Obama Ends the Third Site

[BigRob]

...cost? threat assessment?

The cost is nothing more than the Obama plan by 2018 to put SM-3 Block IIA missiles in silos. The GMD system in Poland was not to become operational until 2013 (I believe), and the cost of that is cheaper than a ramp up in Aegis and paying off nations for forward radar sites that will be essential to actually having a system that works.

Also, the GMD interceptors are (currently at least) a better missile than the basically non-existent SM-3 Block IIA.

Add to that, a 2009 NIE on Iran that has leaked puts Iranian ICBM development at 2015-2020, so it is not like that threat is suddenly going away. While the Polish site was not going to defend Europe all that well against an Iranian missile, what it did was offer an alternative to the California and Alaskan sites, which only offer us one shot in a "shoot-look-shoot" scenario. Redundancy is worth the price tag in my opinion.

I reackon the only reason that they were proposed in first place was to piss Putin off and provoke a reaction - which Bush got!

I wager the real reason they were proposed was because they offered a true capability for a redundant defense should Iran obtain an ICBM, which they are still going to do. Further, there is no logical reason that Russia should have been upset over 10 interceptors in Poland, that had no real capability to even intercept a Russian launch.

The previous administration were not exactly top notch when it came to foreign policy and I bet they just wanted to have a bit of fun with the Ruskies. So basically they decided to plant some missiles in Poland get mixed up in Georgia and make friends with the Ukrainians just to put the icing on the cake ....... all guaranteed to naff off the Ruskies!

Georgia came to us, and Ukraine is by no means an ally. I would say their NATO cooperation is more of a sore point, but NATO has offered to work with Russia, and Russia rebuffs the offers.

Just so happens the Germans and the French have most of their natural gas supplied by those very same Ruskies who were were not exactly happy with uncle Sam pissing in the european pond so those very same krauts told the Yanks to upstick, sod off and think again - why d'ya reckon Obama visited Germany pretty soon after being elected...........

I would guess to drum up support for increased NATO support in the wars, but gas would have been on the agenda as well. If Germany and France want to turn towards Russia and away from the US, then that is going to be a deeper problem than missile silos.

I guess one could look at this as not so much of a climb down or sell out but a strategic withdrawl from an absurd position foisted upon Obama by Bush....... that said Obama missed a trick and should have used it as bargaining position over Medvedev/Putin - jury's out on that one.

I agree, Obama should have gotten something for it, and we did not. That said, I hardly view the third site as an absurd position, given that it added a very important element in defense of the US homeland, if not of Europe.