海峡论谈: 美军陆战队与萨德若驻台 武统倒计时?

choi

樊冬宁, 海峡论谈: 美军陆战队与萨德若驻台 武统倒计时?  VOA Chinese, Feb 19, 2017.
http://www.voachinese.com/a/stra ... 170219/3730926.html

My comment:
(a) "自由时报驻华盛顿特派员曹郁芬则在海峡论谈节目中表示，她在2008年就报导过此事，最早是因为AIT在台北时报招标工程，其中一项就是要建陆战队基地的营房，当时在立法院外交部长还被质询，马政府表示乐观其成。"

It is true. I read it and wrote a posting at Mitbbs.com.

(b) "至于萨德驻台，曹郁芬认为这是一个更好笑的议题。因为攻打台湾的主要是短程弹道飞弹，爱国者系统就足以防御，萨德系统防御的是洲际飞弹。"
(i) This is red herring. See red herring
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring
(section 3 History of the idiom)
(ii) To date, US has not deployed THAAD outside US (which, among other domestic locations, has been deployed in Hawaii and Guam). S Korea would be the first nation to deploy it.
(ii) On the other hand, US has deployed the radar AN/TPY-2 (a portable companion to THAAD) in Israel, Turkey and Japan. The following posted has been deleted from its website, but Google keeps a cache.

The Sun Never Sets on AN/TPY-2. Raytheon, Sept 8, 2014 (updated in 2015)
http://webcache.googleuserconten ... cache:GOEUVCh3rCIJ:[/url]
("the Raytheon-made, truck-mounted AN/TPY-2, which operates in sites including Turkey, Israel, the United States, Guam and Japan")
(iii) For US to deploy AN/TPY-2 in Japan and THAAD in S Korea (in a year), the bogeyman is N Korea. So I do not know how US can explain away deployment in Taiwan. Of course, the advantage of Thaad in Taiwan -- to protect US, not Taiwan -- is elucidated in 亚洲周刊.  

(c)
(i) Sam LaGrone, Aegis Ashore Site in Romania Declared Operational. USNI News,May 12, 2016
https://news.usni.org/2016/05/12 ... eclared-operational
(ii) Aegis Ashore in Poland is under construction, which will be completed in 2018. In Europe, the bogeyman is Iran.
-------------------------------------------------------Raytheon
The Sun Never Sets on AN/TPY-2
Far-flung engineers tend the radar that doesn’t sleep

As the sun sets on one AN/TPY-2 radar operation, it rises on another.

The sun was coming up over the mountains of Turkey's Malatya province as Randy DeMoss worked the dawn shift. Around him, radar operators monitored digital consoles. More than 25,000 antennas on the face of their AN/TPY-2 radar system pulsed the horizon.

The AN/TPY-2 is on the “tip of the spear” of the global ballistic missile defense system. DeMoss and fellow engineers all over the world make sure the world’s foremost missile defense radar is on duty 24/7.

“This job tests all of our skills,” DeMoss said.

The sun never sets on the Raytheon-made, truck-mounted AN/TPY-2, which operates in sites including Turkey, Israel, the United States, Guam and Japan. In a forward-based mode like Turkey or Japan, it can spot a missile launch from hundreds of miles away. Advanced discrimination algorithms allow the radar to distinguish a warhead from countermeasures, so it can then pass the information off to other sensors or cue interceptors such as a Standard Missile-3.

The radar is designed to meet a growing threat. According to publicly available U.S. intelligence estimates, nearly 8,000 ballistic missiles will be held in various stockpiles outside the U.S. by the year 2020. Experts believe those weapons will be increasingly accurate at longer ranges, making early detection by systems such as the AN/TPY-2 a critical first line of defense.

Like the radars, the close-knit team of engineers who maintain them are always on duty. On any given day, they run diagnostics on the power supply, upgrade hardware modules or inspect and maintain the antenna array.

DeMoss and his team have a sense of mission that doesn’t wither even in the howling winds of the Anatolian highlands. “We have a great relationship with our military counterparts, and the team's energy level and morale is high,” he said.

Several time zones away, Brian Keech tended another AN/TPY-2 in Japan.

Keech's team was running a routine maintenance check on the radar when a frigid winter storm blew in. Powering up the 1.3 megawatt system could create stress in the cold radar components, just as running a 100 meter sprint without a warm-up can cramp your legs. Fortunately the team had prepared for this scenario. They stepped through the cold weather start-up sequence, and the radar successfully hummed back online.

In their regular conference call later in the day, Keech walked through the episode with his counterparts around the world.

“We’ve encountered a huge variety of situations and by now, we have a deep appreciation for how the radar functions,” he said.

Working 24-hour shifts far from home brings the team together and allows them to form bonds with folks they might have never met otherwise. “On the weekends, when I have free time, I play basketball and soccer with the kids in the apartment complex,” DeMoss said. “It’s just like interacting with your neighbors at home.”

To a person, the engineers take pride in their mission to maintain a key defense asset.

“An unexpected upside to this assignment is the deep sense of camaraderie,” Keech said. “Everyone knows we have an important mission that can only be met by the entire team working together.”

Published: 09/08/2014
Last Updated: 03/02/2015
-----------------------------------------------------USNI News
Aegis Ashore Site in Romania Declared Operational
By: Sam LaGrone
May 12, 2016 12:57 PM

The Navy and U.S. Missile Defense Agency declared a ballistic missile defense site in Romania operational this week.

The Lockheed Martin-built Aegis Ashore facility in Deveselu is the first of two sites planned as part of the U.S. and NATO’s BMD network based on the same technology used in the Navy’s guided missile destroyers and cruisers to protect against ballistic missile threats.

The site is built around a SPY-1D(V) air-search radar linked to three 8-cell Mark-41 Vertical Launch Systems armed with Raytheon Standard Missile 3 interceptors – the same equipment used on destroyers. The installation is named by U.S. sailors.

The Deveselu site and one in Poland are part of the Obama administration’s 2009 European Phased Adaptive Approach for BMD and replaced a plan for a 10-silo ground-based system in Poland. In addition to the two sites, the second which plans to break ground on Friday, the U.S. has forward deployed four Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers for additional BMD patrols.

While intended to intercept threats from Iran, the installation of the sites has drawn protests from Russian officials who have repeatedly said the BMD sites blunt their own strategic weapon systems and could cause risk to Russian security.