HAMAS Develops New Rocket

Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, aired a video message to the Zionist occupation, which shows one of its resistance personnel manufacturing new rocket, which did not appear nor has been used before.

The video that was aired, was titled "A New Dawn" in Hebrew, and its message was that new Zionist cities that are located deeper in occupied Palestine, will now be within the range of the new Qassam rockets.

The rocket, appears to be a new model and  more sophisticated than older missiles that were previously employed.

It seems that this message is directed at the Zionist home front to the occupation.

Boengs CHAMP Missile: Disables Computers As It Flies By

On October 16th, researchers from Boeing and the US Air Force successfully test-launched a missile capable of remotely disabling PCs and other electronics with only a burst of powerful radio waves. The test was held over the Western Utah Desert as part of the Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), a collaborative effort from Boeing Phantom Works and the US Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate. The project's aim is to create a missile that can remotely paralyze electronic systems with minimal collateral damage — a capability that, according to Boeing, could one day transform modern warfare.

During last week's test, a CHAMP missile successfully disabled its target by firing high power microwaves at a two story building filled with computers and other electronics. Every PC inside went dark within seconds, as did the building's entire electrical system. The test was so successful, in fact, that it even disabled all cameras recording the event. Over the course of one hour, the CHAMP missile knocked out electrical systems at seven target buildings, with little or no collateral damage.

Recent years have seen a surge in the development of similarly electronic and non-lethal warfare. Both the Air Force and US Marine Corps have been looking to adopt the Next Generation Jammer as well as active phased array radar, which allows stealth ships and aircraft to remotely jam other radar systems.

It remains unclear whether Boeing's CHAMP missile will see deployment anytime soon, though CHAMP program manager Keith Coleman says last week's test marks an important step forward. 

"This technology marks a new era in modern-day warfare," Coleman said. "In the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy’s electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive." In proving the missile's ability, he continued, "we made science fiction science fact."

Via: "The Verger"

Air Force Wants Hypersonic Missiles For Stealth Jets

An X-51 Waverider hypersonic missile attached to the wing of a B-52 bomber. The Air Force seeks to build a smaller variant for its stealth fighters. Photo: Boeing


By Robert Beckhusen
June 7, 2012 | 6:00 pm
Courtesy Of "Wired"


For decades, the military has tried — with little success — to build missiles capable of traveling at breakneck, hypersonic speeds. Missile tests, however, have been uneven, with repeated failures punctuated by the occasional stunning success. Now the Air Force is taking a bigger role by seeking to build another hypersonic missile, this time for its stealth fighter jets.

The Air Force’s desired “High Speed Strike Weapon” would travel at five times the speed of sound or faster, theoretically launching from a stealthy F-22 Raptor jet or a future F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and traveling so fast and at such long distances as to render an enemy’s anti-aircraft systems defunct. The Air Force’s Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate is gathering possible design partners later this month at Elgin Air Force Base in Florida before any solicitation. According to an Air Force notice, whatever prototype gets built will ultimately need to strike “time-critical” targets — on the move, possibly — from “tactically relevant standoff distances.”

If it can be done, the weapon will “be representative of an air-breathing hypersonic missile system” that can tough it out in “the most stringent environments presented to us in the next decade,” said Steven Walker, the Air Force’s deputy assistant secretary for science, technology and engineering, in written testimony to the House Armed Services Committee in February.

That’s the hope, at least. The U.S. military has a mixed record with hypersonics. Last August, the Pentagon’s pizza-shaped Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 failed for a second (and likely final) time, crashing into the Pacific during a test flight. But the Army’s Advanced Hypersonic Weapon did much better during a test in November. Two years ago, the Air Force successfully flew its X-51 WaveRider scramjet missile at speeds of Mach 5 for 200 seconds after launching it off a B-52 bomber. A later test, though, ended with engine failure.

Unlike those weapons, though, the High Speed Strike Weapon isn’t a so-called “Global Strike” weapon. Those weapons are supposed to hit anywhere on Planet Earth at any time. The former Falcon missile, for instance, was designed to launch with a rocket into space, before screaming back down to Earth and obliterating its target. But those weapons are indistinguishable from a nuclear weapon when seen on radar — which could inadvertently trigger nuclear Armageddon once a surprised nuclear power like Russia sees one in the air.

A fighter-launched missile resembles any other smaller, non-nuclear missile. It’s just traveling super-fast. Armageddon averted.

There are other technical challenges in launching a scramjet missile from a fighter jet instead of a sub-orbital rocket or a B-52, though. It’ll still need to have air-breathing engines that compresses the air around the missile into a supersonic mixture of oxygen and fuel — absent a turbine. But it will also need to be small enough to be carried by a jet fighter while carrying the necessary advanced navigation controls, precision guidance tools and sophisticated sensors, plus the warhead. The service will also still have to find the right mixture of composite materials like titanium and tungsten (among others) to hold up under the enormous heat generated by Mach 5, Mach 6 and even faster flight.

The Air Force is requesting a whopping 150 percent increase in funding for the program, from $6.2 million now to $15.4 million in 2013 in one “thrust” of weapons development, according to subscription-required InsideDefense. That’s a lot of money for a missile that may not work.

DARPA's Multipurpose Killer Missile

By Spencer Ackerman
November 3, 2010 | 11:09 am
Courtesy Of "Wired's Danger Room"



It looks like the U.S.’ next mega-missile is going to be a multipurpose killer. For over a year, the futurists at Darpa have wanted a high-speed missile that can take down a variety of targets in the air and on the ground. Now, they’re read to shell out $21 million for a missile named for the most fearsome cyborg of all.

Darpa officially announced this week that defense giant Raytheon is going to build its Triple Target Terminator. The T3, as it’s known, is a project for a long-range missile that can destroy cruise missiles, ground air defenses and hostile planes. That’s a bigger deal than it sounds — right now, it takes a whole array of different weapons to handle these missions. A single missile doing ‘em all might save the Pentagon some cash, and it should make the plane carrying these weapons lethal to a wider variety of foes. Darpa wants the missile to launch either from stealth jets, bombers or drones.

It’s hardly Darpa’s first foray into the missile world. Last year, it issued two contracts to develop a Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, an effort to take down ships in places where the U.S. Navy can’t easily operate.

The most recent defense budget included $7 million for Darpa to study production of the T3 missile. As Graham Warwick reported last year for Aviation Week, researchers examined “technologies for propulsion, multi-mode seekers, data links, digital guidance and control and advanced warheads.”

Not much is known about just what exactly the T3 will ultimately be. Raytheon representatives referred inquiries to Darpa; Darpa hasn’t returned them yet. But the company has until next October 22 to complete its work on the project: time travel doesn’t seem to be a feature of the missile just yet.

See Also:

• WTF Weapons, From Spy Saucers to Flying Lightsabers
• Darpa Plans Test for Hypersonic Weapon
• Darpa’s Greatest Hits and Misses

Chinese Missile Could Shift Pacific Power Balance

By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer Eric Talmadge, Associated Press Writer
Courtesy Of "Yahoo News"

ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON – Nothing projects U.S. global air and sea power more vividly than supercarriers. Bristling with fighter jets that can reach deep into even landlocked trouble zones, America's virtually invincible carrier fleet has long enforced its dominance of the high seas.
China may soon put an end to that.

U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China — an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles).
___

EDITOR'S NOTE — The USS George Washington supercarrier recently deployed off North Korea in a high-profile show of U.S. sea power. AP Tokyo News Editor Eric Talmadge was aboard the carrier, and filed this report.
___

Analysts say final testing of the missile could come as soon as the end of this year, though questions remain about how fast China will be able to perfect its accuracy to the level needed to threaten a moving carrier at sea.

The weapon, a version of which was displayed last year in a Chinese military parade, could revolutionize China's role in the Pacific balance of power, seriously weakening Washington's ability to intervene in any potential conflict over Taiwan or North Korea. It could also deny U.S. ships safe access to international waters near China's 11,200-mile (18,000-kilometer) -long coastline.

While a nuclear bomb could theoretically sink a carrier, assuming its user was willing to raise the stakes to atomic levels, the conventionally-armed Dong Feng 21D's uniqueness is in its ability to hit a powerfully defended moving target with pin-point precision.

The Chinese Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to the AP's request for a comment.

Funded by annual double-digit increases in the defense budget for almost every year of the past two decades, the Chinese navy has become Asia's largest and has expanded beyond its traditional mission of retaking Taiwan to push its sphere of influence deeper into the Pacific and protect vital maritime trade routes.

"The Navy has long had to fear carrier-killing capabilities," said Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the nonpartisan, Washington-based Center for a New American Security. "The emerging Chinese antiship missile capability, and in particular the DF 21D, represents the first post-Cold War capability that is both potentially capable of stopping our naval power projection and deliberately designed for that purpose."

Setting the stage for a possible conflict, Beijing has grown increasingly vocal in its demands for the U.S. to stay away from the wide swaths of ocean — covering much of the Yellow, East and South China seas — where it claims exclusivity.

It strongly opposed plans to hold U.S.-South Korean war games in the Yellow Sea off the northeastern Chinese coast, saying the participation of the USS George Washington supercarrier, with its 1,092-foot (333-meter) flight deck and 6,250 personnel, would be a provocation because it put Beijing within striking range of U.S. F-18 warplanes.

The carrier instead took part in maneuvers held farther away in the Sea of Japan.

U.S. officials deny Chinese pressure kept it away, and say they will not be told by Beijing where they can operate.

"We reserve the right to exercise in international waters anywhere in the world," Rear Adm. Daniel Cloyd, who headed the U.S. side of the exercises, said aboard the carrier during the maneuvers, which ended last week.

But the new missile, if able to evade the defenses of a carrier and of the vessels sailing with it, could undermine that policy.

"China can reach out and hit the U.S. well before the U.S. can get close enough to the mainland to hit back," said Toshi Yoshihara, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College. He said U.S. ships have only twice been that vulnerable — against Japan in World War II and against Soviet bombers in the Cold War.

Carrier-killing missiles "could have an enduring psychological effect on U.S. policymakers," he e-mailed to The AP. "It underscores more broadly that the U.S. Navy no longer rules the waves as it has since the end of World War II. The stark reality is that sea control cannot be taken for granted anymore."

Yoshihara said the weapon is causing considerable consternation in Washington, though — with attention focused on land wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — its implications haven't been widely discussed in public.

Analysts note that while much has been made of China's efforts to ready a carrier fleet of its own, it would likely take decades to catch U.S. carrier crews' level of expertise, training and experience.

But Beijing does not need to match the U.S. carrier for carrier. The Dong Feng 21D, smarter, and vastly cheaper, could successfully attack a U.S. carrier, or at least deter it from getting too close.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned of the threat in a speech last September at the Air Force Association Convention.

"When considering the military-modernization programs of countries like China, we should be concerned less with their potential ability to challenge the U.S. symmetrically — fighter to fighter or ship to ship — and more with their ability to disrupt our freedom of movement and narrow our strategic options," he said.

Gates said China's investments in cyber and anti-satellite warfare, anti-air and anti-ship weaponry, along with ballistic missiles, "could threaten America's primary way to project power" through its forward air bases and carrier strike groups.

The Pentagon has been worried for years about China getting an anti-ship ballistic missile. The Pentagon considers such a missile an "anti-access," weapon, meaning that it could deny others access to certain areas.

The Air Force's top surveillance and intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. David Deptula, told reporters this week that China's effort to increase anti-access capability is part of a worrisome trend.

He did not single out the DF 21D, but said: "While we might not fight the Chinese, we may end up in situations where we'll certainly be opposing the equipment that they build and sell around the world."

Questions remain over when — and if — China will perfect the technology; hitting a moving carrier is no mean feat, requiring state-of-the-art guidance systems, and some experts believe it will take China a decade or so to field a reliable threat. Others, however, say final tests of the missile could come in the next year or two.

Former Navy commander James Kraska, a professor of international law and sea power at the U.S. Naval War College, recently wrote a controversial article in the magazine Orbis outlining a hypothetical scenario set just five years from now in which a Deng Feng 21D missile with a penetrator warhead sinks the USS George Washington.

That would usher in a "new epoch of international order in which Beijing emerges to displace the United States."

While China's Defense Ministry never comments on new weapons before they become operational, the DF 21D — which would travel at 10 times the speed of sound and carry conventional payloads — has been much discussed by military buffs online.

A pseudonymous article posted on Xinhuanet, website of China's official news agency, imagines the U.S. dispatching the George Washington to aid Taiwan against a Chinese attack.

The Chinese would respond with three salvos of DF 21D, the first of which would pierce the hull, start fires and shut down flight operations, the article says. The second would knock out its engines and be accompanied by air attacks. The third wave, the article says, would "send the George Washington to the bottom of the ocean."

Comments on the article were mostly positive.

___

AP writer Christopher Bodeen in Beijing and National Security Writer Anne Gearan in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Do Scud Missiles Really Matter?

By Ren Ke
May 15, 2010
Courtesy Of "Xin Hua Net"

BEIRUT, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Since last month when Israel accused Syria of transferring Scud missiles to Hezbollah, the issue has not yet ended.

The United Sates renewed its sanctions against Syria last week, and later on Thursday, U.S. President Barack Obama asked the Congress to approve 205 million U.S. dollars to help Israel deploy an anti-missile defense system, saying that the president recognizes the threat missiles and rockets fired by Hamas and Hezbollah.

Do The Scud Missiles Really Matter For The Regional Balance Of Power?

Analysts said Hezbollah has already had different long-range missiles so that Scuds are not so important for the party, and the issue is just a Syrian backfired game and Israeli tactics of diverting the international community's attention from the Jewish settlement projects and the stalled Middle East peace process.

SCUD MISSILES AND HEZBOLLAH'S ARSENAL

Scud is a series of tactical ballistic missiles deployed by the former Soviet Union since the 1960's. It became world wide famous in the 1991 Gulf War when Saddam Hussein's army launched almost 80 Scud missiles to its neighboring countries, but many of them were intercepted by the U.S.-made Patriot anti-missiles systems.

In the history of half a century, Scud missiles varied into four different types, with the ranges from 180 km to 550 km, and the payloads from 600 kg to 985 kg.

Although it is of high mobility as carried by vehicles, its big size, almost 12 meters long, make it easily found by high definition reconnaissance satellites.

When Israeli President Shimon Peres accused Syria of providing Scud missiles to Hezbollah, all the politicians in Lebanon denied the charges. Lebanese army chief Jean Kawaghi said that such a big missiles cannot be hidden or smuggled.

Hezbollah never comment on its weaponry, they always keep silent.

Amine Hoteit, a retired Lebanese general and now an independent security analyst, told Xinhua that Hezbollah did not need Scud missiles to hit Israel.

He added Hezbollah sources told him that the party has already had missiles with minimum ranges of 265 km, which can hit most of Israel's strategically important places.

Hezbollah's General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel in February that if it attacks Lebanon, the party will retaliate to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.

Israel estimates that Hezbollah now has more than 40,000 different types of missiles, most of which are reportedly deployed in the Shiite-inhabited south Lebanon, from where Tel Aviv is only 130 km away, and Jerusalem 150 km.

"Scud is not the point. We cannot say Hezbollah has Scud missiles or not, but we can say the party has the ability to attack most part of Israel in the next war," said Hoteit.

During the last war with Israel in 2006, Hezbollah fired some 4, 000 rockets into northern Israel during the war, most of them the Soviet-made shorter range (20 km) 122 mm BM-21 models nicknamed Katyusha. They also fired a few longer range rockets at urban areas, and the larger warheads did a lot of damage and caused some casualties.

During the war, Hezbollah has reportedly acquired Iranian-made surface-to-surface missiles, namely Zelzal-2. Its accuracy is under 100 meters at their maximum range, which is estimated to be about 200 km, putting Tel Aviv within its range. Israeli Air Force during the war paid careful attention to hitting Zelzals, and has destroyed at least a dozen of them.

Perhaps Hezbollah has something else. Last week, the head of Israel's military intelligence research department, Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz said that Syria had also supplied M600 SS missiles, a Syrian copy of the Iranian Fateh-110, with 300-km range.

Hoteit said that Hezbollah's weapons play an important role in the regional balance of power. "If Hezbollah is strong, the war will be far away, but if the party is weak, the war will come tomorrow."

A BACKFIRED SYRIAN GAME?

Syria lost points in the aftermath of the Scud missiles issue, as the United States renewed its sanctions against Damascus for one more year, saying it supported terrorist groups and was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

The White House will also help Israel deploy the Iron Dome anti- missile system, designed to intercept rockets with ranges between 5 and 70 km and artillery shells.

Hilal Khashan, chair of department of political studies and public administration at the American University of Beirut, said that now the United States has no longer discuss Scud missiles issues, as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently accused Syria of arming Hezbollah with sophisticated weaponry, without naming Scuds.

"Whether the Syrians have delivered the scuds or not is no longer the issue. The issue is what Hezbollah already has," Khashan said.

Khashan said that it was a backfired game played by the Syrians.

Israel's accusation is based on the satellite images that showed Syrian military transporters shipping Scud missiles in the direction of Lebanese border, so they assumed that Hezbollah received Scud missiles from Syria.

Khashan believed that the missiles are still inside Syria but along the Lebanese border.

"Israel thinks the missiles will change the regional balance of power. Syrians are politically acute, so that they will not commit such a blunder. They would not cross such violation from which they will pay heavily from Israel," said Khashan.

"The issue is that Syrians played a game, they want to create a controlled crisis to get the United States to engage and talk to Syrians," said Khashan.

Syria has long been suffering from stalled economic situations due to U.S. sanctions. Damascus longs for opportunities to reconcile with the United States, and indeed they were once coming closer.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the New Yorker published in February that Syria has renewed its sharing of intelligence on terrorism with the CIA and with Britain's MI6. The first U.S. ambassador to Syria since 2005 was also nominated by Obama in February, but recently the U.S. Congress held confirmation hearings.

Syria wants reconcile with U.S. with a controlled crisis, but unfortunately it has backfired on itself. Khashan said the Americans no longer brought issue of Hezbollah's Scud missiles, they brought Hezbollah's missile arsenal.

Hezbollah has constantly said its arsenal will not be discussed, as they will use it to defend Lebanon against any Israeli attacks. Syria, the party's backer beside Iran, does not want to see this as Hezbollah is Damascus' important counterweight to Israel.

Hoteit said the issue is also a wise move of Israel, which came after ties between Israel and the United States were strained by an announcement of new Israeli settlement plan in East Jerusalem made during a visit to the Jewish state by Vice President Joe Biden in March.

"They (the Israelis) want to divert the attention of the international community, especially the United States," said Hoteit.

Mindless Missiles

The Pentagon’s Drone Budget Is On Autopilot.

BY WINSLOW T. WHEELER AND PIERRE M. SPREY
APRIL 01, 2010 ISSUE
Courtesy Of THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE

Today’s Pentagon is led by its most widely respected secretary of defense in decades, one more in control and feared by the generals than any since the much-hated Robert McNamara. One would hope that with this stature, Robert Gates is nurturing a plan to reverse the decay afflicting our military forces. Think again. The only plan will make things worse.

It was revealed in early February in an obscure, mostly ignored document that accompanied Secretary Gates’s new defense budget—the “Aircraft Investment Plan, Fiscal Years (FY) 2011-2040.” Though the Pentagon has never been able to stick to even the second year of any of its innumerable future year plans, it is confidently laying out a roadmap for the next three decades for all aircraft in the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.

Contrary to the invective that politicians and their think-tank cronies hurl against the Obama administration, this new plan does not ruin America’s air power with less money, but with more. It promotes some of the most gold-plated, mindlessly ineffective weapons seen since the Imperial Japanese Navy’s mega-battleships were dispatched to the bottom of the Pacific.

Year one of the new plan starts with the smallest and oldest aircraft inventory we have had since the end of World War II. The cause is certainly not that our air arms are being starved of money. Even after adjusting for inflation, current spending is significantly higher than Cold War outlays were for far larger aircraft inventories. The planes our services are now buying are inexcusably more expensive than the ones they’re replacing—deliberately so. Moreover, they come with no commensurate increase in effectiveness. Just the opposite.

In 1970, our fighter and attack aircraft supply stood at roughly 8,000 aircraft. Today, we have just 3,300. The new plan continues that trend, down to 2,900 by 2020, a 10 percent reduction. To get there, the fighter/attack budget will swell by 40 percent, from about $12 billion to roughly $17 billion.

Gazing into their crystal ball, the planners also recommend shrinking the forces for other missions, again while sharply increasing costs. The command, control, and intelligence aircraft fleet will drop 10 percent in only five years—from 580 down to 527—but the bill will soar from $5 billion up to almost $8 billion. Cargo, tanker, and bomber inventories stay roughly level, though their spending increases, dramatically in the case of tankers and bombers. No doubt fearing further embarrassment, the 30-year plan offers no force shrinkage or budget bloat details beyond the year 2020.

The plan’s other unmentioned problem is the aging of our already geriatric aircraft inventory, which the Pentagon propels apace. Quite remarkable are the numbers of F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, and A-10s, all originally designed in the late 1960s, that will be hanging around until 2040 because their replacement, the vulnerable and sluggish F-35, costs an outrageous three to ten times more. Ditto for the bomber, cargo, and tanker fleets, many of which are due to grow even longer in the tooth than the fighters. This shriveling force will cost an extra $9 billion at the end of the decade—on top of the $22 billion we’re spending now.

To make it all worse, this scheme assumes flawless implementation; not a penny of new cost overrun is anticipated—an appalling irresponsibility in the face of Government Accountability Office reports of major weapons overruns of $295 billion since 2001.

Not everyone, however, is swooning. Quite notable is a chart in the plan that reveals a Navy gambit to reach deep into the Air Force’s wallet. With only about 30 percent of the aircraft, the Navy ends up with at least 50 percent of the funding. We have not heard the last of this. Budget share is the most prized jewel in the Pentagon’s cut-throat bureaucratic wars. The Navy’s bullion raid is sure to be met with drawn Air Force knives. The jostling between pro-Navy and pro-Air Force factions in Congress, defined by the location of contractor plants, will be fodder for the Washington press for months to come.

But the real fight to watch will be the brawl over funding for drones—or, as the authors like to spin them, “Unmanned Multirole Surveillance and Strike Aircraft.” In just ten years, this court favorite is slated to grow from 72 units today to 476, a more than 600 percent increase. The money will increase—only proportionally, the planners blithely predict—from about $1 billion today to almost $7 billion in 2020, a 700 percent increase. A virtual declaration of budget war, the plan assigns all that drone spending increase to the Navy. Air Force drone spending will actually decline.

Two assumptions in the drone plan stretch credulity to the breaking point: first, future drones will not experience the ongoing geometric increase in cost of manned aircraft; second, Air Force generals will stand by idly with nothing for themselves while the admirals walk off with an extra $6 billion per year. In reality, total drone spending will be far higher, and the Air Force will never permit itself to fall so shamefully behind.

Also beyond belief is the schedule and performance that technology-fantasists on Gates’s staff and in the Navy think they will acquire. Unlike today’s relatively simple, slow, and light Predator drone, the X-47B drone the Navy wants is 20 times larger, weighs 22 tons, and flies at Mach .7. Just two pre-prototypes of the so-called “stealthy” (they never are) drones are costing at least $635 million. The flight plan is already months behind schedule.

No mere vehicle for video cameras, radars, and infrared gizmos to peep on the enemy, the X-47B will not only pretend to find all targets on a hypothetically fogless battlefield, but, replacing manned strike aircraft, will then attack those targets with two tons of guided bombs. Our clumsy attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, using drones carrying much the same sensors as the X-47B, make news with embarrassing regularity. Our Predators and Reapers are tasked with decapitating the al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership, but they prove much more successful at killing civilians, infuriating the previously uncommitted local population into supporting the enemy, and deluding Americans into thinking remote-control bombing of other peoples’ homelands is a freebie spectator sport with no U.S. casualties and no consequences—a truly dangerous fallacy, as the renewed attacks from al-Qaeda’s growing confederacy so vividly demonstrate.

The Navy, however, tops the Air Force’s drone delusions with a vision that it will land its tailless 22-ton beast by remote control on rolling, pitching carrier decks at sea. That will be difficult, perhaps impossible, given the nearly crippling rate of drone crashes we continue to experience while landing on terra firma. Grappling with that task will certainly create the occasion for lots of overruns and schedule slippages. Even without those overruns, the Navy approach appears to offer nothing that can’t be achieved from land with current Predators at about one twenty-fifth the cost.

In any case, capitalizing on Gates’s blessing for these drone projects, the USAF is already forging ahead with secret work on an intercontinental nuclear/conventional bomber drone, a breathtakingly useless concept. Their newly revised Long Range Strike Platform project costs $1.9 billion just for the start-up demonstrator phase. One candidate, the innocently dubbed X-47C, apparently already under a “black” contract at Northrop Grumman, would carry a modest five-ton payload despite a projected total heft upward of 110 tons.

On the face of it, this latest 30-year plan just rubberstamps what the Air Force and Navy have been doing ever since the Cold War started: shrinking our air forces and increasing their age while steadily increasing costs and ineffectiveness. That’s bad enough for American taxpayers, but this new budget has new wrinkles.

Gates has unchained a new aerospace spending monster. It hatched unobtrusively in 2001 with the $4 million Predator to become a $100 million Navy carrier drone that will, in a decade, lead to a literally mindless Air Force intercontinental bomber drone, assuredly nuclear capable, with an unknown sticker price in the billions.

This cost explosion in the drone budget will devour money required for the two necessary and effective forms of air support we owe our troops, capabilities that the aviation bureaucracies in the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps have systematically deprived them of: round-the-clock, immediately available, single-purpose close-air support and on-call emergency aerial resupply straight to the battlefield.

Worse, the huge expansion of the drone fleet deepens the U.S. commitment to a future of worldwide aerial assassinations and bombing foreign lands—and will increase the propensity of our politicians to open these fronts because of the illusion that such aggression will be cost- and casualty-free. The resulting damage to real American security will be incalculable.

But worst of all, the Gates-approved plan for shrinking buys of unconscionably expensive and ineffective weapons is hardly limited to airplanes. The same disease infuses a new naval shipbuilding plan and the Army’s future combat vehicles. These forces, contracting and aging at inflating cost, cry out for meaningful reform. Instead, the decay is being used as the pretext to funnel more and more taxpayer dollars to fewer and fewer defense mega-corporations. They, in turn, recycle increasing amounts of that money into our politics, where it is eating away at our governance, our democracy, and our security.
__________________________________________

Winslow T. Wheeler is the Director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. He worked on national security issues for 31 years for senators from both political parties and for the Government Accountability Office. Pierre M. Sprey, together with USAF fighter pilots John Boyd and Everest Riccioni, brought to fruition the F-16 and led the design team for the A-10 and helped implement the program. Both are contributors to the new anthology America’s Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress.

The US Missile Shield

Towards the Establishment of a Worldwide Missile Interceptor Network

By Rick Rozoff
Source:Stop NATO
September 27, 2009
Courtesy Of Global Research

Synchronized announcements on September 17 by President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the U.S. was abandoning plans to station interceptor missiles in Poland and a forward-based missile radar site in the Czech Republic are now ten days ago and information surfacing in the interim indicates that its new plans are more far-reaching than their predecessor. Two days after the statements by the American president and defense chief the latter, Pentagon head Robert Gates, was granted a column in the New York Times. The most representative segment of Gates' comments is arguably this: "I have been a strong supporter of missile defense ever since President Ronald Reagan first proposed it in 1983. But I want to have real capacity as soon as possible, and to take maximum advantage of new technologies....American missile defense on the continent will continue, and not just in Central Europe, the most likely location for future SM-3 sites, but, we hope, in other NATO countries as well....We are strengthening - not scrapping - missile defense in Europe." [1] Remarking that the earlier-envisioned system in Poland and the Czech Republic would not have been operative until 2015 and that opposition among both nations' parliamentarians would have delayed the process at least another two years, Gates evinced both impatience with and far grander designs for the European wing of the U.S.'s global missile shield program by asserting, "President Obama...decided to discard that plan in favor of a vastly more suitable approach. In the first phase, to be completed by 2011, we will deploy proven, sea-based SM-3 interceptor missiles - weapons that are growing in capability...." The new deployments, which will be examined in depth later, are to be more mobile and less capable of being anticipated and defended against; will be implemented, according to Gates' own schedule, at least eight years ahead of the prior plan's timeline; and will extend worldwide missile interceptor networks into far broader swathes of Eurasia, the Middle East and ultimately the planet as a whole. Even in the first phase of the adapted - advanced - system that Gates first described on September 17, more developed technologies are to supplant what are already outdated ones that would have been applied to the Polish and Czech deployments. "[A] fixed radar site like the one previously envisioned for the Czech Republic would be far less adaptable than the airborne, space- and ground-based sensors we now plan to use." The new system, in addition to being more effective and quickly operationalized, will be much grander in scope and will include several times as many missiles as those intended for Poland, although that nation will still host different variants of medium-range interceptor missiles and, as Gates states below, will still eventually station long-range ground-based missiles. "The second phase, which will become operational around 2015, will involve putting upgraded SM-3s [Standard Missile-3s] on the ground in Southern and Central Europe. All told, every phase of this plan will include scores of SM-3 missiles, as opposed to the old plan of just 10 ground-based interceptors....[O]ur military will continue research and development on a two-stage ground-based interceptor, the kind that was planned to be put in Poland, as a back-up." Scores means some multiple of twenty and one of America's top military commanders has mentioned 100 as a starting point, as will be seen later. SM-3s are the missiles employed by the U.S.'s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, which is a sea-based anti-ballistic missile interception program designed to be based off the coasts of targeted nations as needed to render ineffective those nations' missile launch capabilities, both offensive and defensive. They are also an integral component of the Pentagon's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a U.S.-led 90-nation international naval surveillance and interdiction project inaugurated by John Bolton in 2003 ostensibly to "interdict weapons of mass destruction" by confronting non-PSI nations' vessels anywhere in the world. SM-3s are also to be a staple item for America's "thousand-ship navy," first proposed by the then U.S. Navy's Chief of Naval Operations Michael Mullen, now chairman of the armed forces Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 2005 Mullen addressed the Seventeenth International Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island and said "the United States Navy cannot, by itself, preserve the freedom and security of the entire maritime domain. It must count on assistance from like-minded nations interested in using the sea for lawful purposes and precluding its use for others that threaten national, regional, or global security." [2] A detailed analysis of the Proliferation Security Initiative and the 1,000-Ship Navy is contained in an earlier article in this series, Proliferation Security Initiative And U.S. 1,000-Ship Navy: Control Of World’s Oceans, Prelude To War. [3] As part of these plans for a U.S.-dominated worldwide navy with missile interception at its core, the United States has already recruited NATO and Asian NATO allies like Norway, Spain, Japan and South Korea into the Aegis combat system with its SM-3 missile shield capacity. India is slated to be the next partner. Robert Gates also mentioned the application of SM-3s for ground use and the Pentagon will now base them both on land and more extensively at sea. It was an SM-3 fired from an Aegis class cruiser, the USS Lake Erie, that destroyed a satellite in outer space in February of 2008, to provide an indication of what its next phase mission will be. The updated missile system plan for Europe is also to be more fully integrated with America's allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to provide an impenetrable layered shield throughout all of Europe and North America as well as moving into the Middle East, the Caucasus and beyond in the imminent future. Voice of America confirmed this development on September 22 by revealing "The U.S. believes the plan will reinforce and strengthen ongoing NATO efforts on missile defense, most recently approved by Heads of State and Government at their April 2009 summit, and is fully supportive of previous summit decisions to pursue a NATO-wide multi-layered ballistic missile defense architecture." [4] NATO remains committed not only to the advancement of a continent-wide missile shield but to the basing of U.S. nuclear weapons in all corners of Europe and their first use, even against non-nuclear powers. In the midst of otherwise conciliatory comments last week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated "[W]e should not forget that NATO is...a military bloc, and its missiles are targeted against Russia. We do not feel excited about the fact that more and more nations are joining NATO, that it is expanding further and getting closer to our borders; we do not like it and we do not conceal our sentiments." [5] The following day the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Nikolai Makarov, announced that his nation might still be compelled to base Iskander missiles in the nation's Kaliningrad enclave to counter U.S. missile plans in Poland (and perhaps later in the Baltic states) and warned that the Pentagon "will develop the missile defense network, but it will be sea-based." [6] To confirm Makarov's contention, on September 24 Vice Admiral Richard Gallagher, deputy commander of the Pentagon's European Command [EUCOM], which shares a top commander and in other ways overlaps with NATO, spoke of the new U.S. missile shield system and characterized it as possessing "The intent...to use sea-based defence which, of course, has great flexibility as those ships can be moved to many different locations which gives us very good...ability to employ." Speaking on behalf of the bloc the U.S. dominates, he added that NATO "has not abandoned the missile defence discussions" and "from the U.S. perspective, you have not seen a change in desires to protect the region and to work in conjunction with NATO as well".[7] Gallagher was speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Montenegro of the U.S.-Adriatic Charter, an initiative first launched by then Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2002 to militarily integrate and absorb all the nations of former Yugoslavia and the entire Southern Balkans. Although he formally disavowed plans first leaked by the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza in late August for the Pentagon to shift its missile shield focus from Poland and the Czech Republic to the Balkans as well as to Israel and Turkey, Gallagher was officiating over a meeting to complete NATO's incorporation of an area that will be a choice location for American and NATO missile system deployments in the near future. The Adriatic Charter's first accomplishment is to have added Albania and Croatia as NATO's 27th and 28th full members earlier this year and it is now grooming Macedonia, Bosnia and Montenegro - the world's newest nation - to follow suit. Serbia and Kosovo are next in line. Kosovo, not recognized by over two-thirds of the world's nations and as such not subject to international treaties and constraints, would be an ideal site for U.S. and NATO military deployments of all sorts, including missiles and radar. It's worth recalling that Vice Admiral Gallagher, as deputy commander of EUCOM, is not a NATO but a Pentagon official, yet is instrumental in recruiting several of the European nations not already Alliance members into the bloc. His superior, Adm. James Stavridis, who is both head of U.S. European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander, was also present at the conference in Montenegro. All five Adriatic Charter states - Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro - have provided NATO with troops for the war in Afghanistan. Other top American military commanders have also corroborated the claims by President Obama and defense chief Gates that the U.S., far from retreating from missile shield plans, is escalating them in range, depth and effectiveness. The director of the Missile Defense Agency, Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly, recently stated that "We are not scrapping missile defense. Rather, we are strengthening it and delivering more capability sooner." O'Reilly is in charge of the Pentagon command that is most immediately in charge of developing the global missile shield and his words carry corresponding weight. Note that his expression that the Pentagon is not scrapping but strengthening interceptor missile plans is identical to that used by his chief, Defense Secretary Gates, in the latter's New York Times column. Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 24, "O'Reilly said the old system would only have the capacity to shoot down five missiles, estimating two interceptors would be fired at each missile threat. He said the newer system would have much more capacity. The missile interceptor ships alone are capable of shooting down about 100 missiles." [8] His briefing also included the observation that "The new architecture keeps plans for a radar station in Southeastern Europe, but would also track radar by satellite and ships. Land-based missiles would be deployed at two sites, one in northern Europe and another in southern Europe. "Placing one of these sites in Poland remains an option...." [9] Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy also testified before the committee and echoing previous statements by Robert Gates and others said, "This is not about Russia. It's never been about Russia." She added, "the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was 'very supportive.'" Flournoy touted the role of SM-3s for use on board ships and on land alike, stating "This means greater geographic flexibility, greater survivability and greater scalability in response to an evolving threat. That's exactly what we mean by a phased, adaptive approach." [10] O'Reilly concurred, hailing the interceptor missile as "a very capable weapon due to its high acceleration, burn velocity and its proven track record" which provides an "ability to rapidly increase to over 80 interceptors at any one launch site." [11] Flournoy, O'Reilly and other panelists, including Marine General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "provided several advantages of the new system. It would begin protecting European allies in 2011, roughly six years sooner than the old system, and its missiles, costing $10 million each, are much cheaper than those planned for the old system, which cost about $70 million." [12] On September 25 a column appeared in the Washington Post titled "Reagan's Missile Defense Triumph" by Andrew Nagorski, vice president and director of public policy at the EastWest Institute in New York. The feature celebrates U.S. global missile shield plans, particularly the innovations announced during the past ten days, as a realization of former President Ronald Reagan's infamous Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars. The author wrote that "on a...fundamental level...Reagan would recognize that the announcement represents a watershed moment in American politics. It signals that, for the first time since Reagan made his 'Star Wars' speech in 1983 spelling out his vision of a missile shield...both political parties have accepted his notion that the country needs an effective missile defense system. The debate is no longer focused on whether to build such a system but on what kind of system will do the job better job...." [13] Further endorsing the new system and exposing claims that it represents either a retreat from the scope of the earlier version or a concession to Russia, the writer added: "[T]he president has argued that his plan will produce 'stronger, smarter, swifter' missile defense than the Bush alternative. In other words, the Obama administration's line, as spelled out by the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others, is unambiguous when it comes to embracing missile defense as a necessary component of the U.S. arsenal." [14] A pro-missile defense analyst based in Central Asia recently expressed a similar perspective, writing that "The US policy reversal has...come as a result of the considerable progress made by the Pentagon in missile technology, especially in technical improvements to systems using interceptors, land, sea, air and space-based sensors." He also provided an insight into the true purpose of the U.S.-led global missile interception system: "[A]n anti-missile shield on Poland's and the Czech Republic's territories - and anti-missile radars on Georgia's territory - would have decreased the nuclear capabilities of those countries already possessing nuclear weapons. The Pentagon's goal was precisely to downgrade the nuclear potentials of individual countries.... "It was clear that Washington's proposal for building an anti-missile system in Europe was intended to be the last nail in the coffin of the ABM Treaty and bring Russia to its knees in the military sector." [15] A Russian analyst, Viktoria Panova, recently wrote something to the same effect, comparing the current American missile subterfuge to the period of the genesis of missile shield plans, that of the Reagan and first Bush era: "America can push Russia either on Iran or another issue of concern, so it's very similar to what it was during the last days of the Soviet Union when America was playing with the ABM system being developed. "Then, using that 'threat' as an instrument, the US managed to alter the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that Russia was pushing for into a more favorable one for America." [16] The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed in 1972 by the U.S.'s Richard Nixon and the Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev, and the George W. Bush administration unilaterally withdrew from it in 2002. The first threat to the treaty, though, was the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) expires this December 5. "The United States plans to let a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia expire in 2009 and replace it with a less formal agreement that eliminates strict verification requirements and weapons limits, a senior US official says." [17] In both instances U.S. missile shield - and space war - policies are designed among other purposes to place Russia at a strategic disadvantage in regards to negotiations over nuclear weapons and delivery systems. To compound the threat, the U.S. hasn't even renounced plans for missile deployments in Poland, as Missile Defense Agency chief O'Reilly informed the U.S. Senate on September 24. On September 18 Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski - former resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative and adviser to Rupert Murdoch and husband of American journalist Anne Applebaum - said that the 100 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles the Pentagon still plans to station in his country will be combat ready. Sikorski affirmed that "Poland has been promised by the U.S. that it will go ahead with the deployment of a Patriot battery in Poland and that the missiles will be armed." [18] Six days later Slawomir Nowak, adviser to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, announced that the U.S. could task his nation to base short- to medium-range missiles as part of "its new, flexible missile system." Nowak was quoted as saying, "If this system becomes a reality it would actually be better for us than the original missile shield programme." [19] Polish Radio announced that "Washington may ask Poland eventually to host SM-3 anti-ballistic missiles, currently being manufactured by Lockheed-Martin." [20] Nowak confirmed the information, saying: "We are familiar with the SM-3 system and the Americans have assured us that Poland is one of the countries where they want to place this system." He also offered an ex post facto refutation of the American missile shield rationale by stating "We were never really threatened by a long-range missile attack from Iran." [21] U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was even more blunt in a column she wrote for the Financial Times a few days before. She reiterated comparable claims by President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates in writing, "We are enhancing our capacity to protect our interests and our allies. We are not walking away from our allies but are deploying a system that enhances allied security, advances our cooperation with NATO, and actually placing more resources in more countries." Clinton mentioned in particular American military commitments to fellow NATO states, especially Poland and the Czech Republic, and as Obama had done on September 17 invoked NATO's Article 5 military assistance clause, fraught as it is with the prospect of nuclear confrontation and even war. "An attack on London or Warsaw is an attack on New York or Washington. NATO demonstrated this commitment after the September 11 terrorist attacks." [22] Western media accounts over the past ten days have been replete with a steady refrain that Czechs and Poles feel "betrayed" by the new U.S. missile plans. Such claims are easily enough refuted by surveys demonstrating that 70 percent of Czechs and 55 percent of Poles were opposed to the deployment of third position missile shield installations on their soil. But to the West the only Czechs and Poles whose opinions are worth considering are U.S.-trained subordinates, like Poland's Sikorski, at the beck and call of their masters in Washington and Brussels. Residents of the Polish village of Redzikowo where the Pentagon was to place ten ground-based missiles were exuberant over the news that their homes might not be turned into ground zero in Europe's first missile exchange. "Mariusz Chmiel, head of the rural district that includes Redzikowo, was a long-time opponent of the shield who celebrated the US decision with champagne. 'I was against this shield from the very beginning,' Chmiel said. 'I was very happy. It means our residents can continue to feel safe.'" However, his sense of relief may prove short-lived as "Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorki said the US had assured Poland that armed Patriot missiles will still be located on Polish territory and will 'likely' be located in Redzikowo." [23] Matters are no better in the Czech Republic, which will also not be granted much of a reprieve. A local news source reminded its readers that "Clinton said on Friday the Czech Republic and Poland are major candidates for hosting new mobile anti-missiles that the United States plans to deploy in Europe instead of the originally planned bases." It added that "Czech Defence Minister Martin Bartak said after his talks with U.S. National Security Council chief James Jones on Friday that Prague will discuss with Washington participation in the new form of the anti-missile system by the year's end." [24] National Security Adviser Jones, a retired four-star Marine general, was top military commander of NATO in Europe and the Pentagon's European Command from 2003-2007 during the initial crafting of Star Wars plans for Eastern Europe. Recently the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza, the same newspaper that broke the story on American plans to shift its missile shield deployments to the Balkans and the Middle East a month ago, cited Polish diplomatic officials in claiming "After the White House announced shelving a planned missile shield in Eastern Europe, Washington is planning to establish missile bases in Poland." [25] The same source wrote that "Andrzej Kremer, Poland's deputy foreign minister, was due to travel to Washington on Monday to discuss the plan....Washington's permanent Polish base is due to be established at Redzikowo, near the Baltic coast...." [26] It is not only Russia's northwest border that will be affected, though. A Georgian website recently ran a feature called "Controversy: anti-missile systems in the Caucasus" which included: "Although it has not yet been specified whether they [missile shield components] will be put somewhere in the Black Sea, Turkey or another country the Caucasus was directly mentioned as a possible site for these systems, the only possible location specifically given by [a] US official at a recent press conference on the subject....The Georgian administration has welcomed the US decision." [27] The deployment of U.S. interceptor missile shield installations in Georgia, on Russia's southern border, would be exacerbated if, as an Armenian news sources claimed on September 24, "[T]he Pentagon is drafting an agreement with Georgia. Under the agreement the United States is to deploy two land force and one naval base in Georgia before 2015. The construction is to start in 2014, to be completed the following year. Thus, the Pentagon plans to deploy 25,000 troops in Georgia." [28] Last week a conference was held on Georgia's neighbor to the east, Azerbaijan, in Washington, DC. The Conference on Strategic Cooperation Between the U.S. and Azerbaijan: New Bilateral and Regional Criteria held in Washington included an address by David Kramer, former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and fellow of the German Marshall Fund, in which he spoke of the use of Azerbaijan's "Gabala radar station for missile defense." [29] An Azerbaijani website published this report on September 22: "The plan to scrap missile defence in Eastern Europe could shift the geostrategic balance of power in the Caucasus....[M]issile defence has not been scrapped, as critics claim. Indeed, missiles are still going to be deployed in Europe, as well as at sea, and will actually be deployed earlier than under the Bush-era plan. "Georgia...hopes the hunt for more effective bases for missile defence may increase its importance. "This is because the Caucasus has emerged as one of the most important possible locations for a revamped missile defence plan. Situated on a direct path between Iran and Europe, the region has been discussed as a possible host site for early-warning systems and missiles for years." [30] In a recent article, analyst Rakesh Krishnan Simha quoted Konstantin Sivkov, Vice President of the Moscow-based Academy of Geopolitical Problems, on the change in U.S. missile shield designs: "By temporarily dropping its missile shield, the US is just trying to sell a dead cat for good money. But it's not a breakthrough that gives the US and NATO the right to demand military and technical concessions from Russia. One of the new radars and naval missile components could be set up in the Caucasus, anyway. Georgia has already agreed to host the radar." [31] On September 22 A. Wess Mitchell, Director of Research at the Center for European Policy Analysis, was interviewed by the Trend News Agency of Azerbaijan about new U.S. missile shield intentions. "At present, the emphasis appears to be on the Balkans, Turkey and Israel." The news site quoted another expert stating "Concerning Israel, the US has already installed a powerful missile defense radar in the Negev desert, so it might be considered a possibility to transfer the defense shield to Israel" and, citing Ephraim Kam, Deputy Head of the Institute for National Security Studies of Israel, revealed that "The U.S. can deploy the MDS [Missile Defense Shield] in Israel, but it is a possibility not linked necessarily to the abandoning of its missile system deployment in Eastern Europe or Central Europe." [32] The Israeli daily Haaretz wrote on September 20 that the Israeli Defense Forces and the U.S. military were to include missile defense maneuvers in the course of their biennial Juniper Cobra war games next month. "[T]he drill is also part of U.S. President Barack Obama's new missile defense plan, under which the Pentagon will initially deploy ships with missile interceptors instead of stationing missile defense systems in Eastern Europe....The report came shortly before Defense Minister Ehud Barak was to leave for the United States, where he was to meet with his counterpart, Robert Gates." [33] Another Israeli newspaper characterized the development like this: "Israel and the US are preparing for an upcoming joint military exercise, dubbed Juniper Cobra - which will include the largest exercise yet between the IDF and the US Military's European Command (EUCOM) and the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA)." [34] A Washington Post article of last week entitled "Israel Finds Strength in Its Missile Defenses: Advanced System Could Alter Strategic Decisions in Region" offered more details on interceptor plans for the Middle East, ones underway long before Washington's September 17 revelations. "Israel and the United States [will conduct] a joint, biennial missile defense exercise, called Juniper Cobra, to work on integrating the weapons, radars and other systems of the two countries. "Israel, for example, has the advanced U.S. X-Band radar stationed in the Negev desert. Israeli defense industry officials say the country also has almost real-time access to some U.S. satellite data, an important part of its early-warning system." [35] The Middle East, the Balkans, the South Caucasus and the Baltic Sea region aren't lone in being intended sites for the expansion of American global missile shield deployments. The Korea Times of September 22 confirmed that the plans are indeed international in reporting that "a local news report that the U.S. administration of President Barack Obama may ask South Korea to join the missile shield initiative despite its recent modification of the BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] plan. "The report cited a report written by the Missile Defense Agency affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense, describing South Korea as one of the nations to potentially join the BMD effort. "The report categorized South Korea, Bahrain, France, Germany, India, Qatar and some other nations as the 'nations expressing interest in missile defense.'" [36] For anyone hoping that the threat of unilateral actions by the West to make itself resistant to missile attacks, conventional and nuclear, while rendering the rest of the world defenseless and thus fair game for first strikes was diminishing, this report should clarify matters. On September 25 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) launched a rocket carrying two experimental missile-tracking satellites for the Missile Defense Agency. Reports that the White House was effectively merging what is technically the civilian NASA with the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency for missile interception and space war purposes have circulated since the current American president's election victory last November. The process now appears well underway. A local Florida news source wrote beforehand of the launch that "If the satellites work, it would mean the U.S. would be able to launch dozens of similar satellites...." [37] A Florida television station reported that the satellites are part of the Space Tracking and Surveillance System [STSS], "a $1.5 billion project" that "will be used by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to test the 'birth to death' tracking of missiles from launch to re-entry." [38] Northrop Grumman's STSS program manager, Gabe Watson, was quoted on the day of the launch claiming "We can track missiles in every stage of flight, from launch to intercept, and do hit assessment as well. If the MDA [Missile Defense Agency] wants to intercept missiles in the ascent phase, they will need additional data that [current missile warning satellites] don't provide." [39] To tie together two threads in the U.S.'s new generation missile shield program, it was reported that "The STSS satellites follow NASA's launch of another missile defense satellite - the STSS Advanced Technology Risk Reduction spacecraft - in early May. "They may also play a role in two other tests with other defense systems such as the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system...." [40] Former plans for interceptor missile facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, employing as they were to have antiquated technology, have been superseded by new projects that will encompass broader regions of the world and will coordinate deployments on land, at sea, in the air and in space. Notes 1) New York Times, September 19, 2009 2) Cited in Naval War College Review, Autumn 2007 3) Proliferation Security Initiative And U.S. 1,000-Ship Navy: Control Of World’s Oceans, Prelude To War Stop NATO, January 29, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/proliferation-security-initiative-and-us-1000-ship-navy-control-of-worlds-oceans-prelude-to-war 4) Voice of America News, September 22, 2009 5) Itar-Tass, September 20, 2009 6) Trend News Agency, September 21, 2009 7) Reuters, September 24, 2009 8) Courthouse News Service, September 24, 2009 9) Ibid 10) U.S. Department of Defense, American Forces Press Service, September 24, 2009 11) Ibid 12) Courthouse News Service, September 24, 2009 13) Washington Post, September 25, 2009 14) Ibid 15) Richard Rousseau, Why Obama Needs Missile Defences in Europe Georgian Times, September 21, 2009 16) Russia Today, September 20, 2009 17) Reuters, May 23, 2007 18) Xinhua News Agency, September 18, 2009 19) Polish Radio, September 24, 2009 20) Ibid 21) Reuters, September 24, 2009 22) Quoted by Radio Poland, September 21, 2009 23) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, September 18, 2009 24) Czech News Agency, September 20, 2009 25) Press TV, September 25, 2009 26) Ibid 27) The Messenger, September 22, 2009 28) NEWS.am, September 24, 2009 29) Today.AZ, September 21, 2009 30) Alexander Jackson, The Missile Defence Shift: Implications for the Caucasus, Caucasian Review of International Affairs/Azeri Press Agency, September 22, 2009 31) Rakesh Krishnan Simha, Missile Impossible: How the Russians View America's AMD Backdown, OpEd News, September 23, 2009 32) Trend News Agency, September 22, 2009 33) Haaretz, September 20, 2009 34) Jerusalem Post, September 7, 2009 35) Washington Post, September 19, 2009 36) Korea Times, September 22, 2009 37) WESH.com, September 23, 2009 38) Central Florida News 13, September 23, 2009 39) SPACE.com, September 25, 2009 40) Ibid

Rick Rozoff is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Rick Rozoff

Dangerous Missile Battle In Space

Fifth Act In U.S. Missile Shield Drama

By Rick Rozoff
Source:Stop NATO
September 30, 2009
Courtesy Of Global Research

Wars have brought untold horrors upon Europe over the centuries, especially the two world wars of the last one. Until now, though, the continent has been spared the ultimate cataclysm of a missile war. Though twenty years after the end of the Cold War recent news articles contain reports that would have been shocking even during the depths of the East-West conflict in Europe that followed World War II. A dispatch quoting a Finnish defense official two days ago bore the title "US could launch missiles from the Baltic Sea" and a U.S. armed forces website yesterday spoke in reference to proposed missile shield plans of "a big, complex, dangerous battle in the space over Europe." On September 28 a feature called "BMD fleet plans Europe defense mission" appeared in the Navy Times which reported that "Ballistic-missile defense warships have become the keystone in a new national strategy....Rather than field sensors and missiles on the ground in Poland and the Czech Republic, the U.S. will first maintain a presence of at least two or three Aegis BMD ships in the waters around Europe, starting in 2011." [1] This development is in keeping with U.S Pentagon chief Robert Gates' presentation of September 17 in which, confirming President Obama's announcement to replace and supplement his predecessor's project of placing ten ground-based interceptor missiles in Poland and a complementary radar installation in the Czech Republic, he laid out a three-step strategy to enhance (his word) U.S. missile shield plans in Europe. In a Defense Department briefing with Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright, Gates explained the logic behind the shift. "Over the last few years, we have made great strides with missile defense, particularly in our ability to counter short-and-medium-range missiles. We now have proven capabilities to intercept these ballistic missiles with land-and-sea-based interceptors supported by much-improved sensors. "These capabilities offer a variety of options to detect, track and shoot down enemy missiles. This allows us to deploy a distributive sensor network rather than a single fixed site, like the kind slated for the Czech Republic, enabling greater survivability and adaptability." [2] That is, as Russian officials have over the past two years openly stated that the stationary missile radar facility intended for the Czech Republic and silo-based missiles planned for Poland would be targeted by their own missiles if the U.S. went ahead with the deployments, mobile and rapidly deployable alternatives would have, in Gates' terms, "greater survivability and adaptability." Land-based facilities are easy to monitor and, if the suspicion arose that they would be part of an imminent first strike attack, neutralize. Sea-based, air-based and spaced-based surveillance and missile deployments would be harder - if not impossible - to track and to take out. Referring to the hitherto exclusively ship-based Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), which nineteen months ago proved capable of shooting down a satellite in space, Gates offered further details: "We have...improved the Standard Missile 3, the SM-3, which has had eight successful flight tests since 2007. These tests have amply demonstrated the SM-3's capability and have given us greater confidence in the system and its future....In the initial stage, we will deploy Aegis ships equipped with SM-3 interceptors, which provide the flexibility to move interceptors from one region to another if needed." The second stage of the Pentagon's updated European missile shield program will entail the basing of "upgraded, land-based SM-3s." "Consultations have begun with allies, starting with Poland and the Czech Republic, about hosting a land-based version of the SM-3 and other components of the system," Gates revealed. In language that progressively reflected what sounds like plans to withstand a first - or second strike - in Europe's first missile war, Gates added, "Over time, this architecture is designed to continually incorporate new and more effective technologies, as well as more interceptors, expanding the range of coverage, improving our ability to knock down multiple targets and increasing the survivability of the overall system. "This approach also provides us with greater flexibility to adapt to developing threats and evolving technologies...." The threat repeatedly invoked by the Pentagon chief was, of course, Iran. The inverted logic of the earlier George W. Bush administration program, of which Gates himself was a major architect, ran something like this: Missiles in Poland and an X-band long-range radar installation in the Czech Republic would protect the continental United States from Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles, which the nation neither possesses nor, as both Gates and Obama themselves conceded on September 17, was likely to in the foreseeable future. But once the U.S. went ahead with the deployments Iran could target both sites with medium-range missiles, the argument continued. So America pledged to station 96 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles in batteries manned by U.S. soldiers who would be based in Poland for the first time. Thus Poland and the Czech Republic were transformed from sites for missile shield deployments to allegedly protect the U.S. to potential targets that needed to be protected by...the U.S. The Patriot missiles in Poland, which are still slated to be sent and activated there, can no longer be presented as protecting American ground-based interceptor missiles in that nation, as that plan was officially scrapped twelve days ago. So why are they going to be deployed in spite of that? The Patriot deployment was never intended to defend Poland against Iranian attacks, but to counter Russian plans to station mobile short-range missiles in its non-contiguous territory of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland, in response to what Russia necessarily viewed as a threat to its strategic missile forces. Bluntly put, U.S. ground-based missiles in Poland could be part of a system to destroy whatever long-range missiles Russia had left after a U.S. and NATO first strike. As adviser to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Slawomir Nowak, was quoted on September 24 as admitting, "We were never really threatened by a long-range missile attack from Iran." [3] Six days afterward Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski confirmed that 96 Patriot missiles will be deployed in his nation as scheduled and, moreover, will be armed. As their deployment can no longer exploit the pretext of defending U.S. long-range missile sites from imaginary Iranian "preemptive" attacks, its purpose is demonstrated to be the what missile shield opponents have always asserted it was: To "protect" Poland from Russia. The Polish newspaper that first revealed the shift in U.S. missile designs in Europe weeks before the event, the Gazeta Wyborcza, reported on September 25 some details of the new system as it will affect Poland: "The concept would include a stationary rocket battery and possibly a number of mobile interceptor launchers. This might be a supplement to the envisaged American system of SM-3 naval based anti-rockets. Polish military experts say that equally important would be US military presence in Poland, which would provide an additional security guarantee." [4] What mobile missile launchers ready for practically overnight deployment to Russia's neighbor might look like was indicated at last month's annual Space and Missile Defense Conference held by the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency in Huntsville, Alabama where the prototype of a nearly 50,000-pound "two-stage interceptor designed to be globally deployable within 24 hours" [5] to be stationed as needed at NATO bases throughout Europe was presented by the arms manufacturer eager to produce it, Chicago-based Boeing Company. In his September 17th briefing at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Gates also announced plans to "deploy new sensors and interceptors, in northern and southern Europe." He tactfully did not specify where in the north and south of the continent the "capabilities...to detect, track and shoot down enemy missiles" would be placed, but their likely destinations are not hard to determine. The former head of the Russian Strategic Missile Force, General Viktor Yesin, commented last week on one probability: "Now we only need to be sure that the U.S. plans with regard to strengthening the ABM capability will not create a situation where warships armed with such systems will be moved from the North and Mediterranean seas to the Black Sea, which would pose a threat to Russia's strategic nuclear forces." [6] An analyst from the same country, Sergei Roy, gave vent to similar apprehensions in a roundtable discussion in Russia Profile on September 25: "If anything, that episode [projected U.S. radar in the Czech Republic to be aimed at Russia and not Iran], like so many others in recent history, should teach Russians to view any U.S. move in ABM defense (as in any other 'defense' area) with sober caution rather than credulous enthusiasm. My first idea on hearing of Obama opting for sea-based Standard-3 anti-missiles instead of those in Poland was: 'hey, which sea?' If it’s the Mediterranean and the North Sea, that’s OK, but what about the Black Sea or, God forbid, the Baltic? Those missiles will be much closer to Russia, while still in international waters or those of Ukraine or Georgia (why not Estonia’s, then?), and who will give a written guarantee that they are strictly anti-missile missiles? What about those early warning radar stations? Will they be based in Israel and Turkey – or in Georgia and/or Ukraine?" [7] The Gazeta Wyborcza last month broke the news that the Pentagon intended to shift major missile shield emphasis to the Balkans, Israel and Turkey. Subsequent reports have focused on the South Caucasus nations of Georgia and Azerbaijan as locations for the extension of missile interception networks closer to Iran and to Russia's southern border. The Navy Times report cited at the beginning of this piece discussed the transfer of missile shield hardware and priority to the Balkans, the Black Sea region and the Middle East and mentioned as an example the USS Stout, an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer. Last summer the ship had been deployed for naval maneuvers in the Eastern Mediterranean with Israel and Turkey [Operation Reliant Mermaid] and then moved into the Black Sea in its first deployment as part of the Pentagon's Aegis sea-based interceptor missile system. The USS Stout visited NATO members Bulgaria and Romania and NATO candidate nation Georgia while on the Black Sea mission. While visiting the third country it participated in a joint military exercise with its host's navy directly south of Abkhazia, which could be the site of a fresh Caucasus war at any moment. At least as far back as February of 2008, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency director of the time, Lieutenant General Henry Obering, spoke of adding a third interceptor missile component to those intended for Poland and the Czech Republic, saying that "The powerful, 'forward based' radar system would go in southeastern Europe, possibly in Turkey, the Caucasus or the Caspian Sea region...." [8] So the expansion of the American and NATO missile interception system along a new trajectory that starts in the Balkans and progresses along Russia's southern border and eastward towards China's is nothing new. The implementation of it currently being witnessed is new. And dangerous. Innovations in the interceptor missile system devised by the Pentagon will place greater emphasis on "ballistic-missile defense warships" to be deployed and moved around "in the waters around Europe." [9] "Europe there will be a need for more, modernized cruisers capable of firing the SM-3 and more advanced missiles to come. This might have an effect on the ultimate Navy build program." [10] As one American missile expert phrased it, the commanders of such vessels have been put "on a par with [ballistic-missile submarine] commanders." The Pentagon's project of stationing as many as 100 SM-s, initially, on ships off the coasts of European nations and on their territory could lead to a situation in which "a BMD captain could be responsible for a big, complex, dangerous battle in the space over Europe, needing to fire dozens of missiles to try to destroy dozens of attackers." [11] The immediate reference was to Iran, again, but with implications for Russia as missile killer ship deployments in the Baltic and Black Seas would not be limited to or even primarily directed at Iran. In a September 27 news article from an Icelandic source called "US could launch missiles from the Baltic Sea" spokesperson for the Department of Strategic and Defence Studies at Finland's National Defence University, Commander Juha-Antero Puistola, stated "If the idea is to create this type of mobile platform, then some of the ships can well be placed in the Baltic. The Aegis cruisers have always been moved wherever needed." [12] On the following day Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin stated that the U.S. "missile defense program is becoming less predictable with missile shield elements deployed in the Arctic as the worst-case scenario...." [13] An earlier article in this series - U.S. Missile Shield Plans: Retreat Or Advance? - pointed out that "The major drawback [for the U.S.] of ground-based missiles in Poland is that they would be fixed-site deployments. For several years now Russia has warned that it was prepared to base Iskander theater ballistic missiles in its Kaliningrad region, which borders Poland, should Washington deploy its missiles to that nation." [14] Rogozin shared that perspective in acknowledging "We knew for sure that there would be ten interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in Czech Republic, and that we wpuld have our Iskander [missiles] in the Kaliningrad Region...now the U.S. missile elements are to be based on U.S. cruisers, and you can never tell where they will be tomorrow." [15] Why he has been so tardy in realizing the threat of U.S. ship- and submarine-based missile and anti-missile plans in the Arctic Ocean is puzzling, as the National Security Presidential Directive of January 9, 2009 made no attempt to disguise the White House's and the Pentagon's intentions in that respect. Toward the beginning of the document it is stated: "The United States has broad and fundamental national security interests in the Arctic region and is prepared to operate either independently or in conjunction with other states to safeguard these interests. These interests include such matters as missile defense and early warning; deployment of sea and air systems for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence, maritime presence, and maritime security operations; and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight." [16] NATO held its first-ever top-level meeting - attended by its secretary general, its two top military commanders and the chairman of its Military Committee - on the Arctic seventeen days after the U.S. National Security Directive was released and also broadcast in no equivocal terms interest in expanding its presence into what it called the High North. A plan that was outlined yesterday by Rogozin as follows: "The ice would retreat, it would melt, which means that NATO would definitely be present in the Arctic. They have been planning it for a long time, and under very bad circumstances the U.S. strategic missile defense would arrive there on board these ships." [17] An insightful and penetrating commentary appeared in The Nation of Pakistan on September 26 which linked U.S. President Obama's speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 23 with his statements on missile defense six days earlier. The author, Shireen M. Mazari, wrote that "many of us have been living with these periodic highs at the declaratory level on the issue of nuclear arms control and disarmament - till we realize they are merely a rhetorical facade to hide away the growing nuclear arsenals of the nuclear weapon states." And if White House pledges to reduce or even eliminate nuclear weapons sound something less than sincere - Ronald Reagan's 1983 Star Wars speech included a proclaimed commitment "to lower the level of all arms, and particularly nuclear arms" - than so do American pronouncements that the nation's global missile interception system will eliminate or even diminish the threat of dangerous and perhaps catastrophic confrontations. The Pakistani writer added: "So there will be no BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] placements in Poland and the Czech Republic but there will be BMD systems placed on highly mobile sea platforms to counter a largely imagined threat to Europe and the US from Iran. "Of course, these ships can be moved easily from the Mediterranean to the Gulf or Indian Ocean so Pakistan would also come into this BMD target loop - again with India being helped in the development and acquisition of BMD as part of its strategic military alliance with the US. "BMD has also undermined deterrence which was sustained through mutual vulnerabilities. "Now BMD has focused attention on nuclear war fighting, thereby increasing the danger of nuclear weapons being used in war. "Unfortunately, while Obama may call for nuclear disarmament, his policy on BMD betrays this rhetoric." [18] The preceding paragraphs are as terse yet comprehensive a summation as can be found of the threat the U.S.'s new flexible, mobile and technologically advanced international missile shield strategy presents for raising rather than lowering world tensions, for dropping the threshold of a U.S. and allied missile war being launched because of the perceived invulnerability of the aggressor and, the ultimate worst-case scenario, for nuclear war whether intended or not. A nuclear war which would transform Europe and much of the rest of the world into a gigantic necropolis. Notes 1) Navy Times, September 28, 2009 2) U.S. Department of Defense, September 17, 2009 3) Reuters, September 24, 2009 4) Polish Radio, September 25, 2009 5) Reuters, August 20, 2009 6) Izvestia, September 22, 2009 7) Russia Profile, September 25, 2009 8) Reuters, February 12, 2008 9) Navy Times, September 28, 2009 10) Defense Procurement News, September 18, 2009 11) Navy Times, September 28, 2009 12) Ice News, September 27, 2009 13) Russian Information Agency Novosti, September 28, 2009 14) Stop NATO, September 17, 2009 15) Russian Information Agency Novosti, September 28, 2009 16) http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-66.htm 17) Russian Information Agency Novosti, September 28, 2009 18) Shireen M Mazari, The facade of nuclear disarmament The Nation, September 26, 2009

Rick Rozoff is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Rick Rozoff