It is a different time in the world, we have a lot of sympathy and empathy for the deaths that are happening in Ukraine today. And, we see and note that our deterrence has failed as a Western civilization to prevent this type of a warfare in Ukraine. Today, we have collected, I think some of the experts in the world, specifically on this theater and on this issue, how critical missile defense is for NATO, for Ukraine, and the ramifications it has in the future to deter Russia from what it’s doing as we watch today.
Riki Ellison, “Ukraine, NATO, Russia; Why Missile Defense is Critical”, February 26, 2022
“There’s been a return of great power competition and the specter of large scale conflict has re-emerged. And, we can, and may see conflict amongst the world’s great powers, and the greatest near-term threat is Russia, the greatest, longer-term threat is posed by China’s capabilities and ambitions, and authoritarianism is returning.” And the reason I say that is, I think if you were writing a novel, let’s say, a Russian history novel or something, and you look at the arc of evolution of president Putin and the state of capabilities in Russia over the past couple of decades, we really should not be surprised that we’re finding ourselves in this situation, so it’s frustrating to me that we’re not better equipped and prepared, and we’re still not.
And we need to test our force post. We have too many of our forces, in my view, we’ve become a very home station, US military in the United States. We don’t have… For example, our missile defense forces are principally in the El Paso, Texas area. We should have more of our forces and the bulk of our forces in the Pacific and in forward locations like in Europe to a, provide presence, but also to be able to move to hotspots quickly. And we’ve got to adjust our capabilities set. I don’t mean to be too critical of what president Biden is doing, I mean, I was very critical of what president Trump did in many areas in this area. This is one of the reasons I’m told that he asked for me to resign, when I was there I didn’t agree with him withholding aid to Ukraine as an example. So I think there are capabilities we can continue to provide them, but we also have to think about our own capabilities and how we would fare, and we need to bulk up our missile defense capabilities, we need to bulk up our strategic doctrine, we need to be more serious about nuclear forces and how that plays into our discussions in our doctrine. And then we need to round out our capabilities and that of our allies and things like cyber, space, and that will, by necessity, require less investment in conventional forces, general purpose forces. And the other areas where it’s easy to cite the need for improvements there, but something’s going to have to give in our prioritization to make room for what I would argue is where we need to go.
I personally would like to see them [MDA] as the lead. I think that makes a lot of sense for ground-based cruise missile defense, for things like defensive airfield, defensive of fixed assets. And I think they can be the integrating agent. And they’ve shown when empowered, when led well, when fully sufficiently funded, the capability that the United States can do, but we have to change the way that we’re doing that today. If we just maintain the current MDA structure with the current MDA authorities, current MDA approach, I don’t think you’re going to get a substantially better approach than the services. If you power of them to be a more rapid, a free flowing acquisition system, where you’re looking at the rate of technology that can be fielded and operated successfully and improved. And then as you go finalizing and harmonizing your future plants and making it more of an evolutionary approach, we still operate with an idea, let’s get the requirement exact right.
Mr. John Rood, “Ukraine, NATO, Russia; Why Missile Defense is Critical”, February 26, 2022
And so, what I would encourage is that, first of all, we got to get missile defenses in place, not only for now, but for going forward for the future, in which all of those Eastern European states now have Russians on the doorstep.
And then you’ve got a clear example of third party intervention that was successful, What can you do about it? We can try to engage in the air, just address that situation. I don’t think they went in the long run. Maybe we take some losses, but the Russians are going to take more. He also has said clearly the Russians have good surface to air assets. Okay. And so tactical SAMs, they’ll be in Ukraine. They’re in there now, that’s a threat. They got to be addressed. And then there are the strategic SAMs, like the S-400 system, very capable. So tactical SAMs, we’re going to have to find them or we’re going to have to engage them. And if they’re in Ukraine, they’re not in Russia. And so I would submit that there’s an element of this escalation chain that is significantly different, if you add third party intervention, engaging Russian forces that are in the Ukraine versus Russian sites and forces that are inside Russia itself.
But second, we need to have them in place to increase the number of policy options that we might have. Should we ever consider seriously, some form of limited third party intervention to keep the Ukrainians in the fight? Because if they stay in the fight, eventually this does go against the Russians and eventually Putin doesn’t achieve his objectives. And that’s what needs to happen here. So I’ll stop there. I hope everybody was able to kind of track through on that whole thing, but I think it’s really important to put the… At the operational tactical level, the importance in the missile defenses into context as we go forward, over.
Lt Gen (Ret) Jon Thomas, “Ukraine, NATO, Russia; Why Missile Defense is Critical”, February 26, 2022
I see it as three points. One you got to see it. And I’m talking NATO collective efforts, meaning you got to see it and you got to be integrated. Two, you got to share that information. So you got to have that shared early warning through a number of command and control nodes and passing data, timely data. And then number three is you got to defeat it. And so we haven’t talked too much about the integrated battle command system, but really a layered approach we have talked about from, IFPC as you mentioned, Mark, all the way up to Aegis, THAAD and really we can get into space as well. So see it, share it and defeat it.
COL (Ret) David Shank, “Ukraine, NATO, Russia; Why Missile Defense is Critical”, February 26, 2022
But when you think about the defended area, each Patriot battery can do, we’re talking about less than a percent of the European theater can be defended at any one time right now. That’s because we have not built cost effective cruise missile of defense systems.
Our allies have NASAMs, the same system that protects the national capital region. Portugal, Spain has, Norway has, Denmark, the countries have this, Lithuania buying it. Pretty soon Lithuania is going to have better short range air defense systems than the US army, not something I’d put on a bumper sticker, but we really need to get around on these systems and get these procured and out there. In the meantime, the air base is going to have to be defended by mobility. The air force is going to have to be able to maneuver rapidly between airfields.
RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery, “Ukraine, NATO, Russia; Why Missile Defense is Critical”, February 26, 2022
I mean, look at this. It is ridiculous that they don’t have capability or capacity to stop missiles coming and killing people. We have that, we’ve got it, and it can deter. This has got to be led at a much higher level and demanded to be put in place by the populations of these countries that are on Europe. Why would you not want to invest in missile defense right now? I mean, we’re already late, but that is so viable. Not only because it deters, but it gives you life protection and that’s what we’re… It’s a shock. It should be a shock to the world of what’s happening in a big country like this ripping apart a small country like Ukraine.
Yes, the world needs missile defense, and we better get a better, cheaper, faster, quicker… Like we discussed today. It’s got to happen. That’s we’re going to be responsible for thousands and thousands of lives and may be responsible for a world war that we could stop by putting this stuff in front and shutting this thing down a little bit. So I’m a little passionate about it, but I appreciate the intellect that was behind the discussion today on this critical element. And I don’t think many people in the world are talking about missile defense. They’re not, we are, and this needs to get out.
Riki Ellison, “Ukraine, NATO, Russia; Why Missile Defense is Critical”, February 26, 2022
On February 26th, 2022, the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance hosted a virtual discussion on the “Ukraine, NATO, Russia; Why Missile Defense is Critical”.
Click here to watch the complete roundtable
Click here for a printable version of the transcript
Speakers
Mr. John Rood
Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Department of Defense
Lieutenant General (Ret) Jon Thomas
Former Director of Operations for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration
U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa
Colonel (Ret) David Shank
Former Commander
10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command
RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery
Former Deputy Director for Plans, Policy and Strategy
USEUCOM
Mr. Riki Ellison
Chairman and Founder
Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
