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As a standout football player at a Tucson high school, at USC and with the San Francisco 49ers, Riki Ellison was focused on intercepting passes.

Now, he's focused on intercepting missiles.

Ellison, 48, who played football at Amphitheater High School in the late 1970s, is founder and president of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, an Alexandria, Va.-based non-profit group that advocates for building a national missile-defense system.

At the MDAA, he oversees an annual budget of more than $1 million, about 10 employees and a corps of volunteers in 37 states and about 10 foreign countries.

Ellison was in Tucson a week ago for the University of Southern California-University of Arizona football game. He also visited with local officials at Tucson-based Raytheon MIssile Systems, a key contractor for missile defense.

We caught up with Ellison — Eegee's drink in hand — to ask him about his experiences and the future of U.S. missile defense. Here are excerpts:

Q: What got you interested in missile defense and how did you come to found the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance?

A: In 1981 and 1982, I had a course load at USC in international relations, and I had a certificate in defensive/strategic studies, so we had a couple of guys at the forefront of that issue at SC.

My interpretation as a young, 19-, 20-year old kid was it was an opportunity to make a difference . . . kind of a philosophical position to make our world safer by having the technological capability eventually to be able to eliminate nuclear ballistic missiles. So that was the buy-in for me.

After I retired (from the NFL), I went back to Washington to work with some of the missile-defense (system) integrators. After 9/11, after the president withdrew from the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty, I felt I had an opportunity to help that process to go forward and founded this organization.

Q: Why is missile defense important?

A: It provides our president and Congress and other countries' leaders another option that they don't have on the table to deal with crises that will involve us using pre-emptive military force.

So this gives us another ability not to go in, if a country has weapons of mass destruction. . . . I think that's a critical thing that can be used to help us in a supplemental way to help us with our diplomacy, as well as a real option.

Number two, I believe that the threat continues to grow, continues to be demonstrated. There were over 120 foreign ballistic-missile tests last year alone, and you've got the demonstration of both Iran and North Korea repeatedly on their systems, so the threat's not going to stop, and we're going to have to deal with that as we go.

Q: Where does MDA's major funding come from?

A: We're funded by anyone who supports missile defense. We take funding from individuals, from corporations. We do have some defense contractors in our portfolio, but I don't discriminate on who that comes from.

Q: What is the importance of Raytheon Missile Systems here in Tucson to missile defense?

A: Raytheon does play a pretty pivotal role, especially here in Tucson, where they produce some pretty substantial assets. . . . The SM-3 (Standard Missile-3) is big here, the SM-2 (Standard Missile-2) is big here, the Exo- atmospheric Kill Vehicle is tremendous here, that's the kill vehicle that sits on top of the GBI (Ground-based Interceptor).

And they are starting moving on the KEI (Kinetic Energy Interceptor) and the NCADE (Network Centric Airborne Defense Element) and the other systems they're looking at. They are instrumental in the success we've had; you know, the SM-3 has been the direct result of engineering that's been done over there (at Raytheon), and that's probably one of the most successful systems we have today. . . .

You've got a good base, you've got some industry here, some engineering that has made a tremendous difference, and in fact the biggest one I can point to is that satellite shootdown that happened in February (when a Raytheon SM-3 was fired from a Navy ship to shoot down a rogue U.S. spy satellite). That SM-3 hit I think within centimeters on the target, and proved the technology was capable.

Q: With the current financial crisis and the ballooning federal deficit, what are the prospects for missile-defense funding?

A: I think we're at about $8.9 billion this year, somewhere in that range. Next year's budget, which is already in play, I think they submitted $8.8 billion, maybe $8.9 billion, and they got a $400 million cut off that.

It's not much (of a cut), with a Democrat-controlled Congress, so it shows you there is some bipartisan strength in missile defense.

I think in the next administration, it will be challenged, not on the whole system, but up to a quarter of it (the budget) could be challenged, could be hard-fought for a quarter cut.

Q: What is the biggest missile threat facing America?

A: I think right now Iran is the number one threat to everybody, Europe; that's why the requirement and need for the third (proposed missile-defense) site.

And I might as well say it on the record, the next one is Pakistan. I know no one wants to talk about it, because they're an ally. But I think they have some capability there in the wrong hands (that poses a threat) not to us, but to that whole area. . . . And I think North Korea, obviously in that arena.

Q: Some critics of missile defense question whether it will work, and specifically how the systems will be able to distinguish between decoy warheads and destroy the real thing. How do you respond?

A: Overall, we're not at 100 percent (reliability), but because we can fire three to four of these things, we can increase the redundancy if we have a lower threshold of confidence in that capability, and I'm saying (regarding) the long-range interceptors.

If a missile from North Korea came, we would have an above 90 percent capability of taking that out with what we've got.

This is a growing technology, so we're not there yet, and people over there (at Raytheon) are working on that to try and make that 100 percent, but that's good enough right now to deal with North Korea and Iran.

Because even if you have 10 percent confidence, you're changing the calculus in their minds of whether it's worth it to fire a missile over here, because they have to make sure that is successful because the repercussions are too hard.

I think we're close to 100 percent on the Aegis system, and that's been proven, over and over.