Part 2: Nobody in the Economist comments section knows how BMD works
"It is a missile defense system, is NATO trying to convince the Russians that the defence system will work just against Iranian missiles? That they will just let the Russians ones through?"
"The very fact that missiles dont need to point in any direction, they are facing the sky is being overlooked in the simplistic analysis of this picture."
To hit a ballistic missile you need a looker and a shooter; this is because the optimal point to launch an interceptor (head on) is not the optimal point to track a target (side on). So in real life, BMD is not like a shield in Supreme Commander, they have to be deployed according to specific threat axes. I am not an expert but I do suspect the arc of a missile coming in from Iran would be different from that of a missile coming from Russia. In this sense, yes, you are pointing the defense system at a specific target.
Caveat: most of the tracking platforms are mobile, so they could be redeployed to face a different axis fairly easily, though not immediately in response to an incoming threat.
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