missile defense cooperation

Gen. Obering and Ambassador Graber in Prague

General Obering in Prague

April 23, 2007

“The purpose of my visit is to make sure that we share as much information as we possibly can and answer questions about the proposal of the radar site.  In fact, we do believe this radar in the Czech Republic will protect the European allies and our deployed forces in the region from what we see as a growing Iranian missile threat. We also believe that it could actually be viewed as contribution into a broader NATO missile defense capability as well,” the head of the Missile Defense Agency General Obering told reporters on his first visit to Prague April 23.

Audio recording from the press conference (wav, 11 MB)

Transcript:

Ambassador Graber:  Good afternoon, let me first apologize for being late.  We have had an extraordinarily busy day today.  We met with the President and officials from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  We are just coming from a meeting with parliamentarians, so it has been a very full day here in Prague.  It is a great, great honor of me and pleasure to introduce to you for your questions the Director of the Missile Defense Agency, which is part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense in Washington, General Obering. General,

General Obering:  Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador.  We have had a great day so far here in Prague and I look forward to the afternoon and evening.  The purpose of my visit is to share as much information as we possibly can about the proposals for missile defense sites, the expansion of coverage to our European allies, friends and deployed forces.  And because my purpose is to share as much information as possible, I will stop there and answer any question that you may have.

Q:  Tomas Jenik from Lidove noviny daily. General, I would like to ask you what were the most frequently asked questions you got from the parliamentarians?  This is my first question, and have you received or do you have any sign that opposition politicians are mobilizing to support the radar?

Obering:  First of all, I don’t think there was any one particular question which was asked most often.  There was a variety of questions that was asked about the threat, about the capabilities of the system, about Russia’s concerns, and we walked through those.  So I would say that there was not one particular question.

In terms of your second question, I think that the visit of the parliamentarians to the Marshall Islands to actually look at the radar was very positive.  I think there were some good impressions from the folks that visited there when they can back.  In my discussions with Mr. Paroubek this morning, he stated that his position had not changed; however, he also stated that he had gained more information that he thought was very useful and very positive.  I think that is worth noting and the discussion will continue.  We welcome the debate and we welcome the opportunity to exchange information.

Q:  So you got the impression that the visit had some kind of influence on the other members of committee, not just those who traveled to the Marshall Islands?

A:  I hope so.  I hope that information begins to spread because I think that what they learned there made it much more acceptable in their eyes, in terms of what the radar site entails and why we are doing it.

Q:  Can you tell us in your view what misperception is the most difficult one for you to beat?

A:  That’s an easy one.  We have had a lot of misperceptions for instance that this system is one that is intended to counter a Russian threat, as opposed to an Iranian threat.  And so we walked through the Iranian threat; what we see emerging in the future; we answered the Russian concerns with respect to the site; and I think we have gained a lot of success in that in my discussions at NATO last week, last Thursday.  If you look at the Secretary General’s remarks after the Atlantic Council’s session and the NATO-Russia Council session, I think that we addressed much of the concern that was raised in those sessions and I believe we did make great progress in that regard. 

There is also a lot of misunderstanding about how the system actually operates and we have gone a long way to clarify that.  Just to emphasize, some points.  Number one, these are defensive missiles only.  They do not have any warhead; they do not have any explosives.  All we carry is a very lightweight kill vehicle that we use basically to run into an enemy warhead.  And clarifying that has been very, very important.

Also, to clarify, this radar that we are talking about in the Czech Republic is not a radar that operates all the time, around the clock, 24 hours and 7 days a week.  In fact, it is a very thin – what we call a thin, pencil beam radar – and it is only used for precise tracking.  It is only activated if there is an enemy missile that has been launched, which it is going to be tracking, or if you are training or if you are going to be doing some calibration work.  This is something that will not be up most of the time.  And we also explained the safety of the radar in the operation.  Those are some of the issues.

Q:  Angela Merkel warned against divisions in Europe (inaudible)

A:  Would we sign a deal? 

Q:  Would you sign a deal even if the German CDU, the German governing party, is against it?

A:  The negotiations and discussions that we are having are between the United States and the Czech Republic and between Poland and the United States, and we are working this within a NATO framework.  If we have one country that does not agree, it does not stop the deal, so to speak, in terms of being able to proceed with the system. 

Again, I have been in Berlin.  I have talked to the government there.  I have had many dealings with and also sessions with the Bundestag and with the Chancellery and with some of their ministry officials.  I think that as we lay the information out and they understand why, and when, and how this is all going (inaudible), I think we can dispel at least some of the technical objections or programmatic objections.  I cannot deal with the political objections; that is something that has to be dealt with by other people. 

Q:  (inaudible) It seems that some of the reports say that Robert Gates was not successful with the Russians.  What would you say about that and also, what would be the next step?

A:  There are two things we would like to do with Russia.  The first thing is, and we have offered, we want to continue technical discussions about the capabilities and limitations of the system.  We want them to understand what it is capable of doing and what it is not capable of doing.  We have offered that next level of technical discussions with the experts to do that.

In a separate venue, we have also offered collaboration across a wide variety of missile defense activities to include research and development, technologies sharing, and in addition, expanding our exercise program that we have on-going with the Russians.  Once, again, we will continue to be transparent.  We will continue to try and engage the Russians and we will continue to try and explain and make sure there is absolutely no misunderstanding about the details of the system.  I believe that as we continue that, I would not give up so soon.  I think this is going to take time; this collaboration is going to take time. 

One thing I do believe, though, is that as we continue this, we see Iran continuing to develop as it is.  That wake up call is going to hit sooner or later, that we have to do something about this, with the Russians as well, and hopefully that will be a catalyst here.

Q:  The Czechs oppose the system and the system deployed on the Czech soil.  They usually say that they don't just trust the statement, but want proof.  Are you going to publish the specific characteristics of the radar?

A:  Yes.  In fact, I believe the environmental assessment and things like that are already available on the Internet, so there is already a lot of information that is out there in terms of not having any negative impact on the environment and that is all aspects of the environment, not just the radar in terms of the beam.  It is also how does it affect air and water quality, how does it affect biological resources, how does it affect many, many aspects of the environment.  Those are the types of things we will share.

Q:  What about the pulse aspects of the radar in the area of people?

A:  That is part of the technical questions we are discussing with the technical experts here, from the Czech Republic, and we will make those available.  There are certain things that we will not make available that would have an indication, for example, that could be used  
for a security perspective.  But in terms of the effects of the radar on the environment, we will release that.

Q:  What is the deadline for America?  When would you like to hear the final Czech yes or no to the base?

A:  We would like to complete our discussions and negotiations this year before the end of this year.  That would keep us on track because we do believe there is a sense of urgency here with respect to what we see happening in Iran.  Remember it is not just what we see that Iran has today, but it's what they will have in the next four to five years.  It is going to take that long to build out the interceptor field as well as the radar site.  That is why we feel there is a sense of urgency about this.

Q:  What if the parliament does not approve?

A:  We will never go where we are not approved to go, obviously.  There are other alternatives that we have looked at and explored.  They are not ideal.  The Czech Republic is the ideal.  But there are other options and we would have to exercise those.  

Q:  Can you tell us the options?

A:  No.

Q:  This is predicated to the idea that Iran is going to develop long range missiles and you mentioned a time frame of 4-5 years and sometimes we hear the date 2015.   I am wondering where you get these dates and what is the evidence that Iran is developing long range missiles?

A:  That is a great question.  First of all, all we can do is estimate based on what we observe in our Intelligence Community, about what we see and about what we have concrete facts about. Now a threat is made up of two things:  it is made up of intend and made up of capability.  It takes a while to develop these capabilities.  What has happened is that we have seen a pattern emerging in Iran that we have seen before.  We saw this same pattern in North Korea in the 1990's.  We saw them starting with very short range SCUD missile technology and growing it into longer and longer range missiles like the No-Dong and the Taepo-Dong series.  We had intelligence experts back in 1998, the summer of 1998, say that it would be 5-8 years before North Korea would have the capability for a long-range missile and then, of course, they fired one the next month, in August of 1998.  This last summer they launched seven of these missiles, one of which was a Taepo-Dong 2, which we believe is capable of reaching the United States.  So we have seen the evolution already.  We know there is collaboration between those countries.  It is hard to judge about these countries, so we have estimates between 2010 and 2015. It's hard to judge how fast they are going to move when they are getting that type of assistance.  It's just hard to try and predict that.  

What we do not want to do is find ourselves in the situation where we find they have developed the capability and we have no defense against that.  Then they can start to use that to coerce other countries, like we have seen other attempts at coercion in the past. They would try to break wedges between the United States and our allies.   They could use that capability in many, many different ways to change the geopolitical arena around the world and we do not think that is healthy. 

Just as a footnote, last summer as we had the North Korean missiles being readied for launch and all the media about that. We were inundated with phone calls from some of your colleagues in the media and folks on the Hill, in Congress, and the public wanting to know how you can protect us from this.  Thank goodness that we had a system that we could active that we began deploying back in 2004.  We want to have that same thing for Europe if there is that type of action from Iran.  We want like to have that type of system to activate to prevent a threat to the European theater.

Q:  Do you know for sure that North Korea and Iran are cooperating on this?

A:  Yes, we know that they are collaborating.

Q:  Reuters, I'd like to return to the Russians for a second.  Given the cool response that Secretary Gates had today, are you still prepared, is the United States still prepared to go alone if they do not have Russia on board with the system?  Is it something the U.S. is  
prepared to do, no matter what or is there a point where you are going to have to back off?

A:  First of all, we are not "going it alone."  We are making sure we are bringing allies with us.  We already have the United Kingdom and Denmark working with us in missile defense and in developing the capabilities of protecting the United States today.  We have signed agreements with five different countries in relation to missile defense to include the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan and Italy.  We have relations with many countries around the world with relation to missile defense.  

Now to your specific question, again, we do not feel that we are going it alone.  We are engaging with NATO and discussing this within a NATO framework.  We believe that this capability could dovetail very nicely with a NATO capability to be able to provide missile defense.  We will go ahead -- I think it is imperative to do so.  We did not say that we are concerned about the Iranian threats only if the Russians are concerned.  We said we are concerned about the Iranian threats.  We need to move out to do something about that.  

If Russia wants to come along with us that would be a great benefit to everybody because frankly, in spite of all our arms control measures and everything we have done in the past, these ballistic weapons have continued to proliferate.  I believe the reason for that is that they are very valuable for these countries because they know that historically there has not been a deployed defense against them.

If we join together -- the U.S., Europe and even Russia -- in deploying missile defenses, I believe it will greatly devalue these weapons and you will see a great reduction in their proliferation and thus a great increase in security for all of us.  So, yes, we will proceed 
and also, in parallel, engage with the Russians.

Q:  Given the detailed talks you have had with Russia and still no movement, what is the breaking point?  What do you think will finally persuade them?

A:  That I'm not sure, and maybe that will come out as we continue to have our discussions.

M:  Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for questions.

A:  Please let me sat one more thing.  I very much appreciate my visit here.  This is my first visit to the Czech Republic.  Prague is an absolutely beautiful city and I was able to enjoy the weekend here.  This is my first visit here and it will not be my last visit.  We will be more than happy in future visits to spend more time and engage with you.  This has been very tightly constrained because I must return and testify before our Congress.  So I am strained both by the NATO meetings last week and this testimony to Congress this week. We are trying to fit in as much as we can.  In future trips we will have more time.  Thank you.