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What if a ballistic missile is launched against military forces or even NATO Alliance territory?
To test engaging a ballistic missile threat in flight, the German-led exercise Rapid Arrow
was used to see if NATO’s Missile Defence System was able to intercept the missile.
“Rapid Arrow for the first time we were testing the entire system and it was important
because we have done for the first time the entire cycle.”
Up until now the threats were only simulated and did not include firing a real interceptor
missile. “This time we had an actual ballistic missile
launched against a target area. And that obviously makes a considerable difference
because it adds realism to the exercise.” During the exercise the NATO Command and Control
structure that comes into play when a Ballistic Missile is detected, was tested.
“As this whole event only lasted about five minutes from the launch of the target missile
to the final engagement, it also shows how critical a good C2 system is to the overall
Command and Control process. Because time is very limited, we cannot pick up the phone
and dial some number and try to get some people who we need to talk to. Everything must be
functioning perfectly and working perfectly in order to really do Command and Control
of missile defence.” NATO’s Missile Defence System consists of
the sum of national missile defence assets assigned to NATO, networked together. In this
case it meant that the radar of the US ship The USS Sullivans picked up the target missile
and passed the information to a German Patriot Battery at the NATO Missile Firing Installation
in Crete, to help it conduct an intercept. “From this headquarters here at Ramstein
we could see everything. The detection of the launch, the tracking of the target missile
going inbound to the target area and then the engagement process. And we could have
engaged in the engagement process if we considered it necessary. For instance to order a hold
fire on the engagement process. That could have worked.”
The live fire test, in which the target was successfully acquired and destroyed, is an
important step in the development of NATO’s Missile Defence capability.
“We could use it if we needed to. At the moment there are no indications and warnings
that tensions are high, that we are under the threat of a ballistic missile attack.
But we could use it if the situation would change.”
The exercise also proved that there’s no delay in the information flow between the
US and the NATO Missile Defence systems. The next step is to improve and broaden the Missile
Defence protection from protecting NATO military forces to also protecting its territory and
populations. “Up until now we have been dealing with
the defence of forces. For the defence of forces there are some criteria. Forces are
for example trained and are, to a certain extent, hardened, can be dispersed. Obviously
the population and territorial cities are not, so we need to have different criteria
to deal also with these additional requirements.” That way the civilian population can also
be alerted and warned in case of a missile threat.
I’m Karsten Reiniers, reporting for the NATO Channel from Ramstein, Germany.