This arti­cle first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.

This week’s NATO sum­mit was sup­posed to serve as a cat­a­lyst to drive mis­sile defense activ­i­ties for­ward in Europe. But with Washington still defin­ing its pol­icy stance, the brakes are being put on expectations. 

In another key area of alliance con­cern — Afghanistan — U.S. efforts to enlist greater European force com­mit­ments are also not likely to mate­ri­al­ize, says Robert Hunter, a for­mer U.S. ambas­sador to NATO and senior adviser at the Rand Corp. The Apr. 3–4 sum­mit in Germany and France comes about six months too early for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to have worked out a num­ber of issues, he indicates. 

Arms con­trol and dis­ar­ma­ment con­sti­tute a con­cern that the alliance’s strate­gic con­cept needs to address, says German defense min­is­ter Franz Josef Young. “We need new ini­tia­tives for con­ven­tional arms con­trol,” he argues. 

But for European mis­sile defense efforts, the sum­mit had been regarded as a key venue in which to urge mem­bers to embrace the con­cept of con­ti­nen­tal defense. The Pentagon’s push for a European site for the ground-​​based mid­course sys­tem — with a radar in the Czech Republic and inter­cep­tors in Poland — would be the cen­ter­piece. But the Obama admin­is­tra­tion has yet to artic­u­late a clear path for­ward on the third site, which Russia has stren­u­ously opposed. As a result, the Czech gov­ern­ment this month decided not to seek par­lia­men­tary endorse­ment for the radar construction. 

In addi­tion, it was hoped that work­ing groups would be asked to study archi­tec­tures for expand­ing the alliance’s cur­rent empha­sis on the­ater mis­sile defense into a net­work cov­er­ing all of Europe, and to begin coop­er­a­tively devel­op­ing key new com­po­nents such as early warn­ing sys­tems and inter­cep­tors. A German mil­i­tary offi­cial has warned that with­out U.S. sites in Europe, there would be no mis­sile defense shield built on the continent. 

However, not every­one shares that assess­ment. “Dropping the third site would have no impact from a capa­bil­ity stand­point; there are other solu­tions avail­able,” says Richard Deakin, senior vice pres­i­dent of Thales Air Systems Div., although he con­cedes there would be polit­i­cal reper­cus­sions from the U.S.‘s back­ing away from the so-​​called third site (aug­ment­ing those in Alaska and California). 

“We think BMD [bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense] will be less impor­tant in Strasbourg than ini­tially expected,” says MBDA CEO Antoine Bouvier. “The likely result,” he notes, is that there will be more of a focus on expand­ing air defense capa­bil­ity to cover a range of new threats, using a building-​​block approach, rather than a pure BMD pro­gram. MBDA is pur­su­ing a dual-​​track approach, with the Aster 30 Block 1 for the SAMP/​T sys­tem pro­vid­ing a capa­bil­ity against short-​​range bal­lis­tic threats. The Aster Block 2 design, with its high endoatmospheric-​​intercept capa­bil­ity, would be able to counter medium-​​range weapons. 

Bouvier sug­gests that Aster Block 2 would be capa­ble of engag­ing weapons such as the SS-​​26, which fol­lows a flat­tened tra­jec­tory and can begin ter­mi­nal maneu­vers at alti­tudes of roughly 25,000 meters (82,000 ft.). 

The Block 2 mis­sile is intended to be com­pat­i­ble with both land and naval launch­ers for the Aster 30. 

France, which is expected to fully return into the NATO struc­ture, is step­ping up its inter­est in mis­sile defense. In con­trast, European efforts are largely frac­tured, with coun­tries hav­ing been unable to agree on a com­mon approach. That leaves European gov­ern­ments chart­ing dif­fer­ent courses. 

For exam­ple, at the end of the devel­op­ment period for the Medium Extended Air Defense System (Meads) lower-​​tier anti-​​missile pro­gram, the Italian air force will decide whether to acquire 2–4 bat­ter­ies. The country’s navy is more com­mit­ted to mis­sile defense but hasn’t yet deter­mined whether to embrace a European or U.S. interceptor. 

Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made mis­sile defense a pri­or­ity. The 2009–13 mil­i­tary spend­ing plan, now before par­lia­ment, includes a num­ber of items ear­marked for this area. The most notable are an early warn­ing satellite/​radar net­work and a Block 2 Aster air defense sys­tem that are sup­posed to be oper­a­tional by 2020. 

Further fund­ing is expected to come from a 2.3-billion ($3.1-billion) French gov­ern­ment eco­nomic stim­u­lus pack­age for aero­space and defense projects approved last year, says Bouvier. With President Barack Obama will­ing to give U.S. allies a more equi­table role in com­mon defense, “it’s an oppor­tu­nity for Europe to make its voice heard and con­tribute in kind, not just with fund­ing,” he says. 

“[Territorial BMD] will require no real tech­nol­ogy break­throughs, but it will be costly,” says Michel Mathieu, CEO of Thales Raytheon Systems. Although it would make sense to split the bur­den with­out dupli­cat­ing efforts, he says, U.S. tech­nol­ogy restric­tions appear to make this unfea­si­ble — at least for sen­si­tive tech­nolo­gies such as radar, inter­cep­tors and seekers. 

The cor­ner­stone of ter­ri­to­r­ial BMD will be NATO’s Active Layered Theater Ballistic Missile Defense (ALTBMD) and notably its Air Command and Control System (ACCS), which is being sup­plied by Thales Raytheon Systems. ALTBMD is effec­tively the back­bone to link NATO’s dis­parate sys­tems, rang­ing from Patriot and Meads bat­ter­ies to ships and poten­tially a U.S. inter­cep­tor site in Poland. 

After a long devel­op­ment period that ended with fac­tory accep­tance test­ing last year, NATO is prepar­ing to deploy the ACCS at 15 sites in 13 coun­tries, although the system’s full func­tion­al­ity remains to be fur­ther enhanced. A frame­work con­tract for the deploy­ment phase, known as Replication, will be issued in June and con­tracts let in batches, start­ing in November and con­tin­u­ing through 2012. The ini­tial oper­at­ing capa­bil­ity will be reached in 2010 or 2011, depend­ing on which soft­ware ver­sion (fac­tory accep­tance or Block 1 upgrade) is used, says Mathieu. Upgrade 1 ren­ders the sys­tem com­pat­i­ble with NATO’s lat­est planning/​tasking require­ments and pro­vides new automa­tion, inter­ac­tiv­ity and real-​​time data fea­tures, as well as the abil­ity to inter­face with exist­ing hard­ware. Full oper­at­ing lower-​​tier capa­bil­ity will be reached in 2013 and full upper tier in 2014–16.

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