Russia's permanent representative to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has recently voiced the concern that the U.S. still plans to base anti-ballistic missile facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic [16] in spite of statements by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last September 17 that previous plans for both countries are being replaced by "stronger, smarter, and swifter" deployments.
The U.S. has not substituted the missile encirclement of Russia with that of China. It is conducting both simultaneously.
As it is doing so, the Pentagon announced on February 12 that "A U.S. high-powered airborne laser weapon shot down a ballistic missile in the first successful test of a futuristic directed energy weapon, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said...." [17]
A Reuters report of the test launched from a base in California over the Pacific Ocean, one which has been touted as finally realizing the Ronald Reagan administration's plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars, described its purpose: "The airborne laser weapon is aimed at...providing the U.S. military with the ability to engage all classes of ballistic missiles at the speed of light while they are in the boost phase of flight." [18]
One of weapon's manufacturers, the Boeing Company, issued a press release for the occasion which said in part: "This experiment marks the first time a laser weapon has engaged and destroyed an in-flight ballistic missile, and the first time that any system has accomplished it in the missile's boost phase of flight....The laser is the most powerful ever installed on an aircraft...." [19]
Northrop Grumman, another partner in the project (Lockheed Martin being the third), added: "While ballistic missiles like the one ALTB [Airborne Laser Testbed] destroyed move at speeds of about 4,000 miles [6,500 km] per hour, they are no match for a superheated, high-energy laser beam racing towards it at 670 million mph [one billion kph]." [20]
The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency was no less enthusiastic about the results, stating "The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defence, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometres...." [21]
The airborne laser weapon is mounted on a modified Boeing 747 commercial airliner. Its potential range is global.
Ten days later it was reported by the U.S. Army that the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico will receive a new laser weapon and "The Army may soon blast missiles out of the sky with a laser beam." The weapon contains "100-kilowatt lasers that can rapidly heat a target, causing catastrophic events such as warhead explosions or airframe failures."
Pentagon officials said it has "successfully worked in the laboratory and on the battlefield and now they want to begin shooting down missiles with it." [22]
Airborne laser anti-missile weapons will join the full spectrum of land, sea, air and space interceptor missile components to envelope the world with a system to neutralize other nations' deterrence capacity and prepare the way for conventional and nuclear first strikes.
1) Bloomberg News, March 1, 2010
2) Bloomberg News, March 2, 2010
3) Wikipedia
4) China Daily, February 22, 2010
5) Warsaw Business Journal, March 2, 2010
6) China Daily, February 22, 2010
7) Russian Information Agency Novosti, February 24, 2010
8) Stars and Stripes, February 25, 2010
9) Voice of Russia, March 2, 2010
10) Roman Tomberg, Collapse of the G-2 Myth, or Stalemate in China-US
Relations
Strategic Culture Foundation, March 2, 2010
11) Russia Today, February 27, 2010
12) Polish Radio, February 28, 2010
13) Associated Press, February 9, 2010
14) Associated Press, February 19, 2010
15) Russian Information Agency Novosti, February 24, 2010
16) Voice of Russia, February 23, 2010
17) Reuters, February 12, 2010
18) Ibid
19) Defense News, February 12, 2010
20) Associated Press, February 13, 2010
21) The Guardian, February 12, 2010
22) MyStateline.com, February 22, 2010
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