Turkey to Host U.S. Missile Defense

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Riki Ellison, Founder and Chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA), www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org, has commented on the U.S. placing a  missile defense system in Turkey. Ellison is one of the top foremost lay experts in the field of missile defense in the world. His comments include the following:

United States missile defense assets will be placed in Turkey that will help protect Europe, the U.S. and Turkish territory from Iranian ballistic missile threats.  Turkey, a country which borders Iran and is a participating member of NATO, is going to play a vital role in  missile defense  to contain Iran's continued proliferation of ballistic missiles and future nuclear capability.

These assets, namely the AN/TPY-2 Forward-Based X-Band radars that would be coupled with Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries that can handle missile salvo raids, will provide early sensing and the future capability to remotely launch and engage with sea- and land-based interceptor missiles.

The AN/TPY-2 radars deployed in Turkey will provide early tracking information on long range missiles headed towards the U.S., securely linked into the fire control of the 30 Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI) in Alaska and California defending the U.S. A similar architecture is deployed today against North Korea with the AN/TPY-2 radar deployed in Shariki, Japan.

In the future these AN/TPY-2 sensors will have dual capability to perform U.S. sensor duties and the fire control of a THAAD battery, which will offer both endo- and exo-atmospheric protection of Turkey from multiple Iranian ballistic missiles. These AN/TPY-2 sensors will link into the Aegis Ashore scheduled deployments in Romania and Poland to expand their defended areas.

These same deployments are projected to have a forward-based capability to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) heading towards the United States and Europe ten to fifteen years from now. 

Ideally, two AN/TPY-2 radars would be deployed in Turkey to provide triangulation and cover the full range of missile paths from Iran to the U.S. and Europe. This system would be complemented with THAAD and Patriot Batteries as well as linkage into U.S. Aegis Missile Defense Ships and Aegis Ashore platforms to provide a multi-layered robust defense. If this is done correctly it would provide a regional ballistic missile defense system that could be applied to any area in the world from the Persian Gulf to South Korea and Japan.

In the impending vote by NATO for territorial missile defense, Turkey will play a critical part of the after effects of a positive vote by NATO.

SOURCE Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance