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British Plans: Parliamentary Committee Backs U.S. Radar Upgrade By David Ruppe “We have concluded that the U.K. should agree to the upgrade,” according to a report released today by the bipartisan House of Commons Select Committee on Defense, headed by a member of the ruling Labor Party. Improvements to the existing U.S. early warning radar at the Fylingdales air base are justified and the benefits of approval outweigh the costs, the report says. However, the committee also concluded that upgrading the radar would not itself enhance British or European security — because there are no immediate plans to deploy U.S. missile interceptors in Europe — and questioned whether the overall missile defense system would work. Nevertheless, “the factors in favor of that agreement — the importance of the U.K.-U.S. relationship, the improvement to the early warning capability, the opportunity to keep open the prospect of future missile defense for the U.K. and the potential for U.K. industrial participation in the program’s further development — outweigh the arguments against,” the committee report says. Criticism Persists British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon this month announced a “preliminary conclusion” to approve the U.S. request that would enable the radar to play a major role in an expanding U.S. missile defense system. Hoon’s announcement provoked considerable criticism in the British press and from a large number of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s own Labor Party members, though from backbenchers, those not holding government office. A retired senior British defense official, former Assistant Defense Staff Chief Timothy Garden, today warned that the radar upgrade would make Fylingdales a target for potential enemies. “Enemies intent on using weapons of mass destruction would see the need to take on our infrastructure, of which the ballistic missile warning radars would be a very important and perhaps the most vulnerable part,” he told the BBC, in comments disputed by Hoon. Garden asserted if the British experience participating in the Strategic Defense Initiative backed by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan was an indication, British costs would greatly outweigh the benefits of further participation in missile defense. “I think the best estimate was that over the whole project, which spent billions upon billions of dollars, we got about 1 million pounds of business,” he said. “The U.S. is concerned, just as other nations are, about not letting work go overseas that could be done at home,” he said. A “Real and Increasing” Threat The committee report says U.S. efforts to develop a national missile defense system are justified. “There is a real and increasing threat from the proliferation of ballistic missiles. The United States is justified in believing that it is a principal potential target of that threat. It is therefore justified in taking steps to counteract it,” the report says. Nigel Chamberlain, a missile defense critic at the British American Security Information Council, took issue with the committee’s reasoning. “Missile proliferation is an undoubted problem but it does not follow that the either the U.K. or the U.S. is under threat from an attack. I think the threat perception is exaggerated, in part to justify the deployment of missile defense systems,” he said. “Missile control and verification regimes backed up by intensive diplomacy are, in my opinion, more likely to produce the desired results, even if deployed missile defense systems worked in practice, which is highly questionable anyway.” The committee acknowledged persistent questions about whether the system might ever be made to work effectively. “There are still significant technical obstacles to be overcome, and at great cost, before an effective system could be deployed. But the U.S. has made substantial progress. In doing so it has so far not caused the international instability which many had predicted,” it said.
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