Missile Shield to Completely Cover Europe by 2018, U.S. Says

 

Friday, April 16, 2010

AS YOU READ THIS CONSIDER

WHY should U.S. pay to protect Europe?
    Can't Europeans pay for their own protection? Don't we have enough debt (or, put another way, can we afford to pay to protect Europeans)?

IF the U.S. is to protect Europe, a not-likely target for Iranian missiles, why not (also) protect ISRAEL which IS a prime target for the Iranian crazies?

A high-level U.S. Defense Department official said yesterday that the Obama administration intended within eight years to provide full missile shield coverage of Europe against possible ballistic missile threats from Iran, Reuters reported (see GSN, April 12).

(Apr. 16) - The USS Hopper launches a Standard Missile 3 interceptor during an exercise last year. The United States plans by 2018 to establish a missile shield protecting all of Europe, according to a senior Pentagon official (U.S. Missile Defense Agency photo). Bradley Roberts, deputy assistant defense secretary for nuclear and missile defense policy, told members of a House Armed Services subcommittee that the planned missile defense system would cover "100 percent" of Europe.

Obama officials seek to deploy "proven" land- and sea-based missile interceptors around the continent as soon as it is feasible, Roberts said.

President Barack Obama scrapped a Bush-era plan for European missile defense last fall and replaced it with a version that seeks to defend against potential Iranian short- and medium-range missiles that might carry biological, chemical or nuclear bombs.

Russia has continued to object to U.S. missile shield plans, saying they could undermine its own nuclear deterrent. Washington argues that Iran, not Russia, is the target of its missile shield activities on the continent.

Tehran could enrich enough weapon-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb within a year, though it would likely require three to five years to develop a capability to deploy such a weapon, two senior U.S. generals told Congress this week (see GSN, April 14).

The Bush administration program involved building a large radar base in the Czech Republic and deploying 10 long-range missile interceptors in Poland would have covered only three quarters of Europe.

"We heard immediately from vulnerable allies in the ... 75 percent equation, those left out, that they were looking for protection," Roberts said.

"We wanted to meet their demands for protection and scale the capability as the threat evolves and as our capability improves," he added.

Pentagon spokesman Bob Mehal said that Washington would pursue "appropriate cost and/or burden sharing" in constructing phased European missile defenses.

The Obama administration is considering where to locate in southern Europe by the end of 2011 a radar installation as part of the first phase of work, Roberts said. In that same time frame the United States seeks to deploy sea-based Aegis missile defense systems and Standard Missile 3 interceptors.

Around 2015, more-advanced interceptors and missile detectors would be fielded in addition to a first land-based SM-3 facility in southern Europe. The final two stages of the shield would see the land and sea fielding of even-more sophisticated versions of SM-3 interceptors that would be able to fly faster and farther to protect Europe and the United States.

U.S. Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly told lawmakers that the long-range interceptors that would have been based in Poland would have been priced at $70 million each compared to the $10 million to $15 million that a single SM-3 interceptor would cost (Jim Wolf, Reuters, April 15).

O'Reilly dismissed recent assertions from Republican lawmakers that a new nuclear arms control treaty with Russia would jeopardize plans for missile defenses in Europe, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, April 8).

"The new START treaty actually reduces constraints on the development of the missile defense program," he said during the House hearing.

The accord, signed last week by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, would permit missile defense tests that had been proscribed under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, he said.

"Our targets will no longer be subject to START constraints, which limited our use of air-to-surface and waterborne launches of targets which are essential for a cost-effective testing of missile defense interceptor against medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the Pacific region," O'Reilly said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, April 15)