Polish president Andrzej Duda unveiled the final stage of the US missile defence shield in Europe at the Redzikowo base. It was at that ceremony that he acknowledged something the US government has repeatedly denied ever since the Obama administration. The newly rolled out defense systems are intended to target Russia, he said. But that plot twist means the DC authorities have just put Poland at mortal risk.
Last week, a US missile defence site containing the Aegis Ashore system was unveiled at the Redzikowo military base in Poland. It must be said, though, that the system itself was brought to operational capacity in 2020. Three years later, the base began to be formally integrated into a broader Nato missile shield, but do not be misled by this largely ceremonial transfer. Both the operations and maintenance will still be handled by the US military.
In other words, it is a proper US military base that sits close to the Russian border. Its commissioning marked the final stage in the establishment of Europe’s missile shield under the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) concept. The shield also includes Nato’s Allied Air Command headquarters at Germany’s Ramstein Air Base; Kürecik Radar Station, an early-warning radar installation in southeastern Turkey; four US destroyer ships fitted with the Aegis BMD system; and finally, the Aegis Ashore systems located at Deveselu, Romania, and Redzikowo, Poland.
As the EPAA project was in its inception in 2009, the then-President Barack Obama claimed the entire shield was designed to protect Europe from potential Iranian ballistic missile attacks. Except Iran has yet to design a single long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching European capitals or military assets.
Iran’s currently longest-travelling missile is the Qadr-110 with a range of 2,500 kilometres, which is in turn a modified liquid-fuel Shahab-3 missile with a projected range of 1,000 kilometres. It is highly unlikely that this family of missiles could be upgraded any further. Anyway, the distance between Iran and Poland is outside the range of these projectiles.
The Iranian missiles can only reach Ankara, Budapest and Sofia as well as Incirlik Air Base, a U.S. facility in Turkey storing tactical nuclear weapons. To be able to hit these targets, a missile should be launched from the Tabriz underground base in northwestern Iran. But these assets are all shielded by the Deveselu missile defence site in Romania.
Speaking of the Redzikowo base, it is a repurposed airfield that houses a command centre, an AN/SPY-1 radar and four Mark 41 Vertical Launching systems holding eight missiles each. According to the US reports, these systems contain the SM-3 Block IB and/or SM-3 IIA ballistic missile defence interceptors with a flight ceiling of 500 kilometres and an operational range of 1,000 kilometres.
Based on these specifications, these anti-ballistic missile designs are not capable of intercepting, say, Russia’s Geran loitering munitions as well as Kh-55 and Kh-101 cruise missiles.
Worse still, they can do nothing about the 9M723 Iskander short-range ballistic missiles or the Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missiles as all of those use an operational altitude that is far too low for the SM-3 interceptors whose durability hinders their manoeuvrability in the denser atmospheric layers. Hence their minimal intercept altitude of 60 kilometres.
However, addressing the unveiling ceremony, President Andrzej Duda mentioned that the missile defence site will target Russia. He did not go into detail, but how precisely can this base pose a threat to Russia?
That would mean the base is intended to intercept the Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (IBMs) in the stratosphere and the near space. However, Russia’s US-aimed IBMs are, just like their American counterparts, designed to travel over the Arctic Ocean, away from the Baltic Sea.
There is an exception, though. On paper, the SM-3s’ operational range tangentially intersects with the trajectories of the missiles stored at the Kozelsk launch site in southern Russia whose targets may include Grand Forks Air Base in North Dakota and New York City.
But certain design specifications of these surface-to-air guided missiles (SAMs) make their actual range far shorter than what could be suggested. Sometimes SAMs can easily miss the target interception trajectory.
Besides, an SM-3 missile carries a LEAP-grade kinetic warhead that features a fine-tuned automatic guidance unit offset by its poor manoeuvrability, which means the interceptor must ensure a direct hit into the front of the warhead it is intended to kill. Due to its design limitations, an SM-3 missile equipped with a LEAP interceptor cannot attack its target laterally. Meanwhile, to reiterate, if fired, the Russian missiles would only intersect the operational range tangentially, that is, laterally to the interceptor’s trajectory.
The inference here is that the newly rolled out system is powerless against both the Russian and the Iranian missiles. The question is: What is its actual purpose?
The thing is, the Mk.41VLS is a versatile system capable of launching multiple types of missiles, including the US-made BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack cruise missiles (TLAMs). If fitted with a nuclear warhead, this missile has a range of 2,500 kilometres.
The system can also fit an SM-6 missile, which is officially a SAM with a range of 240 kilometres, but technically, it is a dual-purpose weapon that can be used as a ballistic missile with a range of 460 km for a conventional warhead and perhaps a far longer range for a thermonuclear one.
Worse still, the Redzikowo base has never been independently inspected. There is no guarantee that the US-controlled missile defence site does not house any other types of missiles with a longer rangу, capable of inflicting far more damage.
Let us now dwell upon Nato’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) deterrence doctrine. Under this concept, the US must be able to deliver a powerful precision-guided conventional strike anywhere in the world within an hour. It is only possible through the deployment of IBMs or submarine-mounted ballistic missiles since the bomber aircraft and cruise missiles are too slow to qualify for the mission.
But they can speed up the operations by storing their cruise missiles closer to potential targets or, better still, using the already available low- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
One example would be the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) system, which is expected to supersede its now-infamous older ATACMS counterpart. Increment 4, which is currently being developed, is supposed to hit targets that are up to 1,000 kilometres away. By merely adding another propulsion stage, you can increase that distance by roughly 500 kilometres. Moscow is 1,325 kilometres away from the Redzikowo base. It would only take five to seven minutes for this missile to land in Moscow.
The same launchers can be used to fire the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon surface-to-surface boost-glide missiles (also known as Dark Eagle). They are currently designed, but their expected range will be 2,775 kilometres. Launching these missiles may well be the real purpose behind these alleged missile defence sites, specifically the Redzikowo base.
Apart from that, the US nuclear deterrence strategy includes a decapitation strike intended to incapacitate the enemy’s military potential. The strike is supposed to be delivered using intermediate-range missiles, which are fully compatible with the systems set up at Deveselu and Redzikowo, neutralise the adversary’s political and military leadership and thus foil a retaliatory strike.
President Andrzej Duda must be aware of these details. Therefore, the Polish leader’s statements can be interpreted as his public admission of the new defence site housing the missiles, including nuclear-capable ones, that will target Russia. This will certainly be viewed by the Russian government as a high-risk security threat.
Now, Redzikowo is only 165 kilometres away from Russia’s Kalinigrad region, home to a large Iskander missile base, which may now be put on high alert. The Redzikowo base may not be intended to strike Kaliningrad or the Russian Baltic Fleet. But it may well be utilised to strike targets deep inside Russia. The gravity of the situation is that it will only take two minutes for the Iskander missiles to hit the US base launch site, should it venture a strike inside Russia, and that may be an ominous development that needs to be averted at all costs.
So, what is it that makes President Duda so elated? Is it turning his country into a legitimate target for a Russian nuclear strike?