An old Scottish horseman gave Kathleen Koehler Paige '70 her first crack at leadership. At the age of 12, Paige spent nearly every weekend and school vacation at his stable, lingering long after her riding lessons to groom horses and clean stalls. By the time she was 14, she was teaching adults how to ride.

Because she didn't own a horse, Paige never knew which mount would be hers on any given day. She much preferred young and green to old and plodding. "It's almost like problem-solving," she says. "You get on a horse and you don't know what responses they have, what capabilities they have. It's your job, as the rider, to bring out the best in them."

Paige wasn't again afforded such a wide berth in which to test her talents until she was a young officer in the U.S. Navy. She'd entered officer candidate school after graduating from the University of New Hampshire, thinking that the work experience would improve her job prospects. Two years of service, she figured, and she'd be out. Much to her astonishment, however, she found that the military, much like the stable owner, was willing to give her as much authority and responsibility as she could handle.

Some 30 years later, Paige, 54, is a rear admiral, the second highest-ranking female naval officer. Having proved her mettle in the testosterone-steeped Missile Defense Agency, she now bears the weighty responsibility for carrying out President George W. Bush's pledge to have a national missile defense system in place by the seemingly implausible deadline of September 2004.

Relaxing in a wing chair in her Crystal City, Va., living room, Paige appears much softer at the edges than one might expect for a seasoned officer and the program director for Aegis missile defense. She is dressed for comfort: a fleece pullover and plain black pants. Her red hair is military-short but stylish nonetheless.

It's nearly 6:30 in the evening and Paige is entering the 13th hour of her workday, which is not at all unusual except that tonight she's conducting business at home instead of at the office, on an airplane or behind a podium. The U.S. invasion of Iraq is well underway, but Paige is removed from the war operations. Instead, her day-to-day focus is on the future defense of the country.

Having cut her teeth on building ships and combat systems, she is now a key figure in the effort to expand the country's ability to track and intercept enemy missiles. The notion that the military could shoot down such missiles is an idea that has been kicked around since the '60s. President Ronald Reagan raised the concept to new heights with his vision of a national missile "shield," employing both ground- and space-based defense systems as added protection against the perceived Soviet threat. Dubbed "Star Wars," the controversial proposal lost momentum after the breakup of the U.S.S.R.

Soon after his election, President George W. Bush revived the idea in earnest, pointing to the growing threat from terrorists and rogue nations such as North Korea as justification. Bush made it clear that deployment of a national missile defense program was a top priority and reason enough to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Signed with the Soviet Union in 1972, the treaty prohibited the testing or deployment of such systems. Withdrawal from the treaty cleared the way for the development of just such a program.

Bush's plan calls for land-based missile interceptors (missiles designed to destroy enemy warheads) in Alaska and California, and additional interceptors stationed on three Aegis warships. The sophisticated Aegis radar systems will be used to relay missile-tracking information to interceptors, both on land and at sea, thereby greatly expanding the area covered by missile defense.

Missile defense technology has come a long way since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when U.S. Patriot missiles, originally designed to bring down aircraft, were pressed into service to intercept Iraqi Scuds. The Patriots failed to intercept their targets much of the time. During the most recent attack on Iraq, however, initial reports indicated that the latest generation of Patriots, called PAC-3s, were more effective.

Still, the theory that a national missile defense system will make the country any safer still has plenty of critics. Among their complaints: the unproven technology, the sky-high price tag (as much as $200 billion over two decades) and the potential for touching off an arms race. Proponents argue that such a national missile defense is crucial in the face of a proliferating world population of ballistic missiles. Paige calls that population "awesome," and she does not use the term in its complimentary sense.

"I spend lots of time communicating with people to review, assess, facilitate, counsel, critique, conspire and negotiate," Paige explains, "all towards some combination of keeping the mission priorities understood, executed thoroughly and well, and taking care of the people who make it happen."

Paige has spent a good portion of this particular morning in a meeting discussing a cooperative agreement with Japan to share Aegis and PAC-3 technology as a way to begin building a global missile defense system. The rest of her day was taken up by a meeting with her boss (a three-star Air Force general), a CIA briefing on classified operations, a technical briefing on satellite infrared capabilities and a phone call from a young Navy officer seeking her counsel. In between, she finalized arrangements for moving her office, effective the following day.

When she isn't traveling, Paige usually arrives home, the place she reserves for doing nothing, around 8 p.m. Husband David Tuma, a retired Navy captain who used to operate submarines, makes her dinner. He also pays the bills, picks up the dry cleaning and takes care of all the other mundane tasks that Paige (who takes her last name from a previous marriage) is just too busy to bother with. "I am," she acknowledges, "a very spoiled person."

Her grandmother would be proud. A self-assured woman who distinguished herself during World War I as a chief yeomanette, Mary Tobin never cared for the mechanics of running a house. "Don't get married, Kate," she warned her granddaughter. "You'll just have to lug in groceries."

The qualities that served her grandmother so well--self-assurance, intelligence, refinement, a relentless work ethic--emerged in Paige at an early age. In fact, to hear her mother tell it, Kate was the model child growing up with her older brother and younger twin sisters in the tiny town of Scotia, N.Y. Her mother remembers she was obedient, helpful, calm, easy to get along with, dependable. "Just solid," says Toby Koehler.

Paige made the same impression on Donald Murray '48, now professor emeritus of English, when she took one of his courses while at UNH. Though he doesn't remember much about her reporting skills, he does remember that she so stood out among her peers that he handpicked her to babysit his daughters. "My daughters tell me now," he adds, "that she was the only babysitter whom they obeyed instantly."

In addition to journalism, Paige also studied theater at college. Her mother thought it a waste of time, but Paige says she was "attracted to the idea of learning by doing. It was so different than anything I'd ever done." Not surprisingly, perhaps, what Paige enjoyed most about the theater was directing.

After she graduated in 1970, however, she was exasperated to find that a liberal arts degree only seemed to qualify her for low-paying clerical jobs. Paige began to consider a stint in the military. The Kent State shootings still hung over the country, though, and her final weeks before graduation had been marked by mass anti-war demonstrations that halted some classes and threatened to shut down the campus.

For Paige, however, logic and practicality won out. "I figured, if you're worried about the military and the people who run it, then we ought to make sure it has the right kind of people," she says. She applied for the Navy's officer candidate school.

Her term of commitment kept on multiplying by twos, and by 1976, she'd earned a master of science degree from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Five years later, she was designated an engineering duty officer. In engineering, she'd discovered, she could compete with men on an equal footing.

"At the time, there were not many women in that technical field," says retired Rear Admiral Tim Hood, now a vice president at Lockheed. "She was so bright, we tried to help her along. Not that she got where she is because she was a woman, but it didn't hurt. She could carry the technical message and the equal opportunity message."

Paige herself considers her gender a non-issue. Whatever sexism she's had to confront has been overcome, she says, simply by doing her job well. The Missile Defense Agency is "inherently chauvinistic," says retired Rear Admiral George R. Meinig Jr. "It's hard for women officers. But when Kate was designated technical director of ballistic missile defense, she immediately established her credentials. She was a pillar of competence."

Both Hood and Meinig helped Paige plot a long-term career path by arranging tours of duty to round out her technical and leadership skills. On her way up the military ladder, she watched some women fall by the wayside, not necessarily because they were intimidated but because they weren't cut out for the rigors of military life. At officers' school, her roommate, a quiet, retiring young woman, even attempted suicide.

"There was a senior petty officer who worked for me early on who neither liked nor respected women," Paige recalls. "But he loved and respected the Navy. So the fact that I wore an officer's uniform trumped it."

Paige credits the discipline of horse-riding for her inner calm. She continues to ride whenever she can. The plodders still don't interest her. One Sunday, the mare Paige was riding took a jump badly and fell. Paige was thrown, and hit her head. A few days later, she boarded a plane for London, proudly sporting a big, black eye.

Lisa Prevost '84, a freelance writer, is a regular contributor to the New York Times, Boston Globe and More magazine.

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