NATO starts up defense system

by RIA Novosti & The Moscow News at 21/05/2012 21: 21

NATO has announced that the first steps have been taken in establishing its European missile defense system, despite Russian concerns that the system could be used to target its own defenses.

A NATO official said on Sunday that U.S. President Barack Obama and his allies had made the decision at the alliance’s Chicago summit to put a U.S. warship armed with interceptors in the Mediterranean, and a Turkey-based radar system under NATO command at a German base, AFP reported.

“It is the first step towards our long-term goal of providing full coverage and protection for all NATO European populations, territory and forces. Our system will link together missile defense assets from different allies – satellites, ships, radars and interceptors – under NATO command and control, ” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.

As part of the system, Spain will host four U.S. ships while Poland and Romania have agreed to have land based missiles on their territory.

Missile defense technology has been the subject of tests by the United States for years, since President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program of the 1980s, but analysts have raised questions over the effectiveness of the idea of a missile shield.

“They have scored successes [in tests], but it’s easier to hit things when you know something is about to come than when something is coming out of the blue, ” said Nick Witney, a London-based defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, AFP reported.

“There is a huge number of technical unknowns on both sides of this equation, ” Witney said.

Russia and NATO agreed to cooperate on the system at the alliance’s Lisbon summit in 2010, but while NATO insists there should be two independent systems that exchange information, Russia favors a joint system with full-scale interoperability.

General Nikolai Makarov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, said in early May that Russia would not exclude pre-emptive use of weapons against NATO’s missile defense systems in Europe, but only as a last resort. He included the possibility of stationing short-range Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad region exclave between Lithuania, Belarus and Poland.

Russian threats to counter a proposed missile-defense system in eastern Europe are “completely pointless, ” Rasmussen said, Bloomberg reported.

The system could have the ability to intercept Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles by 2020, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said earlier. Reports said that the system could be fully operational between 2018 and 2020.

NATO has refused to accede to Russia’s demand that it sign a binding agreement not to aim the system at Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent, as it insists that the shield will defend NATO members against missiles from North Korea and Iran, and not be directed at Russia.