decision maker when it comes to a national missile defense, one who will advocate such a system only if it will be effective.”

Mr. Rumsfeld’s career and reputation suggest that as secretary of defense he will not go along with anything that heads toward wasteful failure.