Lieutenant General Obering Press Roundtable on Missile Defense. NATO HQ, Brussels, Belgium

LtGen Obering: I’d just like to immediately open this up for questions. I don’t have any prepared statement or anything like that, so why don’t we just go ahead.

Question: There was a presentation of the joint architecture. Could you give me just a little more sense of what the joint architecture is? And I’m wondering if the Russian part of that might cover the NATO area, the bolt-on that was going to cover Turkey, Greece, and so on.

LtGen Obering: We presented a potential path ahead with respect to being able to take a long-range capability along with the shorter range coverages as well as the Russian potential and their coverages. To answer your question directly, the Russian contribution to that does not cover the areas that would be the shorter range threat areas that would be within the 1500 kilometers or thereabouts of Iran. It does cover, obviously, portions of Russia west of the Urals. Of course the more that we collaborate and the more that we integrate the data together, the greater that coverage goes, frankly, because you’re able to tie different sensors with different interceptors to be able to extend both the detection and the engagement zones of those interceptors. So that is the notional architecture that we are talking about.

Question: I’m not quite sure if I understood well what was said before about the decisionmaking. Did your offer include common decisionmaking on using the system? Or it would be only in your hands, in the Americans’ hands?

LtGen Obering: Are you talking about the cooperation between the Americans and the Russians or --

Question: And the Russians.

LtGen Obering: There would not be joint decisionmaking in terms of the command and control streams. The command and control networks would still be, the Russians are obviously in command and control and would be of their components and we would be of ours. But by being able to share data across those networks, even at the very preliminary level, to be able to cue radars and that type of thing, you get increased capability. Then if you actually tie it to where you could get a radar data all the way through from one U.S. radar, for example, or a European radar into the Russian system and vice versa, that’s when you start getting this expansion of capability, of defensive engagement and detection zones. Does that make sense?

So I’m trying to distinguish here between command and control of activating and saying fire or whatever, and the ability to share data among a network. So there’s a big difference.

Question: The Russian component anti-missile, let’s say, base in Russia would make their own decisions whether they use the rockets --

LtGen Obering: Exactly.

Question: At the same time you make the same decision.

LtGen Obering: Exactly. And the U.S. and NATO would make their decisions, right.

Question: There have been mixed signals out of Moscow in the past few days as to the Russian response to this. Can you tell us how those proposals were received today by your Russian interlocutors in the NRC?

LtGen Obering: I think they were received well in terms of, they confirmed that they are still studying the proposals that we made in Moscow because they did represent new ideas and new concepts, and they need time to study those and to take those into their analysis. I do believe, though, that it is a major step ahead from our perspective in terms of assuring even more willingness to cooperate and even more willingness to be inclusive of our Russian allies and our friends.

Question: I’m just wondering what the architecture would entail. We know about the offer from the Russians, the radars in Azerbaijan and the stuff for Russia. We know about Poland and the Czech Republic and [inaudible] in the UK in the back of it. What else would be required? What other elements would be required to combine the system? What other hardware would you need to do that?

LtGen Obering: First if all, let me kind of walk through that. As it exists today the Gabala radar, for example, appears to be an excellent wide area surveillance radar and an excellent radar to do initial tracking and to provide what we call cues into the system, into a system of networked radars. But there would have to be modifications done for that to be useful for either the Czech Republic radar or for any other even ship-based radars, that type of thing that we would tie into the system. So there has to be modifications done there.

Obviously there would have to be shorter range defenses developed under the NATO auspices and then also the Russians have shorter ranged defenses such as their S300 and 400 systems which could be brought into play. So those are some of the types of components.

So you could have sea-based interceptors, you could have sea-based radars, you could have land-based radars, both mobile systems as well as existing systems, existing radars, that could be tied into this architecture. So hopefully that clarifies that somewhat.

Question: And they wouldn’t need to be joint operations in any location?

LtGen Obering: They would not need to be, no. You can do that through the tying together, as I said, of the network and of making the command and control systems interoperable without losing the integrity, so to speak, of that command chain.

Question: Have you been able to look and do you understand the capabilities of the Russian radar in Armavir?

LtGen Obering: No, we have not. We have not visited the site. My deputy, General Patrick O’Reilly in the back of the room there, he is actually the individual that led the delegation for the U.S. to the Gabala radar. We did ask some questions about the Armavir radar of the Russians, but I want to emphasize, they were very forthcoming in sharing the data for the Gabala radar. They answered almost every question that we had. We even asked for some tapes of potential tracks that they’ve done in the past and they’re looking at providing those. But that’s the kind of technical detail and discussions that we are in with the Russians at this time.

Question: From what is understood so far from the Russians is that they are afraid that the radar in the Czech Republic might be used to spy into Russia. That’s why they are so anxious. Could you make any offers to make sure to Russia that this isn’t going to happen? In other words, would you allow Russian personnel into this installation?

LtGen Obering: All of that’s on the table. All of that is in discussion. But I want to make one note about this, and you’ve heard me probably state in the past or read about it, that radar and the position of that radar was done to optimize coverage against the Iranian threats that we see emerging. So if you look at the azimuth coverage and the range, that’s where we chose to locate. That radar, while it has some coverage into Russian space, it does not have coverage into Russian airspace and that’s important to note. There was initially some concern that we would be able to use that radar to look down into the Russian atmosphere and to Russian airspace and to somehow spy, as you say on their activities. But the fact is the location of the radar in the Czech Republic and what we call the radar horizon limitation, in other words the curvature of the earth and the coverage of that radar, you start opening up gaps in what you can see. We can’t see into the atmosphere in Russia from that radar. It’s just too far away. It’s clearly geared for, again, tracking ballistic missiles that achieve trajectories that go into space and that’s where we can actually track those missiles.

Again, from any type of a capability focused against Russia, that is clearly not the intent of that. And yes, we are willing to look at a whole host of transparency measures to try to mitigate their concerns.

Question: If I understand correctly, would this new architecture, would that not mean that the United States and NATO would be relying on Russia providing information, and that would be a key part of what NATO and U.S. missile defenses and vice versa for the Russians. Does that not imply a level of trust and cooperation which is somewhat higher than the two sides have in mind?

LtGen Obering: Obviously it would imply a level of cooperation and trust. However, as I said earlier, there’s a way that you can provide autonomous coverage, so to speak. Otherwise if you think of the two architectures as being separate, they would provide the coverages that they need, that each organization relatively needs. What you get and the benefit of putting them together is this greatly expanded detection and engagement capability. So it’s not a matter of you can’t cover the mission nor provide for your security, it’s a matter of you can do it much better. That’s why it’s important and it’s more cost effective in that manner.

Question: Once you would have an integrated system. Would the American components within the system be able to work separately or would, in other words, the security of the American and also the European homeland depends on the Russian cooperation?

LtGen Obering: Again, Russian cooperation; the U.S.-NATO architecture would not be totally dependent on Russian cooperation again. It helps to enhance that, is what we’re saying. So in that sense you can still have the autonomous operations that we talk about, but we believe that it is important to be able to get as much as we can out of these systems so it makes it very attractive and valuable to be able to integrate and plug these systems together in order to do that.

Question: In Moscow they agreed that the next round of consultations will be in six months, but actually you are going to start to build the base at the beginning of 2008 as far as I remember. Do you think it’s still possible?

LtGen Obering: First of all the proposals that we have put on the table still include clearly site activation and construction and build-out in Poland and the Czech Republic. So we’re not taking that off the table. We feel very strongly that we need to proceed with that site construction and activation and testing.

So to answer your question, if we start construction in 2008 we’re still on path for that. Right now that’s dependent of course on getting the host nation agreements in place between the U.S. and the Polish and the U.S. and the Czech governments. If we can get those agreements in place then we have a chance to begin the site activities later in 2008, toward the end of 2008. So the timelines that you described are not incompatible.

Question: The Russian [inaudible] ten interceptors which should be based in Poland are only a kind of beginning of another deployment [inaudible]. What are your arguments that it’s not the beginning but it’s the [inaudible] number of missiles?

LtGen Obering: If you look at this carefully, for us to be able to counter the Russian missiles you’re talking about hundreds of Russian missiles that they have. You’re talking about thousands of warheads that the Russians have. We would have to substantially ramp up any type of missile defense capability to be able to address that type of threat. So it’s clearly not geared toward the Russians.

The total complement of interceptors that we have throughout the entire system to be able to handle long range missiles would be 54 total. And that goes out to 2013. That’s all we have in our budget, that’s all we’ve planned for, that’s all we budgeted for, that’s what we have done. That includes 40 in Alaska, four in California, and then the ten that we proposed for Poland. We think that’s prudent with respect to the emerging threats from Iran and North Korea and that’s what it is geared toward.

Obviously if there was a requirement to increase those numbers because of increases in Iran or North Korea, we would do that in a very measured fashion and clearly there would be plenty of notification for that because of the lead times we require to be able to do that. It takes us three years, for example, to order, acquire and build an interceptor.

So this idea that we are just getting the nose under the tent and that we’re going to somehow ramp up dramatically from there I don’t think is very realistic and certainly it is not, I repeat, it is not in our plans in the United States.

Thank you.