These tests are kind of hard to hide. Launching a missile from Vandenberg requires public notice to restrict air and water areas along the flight path. The missile also tends to make noise and draw attention. They could attempt to hide details about the intercept attempt but that wouldn't be a good idea. NMD is a matter of public policy and that requires people to know what is going on. Perhaps it's time for the NMD people to do a better job of explaining the testing process to people.

Part of the problem is that people don't understand the testing process, so any failure gets blown out of proportion. In aviation, new airliner designs undergo years of testing before they carry a paying passenger. All sorts of systems will fail during testing but those problems are normally gone by the time the plane enters service. In software development, a successful test is one that finds an error so it can be fixed. Every time a complex system fails a test, engineers examine the results so they can find the cause and repair it. That's why testing is so complex and expensive. Just think, if we'd given up after every public failure, we would've never developed boosters powerful enough to launch a simple satellite. Back in the 1950s and 60s, rocket failures were very frequent. At least we had the tenacity to still with the effort through the failures.

If failure is the grounds to cancel a weapons system, why shouldn't we apply the same standard to other government programs. There are many of them that have failed dismally but get funded year after year.