US plans to acclerate deployment of Aegis warships for missile defense
The world will not take these missiles lightly.
According to a Chinese white paper, Beijing sees “new negative developments” in the Asia-Pacific region. These include a strengthening US military presence and bilateral military alliances in China’s neighbourhood, and US development of a theatre missile defence system and plans to deploy it in Asia. “The Taiwan Straits situation is complicated and grim,” the white paper states. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_18-10-2002_pg3_8 #msg-4383869
-Am
WASHINGTON (AFP) Oct 27, 2004 The United States plans to accelerate the deployment of Aegis warships in waters off North Korea to serve as forward radars for a missile defense system that is being readied for operations, a top US general said Tuesday.
Lieutenant General Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, also said discussions were well underway with allies about placing a third site for ground-based interceptor missiles in Europe.
He outlined US missile defense plans amid expectations that President George W. Bush will declare the missile defense system to be operational before the end of the year.
Speaking to defense analysts and reporters at a luncheon, Obering would not say when the system would be put on alert but said it was now in a "shakedown period" with trained crews.
"There's no show-stopper there, and there's no reluctance," he said. "What we're doing is making our way very systematically through this. I believe when the time is right, there will be a declaratory policy that will be issued and then we will go on with business.
Two Aegis destroyers already are operating in the Sea of Japan, their powerful tracking radars serving as the leading edge of a system of ground-based interceptor missiles centered in Fort Greely, Alaska and Vandenburg Air Force Base, California .
Obering said four or five Aegis warships will be operating by the end of the year, and plans call for deploying 18 Aegis ships -- 15 destroyers and three cruisers -- in a missile defense role wherever they are needed by 2007.
They will serve initially only as forward radars to track long-range missiles. But starting next year they also will be equipped with SM-3 missiles designed to intercept medium-range ballistic missiles, he said.
"We'll accelerate initial forward deployed radars into 2005," Obering said.
While the North Korean missile threat is the focus of the initial missile defense system being set up in Alaska and California, the Pentagon also has begun to take steps to increase its coverage of the Middle East.
"We also have plans, and have conducted quite a bit of consultations with our allies, on putting (in) a third interceptor site," he said. "In addition to Fort Greely and Vandenburg we'll put a site in Europe to expand that coverage to our allies."
British newspaper reports earlier this month said Prime Minister Tony Blair had agreed in principle to host interceptors in Britain.
Asked why Washington was moving now on the British site when US intelligence does not forsee an Iranian threat before 2015, Obering said, "We think its prudent to lay the foundation now because we are going to expect we're going to run into problems. There may be some delays we'll have to address."
"But I think it's important that we invite our friends, our allies to participate in this with us, and that they can benefit from the coverage the same way we have. Because they are defenseless against the threat just like we would have been if we had not begun to deploy this," he said.
A tracking radar at Beale Air Force Base in California also will be upgraded next year to provide coverage of ballistic missile threats emanating from the Middle East, he said.
As envisioned by the Pentagon, the system initially will be centered on ground-based interceptor missiles in Alaska and California that would be cued to collide in space with incoming long-range missiles through an elaborate computer-linked network of radars and other sensors.
The plan has aroused intense controversy over the years. Critics say it has been insufficiently tested, and that the tests to date have been conducted under unrealistic conditions.
Obering said the system's next integrated flight test will be in December, its first in nearly two years.
Meanwhile, five interceptor missiles have been positioned in launch silos at Fort Greely, and a sixth is due to be added in November. Two more interceptor missiles are to go into silos at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California by the end of the year.
Work to upgrade a Cobra Dane tracking radar on Shemya Island has been completed, upgrades of another radar in RAF Fylingdales in Britain are on track for completionin February, he said.
A huge sea-based X-band radar that is capable of detecting an object the size of a golf ball from 1,000 miles away is being built on giant pontoons. Obering said it will be on station off Alaska by December 2005.
According to a Chinese white paper, Beijing sees “new negative developments” in the Asia-Pacific region. These include a strengthening US military presence and bilateral military alliances in China’s neighbourhood, and US development of a theatre missile defence system and plans to deploy it in Asia. “The Taiwan Straits situation is complicated and grim,” the white paper states #msg-4383869
Washington, May 4: China is expected to deploy three new strategic missiles over the next decade as part of an aggressive military build-up seen threatening US forces in the region, a US intelligence official said on Tuesday. David Gordon, chairman of the National Intelligence Council, told a commission charged with overseeing the consolidation of US military bases that the arrival of new, more capable missiles coincided with China's growing influence on the balance of power in the Taiwan Straits.
"Strategic force modernisation is a continuing priority, and China will likely field three new strategic missiles -- more mobile, survivable and capable -- within a decade," Gordon said at a hearing of the Defence Base Realignment and Closure Commission.
He added, "Beijing has undertaken an impressive program of military modernisation that is tilting the balance of power in the Taiwan Straits and improving China's capabilities to threaten US forces in the region."
The National Intelligence Council, which reports to the new US intelligence czar, John Negroponte, focuses on long-term strategic concerns of the US intelligence community. It also produces periodic comprehensive reports known as national intelligence estimates.
Gordon's comments on Chinese missile development appeared to establish a time frame for a central feature of Beijing's overall arms build-up, which he said was funded by an estimated $60 billion annual defence budget in 2004.
In March, the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency said China was continuing to develop three solid-propellant strategic missile systems -- the DF-31 and DF-31A road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles and the JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile.
By 2015, the DIA estimated, the number of Chinese warheads capable of targeting the continental United States would increase "several fold."
Gordon told commission members the People's Liberation Army continued to acquire a range of modern conventional weapons, particularly air, air defence, anti-submarine, anti-surface ship reconnaissance, missile and battle management capabilities and to emphasise the professionalisation of its officer corps.
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