Obama's Europe missile defense plan -- the good and the bad

Today President Obama scrapped the Bush administration's plan to install 10 ground-based interceptor (GBI) missiles and a high-powered radar in Poland and the Czech Republic. Instead, Obama proposed a distributed four-phase build-up of missile defense capability in Europe, focusing at first on the shorter range missile threats from Iran and later on potential intermediate (IRBM) and intercontinental (ICBM) range threats. Progressively improved versions of the U.S. Navy's Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) will be the centerpiece of the new architecture.

The Obama announcement (followed up by a press conference with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General James Cartwright, USMC) is essentially a redefinition of the U.S. response to the broad Iranian ballistic missile threat. The Bush plan was focused on hedging against an Iranian IRBM/ICBM threat, thought to be possible around 2015. The Iranian short and medium range missile threat was always a known problem but in the Bush era was managed separately. The Obama team has redefined the "Europe missile defense" issue by encompassing the entire Iranian ballistic missile threat, which in the short run won't involve Europe at all (unless you count Turkey in Europe).

In any case, here, lifted from the White House website, is the four-phase plan:

• Phase One (in the 2011 timeframe) -- Deploy current and proven missile defense systems available in the next two years, including the sea-based Aegis Weapon System, the SM-3 interceptor (Block IA), and sensors such as the forward-based Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance system (AN/TPY-2), to address regional ballistic missile threats to Europe and our deployed personnel and their families;

• Phase Two (in the 2015 timeframe) -- After appropriate testing, deploy a more capable version of the SM-3 interceptor (Block IB) in both sea- and land-based configurations, and more advanced sensors, to expand the defended area against short- and medium-range missile threats;

• Phase Three (in the 2018 timeframe) -- After development and testing are complete, deploy the more advanced SM-3 Block IIA variant currently under development, to counter short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missile threats; and

• Phase Four (in the 2020 timeframe) -- After development and testing are complete, deploy the SM-3 Block IIB to help better cope with medium- and intermediate-range missiles and the potential future ICBM threat to the United States.

On to the good and the bad.

The Good

1. From a purely military view, "distributed, adaptable, and flexible" are preferable to the two static sites formerly proposed for Poland and the Czech Republic.

2. Cost. The Obama plan recognizes rule #1 for missile defense: the marginal cost of an interceptor must be less than the marginal cost of the missile it is to intercept. In order for missile defense to make sense, it must be cheaper to build interceptors than offensive missiles. The plan projects that the future SM-3 IIB ICBM killer will be much cheaper than the current GBI and presumably cheaper than an Iranian ICBM. Thus the U.S. will be able to produce and deploy interceptors in quantity to defend against barrage attacks.

3. The Obama plan recognizes (as did planners in the Bush years) that the current short-range Iranian threat requires defending against dozens or scores of missiles at a time.

4. Burden sharing. The Obama plan will use systems such as SM-3, Aegis, PAC-3, etc. that are in use by other allied countries, thus sharing the cost.

The Bad

1. From a political and diplomatic perspective, "distributed, adaptable, and flexible" are not reassuring words to allies. The Obama plan is vague and undefined. Allies are rightly wondering whether they will get the benefits of a U.S. defense presence, when exactly these new capabilities will come on line, what the coverage will be, who will be in, who will be out, etc. And how all of these things will change under a distributed defense architecture as the threat and technology change.

2. The GBI is the only capability the U.S. has to intercept an ICBM. Under the Obama plan, the GBI is out with respect to the Iranian threat. The SM-3 IIB is supposed to substitute for the GBI around 2020, about five years after the GBI was to be ready in Europe (to defend the U.S. against an Iranian ICBM). The U.S. intelligence community better hope that its new forecast on Iranian ICBM arrival is both correct and won't change for the worse between now and then.

3. The new plan calls for the system's X-band radar, a very important component in the system, to now be located "somewhere in the Caucasus." Where exactly? How stable and defensible will that position be? The U.S. is moving it there from the Czech Republic to pacify the Russians -- down south it won't be able to peer across Russia. But if the U.S. puts the radar in, say, Georgia, thus tying Georgia into a virtual U.S. defense alliance, will the Russians be happy with that? And if not Georgia, then where?

In sum, the Obama plan gets some military aspects right but some political aspects wrong. The plan's vagueness is unsettling. It puts a proper short-term emphasis on the short and medium-range missile problem -- but everyone already knew about that problem. And it takes a gamble with the ICBM threat.

The big payoff is supposed to be Russian cooperation on Iran's nuclear program and other issues. We'll have to wait and see about that. And after the Russians look this over, they might miss the Bush plan.