USA — Official Outlines Global Missile Defense Strategy

WASHINGTON, March 21, 2011 — U.S. efforts to build effec­tive mis­sile defens­es are more impor­tant than ever for defend­ing the nation and its deployed forces and for coop­er­at­ing with allies and part­ners, a senior defense pol­i­cy offi­cial said today.
James N. Miller, prin­ci­pal deputy under­sec­re­tary of defense for pol­i­cy, told atten­dees at a mis­sile defense con­fer­ence here that the nation’s mis­sile defense efforts, while focused on a few emerg­ing threats, also span the globe.

“We con­tin­ue to focus on Iran and North Korea as par­tic­u­lar threats to us and our allies,” Miller said. 

Iran already has the largest inven­to­ry of bal­lis­tic mis­siles in the Mid­dle East, he said, and is work­ing to devel­op sal­vo-launch and inter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­sile capabilities. 

North Korea, despite the “urgent human­i­tar­i­an needs of its des­ti­tute pop­u­la­tion,” is like­wise mod­ern­iz­ing its mis­sile arse­nal, Miller said. North Korea’s inven­to­ry already includes “a sub­stan­tial num­ber of mobile bal­lis­tic mis­siles that could strike tar­gets in South Korea, Japan, and U.S. bases in the Pacif­ic,” he added. 

Both nations’ nuclear poten­tial increas­es U.S. strate­gic con­cerns about mis­sile defense, Miller said, and oth­er nations and non­state actors also pose a sig­nif­i­cant threat. 

The Unit­ed States adopt­ed a phased, adap­tive approach to Euro­pean bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense in 2009 to deter and defend against “the devel­op­ment, acqui­si­tion, deploy­ment and use of bal­lis­tic mis­siles by region­al adver­saries,” he said. The strat­e­gy relies heav­i­ly on sys­tems that can be relo­cat­ed, allow­ing the Unit­ed States and its allies to adjust to a com­plex and chang­ing threat envi­ron­ment, he explained. The approach will bring togeth­er sea‑, land- and space-based sys­tems in four phas­es of deploy­ment through 2020, Miller said. 

“Tech­no­log­i­cal advances or future changes in the threats could mod­i­fy the … tim­ing of the lat­er phas­es,” he said. “That’s one rea­son the approach is called adaptive.” 

NATO endorsed the phased, adap­tive approach and agreed to make cur­rent and future mis­sile defense sys­tems inter­op­er­a­ble across NATO, he said. 

Look­ing beyond Europe, U.S. strat­e­gy is to apply the phased, adap­tive mis­sile defense approach in oth­er regions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in East Asia and the Mid­dle East, he said. 

In Asia, the Unit­ed States is part­nered with key allies includ­ing Japan, Aus­tralia and South Korea to enhance mis­sile defense, he said. Japan now has a lay­ered bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense capa­bil­i­ty that includes U.S. track­ing sys­tems, inter­cep­tors, ear­ly warn­ing radars and a com­mand-and-con­trol struc­ture that inte­grates those tech­nolo­gies, Miller said. 

“We reg­u­lar­ly train togeth­er, and have suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed sim­u­lat­ed coop­er­a­tive [bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense] oper­a­tions,” he said. “We’re also engaged in coop­er­a­tive devel­op­ment of the next-gen­er­a­tion … inter­cep­tor, which is pro­ject­ed to enter ser­vice in 2018.” 

Chi­na obvi­ous­ly is a key com­po­nent of secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy in the Pacif­ic, Miller said. 

“The Unit­ed States wel­comes a strong, pros­per­ous and suc­cess­ful Chi­na that plays a greater glob­al role in sup­port­ing inter­na­tion­al rules, norms of respon­si­ble behav­ior and insti­tu­tions,” he said. At the same time, he said, the Unit­ed States and China’s neigh­bors remain con­cerned about its mil­i­tary buildup and objec­tives. Miller not­ed that Chi­na like­ly is near­ing deploy­ment of a medi­um-range anti-ship missile. 

Greater trans­paren­cy from Chi­na about its mil­i­tary strat­e­gy could reduce the chance of a mis­un­der­stand­ing or mis­cal­cu­la­tion, Miller said, and toward that end the Unit­ed States con­tin­ues to seek greater gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Chi­nese leaders. 

When Defense Sec­re­tary Robert M. Gates vis­it­ed Chi­na ear­li­er this year, he pro­posed a strate­gic dia­logue to cov­er space, cyber­space, nuclear mis­sile defense and oth­er top­ics, Miller said. 

“We are quite opti­mistic about the prospects of begin­ning such a dia­logue in the not-too-dis­tant future,” Miller said.

Turn­ing to the Mid­dle East, Miller not­ed the region is expe­ri­enc­ing tremen­dous change and uncer­tain­ty, adding to its strate­gic prominence. 

The Unit­ed States and Israel have a long-stand­ing rela­tion­ship on bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense that includes reg­u­lar mil­i­tary exer­cis­es and coop­er­a­tion in a num­ber of pro­grams, he said. 

“In the Per­sian Gulf, the Unit­ed States main­tains a robust mix of mis­sile defens­es,” Miller said. “To pro­tect our troops and facil­i­ties in the region, we have devel­oped a series of bilat­er­al mis­sile defense agree­ments with the nations of the Gulf Coop­er­a­tion Council.” 

Mis­sile defense coop­er­a­tion between the Unit­ed States and Rus­sia is also grow­ing, Miller said, not­ing recent progress in defense coop­er­a­tion between the two nations includes the entry into force of the New START treaty. 

Ulti­mate­ly, the Unit­ed States’ objec­tive is to coop­er­ate with both Rus­sia and NATO, but not take the lead for bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense in those regions, he said. 

“We would oper­ate our respec­tive sys­tems inde­pen­dent­ly but coop­er­a­tive­ly,” with that coop­er­a­tion includ­ing shar­ing sen­sor data, he said. 

As mis­sile defense is a key ele­ment of U.S. mil­i­tary strat­e­gy, Miller said, fund­ing the tech­nol­o­gy behind the capa­bil­i­ty is a high priority. 

DOD is propos­ing to spend about $10 bil­lion for mis­sile defense in fis­cal year 2012,” he said. “This crit­i­cal invest­ment in our military’s pre­pared­ness … con­tributes mate­ri­al­ly to the defense of the Unit­ed States and to inter­na­tion­al security.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →