Pentagon, NATO allies witness missile defense test in skies over Central New York

This was the first publicly released photo of a prototype of the MEADS missile defense system surveillance radar. The radar was designed and developed at the Lockheed plant in Salina, N.Y., for the U.S. Army. The surveillance radar can search 360-degrees for incoming missiles, planes and drones and be hauled around on the back of a truck. 

Πηγή: Syracuse
By Mark Weiner
April 18 2013

Washington – Military leaders from the Pentagon, Italy and Germany were in Central New York this week to witness a classified test of a missile defense system.

As part of the test, a small plane and a simulated tactical ballistic missile were detected and tracked by the Medium Extended Air Defense System, or MEADS, its developers said today.

MEADS, developed in part by Lockheed Martin with partners in Italy and Germany, was tested using radars placed at Lockheed's test range in Cazenovia and on its campus at Electronics Park in Salina.

Marty Coyne, business development director for MEADS International, said the test conducted Wednesday was a success by all measures.

MEADS and Lockheed Martin officials said they could not release photos or videos of the test because of the classified nature, nor could they disclose the names of the NATO officials who witnessed the demonstration.

"We had visitors from all three nations," Coyne said today. "By all accounts, all of the parties came out quite impressed with both the capability and maturity of those radar assets."

The MEADS 360-degree surveillance radar, developed at Lockheed's campus in Salina, was placed at a testing range in Cazenovia for the demonstration, Coyne said.

The radar in Cazenovia simultaneously tracked and relayed the location of the simulated missile and test aircraft that took off from Syracuse's Hancock International Airport to the MEADS battle manager.

In turn, the system cued a fire-control radar located more than 10 miles away in Salina to acquire and track the target aircraft, Coyne said. In the battlefield, an interceptor missile would have been fired to destroy the target.

Coyne said the test in Central New York was among the last big milestones before a full missile intercept test for MEADS planned this fall at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

In March, Congress approved spending $380 million to pay for the final year of MEADS development.

The Pentagon says it has no intention to deploy MEADS, originally designed as a successor to the Patriot missile defense system, because of cost overruns and early development problems. The United States, Germany and Italy have spent a combined $4 billion on the program.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who represents hundreds of people who work for Patriot missile system builder Raytheon Corp., has dubbed MEADS the "missile to nowhere" while trying to cancel the final year of funding.

Pentagon officials have said they intend to "harvest" promising technologies developed as part of the MEADS project, including the 360-degree surveillance radar developed by Lockheed Martin engineers and technicians in Central New York.

Coyne said the purpose of Wednesday's test was to demonstrate the capabilities of MEADS. "All three nations are looking to harvest this investment in MEADS in future modernization plans," he said.

The MEADS project is the largest radar contract in the history of the Lockheed Martin facility at Electronics Park in Salina, which has about 1,900 employees. Lockheed is the major partner in the United States for MEADS International, a multinational joint venture headquartered in Orlando, Fla.

Russia will counter US missile defence: Medvedev

Πηγή: NewKerala
By IANS
Feb 22 2012

Russia will continue with the overhaul of its missile defence unless the US drops its plans for a European missile shield or proposes a scheme for a joint effort, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said.

"This does not mean the beginning of confrontation, but it means that we cannot treat their (US) plans indifferently since it concerns our strategic interests," Medvedev said.

In an address to the nation in November, Medvedev had said that if Moscow's participation in the European missile defence project fails, Russia would deploy tactical missiles in the Kaliningrad exclave and halt its disarmament and arms control efforts, including participation in the new strategic arms reduction treaty with the US.

"We will do everything in the direction voiced by me earlier, with the only exception being if our partners drop their plans or propose to us a scheme for participating in the joint development of missile defences," Medvedev said.

Russia delivered Tuesday new S-400 Triumf air defence systems to its Western Military District and pledged to put them on alert duty in a month.

Russia-NATO missile defence talks have stalled as Moscow seeks legally binding guarantees that the US-backed European missile defence programme will not be directed against it.

Washington, however, refuses to provide written guarantees, saying the shield is not directed against Russia but rather rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.

RJC video accuses Obama of trying to 'weaken' Israel

Πηγή: Politico
By MAGGIE HABERMAN
Feb 16 2012




The Republican Jewish Coalition is going up with this web video accusing the White House of trying to "weaken" Israel and of slashing the U.S. missile defense fund aid to the Jewish state.

The video notes the current threat from Iran against Israel, and says Hezbollah is arming itself with 40,000 rockets.

"President Obama's rhetoric would have you believe he's doing all he can for Israel's security," the video narrator says. "The reality is that he wants to slash American support for Israel's critical defense."

The Jerusalem Post wrote about the issue today, after Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is, among other things, a prominent Mitt Romney surrogate, and California Rep. Buck McKeon of California released a letter to the White House.

White House aides and Democrats have said it's a straw man issue, saying the overall defense budget from the U.S. to Israel has been put at a record-high $3.1 billion, on top of the missile program, despite the U.S. economy struggling, and they've said they developed the spending plan in concert with Israeli defense officials.

But the RJC argument is one that may be echoed on the campaign trail in the coming weeks, as the focus of the primary has been ticking away from the economy and toward foreign affairs, as well as social issues.

UPDATE: Former Florida Rep. Robert Wexler, who was a major Obama backer in his state in 2008 and is now the head of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace in Washington, D.C., called to say the GOP argument is "just not factually accurate in the broader context."

Wexler, who has spoken out in defense of Obama on Israel - a topic over which some American Jews remain leery of the president, and which the White House has been trying to address - cited the overall increase in the defense assistance to Israel. He also said it was "created in coordinated with the Israeli defense establishment, and [they are] more than satisfied with the president's (budget)."

"The Republicans' claims are just blatantly false for political purposes," he said, arguing it's "actually dangerous, because the worst thing that could happen is the people in Tehran could read the Republicans' allegations and (believe) them."

Missile defense cooperation could be "game-changer" for US, Russia - report

Πηγή: Reuters
By Susan Cornwell
Feb 5 2012

Missile defense, an issue that has poisoned U.S.-Russia relations, could be a "game-changer" that transforms ties if the two sides cooperate on a shared system, says a report by former top officials from both sides of the Atlantic.

Recent headlines in both countries have been reminiscent of the Cold War, with the Russians threatening to deploy missiles aimed at countering a proposed U.S. missile shield, and the Americans responding that they will build the system, come what may.

The planned U.S. shield, endorsed by NATO, would deploy U.S. interceptor missiles in and around Europe in what Washington says is a layered protection against missiles that could be fired by countries like Iran.

Moscow says this could undermine its security if it becomes capable of neutralizing Russia's nuclear deterrent.

Now an international commission that has been working on the matter for two years has designed a basic concept for cooperation with the help of military professionals from both sides.

The new proposal by the Euro-Atlantic Security Commission says the United States, NATO and Russia could share data from radars and satellites about missile attacks and so provide one another with a more complete picture of any attack than countries would have on their own.

But the parties would remain responsible for shooting down any missiles that threaten them. They would keep sovereign command-and-control over their own missile interceptors.

"While the Russians are somewhat skeptical about whether Iran is a threat ... the Russians are very strident about their worries about Pakistan, which has ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons," said Stephen Hadley, a co-chairman of the working group that produced the proposal. He served as national security adviser to former President George W. Bush, a Republican.

The head of NATO welcomed the proposal.

"Overall I really think it points in the right direction," said NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at a security conference in Munich. "It outlines why it is in our common interest to develop cooperation on missile defence."

However, he added, one of the main obstacles to cooperation was the Russian insistence on having legal guarantees that the NATO system was not directed against Russia. If Russia was involved in the project might alleviate Moscow's anxiety over the system, he said.

"The very best guarantee Russia could get would be to actually engage in positive cooperation because that would provide transparency and they could see that the system is not directed against Russia," he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the same conference, did not refer to the commission's proposal, and instead threatened to "compensate" if necessary for the missile defence system.

"If our concerns are not taken into account, if no equitable joint work is achieved, then we will have to compensate for the emerging imbalance," he said in a speech.

"Failure to agree would tremendously reduce the opportunities for cooperation in addressing not only missile risks, but the whole range of threats to our common security. That would not be our choice."

Hadley said a working group of experts from the United States, Europe and Russia concluded that there was enough of a threat from the proliferation of nuclear weapons capabilities and ballistic missiles with a range of up to 4,500 km (2,800 miles), to conclude that defenses were needed.

"Constructing defenses takes a long time, and the last thing you want to be - if you are doing defenses - is late to the party," he told Reuters in an interview.

Hadley co-chaired the missile defense group together with Volker Ruehe, a former defense minister of Germany, and Vyacheslav Trubnikov, a former Russian deputy foreign minister and retired general.

The design of the shared system was created by Henry "Trey" Obering, a former chief of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, and Viktor Esin, a former chief of staff of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces.

The missile defense proposal was part of a larger report by the Euro-Atlantic Security Commission that said the United States, NATO countries and Russia should cooperate on the Arctic, energy issues, and regional conflicts as well as missile defense. It is being unveiled this weekend at an annual international security conference in Germany.

"Successful cooperation on ballistic missile defense would be a game changer," the proposal said. "It would go a long way toward overcoming the legacy of historical suspicion and achieving the strategic transformation that is needed."

"Cooperation on missile defense would establish a pattern for working together, build trust, and encourage further cooperation in other areas," it said.

RUSSIAN PARANOIA, AMERICAN ANXIETY

Discussions about missile defense have been a source of tension since Ronald Reagan's idea of protecting the United States from ballistic missile attack was dubbed "Star Wars" a quarter-century ago. Lately the Russian rhetoric has been intense.

"I think it's well known the Russians are paranoid about missile defense and the implications that has," U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper told Congress this week.

"They overanalyze that and deduce that's a profound threat to their status as a national power."

Recently the Russians have complained bitterly about plans to station elements of the U.S. missile defense system close to them, in NATO members Poland, Romania and Turkey, from where radars could presumably see into Russian territory.

On the American side, there is some anxiety about cooperating with the Russians, even though cooperation on European missile defense was favored by Robert Gates, former Pentagon chief under both Bush and President Barack Obama, and has been sought in talks during the Obama administration.

In Congress, some lawmakers have been so worried that the Obama administration might provide sensitive information to Moscow that they recently wrote a ban on sharing classified data into law, unless the administration notifies Congress first.

"House Republicans will not allow any delay to efforts to deploy missile defenses that protect the United States. Nor will we permit sharing with Russia classified information about our missile defense," said Representative Michael Turner, chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee.

Hadley said the commission's proposal would protect sensitive technologies by letting each side set up screens to filter radar and satellite data before it is shared.

"We would talk about what is being screened out, so people would know what they are not getting," he said. "We do that all the time, in cooperation with countries all over the world."

But other analysts say that because the proposed approach focuses on the threat from intermediate-range missiles, it sidesteps the critical issue of long-range nuclear forces.

The main reason that efforts to cooperate on missile defense have so far failed is Moscow's concern that some of Washington's yet-to-be-deployed or developed interceptors could be aimed at Russia's strategic missiles, said Tom Collina, research director for the Arms Control Association in Washington.

"Until these concerns are addressed, Moscow is unlikely to begin the trust-building process that (the report) suggests," Collina said.

Sam Nunn, the former U.S. senator who co-chairs the Euro-Atlantic Security Commission, acknowledges the proposal doesn't address all the issues that could arise, but said: "I think you could solve other problems as you go down the line."

"If people work together on the first stages of this, the light bulbs will go off, (and) people will say 'Hey, we need to work together on the other stages too,'" Nunn told Reuters.

Otherwise, he said the Russians may make good on threats to resort to a larger offensive missile buildup. "That was what they said they'd do, and I happen to believe them."

Russia urges quick missile defense deal with US

Πηγή: AP
Jan 18 2012

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's foreign minister says a deal with the United States that would assuage Moscow's concerns about its missile defense plans is still possible, but time is running out.

Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed Wednesday that Moscow will take retaliatory action if moves by Washington to deploy missile shield components around Europe pose a threat to Russia.

The U.S. says its planned missile shield is aimed at deflecting potential missile threats from Iran, but Russia believes that the missile shield will eventually become powerful enough to undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent.

Moscow agreed in 2010 to consider NATO's proposal to cooperate on the U.S.-led missile shield, but the talks have run into a deadlock over how the system should be operated. Russia has insisted that it should be run jointly, which NATO has rejected.

Russia warns on missile shield as NATO meets

Πηγή: Khaleej Times
By AFP
Dec 7 2011

VILNIUS — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that NATO had refused to provide a written guarantee that its planned missile shield for Europe poses no threat to Moscow.

“Our friends in NATO categorically refuse to put on paper in legal form what they say verbally, namely that this missile defence project in Europe is not creating risks for Russia, is not directed against Russia,” Lavrov said.

“We continue consultations but our legitimate concerns are not been taken into account,” Lavrov told journalists during a visit to Lithuania.

Lavrov is due to meet his NATO counterparts on Thursday, who are hoping to calm Russian fears over their missile shield project which they insist is aimed at warding off attacks from so-called “rogue states”, namely Iran.

NATO leaders are expected to tell the Russian official that the missile shield will go ahead, but that NATO still wants to negotiate a cooperation deal with Moscow, according to diplomatic sources.

But Lavrov said it was unrealistic to expect an agreement as long as NATO refuses to address Russia’s demands.

“They know too well what the situation is and unless they listen and hear what we are saying, I don’t think we will be able to agree”, Lavrov warned.

In response to NATO’s missile shield plans, Russia recently activated a radar warning system against incoming missiles in its exclave of Kaliningrad on the borders of NATO and EU members Lithuania and Poland. Moscow has also said it was prepared to deploy Iskander missiles there.

But Lavrov, who came to the Baltic state for an OSCE ministerial meeting, insisted there was no cause for concern.

“During the last six or seven years we have withdrawn from the Kaliningrad region hundreds of pieces of heavy weapons and we will be certainly replacing some of these weapons with modern weaponry,” Lavrov said.

“But this will be done exclusively within the competence of the Russian Federation and without any violation of any international obligations, so I don’t think our Lithuanian colleagues or any other country in Europe should be worrying about this.”

On the contrary, he said, Russia is concerned about NATO military forces around Russia, calling it a “gross violation” of a deal made before NATO’s enlargement to include ex-Soviet bloc states.

“When we signed the deal between NATO and Russia, NATO said that there would be no substantial combat forces located permanently on territory on new members. This commitment has been grossly violated,” Lavrov said.

Why Moscow does not Trust Washington on Missile Defense. Towards a Pre-emptive Nuclear War?

Πηγή: Global Research
By F. William Engdahl

Dec 2 2011

Most in the civilized world are blissfully unaware that we are marching ineluctably towards an increasingly likely pre-emptive nuclear war. No, it's not at all about Iran and Israel. It's about the decision of Washington and the Pentagon to push Moscow up against the wall with what is euphemistically called Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD).

On November 23, a normally low-keyed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the world in clear terms that Russia was prepared to deploy its missiles on the border to the EU between Poland and Lithuania, and possibly in the south near Georgia and NATO member Turkey to counter the advanced construction process of the US ballistic missile defense shield: "The Russian Federation will deploy in the west and the south of the country modern weapons systems that could be used to destroy the European component of the US missile defense," he announced on Russian television. "One of these steps could be the deployment of the Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad."1 Those would be theatre ballistic missile systems. The latest version of Iskander, the Iskander-K, whose details remain top secret, reportedly has a range up to 2000 km and carries cruise missiles and a target accuracy to 7 meters or less.

Medvedev declared he has ordered the Russian defense ministry to "immediately" put radar systems in Kaliningrad that warn of incoming missile attacks on a state of combat readiness. He called for extending the targeting range of Russia's strategic nuclear missile forces and re-equipping Russia's nuclear arsenal with new warheads capable of piercing the US/NATO defense shield due to become operational in six years, by 2018. Medvedev also threatened to pull Russia out of the New START missile reduction treaty if the United States moves as announced.

Medvedev then correctly pointed to the inevitable link between “defensive” missiles and “offensive” missiles: “Given the intrinsic link between strategic offensive and defensive arms, conditions for our withdrawal from the New Start treaty could also arise,” he said.2

The Russian President didn’t mince words: “I have ordered the armed forces to develop measures to ensure, if necessary, that we can destroy the command and control systems” of the US shield, Medvedev said. “These measures are appropriate, effective and low-cost.” Russia has repeatedly warned that the US BMD global shield is designed to destabilize the nuclear balance and risks provoking a new arms race. The Russian President said that rather than take the Russian concerns seriously, Washington has instead been “accelerating” its BMD development.3

It was not the first time Medvedev threatened to take countermeasures to the increasing Pentagon military encirclement pressure on Russia. Back in November 2008 as the US BMD threat was first made known to the world, Medvedev made a televised address to the Russian people in which he declared, “I would add something about what we have had to face in recent years: what is it? It is the construction of a global missile defense system, the installation of military bases around Russia, the unbridled expansion of NATO and other similar ‘presents’ for Russia ­ we therefore have every reason to believe that they are simply testing our strength.” 4 That threat was dropped some months later when the Obama Administration offered the now-clearly deceptive olive branch of reversing the BMD decision to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russia is threatening to deploy its Iskander anti-BMD missiles in Kaliningrad

This time around Washington lost no time signaling it was in the developing game of thermonuclear chicken to stay. No more pretty words about “reset” in US-Russia relations. A spokesman for the Obama National Security Council declared, “we will not in any way limit or change our deployment plans for Europe." The US Administration continues to insist on the implausible argument that the missile defense installations are aimed at a threat from a possible Iranian nuclear launch, something hardly credible. The real risk of Iranian nuclear missile attack on Europe given the reality of the global US as well as Israeli BMD installations and the reality of Iran's nuclear delivery capabilities, is by best impartial accounts, near zero.

Two days earlier on November 21, Washington had thrown a small carrot to Moscow. US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher said that Washington was ready to provide information about the missile's speed after it uses up all of its fuel. This information, referred to as burnout velocity (VBO), helps to determine how to target it.5 That clearly was not seen as a serious concession by Moscow, which demands a full hands-on partnership with the US/NATO missile deployment to insure it will never be used against Russia. After all, given Washington's track record of lies and broken promises, there is no guarantee the speeds would even be true.

After the early October Brussels NATO defense ministers meeting, NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in regard to the nominally NATO European Missile Defense Program, “We would expect it to be fully operational in 2018." Spain just announced it plans to join the US-controlled missile program, joining Romania, Poland, the Netherlands and Turkey, which have already agreed to deploy key components of the future missile defense network on their territories.6

The concerns of Russia are caused by the dramatic improvement of an entire system of missile defense by Washington, which is taking the form of a global BMD system encircling Russia on all sides.

Full Spectrum Dominance…

The last time Washington's Missile Defense "Shield" made headlines was in September 2009 early in the Obama Administration when the US President offered to downgrade the provocative stationing of US special radar and anti-missile missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. That was a clear tactic to prepare the way for what Hillary Clinton ludicrously called the "reset" in US-Russian relations from the tense Bush-Putin days. However the strategic goal of encircling the one nuclear potential opponent in the world with credible missile defense remained US strategy.

Barack Obama announced back then that the US was altering Bush Administration plans to station US anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and sophisticated radar in the Czech Republic. The news was greeted in Moscow as an important concession.7 Subsequent developments clearly show that far from ditching its plans for a missile shield that could cripple any potential Russian nuclear launch, the US was merely opting for a more effective global system, whose feasibility had been proven in the meantime.

To assuage the Poles, the Obama Administration also agreed to provide Poland with US Patriot missiles. Poland’s Foreign Minister then and now is Radek Sikorski. From 2002 to 2005 he was in Washington as a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a noted neo-conservative hawkish think-tank, and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative, a project to bring as many former communist countries of eastern Europe into NATO as possible. Little wonder Moscow did not view US missiles in Poland as friendly, nor does it today.

In May 2011 the Obama Administration announced that the missiles it would now give Poland consisted of new Raytheon (RTN) SM-3 missile defense systems at the Redzikowo military base in Poland (see map), roughly 50 miles from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, a unique piece of Russian real estate not connected to mainland Russia, but adjacent to the Baltic Sea and Lithuania. That puts US missiles closer to Russia than during the 1961 Cuba Missile Crisis when Washington placed ICBM’s at sites in Turkey aimed at key Soviet nuclear sites. 8

The new Raytheon SM-3 missile is part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System that will be aimed at intercepting short to intermediate range ballistic missiles. The SM-3 Kinetic Warhead intercepts incoming ballistic missiles outside the earth's atmosphere. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors developed the Aegis BMD Weapon System. The SM-3 comes from Raytheon Missile Systems.

The Polish SM-3 missile deployment is but one part of a global web encircling Russia’s nuclear capacities. One should not forget that official Pentagon military strategy is called Full Spectrum Dominance—control of pretty much the entire universe. This past September the US and Romania, another new NATO member, signed an agreement to deploy a US-controlled Missile Defense System on the Deveselu Air Base in Romania using the SM-3 missiles.

As well Washington has signed an agreement with NATO member Turkey to place a sophisticated missile tracking radar atop a high mountain in the Kuluncak district of Malatya province in south-eastern Turkey. Though the Pentagon insists its radar is pointed at Iran, a look at a map reveals how easily the focal direction could cover key Russian nuclear sites such as Stevastopol where the bulk of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet is stationed or to the vital Russian Krasnodar radar installation.9

The Malataya radar will send data to US ships equipped with the Aegis combat system that will intercept “Iranian” ballistic missiles. According to Russian military experts, one of the main aims of that radar, which targets at a range up to 2000 kilometers, will also be the surveillance and control of the air space of the South Caucasus, part of Central Asia as well as the south of Russia, in particular tracking the experimental launches of the Russian missiles at their test ranges.10

Further, the US-controlled BMD deployment now also includes sea-based “Aegis” systems in the Black Sea near Russia’s Sevastopol Naval Base, as well as possible deployment of intermediate range missiles in Black Sea and Caspian region.11

But the European BMS deployments of the US Pentagon are but a part of a huge global web. At the Fort Greeley Alaska Missile Field the US has installed BMD ground-based missile interceptors, as well as at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And the Pentagon just opened two missile sites at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii. To add to it, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has joined formally with the US Missile Defense Agency to develop a system of so-called Aegis BMD deploying the SM-3 Raytheon missiles on Japanese naval ships.12 That gives the US a Pacific platform from which it can hit both China and Russia’s Far East as well as the Korean Peninsula. These are all a pretty long and curious way to reach any Iranian threat.

Origins of US Missile Defense

The US program to build a global network of ‘defense’ against possible enemy ballistic missile attacks began back in March 23, 1983 when then-President Ronald Reagan proposed the program popularly known as Star Wars, formally called then the Strategic Defense Initiative.

In 1994 at a private dinner discussion with this author in Moscow, the former head of economic studies for the Soviet Union’s Institute of World Economy & International Relations, IMEMO, declared that it had been the huge financial demands required by Russia to keep pace with the multi-billion dollar US Star Wars effort that finally led to the economic collapse of the Warsaw Pact and to German reunification in 1990. With a losing war in Afghanistan, collapsing oil revenues caused by a 1986 US policy of flooding the world market with Saudi oil, the military economy of the USSR was unable to keep pace, short of risking massive civilian unrest across the Warsaw Pact nations.13

This time around the US BMD deployment is designed to bring Russia to her knees as well, only in the context of a US creation of what military strategists call “Nuclear Primacy.”

Nuclear Primacy: Thinking the Unthinkable

While the Soviet era armed forces have undergone a drastic shrinking down since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Russia has tenaciously held on to the core of its strategic nuclear deterrent. That is something that gives Washington pause when considering how to deal with Russia. The potential for Russia to deepen its military and economic cooperation with its Central Asian partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, above all with China, is something Washington has gone to great lengths to frustrate. Such a strategic cooperation is becoming increasingly a matter of life-or-death for both China and Russia. China’s nuclear arsenal is not yet strategic as is Russia’s.

What the Pentagon is going for is what it has dreamed of since the Soviets developed intercontinental ballistic missiles during the 1950’s. Weapons professionals term it Nuclear Primacy. Translated into layman’s language, Nuclear Primacy means that if one of two evenly-matched nuclear foes is able to deploy even a crude anti-ballistic missile defense system that can seriously damage the nuclear strike capacity of the other, while he launches a full-scale nuclear barrage against that foe, he has won the nuclear war.

The darker side of that military-strategic Nuclear Primacy coin is that the side without adequate offsetting BMD anti-missile defenses, as he watches his national security vanish with each new BMD missile and radar installation, is under growing pressure to launch a pre-emptive nuclear or other devastating strike before the window closes. That in simple words means that far from being “defensive” as Washington claims, BMD is offensive and destabilizing in the extreme. Moreover, those nations blissfully deluding themselves that by granting the Pentagon rights to install BMS infrastructure, that they are buying the security umbrella of the mighty United States Armed Forces, find that they have allowed their territory to become a potential nuclear field of battle in an ever more likely confrontation between Washington and Moscow.

Dr. Robert Bowman, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the US Air Force and former head of President Reagan’s BMD effort of the 1980’s, then dubbed derisively “Star Wars,” noted the true nature of Washington’s current ballistic missile “defense” under what is today called the Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency:

"Under Reagan and Bush I, it was the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). Under Clinton, it became the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). Now Bush II has made it the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and given it the freedom from oversight and audit previously enjoyed only by the black programs. If Congress doesn't act soon, this new independent agency may take their essentially unlimited budget and spend it outside of public and Congressional scrutiny on weapons that we won't know anything about until they're in space. In theory, then, the space warriors would rule the world, able to destroy any target on earth without warning. Will these new super weapons bring the American people security? Hardly."14

During the Cold War, the ability of both sides—the Warsaw Pact and NATO—to mutually annihilate one another, had led to a nuclear stalemate dubbed by military strategists, MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction. It was scary but, in a bizarre sense, more stable than what Washington now pursues relentlessly with its Ballistic Missile Defense in Europe, Asia and globally in unilateral pursuit of US nuclear primacy. MAD was based on the prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation with no decisive advantage for either side; it led to a world in which nuclear war had been ‘unthinkable.’ Now, the US was pursuing the possibility of nuclear war as ‘thinkable.’

Lt. Colonel Bowman, in a telephone interview with this author called missile defense, “the missing link to a First Strike.” 15

The fact is that Washington hides behind a NATO facade with its deployment of the European BMD, while keeping absolute US control over it. Russia's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin recently called the European portion of the US BMD a fig leaf for "a missile defense umbrella that says 'Made in USA. European NATO members will have neither a button to push nor a finger to push it with.” 16

That’s clearly why Russia continues to insist on guarantees - from the United States - that the shield is not directed against Russia. Worryingly enough, to date Washington has categorically refused that. Could it be that the dear souls in Washington entrusted with maintaining world peace have gone bonkers? In any case the fact that Washington continues to tear up solemn international arms treaties and illegally proceed to install its global missile shield is basis enough for those in Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere to regard US promises, even treaties as not worth the paper they were written on.

F. William Engdahl may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. His newest book on oil geopolitics, titled Myths, Lies and Oil Wars is due out by spring of 2012.


Notes

1 David M. Herszenhorn, Russia Elevates Warning About U.S. Missile-Defense Plan in Europe, The New York Times, November 23, 2011.

2. Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Misha, Medvedev: Russia will Deploy Iskanders in Kaliningrad to Neutralize New US Missile Threat, Misha’s Russian Blog, December 30, 2008, accessed in
http://mishasrussiablog.blogspot.com/2008/11/medevev-russia-will-deploy-iskanders-in.html.

5 RIA Novosti, US ready to provide Russia with missile shield details, Moscow, November 21, 2011, accessed in http://en.rian.ru/russia/20111121/168883920.html.

6 RIA Novosti, NATO's missile defense program to be fully operational in 2018 – Rasmussen, 5 October, 2011, accessed in http://en.rian.ru/world/20111005/167417252.html.

7 CNN, U.S. scraps missile defense shield plans, September 17, 2009, accessed in
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/09/17/united.states.missile.shield/index.html

8 Kenneth Repoza, Obama's Cold War? Raytheon Missiles On Russia's Border By 2018, Forbes, September 15, 2011, accessed in
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/09/15/obamas-cold-war-raytheon-missiles-on-russias-border-by-2018/

9 Missile Defense Agency, News and Resources various press releases and program descriptions, accessed in http://www.mda.mil/news/news.html

10 Sergey Sargsyan, Turkey in the US Missile Defense System: Primary Assessment and Possible Prospects, 13 October, 2011, Center for Political Studies, “Noravank” Foundation, accessed in
http://noravank.am/eng/articles/detail.php?ELEMENT_ID=6051

11 Ibid.

12 Missile Defense Agency, op. cit.

13 F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, Wiesbaden, 2010, edition.engdahl, p. 145.

14 Robert Bowman, cited in F. William Engdahl, op.cit., p. 161.

15 Ibid., p. 162

16 RIA Novosti, Nato Is Figleaf, November 1, 2011.

U.S. may provide Russia with details of European missile shield

Πηγή: Panarmenian
Nov 21 2011

PanARMENIAN.Net - The United States is ready to provide Russia with technical specifics of interceptor missiles of the European missile defense system, Russia's Kommersant daily said on Monday, November 21, citing U.S. sources.

According to RIA Novosti, the newspaper said Russian specialists were invited to take part in tests of RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) and visit the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) headquarters at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.

"During the consultations [U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen] Tauscher said Washington was ready to provide information about the missile's speed after it uses up all of its fuel. This information, referred to as burnout velocity (VBO) in international documents, helps to determine how to target it," Kommersant said.

In October, Moscow's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin said Russian talks with the United States on missile defense had hit a dead end.

The Kremlin says the U.S. expanding anti-missile system in Europe is a potential threat to Russian nuclear arsenal, while Washington tries to convince Moscow that the system poses no threat to Russia and is needed to protect against missiles that could be fired by countries with smaller arsenals such as Iran.

The missile shield dispute between Russia and the U.S. has undermined efforts to build on improvements in relations between the former Cold War foes and is intensified by Russia's uncertainty of U.S. policy after the November 2012 presidential elections.

US budget woes could hit European missile defense

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, arrives for a meeting with bi-partisan members of the supercommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Nov. 18, 2011.

Πηγή: PittsburghTib
By DESMOND BUTLER (AP)

Nov 19 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A breakdown in high-stakes budget talks in Congress could threaten plans for a missile defense shield in Europe.

Negotiators have shown little sign they will be able to meet next week's deadline for reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion. If they fail to agree, a new law mandates cuts throughout the federal government, including a big slice of the defense budget.

While it is not known what military spending would be cut, an expensive program aimed primarily at defending Europe is unlikely to be spared.

The U.S. sees the missile defense system, aimed at countering a threat from Iran, as part of its contribution to the NATO military alliance. With the United States often complaining that it makes a disproportionately large contribution to NATO, missile defense could be especially vulnerable to budget-cutters.

"A missile defense system for NATO? It's going to be hard to keep people committed if they think the U.S. is picking up the tab for Europe," says Kurt Volker, who was ambassador to NATO at the end of the George W. Bush administration.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned that the European missile defense program could be threatened if the special negotiating panel, known as the supercommittee, should fail to work out a deal. That suggestion, though, may have been intended mostly to nudge lawmakers to resolve their differences and avoid the automatic cuts to one of their favorite programs.

It is still possible that supercommittee members could set aside intense partisan differences and reach a deal by Wednesday. And if they do not, Congress might find a way to cancel the cuts before they take effect in 2013.

That may only delay the scaling back of the U.S. military role in Europe. A decade-long expansion of military spending appears to be coming to an end, and the Obama administration has indicated it is shifting its foreign policy toward Asia, where it sees the greatest opportunities and threats of coming decades.

"Where does that leave Europe? Lower down the list," says Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Beyond missile defense, the automatic cuts could prompt the U.S. to save money by shifting some warships away from Europe but probably would not lead to fewer U.S. troops there.

The United States has already reduced its presence in Europe from more than 200,000 in 1989 to slightly more than 40,000 today. It has plans for a further pullback by 2015 but is unlikely to accelerate that simply because there are no short-term savings to be had from moving troops out of their European bases.

"We can't take the remaining bases with us," says Christopher Wiley, an analyst with the Transatlantic relations program at the Bertelsmann Foundation who is preparing a report on the impact of budget cuts on U.S. policy in Europe. "It's not a good place to save cash."

How to Save a Quarter of a Trillion Dollars

Πηγή: International News Magazine
By Lawrence Wittner

Tuesday, 06 September 2011

BASEL (IDN) - In the midst of the current stampede to slash federal spending, Congress might want to take a look at two unnecessary (and dangerous) “national security” programs that, if cut, would save the United States over a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next decade.

The first of these is the Obama administration’s plan to spend at least $185 billion in the next ten years to “modernize” the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons arsenal. At present, the U.S. government possesses approximately 8,500 nuclear warheads, and it is hard to imagine that this country would be safer from attack if it built more nuclear weapons or “improved” those it already possesses. 

Indeed, President Barack Obama has declared — both on the 2008 campaign trail and as President – that he is committed to building a world without nuclear weapons. This seems like a perfectly sensible position — one favored by most nations and, as polls show, most people (including most people in the United States). Therefore, the administration should be working on securing further disarmament agreements — not on upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal in preparation for future nuclear confrontations and nuclear wars.

In late June of this year (2011), Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wrote: “It is deeply troubling that the U.S. has allocated $185 billion to augment its nuclear stockpile over the next decade, on top of the ordinary annual nuclear-weapons budget of more than $50 billion.”

Not only has the International Court of Justice affirmed that nations “are legally obliged to negotiate in good faith for the complete elimination of their nuclear forces,” but “every dollar invested in bolstering a country’s nuclear arsenal is a diversion of resources from its schools, hospitals, and other social services, and a theft from the millions around the globe who go hungry or are denied access to basic medicines.” He concluded: “Instead of investing in weapons of mass annihilation, governments must allocate resources towards meeting human needs.”

Another project worth eliminating is the national missile defense program. Thanks to recent Congressional generosity, this Reagan era carryover, once derided by U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy as “Star Wars,” is currently slated for an increase in federal spending, which will provide it with $8.6 billion in fiscal 2012.

The vast and expensive missile defense program — costing about $150 billion since its inception — has thus far produced remarkably meager results. Indeed, no one knows whether it will work. As an investigative article in Bloomberg News recently reported: “It has never been tested under conditions simulating a real attack by an intercontinental ballistic missile deploying sophisticated decoys and countermeasures. The system has flunked 7 of 15 more limited trials, yet remains exempted from normal Pentagon oversight.”

Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, reported that his committee was “deeply concerned” about the test failures of the nation’s missile defense program. He also implied that, given the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the United States might not need such a system to deter its potential enemies, which have a far inferior missile capability. “The threat we have now is either a distant threat or is not a realistic threat,” he remarked.

Why, then, do other nations — for example, Russia — fiercely object to the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system near their borders? Perhaps they fear that, somehow, U.S. scientists and engineers will finally figure out how to build a system, often likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet, that makes the United States invulnerable while they are left vulnerable. Or perhaps they think that, one day, some U.S. government officials might believe that the United States actually is invulnerable and launch a first strike against their own nations. In any case, their favorite solution to the problem posed by U.S. national missile defense — building more nuclear-armed missiles of their own — significantly undermines the security of the United States.

Projecting the current annual cost of this program over the next decade, the United States would save $86 billion by eliminating it.

Thus, by scrapping plans for nuclear weapons “modernization” and for national missile defense — programs that are both useless and provocative — the United States would save $271 billion (well over a quarter of a trillion dollars) in the next ten years. Whether used to balance the budget or to fund programs for jobs, healthcare, education, and the environment, this money would go a long way toward resolving some of the nation’s current problems.

*Dr. Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. This article first appeared on http://peaceandhealthblog.com. It is based on his talk about the impact of civil society on nuclear policy at IPPNW's World Congress in Basel in August. 2011 His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).

NATO Warns Turkey Against Chinese, Russian Systems

Πηγή: DefenseNews

By UMIT ENGINSOY and BURAK EGE BEKDIL 

Published: 2 Aug 2011 13:39

ANKARA - NATO officials have warned Turkey that if it buys Chinese or Russian air and missile defense systems, Ankara would operate them without the Western alliance's intelligence on incoming ballistic missiles.

Turkey's national air and missile competition has attracted bids from a U.S. partnership of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, offering the Patriot air defense system; Russia's Rosoboronexport, marketing the S-300; China's CPMIEC (China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corp.), offering its HQ-9; and the Italian-French consortium Eurosam, maker of the SAMP/T Aster 30.

Turkish officials, who are planning to choose a system late this year or early next year, have declined to rule out the Chinese and Russian entries.

Many Western officials and experts say the Russian and Chinese systems are not compatible with NATO systems. If Ankara picks one, Moscow or Beijing may gain access to classified NATO information and disrupt alliance procedures, they say.

"If, say, the Chinese win the competition, their systems will be in interaction, directly or indirectly, with NATO's intelligence systems, and this may lead to the leak of critical NATO information to the Chinese, albeit inadvertently. So this is dangerous," one Western analyst said.

But one Western official here familiar with NATO matters said alliance officials won't let such information slip.

"If the Chinese or the Russians win the Turkish contest, their systems will have to work separately. They won't be linked to NATO information systems," the official said.

This was the first time NATO strongly urged Turkey against choosing the non-Western systems.

"One explanation is that Turkey itself doesn't plan to select the Chinese or Russian alternatives eventually, but still is retaining them among their options to put pressure on the Americans and the Europeans to curb their prices," the Western expert said.

Turkey's long-range air and missile defense systems program, or T-Loramids, has been designed to counter both enemy aircraft and missiles.

Turkey's national air and missile defense program is totally separate and independent from NATO's own plans to design, develop and build a collective missile shield.

Under that NATO plan, approved last November during a summit meeting in Lisbon, the Western alliance agreed to create the collective missile shield against incoming ballistic missiles from rogue countries. Ankara agreed to the decision only after the alliance accepted a Turkish request that neither Iran nor other countries would be specifically mentioned as potential threats.

NATO is seeking to deploy a special X-band radar on Turkish territory for early detection of missiles launched from the region. Senior U.S. and Turkish officials in mid-July discussed the matter in Istanbul on the sidelines of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and both sides reported progress toward an agreement on eventual deployment of the radar.

Ideally, in the event of a launch of a ballistic missile from a rogue state, the launch would be detected by the Turkish-deployed X-band radar, which would send targeting data to U.S. Aegis missile destroyers to be deployed in the eastern Mediterranean and, potentially, to land-based launchers in Romania.

U.S.-made SM-3 interceptor missiles would then be fired to hit the incoming missiles in mid-flight.