Full Coverage

Looks like the Obama administration's plan to have full coverage of Europe from ballistic missile attack would be fully realized a bit sooner than originally anticipated. As Reuters reported yesterday:

U.S. anti-ballistic missile systems will cover all of Europe by 2018, a senior Pentagon official said, laying out an ambitious target for defending against a perceived threat from Iran.

"One hundred percent," Bradley Roberts, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, said in reply to a question at a hearing of a House of Representatives Armed Services subcommittee Thursday.

Roberts said the Obama administration was putting "proven" sea-based and land-based missile shields into Europe as quickly as possible as part of a revised shield announced last September to any Iranian ballistic-missile strike.

Full coverage of NATO territory in Europe would be achieved around 2018, he said, when a second land-based site is to be established in northern Europe for updated Raytheon Co Standard Missile-3 missile interceptors.

Inside Missile Defense reported last November that that capability would be fully realized a couple years later:

Lockheed Martin officials said last week they can deliver a land-based version of the Aegis combat system by 2015, the date the Obama administration has targeted for installing ashore missile and radar batteries in Europe to defend against medium-range ballistic missiles that could potentially be launched by Iran.

The land-based Aegis system would likely be the exact same capability now residing on Navy destroyers and cruisers, the officials said.

Termed “Aegis ashore,” the plan is to use the Aegis Spy-1 radar along with a land-based version of the Standard Missile-3. During an Oct. 1 appearance before the House Armed Services Committee, Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly said two land-based sites using SM-3 block IIB missiles -- that would be capable of intercepting long-range ballistic missiles -- “could protect all of Europe.” The block IIB missiles are in development. The administration’s plan would have that capability in place by 2020.