Obering’s Sobering Refections

I had an interesting chat with retired Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, the former director of the Missile Defense Agency over the weekend, about the tradeoffs involved in the revised European missile defense strategy unveiled by the Pentagon this week.

Some of Obering’s critics are quick to dismiss his advocacy of more a more robust plan as simply the desire of military man for more expensive hardware.

But I think if you listen to the 15-minute phone call I had with Obering [Click on Photo below] you will see he has a reasoned and reasonable position that I think adds to the informed debate.   Having retired earlier this year, he’s up to speed enough to know what he’s talking about, but he also smart enough knows he doesn’t have all the latest intelligence.

Still Obering worries about the Obama plan.   It’s good in the short-term against short range threats, but still leaves Europe vulnerable to long-range missiles for a decade or more, “We can handle the short to medium range threat with the SM-3s that we have, and with the THAAD that we have, what we can’t handle is anything beyond 3,500 to 4,000 kilometers.”

Gen. Obering acknowledges the Obama administration is not scuttling long-range defenses, just kicking the can down the road.

“Before, if we had had the treaties ratified last year we would have put the first long range interceptor in the ground in 2013 , if you move that a year that would be 2014.  But we would have finished it in 2015, 2016.  Now we are not going to have any long range protection at all until 2018 or 2020,” Obering says.

The key question is whether the intelligence has really changed to give the U.S. more breathing space, or anxious to placate the Russians and trim costs, the President and the Pentagon are simply putting a different spin on the same intelligence to support the policy they now want to pursue.

Obering admits, he doesn’t know, “Apparently they are comfortable with that because of the new intell assessments, about the Iranian capabilities.  Frankly that is surprising to me, because I was not aware there had been that dramatic a shift in the intelligence assessments with respect to Iran.  In fact, everything that I am aware of, and that I have seen since I retired, with respect to their space-launched, their Ashura solid missile launch that occurred last spring that was rated at about 2,000 kilometers, tells me that if anything the Iranians are accelerating, not slowing down.”

It is hard to believe Iran’s missile program took such a sharp change in trajectory.   Sounds more like someone is cooking the intell.  Either this administration, or the last.

Tags: Intelligence, Iran, Missile Defense, Obering