• Forum
• SITREP
• Military
• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security

• Space

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Public Eye

NATO to build missile defence system for Europe

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Brussels, May 10, IRNA
NATO-Missile System-Europe
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) announced Wednesday that it has completed a Missile Defence Feasibility Study to protect Europe from missile attacks.

"There is growing threat of long range missile attack on NATO territory and it is timely to examine ways and means of addressing that threat," said NATO's Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment, Marshall Billingslea.

He was speaking to reporters in Brussels this afternoon after delivering the huge 10,000-page study to the North Atlantic Council (NAC), the alliance's highest decision-making body.

"With this study we want to say that a missile defence system for Europe is technologically feasible and costs of building such a system are manageable," he said.

The study, he continued, "marks a significant milestone in the effort to protect our publics from the menace of long-range ballistic missiles,".

It is now up to the 26 member states of NATO to decide the desirability of such a missile system.

"A much larger political and military discussion needs to be held," noted the NATO officials.

The Feasibility Study contains threat scenarios and detailed defence architecture to ensure that incoming ballistic missiles could be intercepted successfully. It was developed by an international consortium of industries, led by the US firm Science Applications International Corporations after nearly four years of work.

Billingslea, however refused to answer repeated questions by journalists on where the growing threat to NATO is coming from, saying "I am not in a position to be able to talk about specific threat scenarios today."
Asked if the existing missile defence system in the US will be integrated with the European missile defence system , he noted that the US defence missile agency has been a key part in the whole process within the alliance discussion.

"There are some logical linkages and there are some technological linkages and there inevitably would be a logical interface between the two systems,'' he said.

"When it comes to the question of missile defence for European territory, we are in fact dealing with technologies and technological approaches that have already proven themselves and are being deployed as we speak by the US and by some other countries like Japan." The missile system would be a mix of sensors of different types, land-base sensors, possibly satellite sensors as well as ground-based sensors deployed in a very small number at a very few possible different locations.

The NATO official also declined to divulge the cost of the system or the time needed to build if it gets the political backing.

"It would be too soon to say how quickly the system would be built, but since the US is proceeding with proven technology developed over many years of research such a system could be put in place sooner rather than later."
"I cannot give you the estimates of the total costs because it will be determined by which set of options will be selected," he said The NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, in November is expected to decide whether to approve or reject the missile system for Europe.

260/1771