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Navy to commission missile defense base in Romania – News – Stripes

The Navy will commission its new missile defense base in southern Romania on Friday, one of two European land-based interceptor sites for a NATO missile shield vehemently opposed by Russia. The base represents a rare expansion of the U.S. footprint in Europe, and the even rarer construction of a new Navy base from the ground…

The Navy will commission its new missile defense base in southern Romania on Friday, one of two European land-based interceptor sites for a NATO missile shield vehemently opposed by Russia.

The base represents a rare expansion of the U.S. footprint in Europe, and the even rarer construction of a new Navy base from the ground up.

The base in Deveselu will be the first to feature the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense system, a land-based version of the sophisticated radar tracking system installed on U.S. warships since 2004. Scheduled to become operational by the end of next year, the base — which is housed within a larger Romanian military installation — will be staffed by several hundred U.S. military, civilian and contract employees. A second site, in Poland, is scheduled to become operational by 2018.

via Navy to commission missile defense base in Romania – News – Stripes.

The young sailors who will be manning this site are too young to remember when Romania was behind the Iron Curtain.

Land based Aegis is one of the smarter things we’ve seen come out of the DoD procurement program.  Relatively cheap, and effective, Aegis/SM-3 is good for intercepting medium range missiles. The potential is there to upgrade to intercept actual ICBMs in the future.

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  1. mosingal

    Shades of the “Cornfield Cruiser” in southern Jersey!

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  2. captainned

    Why do I suddenly dread political turmoil and “separatist movements” in Romania?

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  3. diogenesofnj

    This site won’t do much. SM-3 is too small (slow) to catch an ICBM. The best it can do is to get in the way. If they get enough warning, they might be able to intercept. They would have to launch a SM-3 before the target is in range of the facility radar to intercept an Iranian ICBM headed for the US or the UK. That’s assuming that the radar would come up in time. The radar will be kept off the air to prevent interference with cell phones. Maybe the plan is to let the Romanians tweet out the ICBM sightings as they fly over.

    Europe was suppose to get GBI, but we all know how that went.

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