Defense News:
BEZMER AIR BASE, Bulgaria – The United States and its allies in Europe don’t have enough missile defense capability and still have a long way to go to tie all of the varying systems together into one networked web, according to the outgoing U.S. Army Europe commander.
But that doesn’t mean the Army and NATO partners haven’t made major progress.
“I’ve got about a million miles to go, but we have gone a million miles compared to where we were about three years ago,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said at a Saber Guardian affiliated exercise at Bezmer Air Base, Bulgaria, this month.
“Just the capacity, we don’t have enough, that is all there is to it. When you think about all the different critical airfields, ports, cities, facilities that need to be protected we have a lot of work to do in that regard,” he said.
“You have to think in terms of layers, everything from down to protecting local places all the way up to high altitude, major cities, installations, protecting capabilities, any of which could be targeted. And you have to assume lots, lots of missiles coming if we are talking about a no-kidding serious crisis and so it’s going to take several nations,” Hodges told Defense News in a July 19 interview at the air base.
The United States has made progress bolstering missile defense in Europe by operationalizing its first Aegis Ashore missile defense site in Romania and is building its second Aegis Ashore system in Poland with the expectation it will be up and running in 2018…
