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American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, DC
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RUSSIAN ASSISTANCE FUELS IRANIAN MISSILE THREAT Retired Russian military specialists are engaged in a clandestine effort to assist Iran in expanding its ballistic missile reach, according to a new expose in the Sunday Telegraph (October 16). The influential London daily reports that the former Russian officers have been serving as liaisons between North Korea and Iran on a multi-million dollar missile deal negotiated by the two countries back in 2003. Under the secret accord, Pyongyang is believed to have provided Tehran with regular shipments of missile-related technologies via Russia. Iran’s missiles are becoming more “sophisticated and getting larger and more accurate. They have had very much in mind the payload needed to carry a nuclear weapon,” a high-level U.S. diplomat has confirmed to the Telegraph. “I think [Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows what the Iranians are doing.” The accusations have prompted heated denials from the Kremlin. “It’s delirium, nonsense,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reassured reporters on October 17th in comments carried by the Agence France Presse. Russia “observ[es] scrupulously the non-proliferation regime.” Lavrov’s comments have been echoed by Russian specialists, who say that Moscow is far too cautious to officially “compromise” itself in this fashion. More likely, independent military analyst Aleksandr Goltz has told the Ekho Moskvy radio station, the missile trade “could be the operation of some people who decided to make a quick buck, counting on the positive attitude of the country's highest leaders.” MDA RETHINKS GMD The October 13th Washington Times reports that the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has abandoned efforts to improve its existing ground-based ballistic missile interceptors. According to the paper, while the MDA continues to seek billions of dollars to develop and deploy future interceptors, it also plans to decouple them from the rest of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program – currently encompassing interceptors housed in Greely, Alaska and at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base. Congressional overseers, however, are less than sanguine about the abrupt programmatic change. A Senate Appropriations Committee report, issued alongside the recently-passed 2006 defense appropriations bill, has expressed misgivings about the move, which legislators say would waste the great deal of time and money already invested in the ground-based component of the Bush administration’s missile defense shield. IN ISRAEL, MISSILE DEFENSE AS COUNTERTERRORISM In the wake of its August “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip, the government of Israel is harnessing a new tool against Palestinian terrorism: anti-missile radars. United Press International (October 13) reports that the Israeli military has deployed a new radar system in areas bordering Gaza. The early warning arrays, intended to track short-range rockets (such as the “Kassam” rocket developed by the Hamas terrorist organization) that could be fired at Israel from the Palestinian Territories, are part of the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) program – and are expected to eventually be augmented with directed-energy intercept capabilities. TOKYO BEEFS UP THEATER MISSILE DEFENSES Japan is continuing to move ahead with its missile defense plans. The Japan Times reported on October 10th that the country’s Defense Agency is planning to deploy 18 additional batteries of the advanced Patriot PAC-3 theater missile defense system by the year 2010. According to the newspaper, the deployment will be a prelude to more Patriot acquisitions beginning in 2011, with the total number planned for national deployment currently pegged at 32. “We need more than 30 PAC-3s to defend Japan’s entire airspace,” a senior Air Self-Defense Force official has confirmed. RUSSIAN MILITARY SEEKS ADVANCED MISSILE DEFENSES Russia’s air force is capitalizing on the country’s greatly expanded 2006 military budget by acquiring new missile defense systems, Interfax (October 16) reports. According to the Russian news agency, the initial battery of the S-400 “Triumph” theater missile defense system will go into service with the First Air Defense Corps in the near future, and a parallel program designed to train servicemen in use of the advanced anti-missile system has also been launched. |
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