Score one for antimissiles

Fifty years ago last month, US president John F. Kennedy said that Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, had made an empty boast about his country's antimissile missiles. "What you are trying to do is shoot a bullet with a bullet," Kennedy said, coining an oft-repeated phrase. "Now, if you have a thousand bullets coming at you, that is a terribly difficult task which we have not mastered yet, and I don't think he has. The offense has the advantage."