On the Radar

By Sebastian Sprenger / September 23, 2009 at 5:00 AM

Last week's press conference on the new way ahead for a European missile defense system left some questions unanswered on where exactly the two or three American Aegis missile defense-capable vessels, portrayed as an instantly available capability for protecting Europe from Iranian short- and medium-range missiles, would sail.

Deploying them to the waters "in and around the Mediterranean and the North Sea, et cetera" was as specific as Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was going to get.

(Arguably, the North Sea is a bit of a geographic outlier, but we were assured by Cartwright's spokesman that the general wasn't misspeaking.)

Following the principle of getting interceptors as close as possible to a launch site inside Iran, the Black Sea also would be a suitable location for Aegis ships, as experts have noted.

The idea was picked up in a February Congressional Budget Office study exploring alternatives to the Bush-proposed system of stationary radar and interceptor sites in the Czech Republic and Poland.

But as attractive as a Black Sea option might be -- and a hypothetical Caspian Sea option, too, for that matter -- existing agreements covering those waters could make for some hiccups.

As for the Black Sea, the CBO report notes the Montreux Convention. The agreement, in force since 1936, "establishes Turkish control over the flow of ships between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea," the document states. It stipulates that "warships of non-Black Sea nations are not supposed to remain in the Black Sea for more than 21 days at a time," according to the report.

It is unclear if Pentagon officials are indeed envisioning Aegis deployments to the Black Sea, and whether the Montreux Convention is on their radar at all. According to Cartwright's spokesman, exact deployment locations of the vessels have yet to be figured out.

Perhaps this issue is where Washington diplomats hope to get some form of support back from Russia, as a Black Sea nation, now that the highly contentious Bush-era missile defense plan is off the table.

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