Following on from President Obama’s decision to cancel plans for the installation of a land-based Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system in Eastern Europe there has been a lot of discussion of the merits of this, generally on the lines of:
a) Obama has betrayed NATO and especially our vulnerable East European allies in return for empty promises from the Russians.
b) Obama has abandoned the corrosive policies of the previous administration allowing us to move forward on the important goals of nuclear disarmament and bounding Iran. (PS: BMD would never have worked anyway so canceling it is good)
There are variations but that catches the general drift. There are usually some attached assertions about the anticipated effectiveness or otherwise of the proposed BMD systems that would have been installed in Poland. These are joined by further statements about how we will now be able to cooperate with the Russians on missile defense, some of which are reasonable while others are painfully naive.
What has been missing is vigorous discussion of the technical and operational aspects of the proposed replacement BMD system. Specifically the deployment of a number of Aegis warships tasked with the provision of missile defense services to Europe. For those interested in this rather important part of the equation I offer a couple of links worth pursuing. The first two are from Information Dissemination while the third is from The Space Review both of which are sources deserving of regular visits.
The first provides an overview of the technical capabilities of the Aegis BMD capability, paying particular attention to the number of ships that have the relevant capabilities built in or planned as an upgrade.
The second article gives some additional thought to the impact of this mission on the force structure of the U.S. Navy and raises the question of whether this will actually be a net positive contributor to Western security.
Finally, The Space Review carried an article by Brian Weeden this Monday that addresses the space-security aspects of this new mission for the U.S. Navy given that this BMD capability was the one used last year to shoot down a satellite in a decaying low-earth orbit.
Oh, and of course there is time for an obligatory missile defense picture.
