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US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel announces cancellation of fourth phase of European BMD plan.
17 March 2013
(EIRNS)—In his press conference March 15, where he announced plans to station 14 additional ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel dropped a bombshell, which was picked up in an AP wire and rapidly spread around the world today: He said that the U.S. is scrapping the fourth phase of its missile defense plan for Europe. As Voice of Russia notes in its coverage today, this fourth phase, with much faster interceptors, "had invoked the greatest objections from Russia." Indeed, as the demonstration by now Russian Chief of Staff Gerasimov last May demonstrated, it is the fourth phase that would include interceptors fast enough to threaten Russia’s ICBM counterstrike capability. Both Russian and U.S. sources claim that the U.S. had not preannounced this decision to Russia, but had informed the Poles and Romanians of their intent. They also say that the work had been already sufficiently delayed that it would not have gone into effect before 2022. The U.S. and Russian coverage both noted that there had been significant technical problems with the development of the system, and that the National Academy of Sciences and the Defense Science Board had both recommended that Phase 4 be cancelled because it wouldn’t work. Asked about the impact of the decision on going ahead with a BMD site in Poland, Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy James Miller said: "It will have no impact on that. We will still go forward, as planned, with bases one through three. Phase three for the European phase-adaptive approach will involve deploying about 24 SM-32A interceptors, SM-3 interceptors including the 2A in Poland. Same timeline, same footprint of U.S. forces to support that. "And, as the secretary said, same coverage of NATO Europe... "In the fourth phase, in the previous plan, we would have added some additional—an additional type of interceptors, the so-called SM-32B would have been added to the mix in Poland. "We no longer intend to—to add them to the mix, but we’ll continue to have the same number of deployed interceptors in Poland that will provide coverage for all of NATO in Europe." According to the New York Times coverage, aides to President Vladimir Putin said there would be no reaction from Russia until next week, after a briefing from U.S. officials. A headline by the Itar-TASS news agency read: "U.S. abandons fourth phase of European missile defense system that causes the greatest objections from Russia." EIR will be following up this story intensively over coming days. [nbs] |