"This approach also provides us with greater flexibility to adapt to developing threats and evolving technologies...."
The threat repeatedly invoked by the Pentagon chief was, of course, Iran. The inverted logic of the earlier George W. Bush administration program, of which Gates himself was a major architect, ran something like this: Missiles in Poland and an X-band long-range radar installation in the Czech Republic would protect the continental United States from Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles, which the nation neither possesses nor, as both Gates and Obama themselves conceded on September 17, was likely to in the foreseeable future.
But once the U.S. went ahead with the deployments Iran could target both sites with medium-range missiles, the argument continued. So America pledged to station 96 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles in batteries manned by U.S. soldiers who would be based in Poland for the first time.
Thus Poland and the Czech Republic were transformed from sites for missile shield deployments to allegedly protect the U.S. to potential targets that needed to be protected by...the U.S.
The Patriot missiles in Poland, which are still slated to be sent and activated there, can no longer be presented as protecting American ground-based interceptor missiles in that nation, as that plan was officially scrapped twelve days ago. So why are they going to be deployed in spite of that?
The Patriot deployment was never intended to defend Poland against Iranian attacks, but to counter Russian plans to station mobile short-range missiles in its non-contiguous territory of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland, in response to what Russia necessarily viewed as a threat to its strategic missile forces. Bluntly put, U.S. ground-based missiles in Poland could be part of a system to destroy whatever long-range missiles Russia had left after a U.S. and NATO first strike.
As adviser to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Slawomir Nowak, was quoted on September 24 as admitting, "We were never really threatened by a long-range missile attack from Iran." [3]
Six days afterward Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski confirmed that 96 Patriot missiles will be deployed in his nation as scheduled and, moreover, will be armed.
As their deployment can no longer exploit the pretext of defending U.S. long-range missile sites from imaginary Iranian "preemptive" attacks, its purpose is demonstrated to be the what missile shield opponents have always asserted it was: To "protect" Poland from Russia.
The Polish newspaper that first revealed the shift in U.S. missile designs in Europe weeks before the event, the Gazeta Wyborcza, reported on September 25 some details of the new system as it will affect Poland:
"The concept would include a stationary rocket battery and possibly a number of mobile interceptor launchers. This might be a supplement to the envisaged American system of SM-3 naval based anti-rockets. Polish military experts say that equally important would be US military presence in Poland, which would provide an additional security guarantee." [4]
What mobile missile launchers ready for practically overnight deployment to Russia's neighbor might look like was indicated at last month's annual Space and Missile Defense Conference held by the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency in Huntsville, Alabama where the prototype of a nearly 50,000-pound "two-stage interceptor designed to be globally deployable within 24 hours" [5] to be stationed as needed at NATO bases throughout Europe was presented by the arms manufacturer eager to produce it, Chicago-based Boeing Company.
In his September 17th briefing at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Gates also announced plans to "deploy new sensors and interceptors, in northern and southern Europe." He tactfully did not specify where in the north and south of the continent the "capabilities...to detect, track and shoot down enemy missiles" would be placed, but their likely destinations are not hard to determine.
The former head of the Russian Strategic Missile Force, General Viktor Yesin, commented last week on one probability:
"Now we only need to be sure that the U.S. plans with regard to strengthening the ABM capability will not create a situation where warships armed with such systems will be moved from the North and Mediterranean seas to the Black Sea, which would pose a threat to Russia's strategic nuclear forces." [6]
An analyst from the same country, Sergei Roy, gave vent to similar apprehensions in a roundtable discussion in Russia Profile on September 25:
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