Standoff missile defense
According to the results of the G8 summit in Deauville, Switzerland, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters: “I don’t have any secrets from you, especially on such a simple and open topic as missile defense in Europe. I cannot say that I am satisfied with the reaction to the proposals I have made, both from the US and from all NATO countries ... Since we are losing precious time ... What is 2020? This is the year when the construction of the four-stage system should be completed according to the so-called adaptive approach. After 2020, if we don’t agree today, the real arms race will begin. ”
At the same time, Belarus’s closest ally, Belarus, is not sure that negotiations on missile defense will bring Moscow the desired result. According to Alexander Lukashenko, today there are "extremely rich negotiations between the Americans and the Russians." “The Russians believe that the Americans still prevail over reason and, perhaps, they will eventually agree. I do not believe in this". According to him, "they will place their missile defense system in any case." “I am sure that this is only a preface. It will expand and only grow stronger, ”Lukashenka noted.
Lukashenka also noted that none of the partners from across the ocean and NATO can explain to him about the interception of whose missiles in question? “So, the conclusion is obvious: then it’s all started against us,” he concluded.
Modern missile defense is today one of the most complex and ambivalent issues of the current military-tactical, technical and political topic, on which experts debate this topic for many decades.
According to the testimony of many influential Russian and foreign military experts, from the fact that we are talking about the southern azimuths of Europe, now Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and Israel own medium-range missiles. Shorter-range missiles are in Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Libya.
There are no complex technical obstacles in the ability to increase the range of ballistic carriers, for example, by reducing the payload and other measures. Say, the range of Shekhab-3 missiles that are in service with Iran is quite possible to be increased, thus, from the existing 1500 to 2300 km. It became known that the developed Shekhab-4 rocket could well overcome the distance in 3000 km, and the Shehab-5 and Seijil missiles could be even more significant. According to a number of experts, through 10-12 years, Iran can make intercontinental missiles, but medium-range missiles, which are already there, cover the mainland to Spain, Norway and Krasnoyarsk. The result of the Arab revolutions is impossible to predict. Most likely, in the final conclusion, the new regimes will be more nationalistic and extremely religious. And this is fertile soil for the origin of a whole group of new countries hostile to the whole world in North Africa and the Middle East.
Today, there are no intercontinental missiles, but it would be extremely rash to expect when they appear. With this in mind, the deployment and testing of missile defense is a much more innovative, technically dangerous and capital-intensive process than the development of offensive missile carriers, the special technology of which has long been tested. In addition, missile defense requires a significantly higher degree of performance than offensive missiles, which the enemy may use. In the event of a missile launch failure, the chosen object in the enemy’s territory, of course, will not be hit, and if the missile defense system does not work, then tens, hundreds of thousands of citizens of their own state will die from one missile. This fundamental difference in the performance requirements for tactical offensive and fortification weapons was one of the main reasons that over the past forty years and more full-scale missile defense systems in the territory of the USSR, and now Russia and the United States, have not been involved.
In the spirit of “resetting” the relationship in 2008-2010, the United States and Russia adopted a series of declarations on the joint development of missile defense systems. Russia proposed the doctrine of a universal "sectoral" missile defense system, according to which the Russian Federation and NATO would protect each other from nuclear missiles from various directions. NATO advocated independent, but conjugated on a number of technical elements of the missile defense system. Nevertheless, with the obvious attractiveness of the initiatives, today, as they say, things are still there. The past summit in Deauville, Switzerland showed frank differences in this area.
First, in the course chosen by Washington, there are huge inconsistencies that cause Moscow’s well-founded doubts about the true objectives of the PAP of installing missile defense systems. And the matter is not at all in the fact that Iran today has neither ICBMs nor any nuclear weapons. The case is completely different: the United States has repeatedly declared that it will not allow Iran to create nuclear weapons under any circumstances. With this in mind, a quite logical question appears, why create a missile defense system? In response to such questions, Washington notes that missile defense is not only protection against real threats, but also a way to show the whole world the futility of creating long-range and medium-range missiles, given their vulnerability.
However, in Russia, many people understand that the anti-missile program being created is hardly limited to countering the mythical Iranian threat, and here the Americans obviously don’t agree on something. In addition to the existing Arab contenders for joining the nuclear club of the world, there is a real threat - Pakistan, which has both missiles and nuclear warheads in service with them. The world community is concerned about this fact and even more so today, when Islamists are rushing to power in this Arab state. It is not a secret to anyone that in case of the arrival of this category of rulers, Pakistan has every chance of becoming the second Iran, but with ready nuclear weapons. Of course, all questions on this topic are carefully covered by the United States, this is due to the fear of losing a reliable ally in the region, but who can give Americans a guarantee that the new government will not break off all relations and will not side with extremism?
In addition, there is a factor in China, with which the United States is seriously preparing for a long-term territorial (Taiwan) and global confrontation in the foreseeable period of the 21st century. The US nuclear forces are increasingly targeting confrontation with the PRC. The European Missile Defense Program is a complex of a general anti-missile system on a par with its deployment areas in the Far East, Alaska and California. The system is directed against China’s limited nuclear missile weapons in order to delay as far as possible the time it reaches to achieve nuclear parity and mutual nuclear-missile deterrence with the United States. But the White House cannot say this publicly either, in order not to provoke China into accelerated build-up of its missile potential, not to frighten even more allies - Japan and South Korea - and by all means not push them towards nuclear autonomy.
The key question in this regard for Moscow is whether this large-scale antimissile system can in the final result turn against Russia. The most influential Russian experts say: both the current and forecasted for the next 10-15 years, the overseas missile defense system is not capable of significantly affecting Russia's nuclear deterrence potential. Within the borders of the New START Treaty, and also with the subsequent lowering of its ceiling, an attempt to make a missile defense system for protection from Russian tactical forces would require such ambitious means and would give such suspicious fruits that it would damage the security of the United States itself. Especially as new and priority dangers would appear, in countering which the White House needs cooperation, and not continued confrontation with Moscow. At the same time, the permanent condition of the decent potential of tactical nuclear forces (SNF) of Russia within the borders of the START Treaty is an indispensable condition, so that no one will be tempted to change the parity in their favor with the support of a general missile defense system.
Another thing is that Washington does not want to allow the likelihood of a missile defense program adjustment in the near future. Once a program is called adaptive, it must provide for the likelihood of amendments, not only as a reaction to the threat, but also in a comprehensive dependence on the establishment of cooperation with Moscow. However, Washington has not yet decided on what contribution it expects from Russia. Huge obstacles are created by the negative attitude on the missile defense issue, manifested by the republican opposition in the USA.
This kind of “cooperation” does not satisfy Russia, it only requires joint planning and implementation of the EuroMW system exclusively on an equal basis. However, equality is still a pretty motto, but it should be supported by specificity, taking into account the differences of the parties in economic, geostrategic and military-technical relations, as well as in the perception of threats.
With Russia, the United States has huge differences in the assessment of threats. And the main thing is not in the various forecasts of the development of nuclear and missile programs of Iran threatening the whole world. If you call things with the correct names, the main difference is that a significant part of the political and tactical community of Russia does not define the missile threat of Iran, as any serious, and suggest that the traditional nuclear missile deterrence is absolutely enough. And they see the main threat from NATO and the United States. This is openly stated in the new Russian Military Doctrine of 2010, where the list of military real dangers of actions and weapons of the United States and NATO are in the first four positions, at the same time the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, to deter which missile defense is being created, everything only in sixth place.
Against this background, the plan for a “sectoral” missile defense, voiced by Moscow, according to which Russia assumes responsibility for NATO’s missile defense, and that in turn will protect Russia, looks quite unusual. Moreover, as the official attorneys say, even dual control over the “button” was proposed, an integral perimeter of defense, separation of the sectors reflecting missiles. In Deauville, the President of Russia said: “... We must hear and see evidence: that this is not being done against us. Nobody has provided such evidence to us yet. ”
In fact, any system of protection against ballistic carriers of nuclear weapons has the technical ability to intercept a certain number of tactical missiles or their elements directly on the flight trajectories. In Russia, these are the A-135 missile defense systems located around Moscow. According to experts, even existing overseas systems such as THAAD and Etalon-3 have a certain potential for intercepting ICBMs.
For the West, it is obvious that Russia's assertive assertion of guarantees is evidence that the main reason for its admissible participation in the program is not a real counteraction to the rocket threat from third countries, but the receipt of real military-technical evidence of the impossibility of its use against an ICBM EuroPRO. Participation in the European defense program, not for the purpose of protection, but for the sake of limiting it, is an extremely fragile basis for fruitful cooperation. However, for some options it is acceptable in the thesis. But in other aspects, from the fact that the line between systems of integrated interception of ICBMs and RSD is blurred, the United States is unlikely to significantly limit the power of the system against Iran and other states that have limited missile potential.
Another obvious obstacle to the creation of a joint missile defense system lies in the fact that neither the American nor the Russian military-industrial complexes in reality are not interested in possible cooperation. The US military and industrial corporations are not willing to limit their ability to form a system in any way; they are afraid of losing technological secrets; they do not want to fall into full or partial dependence on Russia with its incomprehensible multi-vector policy.
Unfortunately, the abyss of military confrontation between Russia and the United States creates an obstacle to the entry into any of the missile defense systems on a substantial scale. Transferring secret information about algorithms, as well as dead zones of Russian anti-missile defense systems to a potential enemy, is undoubtedly a threat to national security, and this barrier has destroyed many good undertakings to the present day.
Fruitful cooperation at the level of the overall management system of interception systems is currently possible. The important question is that while in Russia they have not figured out how to get involved in the general system of combat control, without revealing the algorithms and performance characteristics. But there is time, and you can try to think about it. After all, Russia and NATO had a really positive experience in conducting joint missile defense exercises, and even talked about conducting joint firing in Oshaluk.
It is necessary to recognize that the missile defense systems that were involved during the exercises were of a low tactical level, mainly of a commercial configuration and did not pose a threat to the national security of Russia. But models of tactical interaction worked out on the presented systems and possible defensive packages of connection to common control networks can become the basis for unification and secret strategic systems.
In Russia today, one hundred percent sure that the interaction on the means of notification should be established right now. The Russian SPRN functions perfectly and delivers information on all missile launches. In 2010, more than 30 was tracked, this is already two.
The question of the protection of sensitive data remains unresolved, but it is completely resolved. Data may not be transmitted in real time and after certain processing. It may be impossible to use these data for intercepting and leading the target, but to build an overall picture of the combat space for making further decisions, they are suitable and, undoubtedly, are of considerable interest for combat control and control of the ABM forces.
For the implementation of such a program, there is a prepared and adopted legislative framework - a Memorandum on Data Exchange Centers (DPC) between Russia and the United States of 2000. So there are points of contact on the missile defense system, of course.
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