Scheduled for full activation by 2017, the new Alaskan interceptors will bring the total of U.S.-based GBIs to 44, including four in California. Combined, Hagel said, those efforts mean “we will be able to add protection against missiles from Iran sooner while also providing additional protection against the North Korean threat.”
But while U.S. missile defenses are being rapidly increased in the Pacific, plans for development and installation of a new BMD system in Europe were scaled back. In a surprise move in March 2013, the Obama administration announced it was “restructuring” the development program for the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block 2B interceptor, which was to have been placed somewhere in Europe by 2022 as the final piece, or Phase IV, of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). The goal of the EPAA is to gradually deploy increasingly advanced missile defense systems in and around the continent through this decade.
“Overall, the basic components in inventory now, namely Aegis ships with radars and long-range interceptor missiles, are well suited as the foundation of the regional defense mission, including the defense of Europe. The Task Force also finds that current efforts to place assets on land, where suitable geography and regional political relationships enable this option, have the potential to contribute to and enhance a flexible and effective ballistic missile defense,” the report concluded.
Phase 1 became operational in 2011 with the installation of an advanced X-band radar system in Kurecik, Turkey, a command and control center in Ramstein, Germany, and a persistent Aegis naval presence in the Mediterranean. Phase 2, scheduled for completion in 2015, will homeport four Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyers in Rota, Spain, carrying SM-3 Block 1B interceptors to defend against short- and medium-range missiles. In addition, a ground-based radar and 24 interceptors will be based in Romania. Additional SM-3 Block 1B and 2A interceptors are to go to Redzikowo, Poland, in 2018 under Phase 3.
A Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block 1B interceptor missile is launched from the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70) during a Missile Defense Agency and U.S. Navy test in the mid-Pacific, May, 16, 2013. The SM-3 Block 1B successfully intercepted a target missile that had been launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands in Kauai, Hawaii. Lake Erie detected and tracked the target with its on board AN/SPY-1 radar. The event was the third consecutive successful intercept test of the SM-3 Block IB missile. U.S. Navy photo
Both Block 1B and 2A interceptors going to Europe will employ Aegis Ashore, a land-based version of the system going into the Navy’s new Aegis BMD destroyers, including an AN/SPY-1 radar, vertical launch system, and specialized command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) system.
At a missile defense conference in Washington in March, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy James Miller, Ph.D., said the United States and Japan are “on track” in co-development of the Block 2A system, designed to shoot down short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
“I think we are in a really good place on Phase 3,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Space and Defense Policy Frank A. Rose told the forum, including technical progress on the Block 2A interceptor. “We are making a great deal of progress with the development of the Aegis Ashore system.”
Although the United States is committed to providing the upper-tier elements of a layered BMD shield for NATO, Miller added, Europe still needs to make its own contributions to destroy lower-altitude threats, including acquiring the Patriot PAC-3 interceptor. While both the United States and its allies are facing increasingly tighter budgets, European members of NATO have vowed to contribute more than $1 billion toward that effort. That includes some $324 million from the Netherlands to modify frigate radars to track long-range ballistic missiles, an airborne infrared sensor being studied by Germany, and French plans to share an early warning satellite.
“These commitments are critical contributions to NATO’s developing missile defense system,” Rose said, adding NATO is dealing with a significant shortfall in tactical missile defense.
Even so, Hagel expressed confidence in the capability of the revised EPAA.
“The missile deployments the United States is making in Phases 1 through 3 … including sites in Poland and Romania, will still be able to provide coverage of all European NATO territory as planned by 2018,” he said.
A Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block 1A interceptor is launched from the USS Lake Erie (CG 70) during a Missile Defense Agency and U.S. Navy test in the mid-Pacific, Feb. 13, 2013. The SM-3 Block 1A successfully intercepted a target missile that had been launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii. The Lake Erie’s crew detected and tracked the target and its weapons system developed a fire control solution. The crew then launched the SM-3, with the intercept occurring a few minutes later. It was the 24th successful intercept test in 30 flight test attempts for the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program since flight testing began in 2002. Naval Air Systems Command photo
While both Romania and Poland reconfirmed their role in that plan in the wake of the SM-3 Block 2B announcement, Polish officials said they also would invest up to half a billion dollars a year, beginning in 2014, to develop and field their own missile defenses.
“It is not a whim or a sign of megalomania,” Gen. Stanislaw Koziej, Ph.D., head of Poland’s National Security Bureau, said. “Simply put, no other military modernization efforts make sense without an effective shield against tactical, cruise, and ballistic missiles.”
In the wake of the Phase 4 restructuring, U.S. and NATO officials also expressed hope that Russia, which has opposed the European missile defenses as a threat to its strategic deterrent, would coordinate and share missile defense data. But in a television interview on April 11, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said nothing really had changed, from Moscow’s perspective.
“Even if one takes account of the fact that the fourth phase has been put off for a long period – some analysts mention a period of 10 years – the new configuration remains within the framework of the U.S. global system of missile defense,” Lavrov said, adding Russia still demands assurances the missile defenses will not be “aimed” at Russia, something the United States and NATO have refused to do.
Russia is second only to the United States in the number and variety of missile defense systems it has developed and fielded and to the number of systems it has provided to its own allies and traditional military customers.