So where is that European missile defense radar?

On September 17th, President Obama scrapped the Bush administration’s plans for missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. That day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman General James Cartwright gave a briefing on the Obama administration’s “stronger, smarter, and swifter” European missile defense program.

On September 17th I had both praise and some doubts for the new plan. I liked the shift to a distributed, flexible, and more mobile system. On the other hand, the plan seemed vague and incomplete and not very reassuring to allies in eastern Europe. In particular, I wondered where the X-band radar, previously slated for the Czech Republic and highly praised for its capabilities by General Cartwright, was going to end up. Without a convincing plan for missile defense sensors in Europe, it is hard to claim that there really is a missile defense plan for Europe.

It seems as if vagueness on the X-band radar and other sensors has turned into confusion and perhaps paralysis. In the end, Russian objections to high-powered missile defense radars, and the Obama administration’s acquiescence to those objections, is for now gutting the administration’s credibility on European missile defense. The Bush administration found out that its missile defense sensors would annoy the Russians but that annoyance would not stop the U.S. from having a missile defense system in Europe. The Obama team does not seem —to reach this same conclusion. Until it does, it does not really have a European missile defense plan.

Let’s go back to the September 17th Gates and Cartwright briefing at the Pentagon. First, here is Cartwright discussing the virtues of the X-band radar:

But we’ve also added mobile and re-locatable radars: the X-band radar that is in Japan, the X-band radar that we currently have deployed to Israel, one that will be probably deployed someplace in Europe, to be part of this European lay down. That system has proved to be very, very effective and very capable.

The Bush plan had such a radar in the Czech Republic. This annoyed the Russians and led to the Obama team relocating it, as Cartwright explains in this confusing and contradictory excerpt:

It’s [the X-band radar] probably more likely to be in The Caucasus that we would base that, because it’s to get the early tracks. So that likely would be more down in The Caucasus … On the X-band radar, what we’re trying to get — the first question really has to do with Russia and their perception of a threat, from the radar that would have been in the Czech Republic. And that radar is an omni-directional radar. In other words, it sees 360 degrees. And it has a very deep peering capability into Russia. And the worry would be that we would be able then to see very early the launches if Russia were launching their ICBMs and that could be perceived as destabilizing. The X-band radar is a single directional. In other words, when you put it down, it points in a single direction. And it will be very clear that it is pointing south towards Iran.

Confusing or not, the X-band radar is going to “the Caucasus,” right? Probably not, according to this story from the Wall Street Journal:

“We are not consulting with any non-NATO countries and we do not envisage the emplacement of elements of our new architecture on the territory of any non-NATO states,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Sandy Vershbow, who had been quoted in the initial reports that rattled Moscow, told reporters Tuesday in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

This also terminated an idea of using radars in Ukraine for the European missile defense system.

So where is that European X-band radar going? Romania or Bulgaria? From the Russians’ point of view, those are no different than the Czech Republic. How about Turkey? I have seen no mention of Turkey as a site. Perhaps the Turkish government has already quietly and preemptively rejected the idea.

The conclusion is that the sensor plan for the European missile defense system is even vaguer than it was on September 17th. Cartwright discussed plans to site an X-band radar, which by his words seems very important to the system, somewhere “in the Caucasus.” But the Pentagon has since scratched that idea. Cartwright also discussed a concept of distributed space-based and airborne sensors for missile defense. But that vague concept looks more like a theory than an actual capability, like the X-band radar.

It is Russian objections that removed the X-band radar from the Czech Republic and that are keeping it out of the Ukraine, Georgia, the Caucasus, or anywhere else in Russia’s “near abroad.” Without missile defense sensors in Europe, there is no European missile defense system. The Obama administration’s European missile defense plan is not looking “stronger, smarter, and swifter.”