The announcement is merely a formality. The fire system Aegis Ashore installed in Romania it is technically able to detect targets. The anti-missile "Shield" is based on the SM-3 interceptor, launched a few weeks ago from Kauai, Hawaii, in the first "ashore" test. At that moment the kinetic head of the SM-3 hit the ballistic missile in the re-entry phase with a direct impact.
The status of ready for combat of the fire system of the Ballistic Missile Defense System had already been announced, in spite of the Russian "perplexities", as foreseen by the 2 Phase of theEuropean Phased Adaptive Approach . It should be noted that while the fire station could detect targets already now, on the other it could not yet enter service because it was not interfaced with the broader NATO missile defense system. The interceptors Sm-3 Block IB in Romania they should enter service within the next two months.
The space shield has always been a cause of confrontation between Russia and the United States. According to the US the shield aims to defend allies from possible missile threats from Iran and North Korea. We know that precisely the Iranian threat could become such in a decade while the real capabilities of North Korea have never been demonstrated.
Moscow, however, sees in the missile shield positions (interceptors in Romania and Poland) close to its borders as a threat to national security. Russian countermeasures exist and are already in place: in the Kaliningrad region, which borders on Europe, missiles have been deployed Iskander and new stratified air defense and detection systems are being completed. The European fire stations of the US Space Shield will be in Poland and Romania.
The Mediterranean Sea (as well as the Adriatic and Ionian Sea) represents the fulcrum of the shield's offensive capabilities with constant rotation from the 2011 of missile class cruisers Ticonderoga e Arleigh Burke (photo below). The two early warning stations were deployed at the RAF station in Fylingdales and in Turkey. The AN / TPY mobile station (Army Navy / Transportable Radar Surveillance, ed) was deployed at the Kürecik base, in Turkey, in January of the 2012.
(photo: US DoD)
