The United States could temporarily place a mobile ground-based missile interceptor in Europe as protection from a potential long-range missile threat, U.S. defense contractor Boeing Co. recommended yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 19).
(Aug. 20) -
Boeing Co. workers install a ground-based missile interceptor test silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The U.S. defense contractor yesterday proposed preparing a mobile ground-based interceptor for deployment in Europe instead of building a permanent missile defense installation on the continent (Boeing Co. photo).
Russia has long opposed a Bush administration proposal to permanently field 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic due to fears that the system could counter Moscow's strategic missile deterrent.
The Obama administration is currently reviewing the plan, which U.S. officials say is intended to overcome Iran's developing long-range missile capabilities.
"If a fixed site is going to be just too hard to get implemented politically or otherwise, we didn't want people to think that the only way you needed to use a [ground-based interceptor] was in a fixed silo," Greg Hyslop, Boeing vice president and general manager for missile defense, told Reuters at a missile defense conference sponsored in Huntsville, Ala.
By 2015, Boeing could prepare a two-stage, 47,500-pound interceptor that could be transported by C-17 cargo aircraft and deployed at a NATO site on a trailer-based launch platform, Hyslop said. The interceptor could be fielded within 24 hours and then removed when the missile threat abates, he said.
"That would be a significant undertaking," Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, said of the Boeing proposal.
"But we are looking for opportunities," he added, indicating support for the plan by defense contractor Raytheon Co. to produce a land-based version of the sea-launched Standard Missile 3.
The mobile interceptor could be ready by 2015 and is likely to cost less than the existing plan, Hyslop said. The U.S. Defense Department is expected to need at least $1 billion to build the missile shield installations in Europe, according to the Government Accountability Office. The Pentagon says it could establish the two sites before Iran establishes a long-range missile capability in 2015.
Washington has made "a couple of bad decisions" in its missile defense strategy, added Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The United States pursued the rapid deployment of missile defenses based on an assumption that "the emergence of the intercontinental ballistic missile threat would come much faster than it did" from nations including Iran and North Korea, Cartwright said. "The reality is that it has not come as fast as we thought it would come," he said.
The 30 ground-based interceptors to be deployed in Alaska and California could be used to destroy 15 incoming ICBMs at one time, Cartwright said (see GSN, May 22).
"That's a heck of a lot more than a rogue" state could launch, he said (Jim Wolf, Reuters, Aug. 20).