In order to understand Russian concerns, it is useful to examine how Russian military analysts might assess the capabilities of the proposed U.S. system. They would assess both the initial technical capabilities of the U.S. system and its potential capabilities as it matures. They would look twice at U.S. decisions to site the system as the Pentagon intends and rightly conclude that the system might be designed to counter Russia’s deterrent in addition to a nuclear attack from Iran.
Current and Potential Capabilities
The clearest high-level statement with regard to U.S. missile defense programs is Presidential National Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD-23), signed by President George W. Bush on December 6, 2002. The directive stated that the United States would begin to deploy missile defenses in 2004 “as a starting point for fielding improved and expanded missile defenses later.” NSPD-23 was preceded in January 2002 by a memorandum from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The Rumsfeld memo directs the Missile Defense Agency to develop defense systems by using whatever technology is “available,” even if the capabilities produced are limited relative to what the defense must ultimately be able to do.
The Rumsfeld mandate and NSPD-23 would make it clear to Russian analysts that anything they see now will surely be upgraded to something far more capable as U.S. missile defense activities advance.
Russian analysts would surely know that the U.S. missile defense could be readily defeated by very simple countermeasures, such as decoys that would look much like basketball-sized balloons. The analysts and their political leaders also would rightly ask why the Americans are doing this.
What is the U.S. intent? How will Russia have to modernize its ICBMs and attack plans to keep up with the constantly changing character of the defense and the uncertainties created by it? What are the political motivations for the relentless U.S. efforts to build defenses obviously aimed at Russia? What is the relationship of the U.S. missile defense efforts to the constant push to expand NATO and encircle Russia with U.S. bases?
Russian analysts examining the system would also conclude that, at some unforeseen future time, under highly unpredictable and very specialized conditions, the European defense might be able to engage many hundreds of targets, thereby, in conjunction with other U.S. systems, threatening Russia’s nuclear deterrent. Such possibilities, however remote they would seem, would certainly conjure up apocalyptic threats to Russia’s national survival.
The source of these concerns would be basic scientific facts that could be used by the Department of Defense in the relentless and unpredictable modernization effort foretold by NSPD-23. The location of the radar in the Czech Republic and the interceptors in Poland, both close to European Russia, would make it possible, at least in principle, for the radar to track Russian ICBMs very early after a launch and to guide interceptors against them. Although the radar currently proposed for deployment will not have the capability to track hundreds of targets at long ranges simultaneously and the number of interceptors in the initial deployment would be small, Russian analysts would expect that the capabilities of the radar and interceptors could be substantially improved at a later time.
In particular, the limits of the radar’s abilities to track large numbers of targets simultaneously are determined by the antenna’s effective size and average radiated power. The Pentagon could enhance both of these variables, boosting the system’s capabilities.
Currently, the effective size and power of U.S. X-band radar antennas are limited by the number of transmit/receive modules that are mounted in their faces. Initial plans call for the EMR radar antenna to have roughly 20,000 such transmit/receive modules thinly distributed over its 100- to 120-square-meter antenna face, each capable of radiating 2 to 3 watts of average power.
Yet, the maximum number of transmit/receive modules that could be placed on an antenna face of 120 square meters is well more than 300,000. Such a modernization would require the complete replacement and reconstruction of the antenna, but it would result in a vast increase in the number of targets that could simultaneously be engaged by the radar because the “effective area” of the antenna is proportional to the number of transmit/receive modules. If the number of transmit/receive modules were to be increased by a factor of 16 to 17, then both the effective area of the antenna and the radiated power would increase by the same factor. The two factors combine to provide a nearly 300-fold (17 x 17 = 289) increase in capability.
Currently, the ability to build X-band radars is limited by the rate at which transmit/receive modules are being manufactured. The modules are also expensive, currently about $1,000 each. The current limits on manufacturing, however, can be expected to change over time as techniques improve. In addition, as the missile defense program moves forward, the manufacturing base for these modules might grow. Thus, Russia fears that the X-band radar could target 300 times more missiles when a mature capability becomes available.
Russian analysts would also be concerned that the United States might expand the number of interceptors in Poland to take advantage of such an EMR’s prodigious abilities to guide numerous interceptors simultaneously. Indeed, unless one believes Iran will stop building long-range missiles once they get to 10, such an expansion must be expected. Once interceptor manufacturing facilities are operating, additional interceptors could be obtained by extending manufacturing runs, by expanding manufacturing facilities, or both. The primary obstacle to an expansion would be political: increasing the number of interceptors would require modifications to an existing agreement with Poland. If Poland is already hosting U.S. interceptors, the biggest political obstacle would already have been overcome.
Threat to Russia’s Deterrent
The location of the radar in the Czech Republic and missile defense interceptors in Poland, close to European-based Russian ICBM installations, would raise questions among Russian analysts about the potential threat to Russian ICBMs based in European Russia.
The ground-based interceptors in some ways resemble ICBMs themselves. They are extremely large, two-stage ballistic missiles, weighing roughly 21,500 kilograms each, with the two stages derived from the Minuteman series of ICBMs. They boast the same diameter as the Minuteman III’s two upper stages and even use the same shroud. Indeed, if an interceptor were armed with a typical 1,100-kilogram Minuteman III payload of a missile bus and three nuclear warheads, it could carry that payload more than 6,000 kilometers. The interceptor would only have to carry a kill vehicle weighing 70 kilograms, allowing it to achieve a speed 40 percent faster than an ICBM on a trajectory from Russia to the United States and permitting the interceptor to catch a nuclear-armed Russian ICBM from behind.
Despite claims to the contrary, U.S. interceptors launched from a Polish site could intercept the 18 to 25 Russian SS-25 ICBMs based in Vypolzovo, roughly 340 kilometers northwest of Moscow. Furthermore, missiles launched from all of the other European-based Russian ICBM fields would be much easier to engage. The 40 percent faster speed of the defense interceptors relative to the ICBMs and the early-tracking information provided by the EMR in the Czech Republic would allow the defense system to engage essentially all Russian ICBMs launched against the continental United States from Russian sites west of the Urals. It is difficult to see why any well-informed Russian analyst would not find such a potential situation alarming.
It would also be clear to Russian analysts that the placement of the EMR and interceptor sites is not optimal for the defense of Europe. Under the current plan, part of Europe is not covered and must instead be covered by additional shorter-range defenses such as Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Aegis. A European system covering more of Europe could provide greater redundancy by using these shorter-range ground- and sea-based systems as a second layer. Ground-based interceptors positioned in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, or Albania; Aegis sea-based interceptors; and a radar closer to Iran would be better positioned to defend Europe from an Iranian attack and would be too far from Russia to pose a threat to Russian ICBMs. To a Russian analyst, the only obvious technical reason for choosing the Czech Republic for the EMR and Poland for interceptors would be to provide interceptors close to Russia that can be guided by the nearby EMR, making it possible for the European-based radar and interceptors to be added as a layer against Russia to the already developing U.S. continental defense.
Concern about possible future U.S. missile defense capabilities would be amplified by knowledge among Russian analysts that U.S. Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), as well as U.S. Minuteman III ICBMs, are each capable of destroying Russian silo-based ICBMs. Internal documents produced by high-level technical experts in the Soviet Union during the late 1980s[1] unambiguously show that Russian technical analysts had concluded that Russian silo-based missiles could be wiped out by then-existing U.S. forces. Today’s U.S. SLBM and ICBM forces are yet more capable and pose an even more overwhelming threat to Russian ICBMs. Russia has been reducing its arsenal of ICBMs and converting those that remain to single warhead missiles, but an increasingly capable U.S. defense will create strong incentives for the Russians to reverse this process. The concern of Russian military analysts would be that a future crisis between Russia and the United States might lead to U.S. strikes on Russian ICBMs followed by the use of a mature missile defense to reduce or eliminate the consequences of Russian efforts to retaliate.
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007_10/LewisPostol.asp
. Guys, wht don´t you drop "We are the best" and making the best planes etc - it´s so ridiculous! We all know that SU27, SU30 etc can fly and that they fly good but without state of the art electronics the pilots are dead meat. Russia doesn´t have state of the art electronics, in fact they lack that industry as such if you compare with the West. Russian defence material has always lost in duels with western systems and the russians has always blamed it on the (poor) operators