US helicopters fly over the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System (AAMDS) in Deveselu, Romania, on Thursday.
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Launched in 2010, NATO’s anti-missile shield system – based essentially on United States technology – involves the progressive deployment of missile interceptors and powerful radar in eastern Europe and Turkey.
The system, Aegis Ashore, was essentially transferred from a seaborne launchpad onto land in Romania, at the Deveselu air base.
A United States missile defence system in Romania has become operational Thursday in a move welcomed by United States officials as an “important step” but also one likely to infuriate Moscow.
Earlier in the day, the head of Russia’s Arms Committee in the upper house of parliament, Viktor Ozerov, said that Moscow could withdraw from the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in response to new missile defense systems being deployed in Eastern Europe.
Today work begins on another site in Poland, where the missile shield will be deployed in 2018.
She said the Aegis Ashore launchpad was “practically identical” to a system used aboard Aegis warships that can launch Tomahawk cruise missiles.
It is part of a wider defensive umbrella, which will stretch from Greenland to the Azores.
The Romania installation is the first land-based defensive missile launcher in Europe and will join other elements of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation defensive shield, including a command-and-control center at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, a radar installation in Turkey and four ships capable of identifying enemy missiles and firing their own SM-3s based in Rota, Spain.
‘The system was created to protect against an Iranian nuclear missile.
“This site, nor the site in Poland, has any capability – none whatsoever – to undermine Russia’s strategic deterrent”, Work said.
Alliance and US officials insist that European missile defense is not technically capable of knocking down a barrage of Russian missiles.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office said Moscow also doubted NATO’s stated aim of protecting the alliance against Iranian rockets following the historic nuclear deal with Tehran and world powers previous year that Russia helped to negotiate.
Conley said that the Obama administration might have switched gears on the Bush plan in part because it may have been trying to “buy time in order to make the case” to Russian Federation that the new system was not directed against them. There is not going to be an Iranian nuclear missile for at least 20 years.
Tracking sensors then measure the rocket’s trajectory and intercept and destroy it in space, before it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere.
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On May 12, the United States activated a first-of-its-kind ground-based missile-interceptor site in Romania, despite Moscow’s protests. “It was always about ballistic missiles coming out of the Middle Eastern region”.
