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Well, yes & no. The Russian hit was so fast and from an unexpected direction I wonder if we'd have had enough warning to do anything anyway. At 18,000 km hr even spotting it a couple of hundred thousand kms out with eg 10 hrs notice and given the unpredictabilty of it's trajectory and the effect of the atmosphere on it's path what could you in all honesty do ? Evacuate London ? To where ?
I can see the value in tracking NEOs with orbits over long term that could possibly be deflected or planned for but as one Russian commentator posted after it was announced that Russia was going to invest some huge mount of roubles to detect these things it would be better to spend the money on patching roads as the reduced death toll over 100 years ( the predicted hit rate ) saved by better roads would far bigger than the damage caused by a meteor hit.
Not that I'm against trying to detect them but to put it bluntly space is BIG and there is lots more of them out there than there is of us.
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