Dear Members and Friends,

Serendipitously, MDAA was on the same travel plan in Europe as our President, visiting both the United Kingdom and Germany this past week that concluded with a Russian crescendo on Saturday with one of its fighters performing a “barrel roll” over a U.S. Military aircraft (Link to article). In this evolving European threat environment and a promise fulfilled by President Obama (Link to EPAA policy), the United States will declare next month at the NATO Summit in Warsaw the Initial Operational Capability of Phase 2 of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, highlighting the completion of the Romania Aegis Ashore Site designed to defeat Iranian ballistic missiles in southeast Europe. If recent “flybys” and “barrel rolls” by an unprovoked Russia are how it acts towards the U.S. Military in the European Theater, its reaction to this upcoming announcement will no doubt surpass what has been flagrantly flaunted already by Russia. The temptation to intrude on Romanian and NATO airspace in a “flyby” over a deliberately unprotected U.S. Aegis Ashore site without air defenses in Deveselu, Romania may be just too great for Russian President Putin to resist in a show of power against NATO and the United States with an outgoing United States President.

With Iran conducting numerous ballistic missile launches this year in defiance of United Nations Resolutions, a simmering North Africa, and Russia flexing its muscles on the borders of the Baltic States, the Arctic, and the North Sea, the need for integrated air and missile defense in Europe is at the forefront of NATO’s agenda led by the “coalition of the willing,” NATO members that contribute to Air and Missile Defense forces. Europe will have to contribute much more in addressing these threats and significant gaps in integrated air and missile defense that President Obama’s EPAA, whose capabilities are only singular deployed and limited to defeating Iranian ballistic missiles launched from inside Iran towards Europe. The United States has paid approximately $1.5 billion in tax dollars for two Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland, roughly $200 million for a forward-based radar in Turkey, and committed four ~$2.0 billion Aegis BMD destroyers based in Spain to defeat long range ballistic missile threats from Iran. It is abundantly clear that European members of NATO need to contribute their equal share to Europe’s defense and fulfill their NATO commitment of 2% of their GDP.

The defense of NATO today is shifting from an assurance strategy that the United States will be there, to a deterrence strategy which requires demonstrated NATO collective capability and leadership to increase speed of identification of a threat, speed of decision and a response to that threat, and speed of assembly of capability against that threat.

Integrated air and missile defense with our NATO Allies can demonstrate the best collective speed of recognition, decision making, and capability assembly for deterrence against an air and/or missile threat.

Let’s roll it out.