Lieutenant General Obering, U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Interview with Polskie Radio, Brussels, Belgium

Question: Part of [inaudible] system already works and is being tested. It provides some part of protection to the United States territory. There are plans to extend the range of the system to protect the whole United States land and Europe. To implement the plan there is need to install elements of the system in Central Europe, for example in Czech Republic and Poland. Poland probably will host some launchers.

The first question is, will that system really protect Europe? And against whom?

LtGen Obering: Yes, ma’am, it sure will protect Europe from what we see as an emerging threat from Iran. That is clearly the focus of our concern because what we have seen happening in that country mirrors an evolution that we saw in North Korea in which they took very short range missile technology and rocket technology from the former Soviet Union and then they began to improve and evolve that into longer and longer range missiles to the point where the North Koreans flew an intercontinental ballistic missile capable in 1998 and then attempted another flight in the summer of 2006 of an even longer range missile.

We’ve seen that same progression occurring in Iran and we know that those countries are collaborating together. We also know that Iran has stated a very hostile intent with respect to the United States and our allies. So we have to pay attention to that. That is why we are concerned about extending this ballistic missile coverage to our European allies and friends as well as our deployed forces in the European area. So yes, it will protect Europe from the longer range missile threats that we see emerging from Iran.

Question: But critics say that the idea of such a system is [inaudible], that the installation will not protect us from present day attacks, like 9/11 attacks, that it would provoke an armaments race. What would you answer them?

LtGen Obering: First of all in the day and age that we live in we have to be prepared to counter a wide spectrum of threats. I guarantee you that if you announce or if you let it be known that you have no protection against ballistic missiles that is the axis of attack that will occur. You have to be prepared for the 9/11 type of attacks, as you call it, to the ballistic missiles as well.

I will tell you that if you look at the scale of what we’re talking about, that was a very tragic day, September 11, 2001. We lost a lot of people in the United States and the damage to New York alone was about $83 billion.

If you have a weapon of mass destruction attack, just one missile, into a major metropolitan area in the United States or Europe, 9/11 will pale in comparison to the type of damage that you would incur, just from one ballistic missile attack. So being able to protect ourselves from that is very important.

These missiles have proliferated tremendously in the past and they continue to around the world. So the access to these weapons of terrorist organizations, non-state actors will increase as this proliferation increases. That’s why we have to pay attention to this.

It’s not that we can walk away from those other types of threats. We have to be able to address all of them, and that’s what we’re concerned about.

Question: The protection sounds great, but Russia is not convinced of such advantages and systems and seems them as a threat. Nobody is interested in making Russia angry, particularly neighboring countries like Poland. What are your arguments that MD doesn’t create any danger to Russia? Maybe are new Russian arguments you have already accepted [inaudible] that American position is changing? Please comment.

LtGen Obering: Absolutely this system does not present a threat to Russia in any way, shape or form. First of all you’re talking about a very small number of interceptors, only ten, which could not handle the hundreds of Russian missiles or thousands of warheads that they carry. In addition, because of the positioning of this interceptor site in Poland, it is not positioned to be able to catch the Russian missiles. The physics of it does not work out for the way that this system operates and the way that our interceptors fly.

I believe truly that the Russians believe that this site in Poland does not present a military threat to them. I believe they are the ones that are beginning to understand that more and more. So we are working with them, though. We have continued. I just was in Moscow last week. We continue our discussions with the Russians and we will continue to have transparency measures with them. We’ve invited them to our missile defense sites. They accepted an invitation that I gave them in September to come to our missile defense test that was the latest test that we had that was very very successful on the 28^th of September. I had two Russian colonels that sat next to me during that test. So we’re trying to be as transparent as we possibly can to convince the Russians that first of all we have no intentions of trying to grow the system toward them. First of all, it’s just not geared toward them. And secondly, that we need to be concerned about the Iranian threat, not about anything coming from Russia.

Question: The installation of MD elements causes some questions [inaudible]. For example, debris issue. Don’t you see any environmental problems connected with [inaudible] installation [inaudible]? Don’t you see here [inaudible] in the high density inhabited areas like Europe with the use of that interceptor?

LtGen Obering: No. We’ve actually done that analysis and those calculations. By the way, we know an awful lot about debris from our test program. We’ve now had 38 intercept flight tests since 2001. Thirty of those have been successful, and that includes our short, our medium and our long range defensive systems. We know from those successful intercepts what the debris patterns are and what survives an intercept. We can do the calculations to determine what the probability of any type of an injury or casualty on the ground. And even in the most densely populated nations like the Netherlands where you could have some debris coming down from the interceptor or the interceptors, there is a very very very very small chance of injury or casualty. It’s on the order of, I think the highest probability was about one in one thousand, and the normal probability is along the lines of one in a million to one in 2.4 million.

So we’ve analyzed and we’ve looked at this.

We also have the ability – it turns out that any missile fired from Iran toward the United States that would be intercepted from Poland, you do not get intercept debris in the European theater. It’s only debris that occurs when the target is itself in Europe. As I said, we’ve looked at those trajectories and analysis.

We do have the ability to vary the trajectory of the missile as its flying out to further minimize any danger to populations. So I do not believe that debris is a problem.

A much much larger problem is if you have a functioning nuclear warhead, obviously, impact on European soil in these densely populated areas. That’s when you’re going to have massive casualties and massive damage. That could also occur, by the way, even if the target was not Europe. Many of the missiles that Iran may fire, for example, toward the United States are going to fail in flight and those warheads could come down on Europe even though they were intended for the United States. That’s another reason why it’s prudent to have an ability to destroy those warheads before they’re able to do that.

Question: But would they use [inaudible] not only the effect of when the interceptor catches or hits the hostile missile but the [inaudible] interceptor in Poland? The effect of launching.

LtGen Obering: Oh, you're talking about the effect of launching the interceptor? Any danger there? No, there’s not. We go through the calculations for that to make sure that we have the safe distances from the silo to any populated areas and so there’s not a danger there as well.

In fact if you look at the location of our interceptors in Alaska, there’s a town nearby, Delta Junction, and we did the same calculations there to make sure there was no possibility of injury with the personnel there.

Again, I want to make one point. You have to remember that these interceptors would not be fired unless you’re under attack. So you would be under attack from an offensive missile when these interceptors are launched. And there are no explosives on these interceptors. They are strictly hit to kill. There’s no weapons, no warhead, no explosives. So these are defensive missiles only. Defensive weapons only, that would only be fired if we were under attack.

Question: How are you going to protect the installation [inaudible] accepting the installation on its territory? It may cause that they become more to terrorist attack. For example, coming from the air, are missile which will not be protected by your system. What in this case?

LtGen Obering: First of all the protection of that site as well as the defense of Poland, you have to remember that Poland is part of NATO. They do fall under the NATO umbrella. But the protective measures, the specific protective measures are still part of the discussions between the United States government and the Polish government and we are taking that very seriously.

In terms of being more susceptible to a terrorist attack, I think that’s a false argument. We have seen nations around the world that have not done anything, so to speak, to try to anger our outrage a terrorist and they have been attacked across the board.

The way that we’re going to address that is to join and unite together to be able to stop that type of threat and those types of threats.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate having the opportunity to discuss and talk with you today.

Question: The last question. To sum up. How would you explain in pure simple words or convince an ordinary soul that doesn’t know anything about MD, what would be his or her real profit of, benefit of accepting such element on Polish territory?

LtGen Obering: First of all, it shows a commitment to a security umbrella that I believe will have a real positive impact across the entire globe. What I mean by that is, as I mentioned before, we’ve seen these missiles proliferate more and more and I believe the reason that has occurred, in spite of arms control, positive and negative sanctions, et cetera, is because these weapons have historically had no defense. No defense against them. You see that in the way that they’re described by some of these countries. They have become the weapon of choice by many for these countries and they will continue to do so into the future. We are now in the 21^st Century and we need to stop this. We can stop this.

I think if Poland wants to be and is a strong partner of NATO and the United States, I believe that this contribution to be able to field effective defenses against these missiles will begin to devalue these weapons in the eyes of some of these countries like Iran and others, and will therefore raise the security not only of Poland but of NATO, of Europe, Russia as well, and the United States as well.

Question: Thanks a lot for all those information.

LtGen Obering: Thank you very much, ma’am.