The United States plans to activate a national system
that could track and intercept ballistic missiles fired from the Middle East
during 2005.
U.S. officials said Washington would complete what they described as
a limited missile defense capability through a layered system comprised of
interceptors that could destroy short-, medium- and long-range missiles.
The leading missile threats from the Middle East come from Iran
and Iraq, Middle East Newsline reported. The planned defense system would protect the United States
and its allies.
Missile Defense Agency director Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish said the missile
defense from any Middle East threat is the second highest priority of the
United States. He said the Defense Department plans to first complete an
initial missile defense umbrella against threats from North Korea in 2004.
He said the umbrella against Middle East missile threats would require
early-warning radar facilities in Britain and Greenland.
"Primarily Northeast Asia in '04, and then the rest of the Middle East
area in '05, when we need the UK radars and the Thule radar," Kadish said.
"The missiles will have the capability, but we won't have the sensors out
there."
Assistant Defense Secretary J.D. Crouch, responsible for international
security policy at the Pentagon, said U.S. missile defense would be based on
the PAC-3 lower-tier system, the SM-3 interceptor and the ground-based
system meant to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Crouch said the ship-based Aegis system would have the capability of
defending against North Korean No-Dong intermediate-range systems and its
variants being produced in such countries as Iran and Libya. They include
Iran's Shihab-3 missile, with a range of 1,300 kilometers.
"It would have capability, let's say, in the Mediterranean against
threats coming out of the Middle East,
North Africa," Crouch told a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday. "It would have
capability to protect allies in the Far East who might be threatened by
missiles. It would have capability to be used vis-a-vis deployed forces in
areas."
Officials said the Pentagon will spend $8 billion in fiscal 2003 as part
of an accelerated development and deployment for missile defense. They said
the administration would ask for an additional $1.5 billion to speed up a
range of programs, including the PAC-3 and Aegis.
"Against short-, medium-range and long-range targets, we have done a
significant amount of testing in the last couple of years," Kadish said.
"Aegis hasn't missed yet Ñ three for three in the last year; three
attempts, three successes in the approach just in the last year. And in
Patriot, you can see that we have done significantly well in that program,
although we had some misses recently in operational tests. We know why they
missed, and we will fix those. So test, fix; test, fix; test, fix is what
we're doing."
Over the next few weeks, the United States will send an Aegis-class
warship to Israel for a missile defense test in the eastern Mediterranean.
The test is meant to demonstrate the interoperability of U.S. and Israeli
missile defense systems as part of preparations to defend the Jewish state
from any Iraqi missile attack.
