RUSSIA EYES SPACE DEFENSE...
According to the May 11th Russia and India Report, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the creation of a dedicated Aerospace Defense corps by the end of this year. The new unit will integrate the country’s various space sensors (including missile early warning systems, multiple radar stations, and space tracking satellites). It will be tasked with countering potential threats from non-nuclear missiles and UAVs, and will possess a low-earth orbit intercept capability. “Russia, for much too long, placed its bets on the enemy not starting a war against us because people here thought our nuclear-missile shield would guarantee that no one would think of doing anything of the sort,” explains Konstantin Sivkov of the Russian Academy for Geopolitical Issues. “We can see, however, that this didn’t stop Georgia, which perfectly understood that we would not use our nuclear-missile shield in conventional warfare. Nuclear-deterrence forces need to have reliable protection against air and space strikes.”
...AND THROWS DOWN THE GAUNTLET ON EUROPEAN BMD
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned Washington that unless it can strike a deal with Moscow over the planned deployment of missile defenses in Europe, Russia will move to expand its nuclear arsenal. "I hope the questions that I put to my colleague and friend President (Barack) Obama will be answered and we can work out a model for cooperation in anti-missile defense," Mr. Medvedev told reporters at a recent news conference, in comments carried by Reuters (May 18)."If we don't work this out, then we will have take steps to counter it, which we would not like. Then we are talking about forcing the development of our nuclear strike potential... This would be a very bad scenario, a scenario that would throw us back to the Cold War era.”
MORE FUEL FOR IRON DOME
Operational for just weeks, Israel’s “Iron Dome” is already poised to become the newest area of strategic cooperation between Washington and Jerusalem. Reuters (May 26) reports that the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency has requested funds to help Israel acquire four more batteries of the short-range defense system, which has proven itself in multiple engagements with short-range missiles and artillery rockets since being deployed in March. "In our budget, we have a proposal to assist with procurement of four more batteries," Missile Defense Agency Director Gen. Patrick O'Reilly told the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee on May 25th. O’Reilly was referring to $203.8 million in additional missile defense funds currently being requested by the Obama administration to help accelerate work on the Israeli system – funds that, if appropriated, would make “Iron Dome” part of the robust and ongoing missile defense cooperation between the two countries.
JAPAN CONSIDERS EASING BARRIERS TO BMD EXPORT
In a move that represents a significant rethink of its “self-defense” constitution, Japan is contemplating becoming an exporter of missile defense technology. According to the May 27th issue of Defense News, Japan’s Ministry of Defense has confirmed that the possibility of foreign sales of the SM-3 Block IIA missile – a key component of both the U.S. and Japanese missile defense architectures – is now “under careful consideration.” Washington has long lobbied for the advanced interceptors, which are jointly developed by the U.S. and Japan, to be made available to other countries interested in the anti-missile technologies. Up until now, however, Tokyo has refused to do so, citing constitutional constraints on the provision of defense cooperation to third countries.
MOSCOW VERSUS AMERICAN MISSILE DEFENSE
On the heels of its successful restart of arms control talks with the Russian government, the Obama administration is now hard at work wooing Moscow on the issue of missile defenses in Europe. But, according to at least one Russian analyst, U.S. arguments that the deployment of BMD elements in Europe don’t threaten Russia aren’t likely to bear tangible fruit. “A technical analysis of the U.S. plans indicates that U.S. missile defenses, in their current configuration, will be unable to significantly reduce the strike potential of Russian ICBMs for the next 10 to 15 years,” writes Ruslan Pukhov of the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in the May 27th edition of the Moscow Times. “That shows that the U.S. missile defense system is basically focused on countering the missile threat posed by rogue states.”
So what’s the reason for the Kremlin’s vociferous objections to U.S. BMD? It is because, contends Pukhov, Russia fears U.S. efforts “to ensure the complete security of U.S. territory.” Indeed, “Even the hypothetical possibility that Russia's nuclear forces would be devalued threatens the foundation of Russia's military security. For that reason, opposition to an expanded U.S. missile defense system is one of the cornerstones of Russian security policy.” All of which, Pukhov concludes, means that, whatever the atmospherics, missile defense talks between Moscow and Washington “will fail.”
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