NATO theatre missile defence makes progress: Russian disquiet on territorial version continues

NATO's theatre ballistic missile defence system has achieved "interim capability" of linking member states' anti-missile equipment to protect deployed forces, NATO said last week in a statement.  

The capability known as Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) was handed over to military commanders on 27 January at NATO Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) in Uedem, Germany. The handover ceremony for “Initial Capability Step 2 Real-Time (InCa 2 RT)” came after NATO technicians conducted a series of tests by linking weapons and sensor systems from five countries -- France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States.  

"The NATO Combined Air Operations Center demonstrated how this interim capability allows NATO commanders, for the first time ever, to do limited ballistic missile defense planning and exchange information with national ballistic missile defense assets," the statement said. 

In a second statement, Maj. Gen. Mark F. Ramsay Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations and Intelligence in SHAPE, said:What the interim capability does is bring together much more modern systems from many more nations, both space, sea and air based and soon to be land based, that will have a much broader capability to defend ourselves from a whole range of threats. 

According to Jane’s, NATO members have invested around EUR800 million in the ALTBMD system overall, which is designed to protect deployed troops against short- and medium-range ballistic threats up to a 3,000 km range. The ALTBMD Programme Office will continue to upgrade the NATO BMD command-and-control system incrementally from 2013 to 2018, when a "more robust" final operational capability will be fielded. 

At the Lisbon Summit in November 2010, NATO leaders agreed to expand ALTBMD as the cornerstone of NATO's territorial missile defence system. This would protect not just deployed troops but civilians as well. NATO Watch director Ian Davis said, “The alliance is to be congratulated on the successful demonstration of the most expensive truck in history” (Look out for it in this NATO animation of how ALTBMD is envisioned to work). “But the real challenges are political and fiscal: how to encourage and shape NATO-Russian negotiations towards a common approach to territorial missile defence, and then finding the money in cash-strapped treasuries to pay for it”, he added. 

NATO and Russia agreed at Lisbon to jointly study areas of potential missile defence cooperation, but views continue to differ on what that might entail. Moscow favours a more integrated system than the alliance seems willing to consider and has warned that it would withdraw from the effort if it decides it is not being treated fairly (see NATO Watch News Brief, 26 January). Russian envoy Dmitry Rogozin told journalists that NATO's missile defence aspirations "could not be called cooperation. It's not even a marriage of convenience. It's like living separately in different apartments". Meanwhile, Russia alsoappears to be hedging its bets with an announcement last week that it is also developing new warheads for intercontinental ballistic missiles that would be able to overcome any existing and future missile defence systems. 

Congressional investigators in the United States have also waded in to the debate with a report made public last week. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommend that the Pentagon should incorporate new details in the planned deployment of territorial missile defences in Europe, including more specific cost projections and conditions for the finished system. “NATO’s adoption of the territorial BMD mission at the Lisbon Summit in November 2010 fulfilled a major US goal” the report says, and adds that NATO allies must now overcome the difficult task of reaching consensus on how to carry out this new BMD mission, including prioritizing what areas to defend and establishing command and control relationships. “It really comes down to those folks that will be operating the systems needing to understand what the plan is,” according to John Pendleton, GAO defence capabilities and management chief. “What we heard, because we went around and talked and got information from folks all around the world, is we need information about how the system will perform under more operationally realistic conditions”. 

Poland and Romania have agreed to host US BMD assets although the US has not yet found a host nation for a critical sensor planned for deployment in 2011. While NATO members may in the future provide BMD assets to assist in the territorial defence of Europe, the US currently is the only member with BMD assets designed to provide territorial defence. The Obama administration introduced the "phased adaptive approach" in 2009 that emphasizes deploying Standard Missile 3 interceptors in and around Europe as a defence against short- and medium-range missile threats. Deployment of the interceptors and accompanying sensor technology is expected to begin this year and to conclude around 2020.