By Ann Roosevelt
Missile defense was high on the agenda as NATO foreign and defense ministers meet in Brussels 14 Oct.
Ahead of the meeting, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said with more than 30 nations having or acquiring ballistic missiles and considering “the immeasurable cost of a missile strike on any of our cities, I believe we cannot afford not to have missile defence.”
U.S. officials sought allied political approval for its European Phased Adaptive Approach announced by the president about a year ago, looking for acceptance at the NATO Lisbon Summit in mid-November.
Rasmussen said the time was ripe.
“We have sought to put this new approach squarely in a NATO context,” said Frank Rose, deputy assistant secretary, Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. “We want there to be political buy-in by our NATO Allies on this issue. We will do this by seeking Allied agreement at the Lisbon Summit to pursue a missile defense capability for our European Allies’ territory, populations, and forces. The European Phased Adaptive Approach will then become the U.S. contribution to a NATO effort.”
NATO allies have “overwhelmingly” embraced the U.S. approach because it can cover all the European allies, he said. It also prioritizes threats.
“First and foremost, we will protect our most vulnerable Allies from the existing short- and medium-range ballistic missile threats from Iran,” he said.
The phased adaptive approach also creates more opportunities for cooperation and burden sharing among NATO Allies, Rose said.
“We will seek to expand NATO’s (Active Layered Theater Ballistic Missile Defence) ALTBMD command and control system to provide it with the capability to support territorial missile defense.”
Team SAIC [SAI] and Thales Raytheon Systems under separate ALTBMD contracts in June initiated work within the NATO C3 Agency to field by the end of the year a capability to provide real time missile defense situational awareness to a NATO air defense commander.
Additionally, beyond the benefits for NATO Allies, this approach also strengthens the U.S. defense capability the United States.
“Deploying the AN/TPY-2 radar in the first phase of the approach will augment the ability of our existing Ground-based Midcourse Defense system to intercept any future long- range missiles launched from the Middle East,” Rose said. “By 2020, we will supplement that capability when we deploy the SM-3 Block 2-B missile in Europe.”
Raytheon [RTN] produces the AN/TPY-2 radar and SM-3 Block 2-B missile.
The Phased Adaptive Approach Phase 1 plan would seek to deploy a forward-based radar close to the threat. Allies have been briefed, and bilateral discussions held about hosting the radar.
Following the Oct. 14 NATO Joint Ministerial and November Summit meetings, the United States hopes to move forward on discussing basing agreements for the radar.
Additionally, Romania agreed to host the Phase 2 Land-Based SM-3 interceptor site and, since June, the United States has held three rounds of negotiations on a basing agreement.
“We are making good progress on this agreement, building on the excellent history of cooperation we have with Romania and the existing Supplemental Status of Forces Agreement,” he said.
In October 2009, Poland agreed to host the Phase 3 SM-3 interceptor site. Since then, a Supplemental Status of Forces Agreement has been signed and a protocol amending the Ballistic Missile Defense Agreement to allow for the deployment of the SM-3 interceptor site in Poland. The next step to bring this agreement into force is Polish ratification.
These activities pave the way to have all the necessary agreements in place to support the deployment of assets under the European Phased Adaptive Approach for the first three phases.
Answering some critics, Rose said, “we did not design this plan in response to Russian concerns about our missile defenses. There were no “secret deals” as part of the negotiations on the New START Treaty.
“This plan is simply better for the defense of our European Allies and the United States,” Rose said, reiterating a statement he and his office have made many times before.
As well, the New START Treaty will not prevent the implementation of the European Phased Adaptive Approach. It would not constrain the United States from deploying the most effective missile defenses possible. And it does not add any additional cost or inconvenience to our missile defense plans.
U.S. missile defense plans are also committed to transparency with Russia and offer the reassurance that missile defense deployments are not a threat to Russia’s strategic forces.
“We have begun cooperating on missile defense activities with Russia and we hope to expand that cooperation both bilaterally and through the NATO-Russia Council,” Rose said.
The administration’s missile defense decisions and actions, such as the release of the Ballistic Missile Defense Review in February, rebuts incorrect and inaccurate accusations of shelving missile defense plans for Europe and abandoning central Europe, he said.
“Of course, nothing could be further from the truth,” Rose said.