(IBD) While Obama Disarms, Russia Builds Missile Defense It Would Deny U.S.
On the heels of a test last month of a missile that U.S. intelligence officials believe violates the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, Russia is completing a large radar station near Armavir situated near the Black Sea and designed to detect missiles launched from Europe and Iran.
During a flight test of the Yars-M road-mobile missile on June 6, the missile traveled from a launch center at Kapustin Yar and landed at an impact range at Sary-Shagan, about 2,000 kilometers, or 1,242 miles, away. The distance would make the missile an INF-covered weapon.
While President Obama in his Berlin speech committed the U.S. to reducing its nuclear warhead stockpile by one-third, Moscow is clearly committed to modernizing and expanding its strategic nuclear weapons capability, matching it with a missile defense capability as it seeks to limit ours.
The Armavir radar is one of four advanced missile defense radars built by Russia in recent years and being rushed into service by 2020. Each of the radar can track up to 500 objects simultaneously. Two of the stations already are deployed near St. Petersburg and in Siberia in the Irkutsk region.
The fourth radar is located in the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad. That's where Moscow threatened to deploy advanced Iskander short-range nuclear-capable missiles if the U.S. went forward with Bush administration plans to deploy ground-based interceptors in Poland and missile defense radars in the Czech Republic. All the the radars are protected by highly advanced Russian S-400 air defense and anti-missile interceptors.
After Russia objected, Obama caved and dropped those plans, abandoning NATO allies who had stuck their necks out for us but claiming he had a better plan. To reassure the Russians we meant them no harm, the president said last year during an open-microphone exchange with then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would have "more flexibility" to dismantle U.S. missile defenses after his re-election.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/070313-662526-russia-build...
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