The New York Times reports on US plans to deploy Patriot batteries in four Middle Eastern states (maybe Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait – click here to download a graphical overview of the deployments provided by The Guardian) and two AEGIS cruisers in the Persian Gulf.

In this context, Travis Sharp’s two posts on the vulnerability of AEGIS destroyers and David Gormley’s recent ACT article on the proliferation of cruise missiles (see also his book “Missile Contagion“) are very insightful. For a discussion of missile defense in the Middle East see my recent article in Middle East Policy… Anyway, the main deterrent will not be Patriot but US personnel operating the batteries.

On the week-end I also came across a report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) comparing different missile defense options for the protection of Europe and the United States. Remember my earlier posts (here and here) on missile defense deployments in Turkey? The report weighs four options, the third option being

Land-based SM-3 Block IIA interceptors operating from mobile launchers at two existing U.S. bases: Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany and Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey. Tracking would be provided by forward-based transportable X-band radars in Azerbaijan and Qatar. This system would be available around 2015. (p. xiii)

As far as the ability to defend Europe and the US is concerned, the report notes the following:

The other alternatives in this analysis (Options 2, 3, and 4) would provide broad defense of most of Europe against all modeled missile threats. All of those options include interceptor locations nearer to Iran than the proposed European Interceptor Site in Poland and thus would provide more extensive defense of southeastern Europe. (emphasis added; p. xvii)

The options with sea-based and land-based SM-3 Block IIA interceptors (Options 2 and 3) would provide some additional defense of the United States against liquid-fuel ICBMs but none against solid-fuel ICBMs. Those options could provide about the same level of U.S. defense as MDA’s proposed European system if they added launch sites for SM-3 Block IIA interceptors in the United States. (p. xviii)

Here is the report’s graphical summary (p. xix) for the defense of Europe (click here to enlarge):

P.S. The four horsemen ride on video:

You can order the film at th The Nuclear Tipping Point web-page.

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