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HomeMEDIA RESOURCES200911 February 2009 - NATO MPs DEBATE MISSILE DEFENCE WITH CONGRESS AND VISIT DEPLOYED INTERCEPTORS

11 February 2009 - NATO MPs DEBATE MISSILE DEFENCE WITH CONGRESS AND VISIT DEPLOYED INTERCEPTORS

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As of late January, with the transition to the Obama Administration only in its earliest stages, definitive statements on major lines of the new government’s policy were impossible, outside of several broad themes including increased attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a greater multilateral and cooperative diplomatic engagement, and an intent to improve relations with Russia.

In addition, a broad bipartisan consensus in the United States regarding the overall value of pursuing missile defences continues to hold, even if the Obama Administration has not as yet expressed the same enthusiasm for these programs as its predecessor.  The future of the proposed deployments of system components in the Czech Republic and Poland was very much undecided. 

Finally, missile defence technology had matured significantly during the Bush Administration, with operational interceptors in California and Alaska as well as shorter-range systems tied together with deployed sensors and satellites through a complex command and control architecture intended to be interoperable with any future NATO capabilities in this area.  However, ongoing testing of long-range ground-based interceptor systems had not yet demonstrated their full effectiveness in real-world conditions. 

These were the principal conclusions that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Defence and Security Committee brought back from their annual visit to the United States in January of 2009.  The delegation, composed of 33 members of parliament from 17 NATO member states and led by Committee Chairman Julio Miranda Calha, visited Washington for discussions with the 111th Congress, senior career executive branch officials, and independent experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). 

In addition, the delegation visited the headquarters of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and conducted site visits of the Missile Defence Integrated Operations Center at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado and the missile defence interceptors based at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. 

(For full report see : http://www.nato-pa.int/default.asp?SHORTCUT=1715)

 

 
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