Europe need financial backing for Missile Shield

PARIS — Europe has technological capabilities it could contribute to NATO’s planned missile shield to protect European territory but a financial commitment is needed, François Auque, the chief executive of EADS’s Astrium space division, said Jan. 19.

The NATO summit in Chicago in May will be of strategic importance to Astrium as decisions are due to be made on contributions intended to extend the Active Layered Theater Ballistic Missile Defense system to a territorial coverage, he said. The system was designed to protect NATO deployed troops.

“In technological terms, Europe has a certain number of competences it can contribute,” Auque told journalists. “It could contribute to the architecture for the system. The knowledge of the missile threat allows one to organize the defense architecture.”

France could contribute by making available its Spirale launch early warning satellite, a demonstrator project, he said. Spirale has a limited life and needs a program launch, he said.

“Europe could also contribute an interceptor vehicle, which would require a certain amount of development,” he said.

“There are technological bricks,” he said. “The only real subject is the financial thing.”

Astrium is prime contractor for the French M51 submarine-launched ballistic missile, which was delivered on time and on budget, Auque said. There is no better qualification to design a defense architecture than the knowledge gained from building a ballistic missile, he said.

The M51 missile entered service in 2010 after an extremely limited test-fire program, due to budgetary constraints, he said. There were five test fires and five successes, Auque said.

“That takes risk-taking to the limit,” he said. “Really.”

Astrium’s experience in building ballistic missiles helped the company win from Kazakhstan a contract for two Earth-observation satellites, when it emerged that the Kazakh minister who agreed to meet Auque for a brief presentation had been a senior rocketry officer in the former Soviet Union, Auque said.

This year, Astrium is expecting the second phase of a feasibility study on future architecture for the ballistic missile early warning system and a formal NATO staff requirement for the architecture for a territorial ballistic missile defense.

The Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA) procurement office recently launched work on maintaining a capability for a future nuclear deterrence, he said.

Astrium had 2011 sales of 5 billion euros ($6.4 billion), which is expected to increase to around 5.5 billion to 5.6 billion euros with the integration of the U.S. military telecommunications satellite company Vizada.

U.S. Could Send More Supplies Through Uzbekistan

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - The United States is trying to increase the flow of non-lethal supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan via Uzbekistan as it may not always be able to count on the Pakistan route, a U.S. official said Oct. 22.
The official spoke as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, part of the U.S. military's Northern Distribution Network (NDN), following a trip to Pakistan to discuss troubled ties there.

"As a general rule, we're trying to get more [goods] through Central Asia and through Uzbekistan," the senior State Department official, who was accompanying Clinton, told reporters on condition of anonymity.
"We've always said that we prefer to use the Pakistan route because it's cheaper, it's shorter," the official said, recalling that the northern route goes via the Baltic states, Russia and Kazakhstan.
"But still, it's [the northern route] a good thing to have. And again with our [often troubled] relations with Pakistan, we always have to be prepared should they decide to either want to restrict our access or, even in the worst case, close it off.
"We would be prepared to move north through Central Asia if necessary."
The route from Uzbekistan is a rail link that distributes fuel and other non-lethal goods. He said about 50 percent of surface shipments take that route.
The Uzbeks are "sensitive" about publicizing the route to Afghanistan for fear that it will prompt "retribution" from the Taliban and other Islamist militants in the region, he added.
In February 2009, during improving relations with Washington, Uzbek President Islam Karimov said he would allow the United States to transport non-military supplies through his country.
In 2005, Tashkent closed the U.S. air base in the country that was used to support troops in Afghanistan after U.S. criticism of a bloody crackdown on unrest in Andijan in the country's east.
The U.S. official said there were no plans to hold negotiations to reopen the base. Nor were there plans, he said, to increase supplies through Tajikistan, which is a small supply route.
Clinton visited Islamabad on Oct. 20 and 21 to urge Pakistan to dismantle havens in Pakistan that militants use to launch attacks in neighboring Afghanistan, an issue that has put a heavy strain on U.S.-Pakistani ties

U.S. Shifts Supply Routes to Central Asia: Report

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military is expanding its Central Asian supply routes to the war in Afghanistan, fearing that the routes going through Pakistan could be endangered by deteriorating U.S.-Pakistani relations, The Washington Post reported late on July 2.

Citing unnamed Pentagon officials, the newspaper said that in 2009, the United States moved 90 percent of its military surface cargo through the Pakistani port of Karachi and then through mountain passes into Afghanistan.

Now almost 40 percent of surface cargo arrives in Afghanistan from the north, along a patchwork of Central Asian rail and road routes that the Pentagon calls the Northern Distribution Network, the report said.

The military is pushing to raise the northern network's share to as much as 75 percent by the end of this year, the paper said.

In addition, the U.S. government is negotiating expanded agreements with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other countries that would allow for delivery of additional supplies to the Afghan war zone, The Post said.

The United States also wants permission to withdraw vehicles and other equipment from Afghanistan as the U.S. military prepares to pull out one-third of its forces by September 2012, the paper noted.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced last month that 10,000 troops would leave this year and all 33,000 personnel sent as part of a surge ordered in late 2009 would be home by next summer, leaving a U.S. force of some 65,000.

There are currently up to 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, including about 99,000 from the United States. Obama has indicated a series of drawdowns until Afghan forces assume security responsibility in 2014.