Disarmament Documentation

US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Dan Fried and Director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency Air Force Lt. General Henry A. Obering on US Missile Defence Plans for Europe, February 22, 2007

U.S. Missile Defense Plans for Europe Dan Fried , Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs; Air Force Lt. General Henry A. Obering, Director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency Foreign Press Center Briefing Washington, DC February 22, 2007.

We'll start with Lieutenant General Obering and he'll have a few slides to show you on the systems that are under discussion and then we'll have some opening remarks by Ambassador Fried. Thank you very much.

LTG OBERING: Thank you very much. Well, good morning, everybody. I'm going to run through a set of slides that hopefully will put this in context, and then I'll be glad to answer any questions that you may have with respect to that. If I could have the next slide, please.

Here's what we're concerned about. We know that rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran are very much interested in ballistic missiles and their technology not only for the operation of these missiles, but to be able to have them for coercion and for intimidation purposes. We've seen proliferation to non-state actors of some of these technologies and we saw that, of course, this past summer in the attacks by Hezbollah with rockets on one of our allies, Israel, and some of the consequences of not being fully prepared for that type of attack.

And also, if you look back over the past several years, if you go back to 1972 when we were in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the then-Soviet Union, there were only about eight countries around the world that had ballistic missiles or the technologies. Today, that's grown to more than 20 and we've been surprised in the past and we anticipate that we will be surprised in the future. So we are building a context here for making sure that we are prepared for uncertain threats for the future. Next slide.

Now if you go ahead and run this, this is just some of the video that's been coming off -- out of Iran recently. I think this is the Great Prophet II exercise in the November timeframe of this year that shows their interest and their intent in developing these missiles, developing this technology, and showing that they can use them in a fairly robust fashion.

So that brings to bear and to mind for us that we have to be concerned about this, because a threat consists of two things. It consists of capability, it consists of intent. And in both cases, we're very concerned about what we see happening there. Next slide.

We've established a policy in the United States that we are going to build a defense against these threats. We began a deployment back in 2004, the summer of 2004 against the threats with the capability to protect ourselves initially from the North Korean threat. We've been building and expanding on that ever since. And this is determined to protect not only the United States, but also our allies and our friends and our deployed forces around the world. And we're going to do this by building an integrated layered system that is capable of defending against these missiles, all ranges of these missiles in all phases of their flight. Next slide.

A very busy slide, but this shows our program of record and it shows the overall context and the seriousness about which we are taking this threat. We are building defenses in each one of what we call the phases of an enemy missile's flight. There's a boosting phase, a mid-course phase, and a terminal phase. We're developing the airborne laser and a very high-speed kinetic energy interceptor to attempt to intercept in the boosting phase. We've got our long-range ballistic missile defense system, the GBI system that we have begun deployments to Alaska, California that could protect against the long-range missiles. And of course, we have the Aegis, the sea-based interceptors that can protect us against the shorter-range missiles in that regime.

And then on the terminal phase, we have the PAC-3 that we've used in combat in the past and, of course, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense or the THAAD system that we have in development and have achieved successful intercepts. You'll see a couple of those in some subsequent videos that I will show. And we've also established a sea-based terminal program in conjunction with the Navy.

Now supporting this family of interceptors, we have a whole host of sensors, everything from modifications of existing radars such as the ones that we have in Alaska and California and in the United Kingdom and eventually in Greenland as well, along with mobile radars like the very powerful sea-based X-band radar that we have recently deployed to Alaska. And then eventually, moving these sensors, taking advantage of not just the on-orbit sensors that we have with satellites' early warning, but being able to get to where we have precision tracking from space as well.

And we've build a command and control and a battle management foundation that allows the commanders and allows the forces to be able to use this system in an integrated fashion in real-time, because the challenge of missile defense is that you may have to have simultaneous situation awareness across 10 or 11 different time zones at the same time. Next slide.

This is the system that we have today and that we will have by the end of this year, 2007. What's not shown on here is we have a radar that we have deployed to Japan, a transportable radar as part of the overall sensor-netting. We have a modification of a radar in Cobra Dane which is in Alaska, also a Beale radar in California. We have the interceptors in the ground in Alaska today. We have 13 interceptors currently. We will have 14 just in the next two weeks and we have two in California for a total of 16 here in the next two weeks. We have the sea-based X-band radar that I talked about and you'll see what that looks like and the fact that we have that now located in the Alaska region.

We've got cruisers, the Aegis cruisers and destroyers. We have a total of 16 ships that we have modified to be able to track ballistic missiles. Seven of those ships are capable of engaging shorter range ballistic missiles and we've delivered 18 interceptors to be able to do that.

Now we are in a process of doing the final testing and checkout of the radar in the United Kingdom and we'll be bringing that online later this year. But what you see on this slide, none of this was here two and half years ago. So we've made remarkable progress since that summer of 2004 when we began to place the first interceptors in the field in Alaska.

Next slide. This is where we're headed and where we're growing. We want to be able to expand coverage to our allies and our friends and that includes the interceptor site and the radar site that we are proposed to establish in Europe and that we're in discussions with our allies to do so.

Could I have the next slide? Now, the reason for this is that we have a gap right now. We cannot protect ourselves from a long-range threat from the Middle East for our deployed forces in Europe, our allies and our friends, and that's one of the reasons why we have to use a ground-based system to be able to do that. That's the only capability we have against a long-range threat and that's why we believe it's important to proceed with these interceptors, again, focused on what we believe to be an emerging threat from the Middle East.

Next slide. These are just some of the photographs to give you a feel, an idea of what we're talking about. This is an interceptor field at Fort Greeley. This is the -- what we call the readiness and control building there. We have an interceptor that's going into the ground there. It's about 60 feet long -- about 55 feet long, about 56 inches wide. This is the interceptor field at Vandenberg and you can see the kill vehicle there that we use. We do not use explosives; we do not use any type of warhead in these interceptors. It is pure hit to kill. So we just run the interceptor basically into the target because we have discovered that that is the most effective way of destroying these threat warheads.

Next slide. This is a snapshot of Aegis ships, which is the long-range surveillance and track destroyer at the top and one of the engagement destroyers -- I mean, one of our engagement cruisers that is capable of launching the Standard Missile Three sea-based interceptor. Next. This is a picture of the forward-based X-band radar that we now have located in Japan, about the size of a tractor trailer van, very capable of acquiring, initially acquiring and providing initial tracks of missile threats.

Next slide. The early warning radars that we have modified in Alaska and California and the ones that we will be finishing up in the United Kingdom and in Thule, Greenland. Next slide. And this is the sea-based X-band radar, a very, very powerful X-band radar. It's about 30 stories high. This is what has made its way to Alaska. We are very proud of this. It is capable of withstanding the very intense conditions in the North Pacific. And as I said, I just visited the platform last week and it's doing very well.

Next slide. Now, let's talk very quickly about our testing and then I'll get to the actual elements in the European theater. There's this misconception out there that missile defense doesn't work and I'm here to say it does work. And we have the test record to show that. If you look in -- just in the last 15 flight tests, we've had 14 successes. One of those was a failure -- basically a crew operator error on an Aegis test that we conducted last December. But we've had a string of successes that continues to build our confidence in the system, both from the low atmosphere intercepts that we are able to achieve with the Patriot system, all the way up to the very high altitude intercepts with the long-range system.

We've had successful intercepts by the Aegis system that occurred in November of '05 and in June of '06, but we've also had successful tests of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense or the THAAD program. We've now had two of those, one in July and one in January of this year. And of course, we had a very successful ground-based long-range intercept last September. We have several more coming up. Two more intercept tests with the THAAD, five more with the Aegis system and two more of the long range. In total, we have now had 24 hit-to-kill intercepts successful since 2001. So we are well beyond the idea that this system doesn't work. It works and it works very well. Next slide.

Here's one of the flight tests from September of '05. This is a PAC-3, if you'll go ahead and hit that. Just to give you an idea of what these intercepts look like, this is the low-altitude interceptor, the Patriot. This happens to be the soldiers with the unit there, getting ready to prepare for the test. And we do use soldiers and operational crews across the board in our testing. A snapshot of the launcher. This is out in the White Sands area. We had a ripple fire of two interceptors. You'll see the interceptor fly out here and then the interceptor, the target here in slow motion. I think you also have a couple of intercept slides here, the target there, and you get an idea of the destruction of the target. Next slide.

This is the Aegis, the sea-based capability -- go ahead. This took place off the coast of Hawaii. This is off of the -- I'm sorry, go ahead. This is the Lake Erie. We had -- obviously, this is a target that we launched from Hawaii. We had an operational crew on board. This is a camera looking out, operational crew and you'll see the interceptor fire from the back end of the ship. This is what we see in the control room, the fly-out. We have optical cameras. And if -- when it runs out of range, we actually have a telemetry-driven animation that shows us what's going on in real life, such as in this case, staging, that when you have staging occur in real life, it then occurs in the animation.

The next thing you'll see is the orientation of the third stage. We're able to turn on or turn off the third stage of this interceptor and that is also useful in the selection of targets. The jettison of the third stage here, and then again, a kinetic kill vehicle at the top. No warhead, no explosive, it destroys the target by pure kinetic energy running into it.

Now one thing we're able to do here is you will see in real time the intercept. We actually have -- it's not really a video feed, but it's a telemetry feed from the kill vehicle, so a green box will show up and we see this in real time, so we see what is being tracked by the intercept. There's the adjustments of the kill vehicle as it's moving in, there's the green box, and you'll see a picture here of the target coming up as we intercept it in space. And we know exactly, precisely where it is that we intercept these missiles. Next slide.

This is the THAAD system. It took place in Hawaii. It was the first time that we had taken the system out to the Pacific Missile Test Range in Hawaii. You can turn off the -- that's some of our Army brethren and soldiers. They like to get into the music, but anyway, here is a snapshot of the interceptor leaving the silo -- I mean, leaving the launch tube there. You can see the fly-out of the interceptor from the island. Now in this particular test, it happened in the high atmosphere, so we're actually able to pick up a kill vehicle with our cameras and you can see the kill vehicle maneuvering just before it hits the target, which will be coming in from the upper left-hand side of your screen.

That's the fly-out of the interceptor. There's the kill vehicle, the rocket firings of the kill vehicle, there's the target that's coming in, and you'll see that we effect the intercept. And this is an infrared of that same intercept. Next slide.

And finally, this is the long-range system. This is an example of the interceptors that we would propose to place in the European theater. We conducted this -- go ahead. This was a target launch out of Alaska. We brought it down off the coast of California in the Pacific and we intercepted out of Vandenberg, so here is the target launch from Kodiak, Alaska and the next thing you'll see is the interceptor silo at Vandenberg. Again, very representative of what we have proposed for the European theater.

There's the silo clam shell doors opening, the exit of the interceptor from that. Now it happens that those of you familiar with Vandenberg, you know that we do have fog banks there. It went into the fog bank, comes up, and you'll see that we pick it up with a high-flying aircraft.

This is a three-stage interceptor. It is a little faster, a longer-burning version of the one that we would put in Europe. Again, very high altitude intercepts that we would achieve with this and you'll see the fly-out of the interceptor here. And then this occurs so high in space that we actually have to go up and get a very high-flying aircraft, in this case, a Gulfstream flying at about 45,000 feet to capture pictures and photographs of the intercept, so what you'll see is a fly-out here of the interceptor and the next thing is a series of intercept scenes in which you see the infrared photography of the intercept.

So the first thing you'll see is a true perspective from the aircraft. There's an arrow here that shows the intercept there and then we blow that up and you can see this in real time to start with. There's the intercept and then we actually do it again in slow motion. Okay, next slide.

We're going to continue to build out the system through 2013. That includes a total of 54 interceptors. We would have 40 in Alaska, four in California, and we would propose 10 in the European area. We would have 18 engagement ships and more than 130 of the sea-based interceptors. We would have four of those Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense weapons like you saw coming out of the launch tube, four units of those with almost 100 missiles associated with that. And again, the four deployed radars like the one we have in Japan, we would have an additional three of those. Next slide.

Now let's talk about why we want to go to Europe. We do not have defenses in the European theater against the long-range threat, as I said. We have mobile shorter range defenses like the Patriot or the Standard Missile 3 that could be brought to bear, but we don't have an effective defense against the longer-range weapons. And again, it takes time to build these. It takes -- it's going to take us three or four years to build out any kind of capability, so we can't look at what's happening today and say that's what we need to base our decision on. We need to look at what's happening today and project to see what may be the threat for the future. And that's very important in missile defense because it takes time to build these capabilities. Next slide.

This is what we're talking about, a silo-based interceptor field, up to 10 interceptors. We would be able to place the first one in the field, we believe, in about the 2011 timeframe and finish that out in 2013. We would relocate a radar that we have today that's been operating in the Marshall Islands for a long time. We would relocate that radar into Europe. We would obviously modify it and upgrade it as part of that and bring some of the processors up to speed and then we would field an early -- a smaller version and acquisition radar that would be farther forward that would help tie in the whole -- tie together the whole system. Next slide.

This is what an interceptor field looks like. You can see the mechanical electrical building here. This would be 10 silos here. That's -- just for comparison purposes, that is a football field that's overlaid on the top of that. You can get almost all of the interceptors basically in a football field's footprint. Next slide.

This is a snapshot of the radar that is in the South Pacific that we would do -- modify, do the modifications, and redeploy that. Next slide.

This slide, and near the last one, just shows that we have a whole family of allies that are working with us in missile defense and in varying degrees of participation. We have a country like Japan, who is actually co-developing with us an expanded version of that sea-based interceptor, a very, very big deal, a very, very complex program. We're working very closely with them, but we have relations with many countries around the world in a variety of development and cooperative research in a whole host of activities. And so what we're proposing is an expansion, again, of that cooperation. Next slide.

Now my last one: I want to talk a little bit about some of the issues that have been raised, first of all, the Russian reaction. It's been briefed that they consider this a threat and it changes the strategic balance between the United States and Russia. And frankly, speaking from a technical perspective and a programmatic perspective, we just don't see that.

First of all, these interceptors, the radars, are not designed against the Russian threat. You're not going to counter the hundreds of Russian ICBMs and the thousands of warheads that are represented by that fleet with 10 interceptors in a field in Europe. The radar that we were putting there -- first of all, it is designed against the Middle Eastern threat, not against the Russian threat.

With the radar that we have there that we have proposed, it is a very narrow beam radar. It has to be queued. And so even if we wanted to try to track Russian missiles with that radar, we could only track a very, very small percentage of those missiles. And even if we could, passing that information off and having an interceptor try to intercept the Russian missile, we can't do it. The interceptors that we would place in Europe are not fast enough to catch the Russian ICBMs. We're in a tail chase from a location in Poland and if you'd like, in that -- in response to any questions, I can show you some slides on that as well.

Debris is another issue that's brought up. Well, you're going to be raining down debris. Well, there are a couple of things to point out. Number one, the debris that we have from these intercepts, as you can see from the videos and what we are actually able to measure with very precise radars in our test bed, we have -- the debris pieces from the actual intercept itself are very, very small. Even from some of the largest targets, you have pieces that don't survive more than eight inches in length. We know that from our data.

We also know that the probability of casualty on the ground, even in some of the most densely populated areas, from many of that debris is very low. You're talking on the order, depending on where you are in location, anywhere from one and a thousand chances to one in 2.4 million in terms of having some type of problem. So debris is not something we have to worry about.

On the other hand, if you have a warhead to impact in the European theater with our deployed forces and allies, it's a totally different story. You could have tens of thousands of casualties from that impact. And even if there was not a missile site, interceptor site in Europe to try to protect the European allies and let's say that there was some type of a problem in which the Iranians were firing at the United States, not all the missiles that the Iranians would fire at the United States are going to make it to the United States, just from not working themselves. And so we think it's very prudent to have that protection of our allies and our deployed forces in that region.

Electromagnetic impulse is another one. If you intercept a nuclear warhead and it detonates, assuming that over time, somebody is able to develop that, we mitigate that by the very high altitude that we intercept. And those electromagnetic pulse effects are negligible at the altitudes that we're talking about in terms of where we intercept and the effects of that EMP on the ground. That's how we mitigate against that.

And finally, there are some concerns about the effects of X-band radars. There is nothing to worry about in this case. X-band radars are used around the world. The one that we would propose to be relocated in the European area has been operating in the Marshall Islands for years. There are people who have been living and working with that. There are no health issues or health problems with that and in fact, they are used very extensively with respect to airplane tracking and that type of thing.

So I've run through quite a few slides in a very fast period of time and hopefully, that would generate some questions a little bit later on. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FRIED: My colleague made points about the threat from Iran. He also made points about the Russian reaction and it's important to emphasize this: Russia is not the intended target and the Russian offensive, the Russian strategic nuclear deterrent, is not intended to be the target of this system and the Russians know this. Everything that has been briefed to you today has been explained both to NATO allies and in the NATO-Russia Council and to the Russians bilaterally in a series of detailed discussions, both at high level and at expert level, and these discussions are going to continue. We have not developed this system in the dark. We have not developed this system without intensive consultations with both Europeans and the Russians and that is how it should be.

We were, of course, surprised by General Solovtsov's remarks earlier this week in which he said that Russia could target Poland and the Czech Republic if they accepted elements of a defensive system on their territory. We were surprised by those remarks and frankly, found them both incomprehensible and negative. A threat against Poland and the Czech Republic makes no sense in the early part of the 21st century and we assume and hope that the General was not speaking for the entire Russian Government.

And indeed, I noticed that Foreign Minister Lavrov, the following day, spoke to this issue in far more measured and reasonable tones, saying, among other things, that Russia would not respond hysterically -- his words -- not hysterically to a missile defense system deployed in Europe. And that is indeed how it should be. This is not directed against Russia. The Russians know this. Their technical people are certainly aware of the capabilities of the system -- what it can do and what it cannot do, and what it cannot do is threaten Russia.

But questions have also come up earlier this week about the Russian reaction and whether this portends a new period of U.S.-Russian tensions. I don't think it does, and I certainly hope it does not. But let me say something about U.S.-Russian relations generally, since that's generated a lot of interest. We have a relationship with the Russians which is very broad and includes a great deal of cooperation. And Secretary Rice pointed out after President Putin's speech at Werkunde that his speech did not seem to reflect the reality of the cooperation ongoing with Russia in areas such as counterterrorism, counterproliferation, cooperation on issues such as North Korea and Iran.

Yesterday I spent most of the day in productive and useful discussions with one of my Russian counterparts discussing some issues of European security, and we had good discussions. So there was a mismatch between the public tone and the private diplomatic reality. Certainly that mismatch was extreme with respect to General Solovtsov's remarks about the Poles and Czechs. We hope to get past this. There's a lot of work we have to do with Russia and work we look forward to doing with Russia.

In anticipation though of a question, let me talk about what might have motivated the Russians and my remarks have to be speculative since I'm not inside their heads. One of the themes of the Russian remarks seem to be that Russia is back as a power in the world after the decade of the '90s which was in Russian -- as many Russians have said, a terrible decade for Russia, a decade of internal retreat and foreign policy retreat. We would welcome -- we, the United States, would welcome Russia being back as a force for good in the world, if Russia being back means that Russia will play a constructive role with respect to Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions, with respect to North Korea, in Kosovo, in the war on terror. This is a Russia whose partnership we welcome -- a stronger Russia helping in these areas is a good partner. But we hope that Russia will play this constructive role and not use its newfound energy wealth to exert pressure on its neighbors or to threaten Poland and the Czech Republic or any other country, so we have hopes for a good, solid partnership with Russia.

National Security Advisor Steve Hadley is in Moscow working on the constructive elements of our agenda, as well as addressing, I'm sure, some areas where we have differences. But my point is simply this: We want to work with Russia as a partner. We have our disagreements with Russia in some areas, but our goal is partnership. That's why we don't understand why it is that the Russians would feel obligated to make remarks like this, but that's a question to them. All I can do is talk about our own policy. And with that, I'm happy to take questions with the general.

MR. BAILY: Yes, sir. Right here in the middle. Please state your name and organization.

QUESTION: Demetri Sevastopulo, Financial Times. I had one question for both of you. For Mr. Fried, if this system is so important for Europe, why are you not asking Europe to put more money into it? Why is the U.S. footing the bill? And for the General, the Russians have threatened to pull out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. If they did that, if they started targeting Poland, the Czech Republic and other countries in Europe with medium-range missiles, how will that affect your calculation about what kind of missile defense you would have in Europe and how would it make it more difficult? And would it then not just exacerbate the situation?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FRIED: Well, with respect to the first question, missile defense has its own history in discussions between Europe and the United States. We are talking about this at NATO, which is a good venue for it. We've also talked about it at the NATO-Russia Council. We think it's important for reasons of European and American security. But we did -- we wanted to start our work now. And Europeans will decide how much they want to be part of this system, but they will certainly benefit from it.

On the INF Treaty, I should say that the Russians have been talking about the INF Treaty and -- for some years, well before any of this -- any of the stationing of missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic was contemplated. They've had other reasons why they've considered pulling out of the INF Treaty. You should ask them, but their rationale has not always been missile defense. In fact, it has not been missile defense.

QUESTION: Just to get an actual answer, but are you going to ask for the Europeans for more money then? And despite the fact that the Russians have brought up this before -- they brought it up with Ivanov and Rumsfeld two years ago. My question is, if they go ahead and do it, how does it affect -- I'd like the general to answer that -- how do they affect your calculations for missile defense in Europe?

LTG OBERING: Well, first of all, as I mentioned, the system that we are developing and deploying is not aimed at a Russian threat, and I'll reiterate that. The system that we are deploying is not aimed at a Russian threat. And so the fact that they would pull out of an INF treaty and then start targeting our allies, that's a different scale and a different level in terms of missile attack or a threat. This is geared toward what we perceive to be the more urgent threat with respect to missiles, which again, is what we see happening in Iran. And the thing that we all know that goes back many decades now is that we have a stable relationship with Russia with respect to deterrence. We know that they are deterrable; they have been deterred. We've had that relationship for quite a while.

So you're asking me a hypothetical question in terms of that, and as I said, I'll reiterate it; it is not geared for that type of threat.

MR. BAILY: Yes, sir.

QUESTION: Yaron Deckel from Israeli Television and my question is for the General. You mentioned Israel and we know that Israel is under a direct threat from Iran. And I wonder, according to your assessment, how vulnerable is Israel? And you work with Israel on the Arrow missile. How effective is the Arrow missile in preventing the ballistic missiles from Iran?

Thank you.

LTG OBERING: I will tell you this in terms of the Arrow program. The participation that we've had with Arrow and the test program, I think, has been very successful, and I believe that that is a very effective weapons system that will provide protection to the Israelis and to the Israeli forces.

The second part of that, we are continuing to work with Israel. We are participating with them on short-range defense. We're investigating possibilities there in terms of helping them with that vulnerability that they have exposed, and we intend to continue to pursue that if we're allowed to do so by the Congress.

MR. BAILY: Okay. Right there in the back.

QUESTION: Daniel Anyz of Czech daily paper Hospodarske Noviny (Financial News). I have two questions. How far is Iran, according to your knowledge, from developing functional long-range ballistic missile? And the second one, NATO finished a feasibility study last year for their own defense system. What are the technical overlaps there? Is there a chance that this system would be incorporated in this missile defense U.S. system?

LTG OBERING: Okay. Very good question. Let's see, the first question -- let me answer the last one first. We believe that -- first of all, we are supporting very strongly the Active Layered Theater Missile Defense program in NATO. We actually have people participating in NATO and helping to guide that, and we believe that the system that we would propose be located in Europe complements what would happen with respect to the NATO -- the outcome of that NATO program.

Just as I showed you, we're building an integrated layered defense with respect to defense of the United States and our allies and friends around the world. This just fits into that very concept of where that system would be able of handling shorter-range threats. This, of course, is able to handle the higher-end threats.

And the first question you asked me was -- how far is Iran from developing a capability?

Let me tell you this: If I could stand here and predict that with precision, I could save a lot of people a lot of money, but I can't. I will tell you what we do know, and what we've experienced in the past.

In 1998, there were experts around the world in the community that were saying that the North Koreans were years and years away from being able to develop a long-range missile. The next month, they did so. They fired a Taepodong-1 that actually overflew Japan. It was a three-stage missile -- that also shocked a lot of experts and they were able to show that they could stage, they could control the missile through staging. And they had all the building blocks of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

I will tell you that what we see happening in Iran is following down that same path in terms of growth and in terms of their stated intent, for example, to be able to launch a space launch vehicle. If you're able to launch a space launch vehicle, you have also demonstrated all of the basic building blocks for a long-range ICBM.

In terms of the actual timing, we want to make sure that we have a defense in place before that occurs.

QUESTION: Philippe Gelie of Le Figaro, France. My question is for Mr. Fried. Do you fear or would you welcome a revival of the Old Europe-New Europe split?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FRIED: No.

QUESTION: And since there are obviously political risks attached to this move, what are the political benefits that you expect?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FRIED: Well, the political benefit from greater security is obvious. The political risk from insecurity, should the Iranian threat develop as it might, is also obvious. This system is no good against the Russian ballistic missile capability. It has the potential to be effective against the Iranian threat, and the benefits to Europe are clear. It's also clear that the United States could defend its own territory without benefit of these systems, but it is better if our security is indivisible. And you know, as for Old Europe and New Europe, that's something forgotten and best forgotten.

I should say, though, with respect to Poland and the Czech Republic, that we have gone through some preliminary discussions, but we haven't started negotiating the details. The Poles and Czechs are going to have a lot of very legitimate questions. They're going to have military questions, financial questions, and legal questions. These are very legitimate.

This is -- we're going to sit down with them and look -- frankly, I look forward to being able to work through these issues in a very cooperative and transparent spirit.

MR. BAILY: Yes, sir.

QUESTION: Thank you. Marcin Gadzinski, Gazeta Wyborcza of Poland. A question for you, General. Sir, when you listened to General Baluyevsky actually threaten that Russia will withdraw from INF treaty, meaning will start building intermediate missiles, and you listen to the other general, your counterpart in Russian missile defense, when he says that Russia might target U.S. installations in Poland and Czech Republic, don't you feel this urge to really respond to talk like General to General, to use maybe more blunt language? And maybe you could start it today. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: And a question for Assistant Secretary Fried. Weren't you caught kind of off guard with Putin's speech in Munich and then General Baluyevsky talking about INF and then, you know, those other threats? Weren't you caught off guard with that escalation?

LTG OBERING: Well, first of all, I have had discussions with General Baluyevsky and I will continue to have discussions with General Baluyevsky. But as I said before, you know, we have been facing the Russians in the past and we have been allies with the Russians in the past. And as far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed with respect to that relationship.

What has changed is the threat that we see emerging from the Middle East, and I believe that the question that was asked earlier about the benefits, if I could address that in the context of your question as well, is we had a significant event last summer in the United States where we woke up one morning and discovered that the North Koreans were getting ready to launch a long-range missile that they had not told anybody what was on the top of. And all of a sudden, we had millions of Americans wake up and understand that they needed to have some confidence that we would be able to protect ourselves should that be a threat to the United States.

What we hope and what we are making sure does not happen is that we have a similar scenario play out in the next five years where you wake up and you find out that you have a threat that is threatening your borders and your neighbors that you can have a system to turn on the way we did last summer to protect yourself against that. And that is the overarching benefit, I believe, of what we're trying to do here. And as I said, I will continue to have discussions with General Baluyevsky.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FRIED: As to your question about surprises, well, I don't enjoy surprises but I have come to expect them from time to time, including from the Russians. The Russians made -- President Putin made the decision to give the kind of speech he gave. And Secretary -- Defense Secretary Gates responded, I think, with a dose of good humor and calm and perspective, which I think was exactly right.

The fact is we have a complicated relationship with Russia. We cooperate in some areas. We would like to cooperate in more areas and more deeply. Other areas we have differences with Russia. Now, the United States is capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time with respect to our Russia policy. We are capable of working with the Russians wherever we can, as much as we can, and dealing with our disagreements when they arise.

And as I said, with respect to issues like NATO enlargement, which President Putin raised, with respect to this missile defense system, with respect to certain aspects of Russian democracy or energy policy, we have spoken of our disagreements. With respect to other areas -- cooperation on Iran, on North Korea, hopefully cooperation on Kosovo -- we look forward to more of it. And we've got to be able to do both at the same time. Poland does the same thing. You speak out strongly in defense of your interests, yet you cooperate with Russia wherever possible. Very wise policy. We try to do the same.

MR. BAILY: We're going take a question from New York, please. We're calling New York. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Hi, I'm Adrian Novac from Romanian Television on Channel 1. And my question for you is --

MR. BAILY: We're not hearing --

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. BAILY: New York, we're not hearing your question. We're going to have to go someone else.

QUESTION: Andrew Gray from Reuters. I wonder if you could tell a little bit more about the extent of the protection that will be given by these initial facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic. What kind of area -- what kind of a shield and how big an area will that cover?

And could you also say what you would like to do with the United Kingdom? Would you like to place interceptors there as well? And how far are you along in your discussions on increased cooperation with the United Kingdom?

LTG OBERING: Actually, I brought a chart that will help you answer the first part. Steve, would you go to slide number 35?

To answer your question, the extended coverage that we would have from the interceptor site -- as you can see on the map, it would extend almost down to the Black Sea with respect to the coverage of the Europe -- it extends us close enough to where there's no longer a long-range threat to those countries. Otherwise, to be able to attack or target any of the nations that would be outside that coverage, they wouldn't do so with a long-range weapon. It would not be able to do that. It would have to be a shorter-range weapon, like a short-range ballistic missile or medium-range.

So this is geared toward the longer-range and the high-end intermediate-range ballistic missiles. And this is a combination of coverage between what we would have from Fort Greeley, from California and from Europe and all of the sensors tied in, versus an Iranian threat. So you see it's pretty good coverage.

And it goes back -- we are always pursuing areas where our interests and our allies' interests overlap. And we believe this is one of them, where we also get redundant coverage of the United States from that interceptor field. So we think it's a wise decision on our part and on our allies' part to put our heads together to do that.

QUESTION: And the U.K. in terms of --

LTG OBERING: The United Kingdom is a tremendous partner and we have a longstanding relationship with the United Kingdom in missile defense. We have a whole spectrum of activities that we've had with the United Kingdom with respect to cooperation with research, development, lethality testing, that type of thing. We will continue that relationship. We will -- we are always looking for new ways to partner with the United Kingdom, whether that is co-development or hosting or any of the activities of that nature. But I can't answer anything more specific than that at this time.

MR. BAILY: We're going to take that question in New York. Go ahead, New York.

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Adrian Novac from Romanian Television on Channel 1. My question for you is if the plans in Poland and Czech Republic will prove successful, would you consider expanding them to other countries in Eastern Europe? And I'm talking here about Romania or Bulgaria. Are these countries another option for you?

LTG OBERING: Actually, if we get the interceptors located in Poland and the radar site in Czech Republic, as you can see from the slide that I showed previously, we get the coverage that we would anticipate and expect, and we do not have any further plans at this point to expand into any additional nations over there.

MR. BAILY: Christophe.

QUESTION: Christoph von Marschall. I'm the U.S. correspondent of the German daily Der Tagesspiegel. I have a question for the General and one for Dan Fried.

And if I look from the Russian side, of course it was very convincing that you said today that it wouldn't -- had no effect to the balance, to the strategic balance between the United States and Russia. But if you had said you'll put all this up in two and a half years, and I would like to continue this idea on the timeline, then in 10 to 15 years might that not change if you have further technical development? If you place much more radars and interceptors, wouldn't it then affect if that might be one? That's my question to the general.

And to Dan Fried, we all try to understand what might be behind the Russian threats and, of course, we just can guess. One short-range guess would be the system is not very popular in the Czech Republic and the Polish government is just breaking apart. You have lost your main partner in the former Polish government, Radek Sikorski, so maybe they're just thinking it's a good idea to make troubles now and then you have to look for new partners. And the long-range thing could be maybe they would like you to share the technique with them. Do you have -- could you comment on those two guesses, whether there's the short-range or the long-range interest?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FRIED: Well, in my -- this is speculation. Although in my experience, it doesn't usually pay to threaten Poles or Czechs, and I think the response from the Poles and Czechs was predictable for anyone who has experience with them; no country likes to be told that it's going to be put in nuclear crosshairs. No country likes to be threatened in that way.

I don't -- and as for the Polish Government, you know, it's a democracy. I don't sense that, you know, whatever is going on domestically is going to impact this. We have a good relationship with the Poles. We look forward to working with the defense ministry and their experts as these discussions proceed both in Poland the Czech Republic. But those governments spoke for themselves and, frankly, I think they spoke rather well.

LTG OBERING: With respect to the -- you said 10 or 15 years in the future. Now, what I can say is this. We have funding that has been outlined all the way through 2013 today, and that funding supports what you see. And I don't know of anybody that's clamoring to be able to spend more money on missile defense in the United States, especially in the new phase that we are now entering into. Certainly, I don't see anybody trying to hand me more money.

But be that as it may, we are trying to pace this development based on what we see happening with respect to the threat. And therefore, again, this is targeted for the Middle Eastern threat and we will react they way they do, but I think it will be many, many, many, many, many years before they would be able to present anywhere near the capabilities that the Russians, for example, have today.

MR. BAILY: One very short question.

QUESTION: My name is Masaya Oikawa with Japanese newspaper Mainichi, and I'd like to ask about China's space missile test, which might be something that could pose a threat to your BMD system, especially in terms of satellite system. How do you estimate the threat of it and do you have any countermeasure against it?

LTG OBERING: Well, first of all, the Chinese launch represented years and years of work on their part in terms of what they demonstrated, even though their success in doing that was obviously a surprise, I think, around the world. I will say this, though. It does not present a threat to the ballistic missile defense system that I've outlined here with respect our capabilities against North Korea or what we are building toward for the Middle East. It may do so in the future, but it does not today based on what we have seen them to be able to demonstrate.

And the missile defense system, as I've said before, we have capabilities that we are fielding against the North Koreans and the potential threat from Iran. We have a development program that we could begin to address things like that type of development with respect to China, but that's not something that we have any plans or intent to field.

MR. BAILY: Thank you, all, very much. I'm afraid our briefers have to go. Thank you.

Source: US Department of State, http://www.state.gov.