I think I wrote an acceptable research paper, but it could definitely have been much better. I was able to write much more and of higher quality in the literature review, especially choosing the best sources and using them to argue that Brilliant Pebbles was a feasible product both technologically and financially. At the final step of putting it all together into the research paper, I really struggled to identify and stay on topic with my claim that Brilliant Pebbles should be recreated. I think I have the framework there, with all my points of evidence and supporting claims made. However, I would have liked to flesh out the topic much more with alternatives and limitations. I had written pages I deleted about THAAD , Aegis, GBMD, and SM3 Block IIA. However, much of that was scrapped for going far beyond the page limit and being of tangential relevance to space-based midcourse defense. In hindsight, I should have kept GBMD, as it is the primary thing I would be arguing against. Furthermore, the concerns against it are technological and financial, which would have been relevant to the concerns brought up in the research paper.