Meeting an ambitious agenda to create a NATO missile defense system set in Lisbon 18 months ago, the alliance now has declared the system a reality.
“We are pleased today to declare that the Alliance has achieved an Interim NATO BMD Capability,” NATO’s Chicago Summit Declaration said Sunday.
At a press conference after the first session of the North Atlantic Council, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said, “It is the first step towards our long-term goal of providing full coverage and protection for all NATO European populations, territory and forces. Our system will link together missile defense assets from different Allies–satellites, ships, radars and interceptors– under NATO command and control. It will allow us to defend against threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic area. “
This transatlantic cooperation also is an example of the renewed culture of cooperation the alliance calls “Smart Defense: countries working together to develop capabilities which they could not develop alone,” Rasmussen said.
“Smart Defence is a vital principle,” Rasmussen said. “And we have agreed to make it the new way NATO does business. And we are putting it into practice.”
The BMD element provides the ability to produce an integrated air and missile situational awareness picture at NATO’s Air Command Ramstein, in addition to the capability already established at NATO Combined Air Operations Center in Uedem, Germany. It will give NATO the capability to conduct 24/7 territorial missile defense operations while simultaneously deploying a theater missile defense command and control capability to any necessary theater of operations.
NATO remains committed to cooperation with Russia on missile defense.
“We today reaffirm that the NATO missile defense in Europe will not undermine strategic stability,” the declaration said. “ NATO missile defence is not directed against Russia and will not undermine Russia’s strategic deterrence capabilities.”
NATO plans to create a joint NATO-Russia Missile Data Fusion Center and the joint Planning Operations Center to cooperate on missile defense. The alliance also plans to develop a transparency regime based upon a regular exchange of information about the current respective missile defence capabilities of NATO and Russia.
Ahead of the Chicago Summit, in an Op-Ed in a Moscow newspaper, two top State Department officials acknowledged that Moscow and Washington “have rarely agreed” on missile defense. However, they said the goal is to reach a political agreement allowing practical cooperation, “but we will not negotiate a legally binding agreement that would limit U.S. missile defense capabilities.”
At the beginning of the year, NATO signed an approximately $3.9 million contract with ThalesRaytheonSystems to deliver a Ballistic Missile Defense Interim Capability element at NATO Air Command, Ramstein, Germany (Defense Daily, Jan. 30).
In August, NATO successfully tested missile defense in an operationally realistic environment (Defense Daily, Aug. 26, 2011). The test demonstrated that NATO BMD capabilities from a number of alliance members, including the United Sates, could operate in a seamless manner under a unified command structure to accomplish the NATO mission.