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Warsaw (AFP) May 18, 2010 Poland will unveil its first US Patriot-type missiles battery at a military base in the northern town of Morag on May 26, a Polish defence ministry spokesman said Tuesday. "Ceremonies associated with the first rotation of the Patriot missile battery will be held Wednesday, May 26, in Morag", spokesman Janusz Sejmej said in a statement. Asked by AFP, the defence ministry's press service declined Tuesday to provide further details. The Polish military base at Morag, in the Mazurian Lakes region, is some 250 kilometres (150 miles) north of Warsaw and just 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the border with Russia's Kaliningrad territory. In February, Poland ratified the so-called SOFA deal on the stationing on its soil of US troops who will crew the surface-to-air Patriot battery. They are also due to train Polish soldiers to use the system. Poland has repeatedly insisted that the base close to Russian Kaliningrad was not chosen for political or strategic reasons, but simply because it already had good infrastructure. In September 2009 US President Barack Obama scrapped a plan agreed a year earlier by his predecessor George W. Bush to install a controversial anti-missile shield system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Under that now-shelved deal, the United States also pledged to help upgrade Poland's national air defences with Patriot missiles and has stuck to that part of the agreement. The anti-missile shield plan had enraged Russia, which dubbed it a menace to its security on its very doorstep, although Washington insisted it was meant to ward off a potential long-range missile threat from Iran. Warsaw and Prague were part of Moscow's Soviet-era sphere of control, but became solid US allies after breaking from the crumbling communist bloc in 1989, and joined NATO in 1999. The Obama administration has since come up with a new plan aimed at parrying short- and medium-range missile attacks.
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Study says US missile defense weapons deeply flawedWashington (AFP) May 18, 2010 US missile defense plans are based on "technical myths" and interceptors have mostly failed to knock out incoming warheads in military tests, a new study argues. Two American scientists reviewed 10 tests of the SM-3 "kill vehicle," designed to take out ballistic missiles, and concluded that the interceptor succeeded in directly hitting mock warheads in only one or two cases. "This means ... read more |
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