Defense Articles

Taiwan hopes to join a joint missile defense project promoted by Japan and the United States in the future even though it understands the ”realistic difficulties” of doing so in view of problems with China, Taipei’s de facto envoy to the United States said in a recent interview.

Jaushien Joseph Wu also said Taiwan is very worried about China’s increasing military advantage, stressing that the missile threat is ”very serious.”

Wu, economic and culture representative to the United States, is known to be very close to Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian. He assumed the Washington post in mid-April, the first person from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which takes a pro-independence stance, to do so.

Asked about the possibility of Taiwan joining the missile shield project, Wu said, ”Of course, the hope is there, but we also understand the realistic difficulties.”

While acknowledging that Taiwan’s participation is ”politically sensitive” as it may provoke China, Wu said it ”will be good for Japan and we are very glad that Japan is better protected from missiles because what we see is that Japan is not only threatened by North Korea but also (by) China.”

”And if Japan can be better protected, there can be further opportunities for Japan and Taiwan to work together in an urgent matter,” he said.

Expressing concern over Beijing’s growing military might, Wu said the military balance is shifting in China’s favor ”and it seems to be getting worse.”

”We have a very serious concern about that,” he said.

Wu also stressed the importance of implementing the 2001 agreement between the United States and Taiwan in which Washington promised to sell advanced arms to Taipei, including Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor systems and P3C anti-submarine patrol aircraft. It has stalled because the opposition National Party, or Kuomintang, strongly opposes including the purchase in Taiwan’s budget.

On China’s military buildup, Wu pointed out that China has increased the number of its combat fighters such as the Russian-designed Suhkoi 30 and the Suhkoi 27 models.

As a result, Taiwan’s air force does not have the capability to counter a Chinese air assault because the Taiwanese air force deploys the aging A and B models of F-16 fighters designed by the United States.

Wu also said that Taiwan has been trying to buy the newer C and D models of the F-16 fighter from the United States, but negotiations have become deadlocked because the 2001 arms agreement has not been implemented.

Wu estimated that more than 1,000 Chinese missiles are pointed at Taiwan. ”So we need to have the PAC3,” he said.

”This is the (situation) Taiwan faces in terms of cross-strait military balance,” he added.

”The American military experts continue to tell us that it takes only 12 to 16 submarines to have a blockade of Taiwan,” Wu said, which means the Chinese ”have more than what they need to blockade Taiwan already.”

Washington maintains a ”one-China” policy of recognizing Beijing as the sole government, while keeping informal contacts with Taipei and committing to sell arms for self-defense and defend the island from aggression under the Taiwan Relations Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1979.

But China has objected to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan based on a 1982 communique signed by Washington and Beijing in which the United States agreed to decrease arms sales to Taiwan over time.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2002-Despite a few misfires and a ground-based booster system that’s back on the drawing board, the head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency says heis confident the system “will work.”

It has to

The United States currently has no overall proven defense capability against an enemy ballistic missile attack. In fight of threats by hostile states and terrorist groups, however, President Bush directed-the Pentagon today to begin fielding initial defense capabilities by the year 2004. He cited the need “to protect U.S. national security and the security of its allies and friendly countries.”

A special commission in 2001 assessing the ballistic missile threat to the United States listed China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Iraq, and Iran as countries that have or have been working to develop ballistic missiles.

At a briefing today, air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish said he is confident the United States is ready to proceed with initial testing of what is called “hit- to-kill capability Kadish is the Director of the Missile Defense Agency, the organization responsible for research, development, and testing of all the components of the program.

“What we do know is that our fundamental technology of hit-to-kill works. A few years ago, I could not tell you that with confidence,” Kadish said.

“The system testing that we have done gives us the confidence that we have the ability to integrate these elements, as complex as they are, and to make them effective,” he said. “Our computer predictions.., are telling us when-we do have a successful test, it occurs justas we predicted.”

Kadish has good reason to be confident–and Video-tape to back the Missile Defense Agency test results. During tests in 2001 and 2002, the agency was able - to destroy four of five missiles in long-range, ground based intercepts, two of four using the Army’s Pa triot Advanced Capability 3 missile system and three - of three short to medium range missiles using ship based intercepts

“Some things will work and-some things wont but we will build confidence over time as we invest in this program,” he said. That investment is expected. -to-cost about $8 billion a year and Kadish said he will ask Congress to appropriate-another $1.5 billion over-the next two years for certain development capabilities. These include.

* Up to 20 ground-based interceptor missiles capa-ble of taking out ICBMs. [Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles] during mid-flight–16 at. Fort Greeley; Alaska, and four at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

* Up to 20 sea-based interceptor missiles employed on existing Aegis destroyers.

* Deployment of air-transportable patriot PAC-3s to intercept short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

* Land-, sea- and space-based sensors.

* Upgrades to existing early-warning satellites and radars in the United Kingdom and Greenland.

* Development of a sea-based X-band radar and up-grades to-sensors currently on Aegis cruisers and destroyers.

Kadish described the missile defense program as aggressive and ongoing He said that results of recent testing and analysis have given-hisagency the confidence to move forward.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry “Trey” Obering, Missile Defense Agency director, announced that Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, U.S. Air Force (Retired), is the third recipient of the Ronald Reagan Missile Defense Award, an annual honor awarded to individuals or organizations to recognize outstanding support, innovation and engineering, and scientific achievement associated with technologies designed to defend against ballistic missile attack. Kadish served as director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and the Missile Defense Agency from 1999 to 2004.

Previous recipients of the Ronald Reagan Missile Defense Award were former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in 2003 and retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James A. Abrahamson, the first director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization.

The U.S. nuclear deterrent worked for 40 years against the Soviets, so why won’t it work now against lesser powers, armed with drastically fewer nuclear weapons than Moscow? Once the cruder, practical arguments against a U.S. missile defense are cleared away-it simply won’t work, it’s too expensive, etc.-the most sophisticated and best case against a defense hangs on this argument: Nuclear deterrence worked without a missile defense for decades, making a defense now at best superfluous, at worst a destabilizing force.

This argument has been made, in various forms, by Michael Kinsley, Thomas Friedman, Robert Wright, Christopher Hitchens, and a slew of Democratic politicians. Fancier than the average soundbite, it is the Belvedere vodka of anti-missile-defense arguments. But the case for nuclear deterrence made by these new, liberal Dr. Strangeloves is shot through with misunderstandings, beginning with the fundamental question of how-and how well-deterrence actually worked against the Soviets. Deterrence essentially involves convincing a state that the costs of a given action will be higher than any potential benefits. It is not nearly as easy as it looks, especially in the post-Cold War world.

A small circle of conservative defense strategists has in recent years updated Cold War deterrence theory, and perhaps foremost in this circle is Keith Payne, a scholar who runs a small think tank called the National Institute for Public Policy. Payne has worked closely with defense analysts who now occupy the top levels of the Bush administration, and has written a new book-The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction-that is an essential text for understanding the reasoning behind the administration’s push for missile defense. (Asked whom to talk to about the current state of deterrence theory, one nuclear expert quipped, “If you talked to Keith Payne, you’ve talked to everyone.”) Properly understood, deterrence is more subtle and less foolproof than the simplistic version advanced by Kinsley & Co., and certainly requires a missile defense to bolster it.

Opponents of missile defense misunderstand the purpose of the U.S. nuclear deterrent in the Cold War at the most basic level. As former CIA director Jim Woolsey has written in NR (June 19, 2000), the deterrent was never primarily to dissuade the Soviet Union from launching a city-busting, out-of-the-blue nuclear strike against America (although that was important). It was meant to deter a conventional attack against Western Europe. The West didn’t have the conventional arms to oppose such an attack on the ground, so the United States always let the possibility of its first-use of nuclear weapons hang in the air, a not-so-subtle way to discourage the Soviets from rolling their armor across the Fulda Gap.

The problem for the U.S. in today’s international environment is precisely that its deterrence policy did work in the Cold War. It demonstrated that a nuclear force can make the potential costs of war too high even for an adversary who possesses an overwhelming conventional advantage. Today, the Fulda Gap is much less important than simply The Gap, and it is the U.S. that may need to project an overwhelming conventional power, probably in the Middle East and Asia. The nuclear deterrence that worked against the Soviets can now readily be turned against the United States. Is America, as Keith Payne asks, willing to absorb greater costs-perhaps entire cities destroyed-than the Soviets? Unlikely. Will the stakes in a foreseeable crisis be higher for the U.S. than they were for the Soviets? Unlikely again, since the Soviet Union was contending over the fate of Europe, while the United States may be contending over the fate of Taiwan.

Some missile-defense critics acknowledge that the U.S. will be deterred by new nuclear states. “The possession of nukes would probably give a dictator more leeway in world affairs, [and] great powers might be less inclined to confront such a dictator,” wrote Robert Wright, a dogged opponent of missile defense, recently in Slate. This is precisely the effect that the United States has to fear in the post-Cold War world, and its massive nuclear force is powerless to counter it. In fact, the size and structure of the force probably never had quite the importance attributed to it. Arms-controllers during the Cold War obsessed over tiny adjustments in the U.S. and Soviet missile forces, and deterrence became mostly about number-crunching game theory-Gradgrind does nuclear weapons.

As Payne points out, this niggling over the specific mix of weapons was a luxury, possible only because the strategic situation with the Soviets was fairly stable. The Soviets were a revolutionary power, but generally showed little taste for provoking a major war and had a bureaucratic power structure and a decision-making process that we understood fairly well. So, deterrence theorists assumed away all the really nettlesome questions about the Soviets, about their goals, their ideology, their culture. Cold War theorists, Payne writes, “derived grand conclusions about deterrence based on the one factor that is relatively easily measured, i.e., the balance of nuclear forces.” Not every U.S. adversary for all time will be as well understood, or as predictable.

Twenty church leaders from Canada’s major denominations have written to Prime Minister Paul Martin urging that Canada abandon any plans to join with the United States in its Ballistic Missile Defense strategy. “The extraordinary squandering of resources in the vain pursuit of technological immunity from nuclear weapons is itself an offense against the will of the Creator,” said the church leaders in a four-page letter dated March 15.

Signed by the national leaders of the 20 member churches of the Canadian Council of Churches, The letter was prompted by current negotiations which could result in Canada’s lending support to the U.S. initiative to build a ground-based missile defense system. “We cannot afford to waste time and resources on an unworkable strategic missile defense scheme. The world cannot afford it,” said Karen Hamilton, the church council’s general secretary.

WASHINGTON — A historic moment took place July 22 at Fort Greely, Alaska, as the first ground-based missile interceptor (GBI) was placed in an underground silo at the missile defense complex there.

Army Maj. Gen. John W. Holly said the emplacement of the interceptor “marks the end of an era where we have not been able to defend our country against long-range ballistic missile attacks.” He is the director for the Missile Defense Agency’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense Joint Program Office.

Holly noted there are countries that possess weapons of mass destruction and have the ability to launch ballistic missiles that could impact the United States.

The Alaska interceptor emplacement took place the same day that the House and Senate approved the $417 billion fiscal 2005 DoD budget. About $10 billion of that money goes for missile defense. The defense authorization bill now goes to President Bush for signature.

Missile Defense Agency (MDA) spokesman Chris Taylor said up to five more interceptors will be emplaced at Fort Greely, located 100 miles from Fairbanks, by the end of 2004. The agency hopes to have up to 10 more interceptors emplaced by the end of 2005, he added.

The July 22 event signaled the first interceptor in the ground for the MDA, the outcome of President Bush’s December 2002 directive that the secretary of defense provide an initial capability in 2004. The system was developed in response to a near-term ballistic missile threat to the United States, deployed forces, and allied countries.

The emplacement of the first GBI does not mean the missile defense system is operational, according to an MDA release. This will happen after more interceptors are emplaced and the interconnected architecture of radars, sensors, battle management and command, control, and communications is activated.

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In December 2001, President Bush gave Russia six months’ notice that the United States was withdrawing from its Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in order to pursue an ABM system.

DoD’s initial plan for a missile defense capability called for up to 20 GBIs capable of intercepting and destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles during the midcourse phase of flight, a period that offers the greatest opportunity for a “hit to kill.”

In addition to those planned for Fort Greely, another four are slated for Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., by 2005. The plan also calls for sea-based interceptors to be employed on existing Navy Aegis-class ships for a shoot-down capability against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles threatening the United States.

Up to 15 Aegis-class destroyers and three cruisers will be equipped with a long-range surveillance and tracking capability by the end of calendar 2006. The cruisers will also have the capability of shooting down potential enemy threats with the Standard Missile-3.

The department also seeks to deploy air-transportable Patriot Advanced Capability-3 systems as another means to stop short- and medium-range missiles.

The plans also call for targeting incoming missiles by using land-, sea-, and space-based sensors and existing early-warning satellites, as well as upgraded radar now located at Shemya, Alaska. By the end of calendar year 2005, a sea-based x-band radar will also be in place at Adak, Alaska.

In addition, DoD requested that the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Denmark upgrade early-warning radars on their territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed Thursday that the United States and Russia jointly use a radar system in the central Asian country of Azerbaijan to erect a missile shield that would protect all of Europe.

Putin said Moscow will drop its opposition to the planned missile shield in central Europe and that he will not seek to retarget his country’s missiles on Europe as he threatened to if Washington accepts his proposal.

”Vladimir and I just had a very constructive dialogue, particularly about missile defense,” U.S. President George W. Bush told reporters after emerging from talks with Putin.

Bush had earlier proposed basing a radar system in the Czech Republic, and rockets in Poland, but Putin offered a counterproposal that the United States install the radar system in Azerbaijan instead, and said it was premature to talk about rockets.

Putin’s counterproposal features using a radar station in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, which Russia rents. Azerbaijan is willing to let the United States and Russia use it together if it helps promote global security and stability, he said.

”This will make it possible for us not to change our policy on targeting our missiles,” the Russian leader said. ”On the contrary, this will create the necessary grounds for common work.”

The two men also agreed to set up a working group to deepen talks on the missile shield issue, with technical experts from both nations looking into who will be participants in it and when its meetings will take place.

”We both agreed to have a strategic dialogue,” Bush said.

Bush and Putin met on the fringes of the annual summit of the Group of Eight nations in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm, Germany, amid tensions over the U.S. plans to build a missile shield in central Europe.

Bush described the Russian president’s proposal as ”interesting” and said he will discuss the issue again with Putin during two days of talks starting July 1 in Kennebunkport, Maine, at the Bush family’s oceanfront compound.

”We think it was a positive development and offered the prospect of kind of bridging the gap on this issue,” said Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Asked if Putin would tolerate the stationing of interceptors in Poland, Hadley said the Russian leader sees that part of the project as unnecessary at this juncture in the absence of imminent threats.

”His view is that the deployment of interceptors at his point is premature, because the long-range missiles that they would be designed against have not yet emerged,” he said.

Tensions were growing between the United States and Russia because of the plans. Putin recently likened the Bush administration to the Third Reich, and last week he denounced the United States for ”imperialism.”

Though Washington says the missile defense shield plans are intended to counter threats from ”rogue” states such as North Korea or Iran, Putin warned Monday that Moscow could redeploy missiles aimed at targets in Europe in retaliation.

Bush had tried several times to calm Russia’s anger over the U.S. plans in the past couple of days. He said Wednesday that Russia is ”not our enemy” and is ”not going to attack Europe.” He also said Thursday, ”This is not an issue to be hyperventilating about.”

Russia is not alone in opposing the project. Opinion polls in the Czech Republic, a former Soviet satellite but now a democratic North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, show more than two-thirds of the public are against the plans.

However, Bush and Czech President Vaclav Klaus and Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek reaffirmed during their talks in Prague on Tuesday that they will join forces to proceed with the anti-missile system project.

The first round of negotiations on a missile defense system between the United States and the Czech Republic was held last week, followed by the opening of similar talks between the United States and Poland earlier this week.

In addition to missile defense, Bush criticized Russia on the issue of democracy during his stay in Prague on Tuesday. ”In Russia, reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development,” he said.

Bush is visiting Germany on the second leg of his eight-day, seven-nation European tour ending next Monday. He made a trip to the Czech Republic earlier this week, and will visit Poland and other nations from Friday.

Dramatic changes have been made in the way in which the Department of Defense develops and procures weapon systems. There is a movement away from the strict requirements-based approach that emphasized a formalized identification of deficiencies, an identifiable and predictable threat, and strict system performance parameters. In the vanguard of this defense acquisition process revolution is the Missile Defense Agency’s embrace of capabilities-based acquisition and spiral development. Since its adoption of these processes in January 2002, the MDA has made remarkable progress in restructuring its approach to the development of a fully integrated ballistic missile defense system (BMDS). The MDA is now faced, however, with an even larger–and perhaps more difficult–task: turning these principles into formalized and institutionalized programmatic processes in the face of significant cultural and organizational challenges. Those challenges are based on the fact that MDA’s approach significantly alters the the traditional roles and responsibilities of acquisition organizations, operational units, and contractors.

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The MDA’s approach is unprecedented for such a large program. Although some DoD acquisition organizations have, in the past, bridged the organizational and cultural gap between research and development and operational use, the BMDS will be the first large-scale program that comes into operation while still, in effect, in an R & D mode. This capability-based approach calls into question who “owns” the particular system and significantly alters the traditional DoD role of the acquisition community.

Although much of MDA’s acquisition approach is still undergoing refinement, the fundamental precepts are in place. Despite recent testing setbacks, a rudimentary missile defense system will soon go operational, the overall BMDS program management of the system remaining with MDA. There will be no formal turnover from the acquisition community to the Services for many of the missile defense elements and components. MDA will concurrently test and operate the BMDS while on alert, and day-to-day operations will be performed by a mix of contractors, National Guard, and servicemembers. Contractor logistics support (versus a large Service-led logistics “tail”) will be the key to maintaining the system. These initiatives are a significant break with existing DoD processes and will serve as a model for the development and fielding of large-scale future joint systems.

Unique Nature of the BMDS Program

There is a well-established and formalized process for transitioning a system from R & D to operational use that allows the Service to formally identify and allocate funding to operate the system, to train personnel, and to develop logistics procedures. A variety of factors, however, will require the BMDS to operate in a manner that is not in clear concert with the existing DoD processes. Although these factors are unique, they have relevance to other future high tech joint systems. A major issue is that BMDS elements and components will be fielded in very small numbers; for example, only a handful of ground-based mid-course interceptors are initially planned. This is in contrast with most weapon systems, which are produced using a fairly rigid lockstep process, manufactured in mass quantities, and often require a long logistics and maintenance tail. A modern BMDS negates the need for a large number of military personnel to be identified, trained, and equipped.

Another unique factor is that unlike most DoD weapon systems under development currently, the BMDS will provide a new capability that is non-existent today: the interception and destruction of an incoming ballistic missile. Since the BMDS provides a new capability, integration testing–both horizontally and vertically–occurs across the entire system, as opposed to the long series of formalized processes and regression tests that are necessary to ensure that adding a new capability does not degrade existing capabilities. The lack of any current capability today to defeat a ballistic missile attack negates the need to defer fielding of the BMDS.

Another consideration is the unprecedented level of integration required among BMDS early warning sensors, weapons sensors, and interceptors. The speed required to track, identify, and engage a ballistic missile calls for an extraordinary level of sensor fusion. No single sensor or weapon can achieve the capability required to engage a ballistic missile traveling at high speeds across oceans and continents. Only through continued, centralized management of all BMD systems will MDA be successful in developing a program that meets the unique characteristics of a missile defense engagement.

Restructuring the Missile Defense Program

MDA’s approach was brought about by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s January 2002 memorandum on MDA program direction, which fundamentally restructured the missile defense program by canceling the missile defense operational requirements documents (ORDs). This was the most fundamental redirection of the missile defense program since its inception in 1983. Like all ORDs, the missile defense ORDs mandated discrete and exact levels of effectiveness (key performance parameters) for each missile defense element. A theater air and missile defense capstone requirements document was also established; it laid out the overall framework for the entire missile defense mission.

As Delivered by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, Washington, DC, Monday, March 20, 2006

Speech by the Honorable Gordon England

Deputy Secretary of Defense

4th Annual U.S. Missile Defense Conference

20 March 2006

“Missile Defense as an Element of National Security”

Good morning! Thanks to Lt. Gen. Obering for the warm introduction.

Trey is a great guy. Did you know that Trey is a student of Dr. Friedman, the famous economist? Dr. Friedman was teaching a class one day, and he saw that one of his students had fallen fast asleep. So he marched over and demanded, “What was the answer to my last question?”

The startled student blurted out, “I don’t know the question, but the answer is increase the money supply!”

It’s also good to see another great American on the agenda–General “Hoss” Cartwright. And I want to say thanks to him, too, for letting me be his warm-up act!

It is a distinct pleasure to be here this morning with the ballistic missile defense community–from MDA, other agencies, the Services, Combatant Commands, and industry.

You are the experts on missile defense, and I can’t add anything to your knowledge in that field. What I can do today, is to put your work building a top-notch missile defense system into the broader strategic context of defending freedom and liberty for our Nation, and our friends and allies.

Our new National Security Strategy, released last week, stresses a very important theme: we have never before faced greater uncertainty about future security conditions, than we do today.

This is a critical time for America. America is fighting a war against dispersed networks of terrorist extremists. They know they can’t succeed with conventional methods, so they use asymmetric means to challenge us and our allies. Their goal is to break our resolve and shatter our way of life. On 9/11, terrorists turned civilian airliners into guided missiles, killing some 3000 people of 60 nationalities. The only reason they didn’t kill 30K or 3M was because they hadn’t figured out how to do it.

But the Long War against terrorist extremists is only part of the nation’s security challenge.

Hostile states or non-state actors could acquire and use weapons of mass destruction, to devastating effect. And the nation also faces the possibility that a major or emerging power could choose a hostile course.

Today, we face a wide array of security challenges and concerns, and each is potent.

Where does a missile threat fit into this picture? The answer is, “almost everywhere.” 26 nations currently have ballistic missiles, and there were nearly 80 ballistic missile launches around the world last year.

Iranand North Korea–countries that our new National Security Strategy calls “tyrannies”–continue to pursue

Terrorists would obtain WMD if they could, and they’re trying. As one of al-Qaeda’s ringleaders, al-Zawahiri said in 2001, “The need is to inflict the maximum casualties against the opponent … for this is the language understood by the west, no matter how much time and effort such operations take.”

The new National Security Strategy says, “The first duty of the US Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests.”

Missile defense was, and is, a critical part of our strategy for protecting America. Both the new National Security Strategy and the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review underscore the need for a strong missile defense capability.

Missile defense is a central part of our broader national strategy, a strategy that can only be realized over time and with a great deal of hard work, and I thank you for your steadfast commitment to this task.

The NSS identifies the proliferation of nuclear weapons as one of the greatest threats to our national security. Ballistic missile defenses provide a critical layer of defense for protecting America against the danger of WMD-armed missile attacks.

* The Cold War-era, “one size fits all” notion of deterrence is no longer appropriate to the challenges of the 21st century.

* The updated, “New Triad” concept reinforced in the QDR provides a set of approaches that are more tailorable to a range of potential adversaries, and to range of missiles. I expect that General Cartwright will have more to say on this subject. The new concept includes, as an essential element, an integrated ballistic and cruise missile system.

During the 40 long years of the Cold War, America maintained a steadfast commitment and resolve.

The threats our Nation face today will require the same commitment, the will and resolve that the American people demonstrated during the Cold War. It’s not about a single President or a single Congress. The Cold War commitment spanned Conservatives, Liberals, Democrats and Republicans and across many terms. Although a Republican Congress opposed President Truman on many issues, the Congress and the President were united on the issue of national defense. That same commitment and will is necessary today.

Adm. Gary Roughead, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, has expressed confidence in the effectiveness of the missile defense systems being developed jointly by Japan and the United States to counter threats in the region, including intercepting ballistic missiles from North Korea.

Roughead also indicated in a recent interview with Kyodo News in Tokyo that there have been active exchanges between the U.S. and Chinese navies following the encounter by the Japan-based U.S. aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk with a Chinese submarine in international waters off Okinawa Prefecture last year.

”I would say it is possible to hit a missile with a missile because we have done it. We have done it many times,” Roughead said referring to tests that have been conducted in developing the ballistic missile defense systems.

”Our testing, especially with the navy’s ballistic missile defense that’s based on the Aegis weapons system that both the U.S. and Japan have as part of their capability…(has) proven that capability. I have great confidence in that capability,” he said.

The commander of the Hawaii-based fleet admitted the system is ”very expensive,” but said it is because of the advanced nature of the technology involved and that he is pleased with the progress in developing the capability together with Japan.

Concerning the Japanese government’s intention to study the possibility of easing its self-imposed ban on the exercise of the right to collective self-defense to protect allies under attack, Roughead declined to comment directly but emphasized the importance of prompt information sharing between the two countries in the event of a missile attack.

”The approach and the process that the Japanese government is going through in that regard is really a matter for the Japanese government to work through and think through,” the 1973 U.S. Naval Academy graduate said.

”But it is very important that we be able to share information, especially in areas such as ballistic missile defense where the threat of a ballistic missile moves so very, very fast that our ability to share information and the ability to cooperate is very important,” he added.

The two countries have both begun deploying the missile defense systems, mainly to deal with threats from North Korea as well as China’s rapidly growing military spending.

Tokyo and Washington envisage a two-stage interception scheme to deal with a missile attack. First, Aegis vessels from both countries would try to intercept an incoming missile in space by launching the sea-based Standard Missile-3 interceptors.

If unsuccessful, they would employ the ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles designed to intercept incoming ballistic missiles in their final phase after they have reentered the atmosphere.

Japan and the United States began a joint missile defense research project in 1999 after North Korea test-fired a long-range Taepodong-1 missile, part of which flew over Japan and fell into the Pacific Ocean, the year before.

On the Kitty Hawk’s encounter with the Chinese navy sub within range of a torpedo attack in October, Roughead explained, ”Both ships were operating lawfully in those waters. Both ships were operating in a very safe and responsible manner.”

The admiral, responsible for the world’s largest combined fleet command covering the Pacific and Indian oceans, said the incident showed the Chinese military aspires to build a navy that will ”go farther and farther from their shores.”

Against the backdrop of China’s growing military spending and concerns about the lack of transparency involving its military policy, Roughead emphasized the importance of trading views directly with Chinese navy officials for promoting mutual understanding.

He said he visited China in November and the Chinese navy commander, Adm. Wu Shengli, reciprocated with a recent trip to the United States to meet Roughead and other navy officials as part of such efforts.

”I believe that the engagement and the better understanding of where our navies are going…(are) important. And transparency between and among navies, I think, is something that can only add to the understanding and the security and prosperity of the region,” Roughead said.

Concerning the U.S. Navy’s recent shift of gravity from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, he suggested the move is motivated due to economic interests as trade using Pacific routes has been on the increase.

”The amount of goods that move between the United States and Asia is three-and-a-half times that which moves between the United States and Europe,” Roughead said.

”For the predictable future, the economies in the Pacific are what will fuel the global economy, what will fuel our prosperity, and that’s why the importance is being placed on the Pacific,” he said.

”It’s important that we have the capability to represent our interests to cooperate with our friends and allies, and the way that we do that is to have credible naval capability in the Pacific Ocean,” he added.