Civilian missile defense.

Ramah, New Mexico Mary Lou Jones has her eyes on the western skies. She's one of the leading opponents of a Star Wars plan for firing Scud-like missiles from northern New Mexico and southern Utah and then shooting them down over the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico. The missiles' 200-to-400-mile flight path would carry them over her home and other populated areas, Indian reservations, and national forests and monuments. Along the way, booster rockets weighing as much as 3,000 pounds would fall to the earth. Should anything go wrong in the air, the missile's flight would be terminated, showering the ground with more debris.

"It's insane to test weapons over people," says Jones, who is the president of the 500-member Zuni Mountain Coalition. More than 100 missiles could be launched between 1995 and the year 2000, under current plans. Jones's coalition has been working with the Navajo and Zuni Indians and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance to prevent the mock missile war.

The kitchen table in Jones's home near Grants, New Mexico, is piled high with documents detailing the missile proposal. She edits and publishes the coalition's lively paper, the Zuni Mountain News. She and her husband, Scott, have been speaking out and organizing protests against the missile plan ever since they realized the military was going ahead with it. "Nobody took it seriously at first, it was such a goofy idea," she says.

In 1991, Congress directed the Army to develop a "theater missile-defense program." This task fell to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the successor to Star Wars. None of the current military-testing ranges is sufficient for realistic testing of "defensive intercepts," so the Army is studying the White Sands site and three other locations for possible use.

In a test last October, a missile blew up over a New Mexican rancher's land. The missile contained 300 to 900 bowling-ballsized bomblets that fell, along with other debris, about one and a half miles from the surprised and angry rancher's home. Further tests were subsequently banned.

The booster rockets, dropped during all the launches, will fall from a height of twenty to sixty miles in the air, Jones says. The Army at first told her that the 3,000-pound discard would make only a four-foot crater. Now military spokespeople concede that up to an acre of land could be affected, she says.

The Army has identified a number of "impact zones" in western New Mexico and southeastern Utah where it predicts the rubble will land. It has proposed to close these areas (including roads) to the public, evacuating citizens from the zones during launches, and using helicopter clean-up teams to clear the areas.

Several of the impact zones are on federal land managed by the Department of Interior and the Bureau of Land Management. Both of these agencies have registered solid opposition to the Army plan, citing concerns over damage to ecologically sensitive areas.

Public opinion hasn't lined up with the Army, either. One Utah poll found 63 percent of the state's southeastern residents opposed to the launches. Public hearings in nine different communities, part of the environmental-impact-statement process, also revealed widespread opposition.

And the Navajo Nation Council told the Army that the missile plan "conflicts with Navajo traditional beliefs, interferes with Navajo culture, and adversely impacts the Najavo nation's health, safety, welfare, economy, and environment."

Despite this discontent, the Army "is not listening to the people," Jones says. "It's like, `We're the Army, we don't have to.'" The Army will make a final decision in the spring. Jones says she won't stop even if the plan is approved: "If I have to stand on the corner and sell cupcakes, we're going to sue the Army."