“The shortcomings are the numerical disadvantages the US has right now in being able to handle the thousand or so Iranian missiles that are 120 miles away. So we are lacking the numbers of the specific PAC-3 missiles, we are lacking the launchers that are needed and other systems that are needed to be deployed as quickly as possible,” said Riki Ellison, chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a US-based organization.
Ellison told The Media Line that some Iranian rockets are “only a few short minutes of missile flight away” from US personnel and other targets in the Gulf countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Ellison spoke following a visit to missile installations in Bahrain this week, revealing that only two US air defense battalions are currently spread across the four countries to protect thousands of US personnel, as well as the nearby cities, military sites and civilian populations.
The United States has reportedly been planning to bolster missile protection for its allies in the Gulf, including dispatching sea-based cruisers with sophisticated Aegis defense systems. Washington also reportedly said it was beefing up its eight Patriot missile batteries, although there has been no evidence of this.
While steadily developing its long-range ballistic missile, Iran has been concentrating more readily on short- and medium-range missiles that put the Gulf states well within reach. These are the types of systems that the Patriots and Aegis systems are designed to defend against.
According to Ellison, there are currently four basic types of deployed Iranian ballistic missiles: Shahab, Sajjil, CSS-8 and the M11.
The declared goal of Ellison’s organization is to drive “development, deployment and evolution” of missile defense.
He outlined a number of steps the US should take to enhance missile protection, particularly in Bahrain, which hosts the US 5th fleet headquarters, and Qatar, home to a modernized US air operations center that has played a key role in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. These include increasing the number of PAC-3 Patriot launchers from one in each of the eight batteries deployed and doubling their missile inventory, Ellison said.
Another suggestion was the deployment of the new THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system designed to shoot down incoming rockets in space before they re-enter the atmosphere. The THAAD system just last week passed a successful test at a US range in the Pacific, intercepting a target missile inside the Earth’s atmosphere. The test also included coordinated interoperability links with a Patriot missile defense system, according to Defense News.
Ellison also advised that the US integrate all the regional missile defense systems to make a combined shield.
“The size and scope of this [Iranian] threat drives the need for missile defense protection to be top priority,” he said. “The US missile defense systems, which are vastly outnumbered by Iranian missiles in the Gulf need to be addressed in order to perform their critical mission.”
