NATO: Debate on European defence shield warming up
01 May 2006
In May NATO announced that it had completed a 10,000 page Missile Defence Feasibility Study for a strategic weapons system to protect territory, forces and population in the NATO part of Europe from missile attacks. The study contains threat scenarios and detailed defence architecture to ensure successful interception of incoming ballistic missiles. It was developed by an international consortium of industries, led by the US firm Science Applications International Corporation after nearly four years of work.
The system will consist of a mix of sensors of different types, land-base sensors and possibly satellite sensors deployed in a "very small number at a very few possible different locations."
NATO's Assistant Secretary for Defence Investment, Marshall Billingslea, who delivered the study to the North Atlantic Council, refused to answer repeated questions by journalists on where the growing threat to NATO was coming from. He was able to confirm however that the European system would have a "logical interface" (that is: will be integrated) with the existing $10bn a year US missile defence system. Meanwhile the US is negotiating bilaterally with Poland, the Czech Republic and possibly Hungary as locations for a US missile base as part of their own system. NATO officials are now concerned that the US outfit might undermine unity by only protecting the countries that agree to base US interceptors on their territory.
After the North Korean missile tests in July NATO secretary-general De Hoop Scheffer tried to move the debate ahead and mentioned Pyongyang and Teheran by name as posing "increasing dangers". The NATO summit in Riga in November this year is expected to decide whether to approve or reject the missile system for Europe. NATO has already begun work on an sub-strategic anti-missile system that protects only deployed troops and is scheduled to be ready by 2010.
The British American Security Information Council (BASIC) has called for the NATO feasibility study to be declassified and placed in the public domain to allow for independent and parliamentary scrutiny, describing the project as a "Maginot line in the sky".
"NATO to build missile defence systems for Europe". Irna 10.5.06; "BASIC calls for declassification of NATO's missile defence study", BASIC Press Release 31.5.06; "Nato warms to plan for defence shield", Daniel Dombey, Demetri Sevastopulo. Financial Times 7.7.06; "North Korea missiles prompt NATO debate on defence shield", Lucia Kubosova. EUobserver 7.7.06