US Navy in Talks To Use Iceland's Keflavik Air Base Again

HELSINKI — The government of Iceland is engaged in a dialogue with the United States over the proposed future deployment of Navy P-8 Poseidon submarine "hunter" aircraft from a renovated Keflavik Air Base.

The US Navy, which withdrew aircraft assets and personnel from the airport in 2006, plans to spend an initial $22 million to renew hangar facilities and restore infrastructure at Keflavik as part of a project to house P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft for maritime patrol operations in the North Atlantic.

The capital investment plan is included in the US Defense Department’s 2017 fiscal budget. Under the proposal, the Navy would use Keflavík Air Base to house P-8 Poseidon aircraft as needed. In effect, this would give the Navy the capacity to establish regular patrol rotations at the base in the future.

Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, said the US plan would add a new tier of security to the defense of the North Atlantic island.

However, Gunnlaugsson added that in ongoing discussions the US has made no mention of locating a permanent force at Keflavik at the level that existed before 2006 when the Navy operated P-3 Orion planes to police North Atlantic waters around Iceland and Greenland.

At peak, about 2,500 US Navy and Air Force personnel were stationed at the Keflavík Naval Air Station.

"The US proposal for Keflavik is welcome, but we have had no talks about increased operations from there. Should more flights and operations happen, then this is already covered under our current defense agreements with the US," said Gunnlaugsson,

The Navy’s decision to withdraw from Iceland in 2006 happened against a backdrop that saw the US shift its operational focus in Europe away from the North Atlantic and toward the Mediterranean Sea.

Established in 1951, the Keflavik Naval Air Station became an important base for the US as it is strategically located midway between the United States’ East Coast and Europe. It allowed Navy P-3 Orion and fighter aircraft to patrol Arctic and sub-Arctic ocean waters in the North Atlantic between Greenland, Iceland and Britain.

Recent inter-government discussions with the US have focused increasing on Iceland’s concerns over a surge in the activity of Russian military aircraft and submarines in the air and waters around the island. Russian activity, according to Iceland, is now running at levels not witnessed since the end of the Cold War.

Under a treaty signed in 1951, the US continues to be responsible for the defense of Iceland, which has a small coast guard but no standing army or military organization. Since 2008, Iceland’s air space has been patrolled by NATO allies as part of the Icelandic Air Policing operation

Cold War Shadows In The Indian Ocean

Since the end of the Cold War in 1991 there has been a major shift in naval power in the Indian Ocean. With the demise of the Russian fleet (seen as an Indian ally) and the rise of Chinese naval power, India has sought cooperation from a growing U.S. Navy presence in the area. This is all about keeping Indian naval power supreme in the Indian Ocean. The rising Chinese threat is seen as more than India can handle alone. With Indian inability to expand, or even maintain their current naval power more help has to come from somewhere.

 

While India was technically neutral during the Cold War, India was generally hostile to the United States and quite cozy with Russia. India still has good relationships with Russia, but the Russians have no fleet to speak of these days and suddenly the Americans are seen as potential allies. In part this is because the anti-American slant was more the product of Indian post-colonial nationalism (that was generally anti-Western) and infatuation with socialism. Both those policies proved failures and, while many Indian politicians do not accept the shift to a market economy and better relations with the West, these changes have happened anyway. 

 

But above all this there is China, which has already taken some disputed territory on the Indian border and claims still more. Chinese ships (both commercial and military) are more frequently seen in the Indian Ocean. Chinese shipping firms have refurbished ports throughout the region and manage them to handle growing Chinese trade with the countries where these ports are located. The Chinese presence cannot be ignored and the Indians are now welcoming the Americans.

 

Yet there won’t be a lot of Americans. The U.S. defense budget is declining and so is the size of the American fleet. Most of the U.S. naval presence in the Indian Ocean is in and around the Persian Gulf and is there mainly to curb growing Iranian aggression. The only major American base actually in the Indian Ocean is Diego Garcia (a 44 square kilometer island 4,700 kilometers south of Afghanistan). 

The U.S. Navy maintains a base in Bahrain in the Persian Gulf and several Gulf states host American warplanes. What India wants is some American warships closer to the Indian coast. That does not seem to be happening soon enough to influence the Chinese fleet moving into the region.

Inside the Ring: Russia builds up, U.S. down

As the Obama administration prepares to launch a new round of strategic nuclear missile cuts, Russia’s strategic nuclear forces are undergoing a major modernization, according to U.S. officials.

Russia's military announced last month that as part of the nuclear buildup, Moscow later this year will deploy the first of its new intercontinental ballistic missiles called the Yars-M.

Details of the missile are being kept secret, but it has been described as a fifth-generation strategic nuclear system that Russian officials say will be able to penetrate U.S. missile defenses using a new type of fuel that requires a shorter burn time for booster engines.

The solid-fueled, road-mobile ICBM was tested a year ago, and it is said to have an increased payload capacity for a warhead weighing up to 1.5 tons. The range is 6,835 miles. Like earlier mobile missiles known as SS-29s and SS-27s, the new ICBM is expected to have up to 10 multiple, independently targetable warheads.

Retired Russian strategic forces commander Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin has said the Yars-M “is one of the military technological measures that the Russian military-political leadership has devised in response to the development of a global missile-defense system by the Americans.”

Last year, a Russian official explained the new missile’s fuel and anti-missile defense capabilities in an interview with Moskovski Komsomolets. The strategic nuclear weapons specialist said the high-tech fuel “allows for the reduction of the working time of the engines during the boost phase of flight, when it [the missile] is most vulnerable to detection by defensive means.”

“As a result, we achieve the most complex part of the rocket boost so fast that the enemy does not have time to calculate its trajectory and, therefore, cannot destroy it,” the official said. “That is, we can say that our ability to overcome missile defense will be significantly increased.”

Russia also announced last month that it has launched a new research-and-development program for a modernized rail-mobile ICBM. Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov told RIA Novosti April 23 that work on this rail-based missile is in the early stages and could be deployed by 2020.

Russia, during the Soviet era, was the first to deploy a rail-mobile nuclear missile system known as the SS-24.

The rail-based missile is being developed by Russia’s Moscow Institute of Thermal, which also is building the new Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missiles, as well as existing land-based Topol ICBMs.

The rail-mobile ICBMs were prohibited under earlier versions of the U.S.-Russia START treaties. 

However, the 2010 New START treaty did not prohibit rail-mobile basing of missiles, and Moscow is taking advantage of the omission.

In addition to the new strategic missiles, Russia is building a new strategic bomber that is expected to be deployed by 2020.

By comparison, President Obama is expected to announced soon that he will seek a new round of talks with Russia aimed at cutting U.S. nuclear forces even further than the 1,550 deployed warheads under the 2020 New START treaty.

The cuts are expected to be justified under a Pentagon strategic review that was completed months ago but withheld from release. That report is expected to suggest that U.S. warhead levels could be cut to as few as 1,000, causing critics to say the administration is undermining U.S. deterrence and the ability to extend the nuclear umbrella to European and Asian allies.

Rep. Mike Rogers, Alabama Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, said in a recent speech that the administration is short between $1 billion and $1.6 billion that was promised in 2010 for nuclear modernization.

Among nuclear programs in trouble are a new strategic submarine, life extension programs for B-61, W-76 and W-88 nuclear warheads and a long-range standoff nuclear cruise missile. A needed plutonium facility in New Mexico was also canceled, Mr. Rogers said.

The Pentagon also postponed a test launch of a Minuteman III ICBM last month over concerns that it might be misconstrued as an attack on North Korea, which threatened nuclear missile attacks on the United States.

“I find this deeply concerning, given the sorry state of the nuclear modernization commitments made during the last round,” Mr. Rogers said of plans for additional nuclear cuts.

The Pentagon also has signaled a further lack of resolve toward its nuclear modernization program by ordering an environmental impact study of shutting down an entire land-based nuclear-missile wing.

“New START doesn’t require shutting down a missile wing, and I have heard no explanation for this requested study,” Mr. Rogers said.

N. Korea provocation alert

U.S. intelligence agencies are stepping up monitoring North Korean’s military and missile activities now that the annual U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises have ended.

The increased surveillance comes amid new worries that North Korea will conduct some type of military provocation during the visit to the United States next week by South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Mrs. Park arrives Monday on her first visit as president.

Officials tell Inside the Ring there are continuing signs that North Korea is moving some of its mobile missiles and could possibly conduct a test launch of the new intermediate-range Musudan missile, with an expected range of about 2,500 miles — enough to hit targets at the U.S. island of Guam.

Also, intelligence imagery revealed some type of activity at North Korea’s nuclear testing facility that could be an indication of a fourth underground nuclear blast. “It could just be maintenance” on the site in the northeastern part of the country, one official said.

A key worry is that the North Koreans, who engaged in a new round of saber-rattling last month and then appeared to calm down, are now ready to take some type of action that would upset the Park visit.

The new South Korea president is said to be ready to engage North Korea in talks, if Pyongyang dials back its hostile rhetoric and threats.

U.S. officials said there are subtle signs that China recently pressed North Korea’s government not to conduct a military provocation, like the Musudan test.

Chinese envoy Wu Dawei, considered a hard-line, pro-North Korea official, recently met State Department officials. Sources familiar with the talks said Mr. Wu did not present the same Chinese policy line toward North Korea as he has in the past.

Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn revealed last month that China has deployed its new mobile DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee in prepared remarks that the unique aircraft carrier-killing ballistic missile is now fielded opposite Taiwan among 1,200 ballistic missiles aimed at the U.S. ally.

Describing China’s nuclear forces, Gen. Flynn said the Chinese military is “augmenting the over 1,200 conventional short-range ballistic missiles deployed opposite Taiwan with a limited, but growing number, of conventionally armed, medium-range ballistic missiles, including the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile.”

It was the first time a senior official confirmed that the missile is deployed.

China’s Gen. Chen Bingde said in July 2011 that the DF-21D was “still in the research stage.”

The DF-21D is part of what the Pentagon calls the Chinese military’s anti-access and area-denial weapons, along with anti-satellite missiles and lasers, submarines and missile defenses.

The weapons prompted the new military concept called Air Sea Battle that seeks to better coordinate Navy and Air Force systems in Asia to deter and, if needed, defeat China in a future conflict.

Russia to Deploy Fighter Jets in Belarus - Defense Minister

Russia plans to base fighter jets at a military airbase in Belarus, with a first wing due to arrive there later this year, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday. 

“In 2013 we will establish a military commandant’s office and provide a wing of combat fighters on alert duty,” he said, adding more jets could be based there later.

“We hope that an Air Force regiment will be here by 2015 to protect our borders,” he said.

Russia will also deliver four battalions of S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Belarus in 2014, Shoigu said. 

The decision to deliver the missiles was made at a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Shoigu said. 

Belarus borders NATO nations Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. NATO nations now fly combat air patrols from the Baltic states close to Russian airspace, an issue that has previously been viewed with concern in Moscow. 

The Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led military alliance of six former Soviet republics, plans to build an integrated air and missile defense system, the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff said in December. 

The CSTO's current members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan announced it had pulled out of the organization in 2012.

So far Russia has signed agreements on creation of joint regional air defense systems with Belarus and Kazakhstan.