U.S.-Russian Team Deems Missile Shield in Europe Ineffective - Washington Post »
Posted By gamahuche 6 months, 1 week ago in NewsA planned U.S. missile shield to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy, according to a joint analysis by top U.S. and Russian scientists.
The U.S.-Russian team also judged that it would be more than five years before Iran is capable of building both a nuclear warhead and a missile capable of carrying it over long distances. And if Iran attempted such an attack, the experts say, it would ensure its own destruction.
"The missile threat from Iran to Europe is thus not imminent," the 12-member technical panel concludes in a report produced by the EastWest Institute, an independent think tank based in Moscow, New York and Belgium.
The report, scheduled for release today, could further dampen the Obama administration's enthusiasm for a Bush administration plan to deploy radars and interceptor missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. The missile shield has been promoted as a safeguard against future attacks from rogue states, particularly Iran. But the plan has severely strained relations with Moscow, which says it would undermine strategic stability and lead to a new arms race.
The year-long study brought together six senior technical experts from both the United States and Russia to assess the military threat to Europe from Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The report's conclusions were reviewed by former defense secretary William J. Perry, among others, before being presented to national security adviser James L. Jones and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
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gamahuche
"I would rather be a square peg than fit in a pigeon hole" -
an essay which won me the "Lamb Essay Prize" at the Religious ...
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gamahuche6 months, 1 week ago
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Compelling evidence of the inefficacy and redundance of the "Missile Shield" project based on a joint analysis by Russian and US scientists. What the story does not address is how unpopular the project is with the population of the Czech Republic who do NOT want to again be pawns in a "new" Cold War between Russia and the US. Especially to no good or useful purpose!
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gamahuche6 months, 1 week ago
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Please forgive me for continuing to harp on this!
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I seriously fervently hope and seriously believe that this project does not benefit anyone and, should it go ahead, that it will serve only to heighten tensions - e.g. between Russia and the US but also, obviously, between the potential "host" countries [Poland and the Czech Republic] and Russia and Iran, while bringing no benefit whatsoever to the host countries - on the contrary making them targets. An additional problem is that the radar which, is intended to be based only a short distance from Prague, will be emitting radioactivity with the consequent health risks to the surrounding populations. And it must be emphasised one more time that there is no suggestion that these bases - either here or in Poland - will do anything to protect the domestic populations. Nor will the US military, who will be staffing and operating the bases, be subject to ANY Czech laws. Last but not least the population in the Czech Republic is very strongly against the bases. Interestingly enough the Poles have a very different take - despite the "assurance" from the Russians that should this go ahead, they will be basing missiles in the Kaliningrad areae - a small anomalous Russian enclave which borders on Poland but is detached from the Russian mainland. -
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gamahuche6 months, 1 week ago
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Actually tchef you are missing the point..
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This is entirely a US project, designed for the defence of the US and not in any way for the defence of Europe!
The Czech Republic and Poland have been - to different and varying degrees - cajoled to take this on - thereby obviously making themselves front-line targets. -
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hyperbola6 months, 1 week ago
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Well tchef, this "shield" actually has zero to do with "protecting" Europe. It's really about protecting US military and economic imperialism. The US needs some client states in eastern europe and is looking for eastern european politicians that will facilitate that in return for their own personal gain. The same pattern we use throughout the world.
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Georgia506 months, 1 week ago
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I just love articles like this. The study has been underway for a year, and Iran recently launched its most sophisticated missile yet. The report focuses entirely on Iranian missiles.
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You can just hear the technicians in Prague:
"Incoming!"
"Iranian?"
"Um, no, this one seems to be Chinese."
"Oh, ok. Let it go. We're only allowed to concern ourselves with Iranian missile launches. Might wanna call your family and tell them goodbye though."
Any anti-missile battery would be impartial as to the threat it defended against. Any report against anti-missile systems that included Russians would be tainted by Russia's longstanding position against them.
Reports that address only this or that threat against a host nation, or any one nation's CURRENT threat level, or the assumption that merely installing a system makes a host country even more a target, miss the point by avoiding the logic altogether.
1. anti-missile technology improves with almost every launch.
2. any addition by a nation to its arsenal adds to the consideration of its capability by its adversaries.
3. no weapon system is perfect, therefore perfection cannot be the goal. It's only with anti-missile systems that its detractors demand a level of perfection that is otherwise nonexistent.
When the US Navy was first presented with the idea of aircraft launched from ships, they scoffed. The next world war it fought was decided--at least in one theatre--by aircraft launched from ships.
We are not going to know the efficacy of anti-missile systems until they are used in combat. In their debut during the Gulf War, it was clear that they had the potential to be effective. What fool believes this technology will lie dormant by our adversaries merely because we walk away from it? Does such a fool imagine that we are better off without missile defense while our adversaries are free to engage in clandestine research and development with subsequent deployment?-
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gamahuche6 months, 1 week ago
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The point is: for whom is it working and why should one country make itself a target in order to protect another country.?
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In this case there is also the small matter of dangerous levels of radiation within 50 miles of a capital city.
When you want to have a "nice" system like this in your back yard please be sure to volunteer to the right people - and let us know.. -
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hyperbola6 months, 1 week ago
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As usual Georgia is parroting state propaganda designed to keep corrupt military imperialism for our profiteering classes functioning. Why do you so hate Americans Georgia?
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The US missile defence system is the magic pudding that will never run out
Poland is just the latest fall guy for an American foreign policy dictated by military industrial lobbyists in Washington
....The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing. You wouldn't know it if you read the press releases published by the Pentagon's missile defence agency: the word "success" features more often than any other noun. It is true that the programme has managed to hit two out of the five missiles fired over the past five years during tests of its main component, the ground-based midcourse missile defence (GMD) system. But, sadly, these tests bear no relation to anything resembling a real nuclear strike.
All the trials run so far - successful or otherwise - have been rigged. The target, its type, trajectory and destination, are known before the test begins. Only one enemy missile is used, as the system doesn't have a hope in hell of knocking down two or more. If decoy missiles are deployed, they bear no resemblance to the target and they are identified as decoys in advance. In order to try to enhance the appearance of success, recent flight tests have become even less realistic: the agency has now stopped using decoys altogether when testing its GMD system.
This points to one of the intractable weaknesses of missile defence: it is hard to see how the interceptors could ever outwit enemy attempts to confuse them. As Philip Coyle - formerly a senior official at the Pentagon with responsibility for missile defence - points out, there are endless means by which another state could fool the system. For every real missile it launched, it could dispatch a host of dummies with the same radar and infra-red signatures. Even balloons or bits of metal foil would render anything resembling the current system inoperable. You can reduce a missile's susceptibility to laser penetration by 90% by painting it white. This sophisticated avoidance technology, available from your local hardware shop, makes another multibillion component of the programme obsolete. Or you could simply forget about ballistic missiles and attack using cruise missiles, against which the system is useless.
Missile defence is so expensive and the measures required to evade it so cheap that if the US government were serious about making the system work it would bankrupt the country, just as the arms race helped to bring the Soviet Union down. By spending a couple of billion dollars on decoy technologies, Russia would commit the US to trillions of dollars of countermeasures. The cost ratios are such that even Iran could outspend the US.
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Icantwait6 months, 1 week ago
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My Fellow Americans: Why worry about a Missile Shield? Hey, the Taliban, Iranians, Chinese, Russians, or Mexicans can walk right across our borders with a nuclear bomb on their backs and no one really cares. Including our Government. Well boys if you intend to carry a couple of those around take a break and have a coffee in front of the white house. There has to be a bunch of your buddies out their with the clicker. The Real American
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