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07 August 2010 By Rick Rozoff On September 17, 2009 U.S. Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates and President Barack Obama separately
announced plans to shift the emphasis of the global
American interceptor missile – so-called missile
shield or anti-ballistic missile defense – project
from the previous George W. Bush administration’s
plans to a more mobile, flexible and geographically
broader system. [1] The proposed deployments of ten ground-based
interceptor missiles in Poland and a forward-based
X-band radar installation in the Czech Republic were
abandoned in favor of what Obama deemed “stronger,
smarter and swifter defenses of American forces and
America’s allies.” Both Poland and the Czech Republic,
however, remain part of Pentagon plans and will be
incorporated into a broader grid with all 28 members
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which in its
final stage will cover all of Europe. Or at least the
entire continent west of Russia and Belarus. Plans for ground-based interceptors in Poland
alarmed Russia, which necessarily saw them as aimed at
itself, but would also have been housed in fixed silos
that made them easy targets. In the month before the announced change in
American plans to begin the incremental buildup of a
missile shield in Eastern Europe – phased adaptive
approach in government terms – a report surfaced at
the annual U.S. Space and Missile Defense Conference
of the Boeing Company planning a 47,500-pound mobile
interceptor missile launcher to be deployed within 24
hours to NATO bases in Europe. [2] During the same
month the Missile Defense Agency and Boeing also
announced the successful test of their joint Airborne
Laser (ABL) anti-missile system [3]. At the end of last August the first disclosure
appeared of plans to expand U.S. interceptor missile
deployments to the Balkans and the Black Sea region,
Israel and Turkey. [4] The head of the Missile Defense
Agency, Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, said at
the time that he supported the installation of
Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptors in the Balkans
and Turkey. (In 2007 his predecessor, Lieutenant
General Henry Obering, mentioned placing U.S.
interceptor missile radar sites in the Caucasus and
even Ukraine.) The SM-3 is a ship-based anti-ballistic missile and
anti-satellite interceptor – used to destroy an
American satellite in orbit over the Pacific Ocean in
February of 2008 – and part of the U.S. and allied
Aegis ballistic missile defense system. It has the
main advantage of being deployable around the world on
destroyers and cruisers. What O’Reilly was referring
to, though, was a combination of sea-based SM-3s and
their adaptation for use on land. In describing current U.S. missile shield plans
last September, Pentagon chief Gates spoke of a
four-phase program that began with the deployment of
Aegis class warships equipped with SM-3s in the
Eastern Mediterranean Sea last year, to be followed by
enhanced versions of the missile both on sea and land,
with successive generations of more advanced models in
the third and fourth stage. This February plans to station land-based SM-3s in
Bulgaria and Romania were announced [5], and when
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Polish
Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in the latter’s
nation early last month to sign an amended agreement
on interceptor missile cooperation, it was revealed
that SM-3s will be stationed in Poland in the second
phase of the Pentagon’s plan for a continent-wide
interceptor system. [6] Slightly more than a month
before, the U.S. moved Patriot Advanced Capability-3
(PAC-3) interceptors and approximately 100 troops into
eastern Poland, only a few kilometers from Russia’s
Kaliningrad exclave. [7] U.S. deployments in the
country are also part of a broader NATO strategy. [8]
Connecting the ship- and land-based components of
the global U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe with
other locations to the east and the south, the
Pentagon has also been qualitatively expanding Patriot
Advanced Capability-3 and Standard Missile-3
deployments in the Persian Gulf. Washington is now
preparing to provide Gulf Arab states with the
longer-range Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)
missile intercept system. [9] Last October and November the U.S. and Israel
conducted the fourteen-day Juniper Cobra 10 exercise
with five missile interception systems, the largest
such live-fire maneuvers ever held. An American
military officer present at the war games said the
unparalleled drills would “help the development of a
planned NATO missile shield for Europe.” [10] A year
before, the U.S. deployed an X-band missile shield
radar (Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance) to
Israel with 120 troops, the first and to date only
long-term foreign troop deployment in Israel’s
history. Washington and NATO are well advanced in
solidifying an impenetrable interceptor missile system
from the Baltic Sea to the Arabian Sea and the Black
Sea to the Red Sea. In the past few days further details have emerged
concerning the expansion of those plans in both
breadth and sophistication. On August 30 Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas
announced that “his government has been negotiating a
plan with the United States to place a warning center
in the Czech Republic as part of a reworked U.S.
missile defense plan.” He also stated that personnel
manning the facility could be provided by the U.S. and
other NATO states and that the site could even be
based in his nation’s capital, Prague. Necas added,
“The U.S. plans to initially invest $2 million in 2011
and 2012 for the center, which is expected to become
part of a joint NATO missile defense shield in the
future,” [11] and that no new treaty with Washington
would be required for the project. Czech popular
opposition to the earlier plan for an X-band missile
defense installation was credited for the U.S.
discarding the Bush-era plan. Two days afterward Czech Defense Minister Alexandr
Vondra confirmed that the U.S. had allotted $2 million
for the construction of the facility, that American
experts would be deployed there and that it would be
in operation by the middle of next year. Vondra added,
“I believe it will be one of many parts of the NATO
system….” [12] In August of last year the Polish newspaper Gazeta
Wyborcza revealed that the U.S. would expand its
interceptor missile plans to the Balkans, Israel and
Turkey. This August the Washington Post belatedly
confirmed that design. An article by staff writer Craig Whitlock appeared
in the August 1 Sunday edition of the newspaper which
quoted several U.S. military officials to the effect
that: “The U.S. military is on the verge of activating a
partial missile shield over southern Europe…. “Pentagon officials said they are nearing a deal to
establish a key radar ground station, probably in
Turkey or Bulgaria. Installation of the high-powered
X-band radar would enable the first phase of the
shield to become operational next year. “At the same time, the U.S. military is working
with Israel and allies in the Persian Gulf to build
and upgrade their missile defense capabilities. The
United States installed a radar ground station in
Israel in 2008 and is looking to place another in an
Arab country in the gulf region.” Not substituting for deployments in Poland and the
Czech Republic, as has been seen above, but adapting
and extending the network of which they are a part
southward and eastward. The Washington Post feature added that although the
interceptor missile projects in Eastern Europe, the
Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf are
technically distinct, “they are all designed to plug
into command-and-control systems operated by, or with,
the U.S. military. The Israeli radar, for example, is
operated by U.S. personnel and is already functional,
feeding information to U.S. Navy ships operating in
the Mediterranean.” Providing historical perspective and dispelling the
prevalent notion that the current administration’s
plans are in any manner a retreat from those of its
predecessor, the piece stated: “The concept of a missile shield began with former
president Ronald Reagan, who first described his
vision of a defense against a Soviet nuclear attack in
his ‘Star Wars’ speech in 1983….It has expanded
further under President Obama, despite the skepticism
he expressed during the 2008 campaign about the
feasibility and affordability of Bush’s plan for a
shield in Europe. “In September, Obama announced that he was changing
Bush’s approach. Instead of abandoning the idea, he
directed the Pentagon to construct a far more
extensive and flexible missile defense system in
Europe that will be built in phases between now and
2020.” [13] The author provided these additional details: Starting late last year the U.S. has steadily
deployed Aegis class warships in the Mediterranean Sea
equipped with Spy-1 360 degree missile radar and
“arsenals of Standard Missile-3 interceptors [which]
will form the backbone of Obama’s shield in Europe.” The initial detachments, one or two destroyers and
cruisers at a time, will be tripled in number.
Furthermore, “the Obama administration has plans to
nearly double its number of Aegis ships with ballistic
missile defenses, to 38 by 2015.” Citing the commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the
Mediterranean, Vice Admiral Henry B. Harris Jr., the
Washington Post article stated that one “option would
be to assign some Aegis ships to home ports in Europe
instead of making them sail constantly back and forth
to the United States. “Other Navy officials have floated the idea of
flying in fresh crews so a ship could more or less
deploy continuously, obviating the need for long
breaks.” It then supplied further specifics, disclosing that
“Aegis ships, armed with dozens of SM-3 missile
interceptors, will patrol the Mediterranean and Black
seas and link up with…high-power radar planned for
southern Europe.” Romania will host land-based Standard Missile-3
deployments and Poland will follow as the site of
SM-3s and additional sensors. Although as recently as last year the Pentagon
envisioned a total of 147 SM-3s, the Obama
administration intends to nearly triple that number to
436. The new strategy “will require an unspecified
number of new SM-3 missiles, which cost between $10
million and $15 million apiece.” The system will expand in earnest after the NATO
summit in Portugal in November, when the U.S.’s 27
members in the military bloc are expected to endorse a
comprehensive, layered, mobile interceptor missile
system for the entire European continent, albeit still
firmly under U.S. control. The Missile Defense Agency’s O’Reilly “said
combined defenses would feature the best of both
worlds: an ‘upper layer’ framework of SM-3 and
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD,
interceptors, operated by the United States, that
could shoot down enemy missiles in space or the upper
atmosphere; and a ‘lower layer’ of Patriot batteries,
operated by European allies, providing a second layer
of defense closer to the ground.” [14] Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles have a
longer range than both the PAC-3 and SM-3 and had not
been discussed before as part of the new system. Regarding the placement of U.S. and NATO
interceptor missiles in Romania, on the Black Sea
across from southwestern Russia, a recent analysis
examined the geopolitical consequences: “This means that the U.S. front line of defense is
shifting from the eastern border of Germany to the
Black Sea, which is adjacent to the Middle East, the
Caucasus and Russia. “Romania is ready to accept deployment of 20 SM-3
anti-ballistic missile units, currently installed on
American naval vessels with the Aegis Combat System.
These missiles could later be replaced with the more
advanced terminal high altitude area defense (THAAD)
missiles. They will also be deployed in Bulgaria.
Meanwhile, it has become more likely that the X-band
radar system, which the U.S. originally planned to
install in the Czech Republic, will be set up in
Israel.” [15] Bulgarian Defense Minister Anyu Angelov was
summoned to Washington for six days starting in late
June for “the launch of technical negotiations about
NATO’s missile defence in Europe in general” [16] and
meetings with Defense Secretary Gates, Air Force
Secretary Michael Donley and Under Secretary of State
for Arms Control and International Security Affairs
Ellen Tauscher, the last-named the key point person in
securing U.S. missile shield deployments in Eastern
Europe. Angelov was given his marching orders and returned
home to confirm that his nation will join the U.S.
interceptor missile program in Europe (and beyond) and
that “Bulgaria is participating actively in the
discussions and the practical realization of all steps
concerning the establishment of a NATO-wide missile
defense system.” [17] For domestic consumption he presented the decision
as his country’s own – “We are the most interested
state in Europe in the establishment of a missile
shield because we are in the most threatened region –
we fall within the range of ballistic missiles,
medium-range ballistic missiles [such] as the ones
employed by the states in the wider Middle East” – but
since Bulgaria was incorporated into NATO in 2004 it
now receives orders from the White House, the State
Department and the Pentagon. In a recent report that 700 Bulgarian combat troops
have been ordered to Afghanistan (as Dutch troops have
left), a leading local news agency demonstrated how
such decisions are made: “Bulgaria’s center-right
government, elected last July, initially said it would
not be able to provide more forces in Afghanistan due
to the economic crisis, but later changed its strategy
under pressure from the United States and NATO.” [18] The same relationship of supremacy and
subordination obtains between the U.S. and all other
NATO members, particularly the twelve new acquisitions
in Eastern Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic
Sea. The Pentagon has secured seven new military bases
in Bulgaria and Romania since the latter two states
joined NATO in 2004. Those sites include the Bezmer
Air Base in Bulgaria, fifty kilometers from the Black
Sea, and the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in Romania
near the city of Constanta on the Black Sea. Both are
being upgraded to strategic air bases which, already
employed for the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq,
are available for strikes against Iran and in the
South Caucasus in the event of an equivalent of the
Georgian-Russian war of two years ago. The Romanian
base is the main headquarters for the Pentagon’s Joint
Task Force-East. At any given time there are several thousand U.S.
troops in Bulgaria and Romania, the first foreign
forces in Bulgaria since shortly after the end of
World War Two and in Romania since 1962. A comparable situation exists in Poland. An
American military newspaper recently ran a feature on
the deployment of Patriot missile batteries in the
country called “U.S. Army’s presence in Poland most
significant since World War II” in which an American
Army spokesman stated, “We have between 80 and 150
troops going there on a regular basis. We’ve never had
that number and for that long of a period.” No foreign
troops had been stationed in Poland since the
dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991. The article also stated that “For the first time
since the end of World War II, U.S. Army soldiers are
making regular rotations into Poland, this time to
train its forces to use Patriot missiles. “Forty miles from the Russian border, a small group
of U.S. Army Europe soldiers is instructing the Polish
military about the missiles, which are designed to
counter tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles
and advanced aircraft.” [19] A Fox News report characterized the operation as
“the first long-term U.S. troop presence…in Poland,”
and quoted U.S. ambassador to the nation Lee Feinstein
as maintaining “It’s U.S. boots on the ground, a very
tangible symbol of the U.S.-Polish alliance.” [20] Regarding Israel, where the U.S. has also deployed
the first foreign troops on that country’s soil, in
late July the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee
on Defense added $95.7 million to a White House
funding request for Tel Aviv’s long-range Arrow and
medium-range David’s Sling anti-ballistic missile
programs subsumed under the Iron Dome layered air and
missile defense system. Abiding by the subcommittee’s
recommendations, Congress will allot $422.7 million
for the above purpose for next year (with $109 million
for the Arrow 3 system), bringing total U.S.
underwriting of Israeli interceptor missile programs
to $1 billion over the past four years. According to member of the subcommittee Congressman
Steve Rothman, “Given the concern and attention that
we are focusing now on every dollar we are expending
on behalf of the US taxpayer for all purposes,
including the defense of the United States and its
allies, it is a mark of the importance of these
projects that they were all funded so robustly and
fully by our subcommittee.” [21] By absorbing most all of Eastern Europe into NATO,
the U.S. has also provided its Israeli ally access to
air bases and training sites of strategic significance
for future attacks on neighboring Middle East nations.
On July 29 Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan
Vilna’i stated, “We fly in Romania so we can act deep
inside neighboring Arab states.” [22] The more extended and flexible, the “stronger,
smarter and swifter” U.S. missile strategy, then,
pursues a trajectory from the Baltic Sea, with
Standard Missile-3-equipped Aegis warships also
available for service in the Norwegian and Barents
Seas, to Southeastern Europe into the South Caucasus,
Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea and Persian Gulf, covering
Russia’s western and southern flanks and encroaching
upon Iran. When President Obama visits India in November he
intends to secure billions of dollars in arms deals
with the world’s second most populous nation. On July 12 Russia’s Vzglyad newspaper reported that
“The deal, if signed during Obama’s visit, would
[have] the US replace Russia as India’s biggest arms
supplier…adding that the deal would also help India
curb China’s rise. “India’s shortlist includes Patriot defense
systems, Boeing mid-air refueling tankers and certain
types of howitzers, and the total cost of the deal may
exceed $10 billion….” [23]. By selling anti-ballistic missile systems to India
– starting with Patriots and advancing to longer-range
models – Washington will connect its missile
interception network from Europe through the Middle
East to its eastern wing, that which includes 26
ground-based interceptors at Fort Greely in Alaska, a
280-foot-tall, 50,000-pound sea-based X-band radar in
the Aleutian Islands, and PAC-3, SM-3 and THAAD
missiles in Japan, South Korea and Australia. Current U.S.-China tensions, the worst in several
decades, were triggered early this year when
Washington confirmed it was providing Taiwan with 200
advanced Patriot missiles and warships capable of
being upgraded for the Aegis Combat System. [24] For all the talk of protecting the U.S. Mainland
from alleged Iranian and North Korean missile threats
– accusations that are in the first case absurd and in
the second highly improbable – at the end of the day
Washington and its military allies around the world
are well on the way to encircling Russia, China and
Iran with an insurmountable barrier of interceptor
missile deployments in conjunction with the
militarization of space and the Prompt Global Strike
program. Neither those three nations nor any other
outside the rapidly expanding U.S. global military
nexus will be permitted to retain effective deterrence
or retaliation capabilities. 1) U.S. Missile Shield Plans: Retreat Or
Advance? http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../u-s-missile-shield-plans-retreat-or-advance U.S. Missile Shield System Deployments: Larger,
Sooner, Broader http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../u-s-missile-shield-system-deployments-larger-sooner-broader 2) Pentagon Intensifies Plans For Global
Military Supremacy: U.S., NATO Could http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../pentagon-intensifies-plans-for-global-military-supremacy-u-s-nato-could-deploy-mobile-missiles-launchers-to-europe 3) U.S. Accelerates First Strike Global Missile
Shield System http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../u-s-accelerates-first-strike-global-missile-shield-system/ 4) U.S. Expands Global Missile Shield Into
Middle East, Balkans http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../u-s-expands-global-missile-shield-into-middle-east-balkans 5) Romania: U.S. Expands Missile Shield Into
Black Sea http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../romania-u-s-expands-missile-shield-into-black-sea 6) Clinton Renews U.S. Claims On Former Soviet
Space http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../clinton-renews-u-s-claims-on-former-soviet-space 7) Poland: U.S. Moves First Missiles, Troops
Near Russian Border http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../poland-u-s-moves-first-missiles-troops-near-russian-border 8) Rasmussen In Poland: Expeditionary NATO,
Missile Shield And Nuclear Weapons http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../rasmussen-in-poland-expeditionary-nato-missile-shield-nuclear-weapons 9) U.S. Extends Missile Buildup From Poland And
Taiwan To Persian Gulf http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../u-s-extends-missile-buildup-from-poland-and-taiwan-to-persian-gulf 10) Israel: Forging NATO Missile Shield,
Rehearsing War With Iran http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../israel-forging-nato-missile-shield-rehearsing-war-with-iran 11) Associated Press, July 30, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../283/ 16) Sofia News Agency, June 29, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../u-s-china-military-tensions-grow |
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