Weekly press briefing

JAMES APPATHURAI (NATO Spokesman): Colleagues, sorry to make you wait. I was trying to track down our briefer, who seems to have disappeared somewhere, so hopefully he'll show up one of these days. We have called back and they are trying to find him. 

Sorry?

Q: (Inaudible)...

APPATHURAI: I don't have a clue. Let me... sorry. Thank you for waiting for me. Normally I try not to make you wait, but let me update you on a few things and I'll be happy to take your questions, and if Peter shows up well, all the better.

The first thing I was going to do was to update you on a series of technical briefings that we're planning to hold in the run-up to the Bucharest Summit. The first one was supposed to be on defence against terrorism and missile defence. That's today. We'll see how that goes.

Next week we hope here to have a briefing on cyber defence and where we are, where there has been substantive progress in NATO in the last little while in terms of taking forward our cyber defence approach within the Alliance. So we will bring, I believe, two experts down to brief you.

Ha! He appears. Peter, have a seat.

Let me stop and I'll do my business afterwards. Let me then take this opportunity, first, to say that at least the first technical briefing will, indeed take place, and to thank Peter Flory, F-L-O-R-Y, who is our Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment, for coming down and taking the time to provide a technical briefing for you on defence against terrorism and on missile defence within NATO. And then he'll be happy to take your questions on these subjects.

Of course, we're working hard on these issues in the run-up to the Bucharest Summit. And then I'll let him go and I'll complete my own press briefing afterwards. Peter.

PETER FLORY (Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment):  Okay, thank you James. After what happened to Mr. Massoud back in September 10th, 2001 I always get nervous when I get in with a bunch of journalists and all these technical devices in front of me.

Every time we have a counter-IED briefing I think about all the ways you can make things blow up, but I know you've got everybody well-vetted.

APPATHURAI: Oh yes, we've patted them all down.

FLORY: Okay, good afternoon, I'm Peter Flory, as described I'm the assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment. I'll give you a rundown first on the defence-based terrorism program and then where we are on missile defence.

James, give me, time-wise, I need to...

APPATHURAI: Yeah, shorter is better.

FLORY: ...wheels-up about quarter of, because we had a lot of trouble getting down here, and I've got people waiting for me.

I don't know how much you know about the Defence Against Terrorism Programme of Work. That title is kind of self-explanatory, but it's a program that NATO developed after the Madrid bombings in 2004. Obviously it's worked. It was, you know, already relevant after 2001, frankly, over the last couple of decades, but the Madrid bombing really brought this problem into focus. Strictly as an immediate threat to NATO countries, both in their homelands, and then also in time as NATO took on more challenging missions, particularly in Afghanistan, of course the threats that these kind of things did to our forces deployed in the field.

So the program was set up in 2004, started out with seven programs, expanded to 11 now. I'll give you a quick listing of them towards the end.

Basically what we... the value of the program, in my view, is that it provides a programmatic framework, it provides a forum in which information, technology, best practices and other tools can be brought together. There's a tendency to view it sometimes as purely a technology program. Technology is a very important part of it, but it's not at all the only part, and a lot of the technology part is... part of it involves developing technology or maybe affecting the course of development of technology that's already out there being developed. In some cases actually developing prototypes for particular items of equipment.

But it's also about what I call sort of socializing, sharing and socializing technology. You've got 26 countries, 26 sets of industry, plus all the industry in non-NATO countries that are working on many of these challenges. Not necessarily a whole lot of visibility across all of these nations, across all of these technology areas. So that's one of the things we've tried to foster.

We've had 45 technology demonstrations since the program was created. I've attended a couple of those, and they impressed me as one of the most efficient ways of sharing, not just technology, the knowledge about technology is out there, but how different bits of technology might relate to each other and might be able to support each other to become even more effective.

We also do some sort of non-technical things. For example, in NATO we developed something called STANAGs, Standardization Agreements, which is a sort of a subset. And actually I shouldn't call it non-technical, because it's technical in the sense that it talks about having equipment, or tactics, techniques, procedures that make us more interoperable and to the extent that there are solutions, interoperability STANAG solutions to terrorism-type challenges. We also work on that as well.

A big part of this, though, is again we've got technology work that involves networking. There's also a broader networking aspect here. And one of the most useful things I think we do is get together twice a year for what we call Counter-IED Day and in the course of that we bring together experts from the field, from the commands, technology experts, intelligence experts and try to have a discussion on what's the state of the intelligence, what's the state-of-the-art on the threat side, how are we doing on the response side? Again, a lot of the... the biggest value there, I think, comes out of having all these people, many of whom spend most of their time in Afghanistan, bringing them altogether with experts so they can share ideas and share knowledge.

I referred a couple of times to TTPs. I don't know if I said what that meant. I apologize. That's kind of a NATO habit, to speak in acronyms and riddles. Tactics, techniques and procedures. Those are the things that they aren't necessarily a piece of equipment with which you might find an IED or a technology solution to how to disarm them, but how you would deal with the situation and how would you patrol, how you prepare a patrol and things like that.

An important part of this program is the cooperation of some of our partner nations. All of the NATO nations participate in various ways and I'll list the lead nations briefly in a second. But a couple of our partners in particular, not surprisingly typically partners that are in the field with us in Afghanistan, or Kosovo or elsewhere, that have resources, that have technology to bring to bear, that have interest in solving the problem, and energy, a couple of cases, Sweden, Finland, Austria, also Ukraine.

Two of our programs are open to partners on a full-time basis. The counter-IED program, which given the nature of the IED threat is, I would say, our number one priority, but also the related program of dealing with explosive ordinance, the so-called EOD program, and we recently decided to, on a case by case, is open all of the programs to partner participation because we realized that partners, in many cases, have a great deal to add here.

I'm going to flip to missile defence quickly. The… when we talk missile defence now we're mostly talking territorial missile defence.  As you know, NATO has done work on theatre missile defence and I'm happy to refer to that if anybody wants me to.  This work on theatre by the way is important because it could form part of a solution to a territorial missile defence tasking but, as I think most of you know that, sort of, the current main pillar of NATO territorial missile defence work is the so-called missile defence feasibility study, MDFS, that was completed in 2006.  A very, very long document but the key finding was missile defence is feasible within the assumptions and limitations of the study.  It was a basic finding that NATO that, yes, this is something that can be done.  It did not include the proposed US third site.  So it… in June of last year, the defence ministers tasked us to go back and, sort of, rerun the numbers and rerun the maps and everything else, plugging into the equation the proposed US third site.

That is work that we're completing now in preparation for the Riga Summit where… excuse me, Bucharest, Riga was the last one… Bucharest Summit where we are helping to provide information both on the policy side, which my office doesn't do so much, but on the technology side that will allow ministers, heads of states of government, to have informed discussions and potentially make decisions on a NATO approach to missile defence.  I mean, I think the Bucharest Summit has the potential to be a very important summit on this topic.  We'll see what actually happens but I think the potential there is substantial.

What are some of the key questions on missile defence?  I mean, I think you're familiar with them, some of them have to do just with the characteristics, for example, of the US system.  How much coverage does it provide?  Obviously, a relevant part in deciding the question of what might NATO then have to decide?  The usual questions of cost efficient effectiveness against things like counter measures, debris, implications for arms control and non-proliferation measures… basically, questions that have been part of debate on missile defence for a number of years.  However, also, a sense that the debate on missile defence is not the debate on missile defence that it was in 1983 when Ronald Reagan made his speech unveiling the strategic defence initiative.  I think there's a broad understanding at NATO of all the ways in which the world has changed, in which the threat has changed, in which traditional assumptions on missile defence may no longer be valid and we're working through that now.

I mentioned the coverage of the US system.  The flipside of that is, of course, what would be uncovered and what would be options that NATO might develop and how might it provide coverage of the areas that aren't covered under the general concept of the indivisibility of security, which is a theme that the secretary general has stressed in all of his statements on this regard; the idea that for an alliance like NATO, where collective self-defence is the core purpose of the alliance, the need to provide an indivisible defence for our different alliance members.  So we're looking at what might be possible options for a NATO missile defence.  How might it connect with the US system and all the relevant questions of how much would that cost.

Going into Bucharest I'd say we have a high degree of consensus on a number of issues, we don't have a final sort of position, we don't have a final language, I would say.  There's considerable consensus; we have a greed document on the extent of the ballistic missile threat and if you… it tracks the trend of statements from preceding NATO summits that have found an increasing missile threat to NATO.  There's consensus, as I mentioned earlier, on the general feasibility of missile defence, although this is not a specific judgement on the US system, but on NATO's ability to defend itself with missile defence, there is a consensus on the level of coverage that the US system would provide if it's deployed.

This is something we worked in the CNAD, in the sub-groups, and we have an agreement on the quite substantial level of protection that would provide.  There are, and there's certainly a consensus on the concept of the indivisibility of security.  The questions, again, tend to be the familiar ones; you know, how much would this cost, how effective would it be, how… you know, where does it fit in in a broader concept of how you deal with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction?  Russia has obviously had a strong reaction to this, and I think, well, NATO nations have been very clear that Russia does not have a veto over NATO decisions.

You know, clearly it's an element in our discussion and a number of nations have made the point that, you know, that while Bucharest is an appropriate venue in which to discuss the possible missile defence in the future for NATO, there is… I don't think we're going to see a decision there, I don't see any nation pushing for a decision on an actual procurement program … an actual decision on a defence architecture.  It's more on a…  I can imagine a statement that would include elements of acknowledging the threat, acknowledging the contribution of the proposed US system, acknowledging the fact that missile defence can play a role in an overall strategy of dealing with proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.  That NATO system can play a role and then coming back and tasking us on the international staff and the various sub-groups that we work with to develop options for consideration at a 2009 summit.

With that, James, I will wrap up and would be happy to take your questions.

APPATHURAI: Questions.  Let's start at the front and then we'll go back.

Q: Paul Ames,  Associated Press.  How much will it cost and how efficient is it? (Laughter)

FLORY: We are working on that, we don't have the final answers on cost.  The previous feasibility study, which envisioned a NATO-only system, in other words it did not assume the US system.  Looked… it identified one set of costs.  The addition of a system to be paid for by the US entirely obviously has a significant impact on that.  There's the… I haven't mentioned specifically the ALTBMD system by name, but if NATO decided to fill a gap left by a US system, the logical candidate would be the ALTBMD, that's Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence System, which is designed to defend against missiles with a range of up to 3,000 kilometres.  In other words, shorter range ballistic missiles.

These are all elements… this is something that NATO's already developing, in fact, as a tactical, deployable system to defend NATO forces, but which could, because of the characteristics of the ranges it's capable of defending against, could work also maybe in a slightly altered… optimized fashion as a defence against shorter range threats to some of the alliance countries.  So, we haven't come up with final costs yet, that's an important part of the work we're doing for Bucharest.  I wouldn't say that those numbers would be completely final because we won't have identified which option, if any, NATO might want to take.

In terms of effectiveness, again, that's one of the debates right now, I think we have agreement on the coverage, as I say, the sort of the basic coverage the US system would provide… questions, some nations have raised questions; well, what if against 100 missiles at one time, or what about counter measures?  In other words, people asking questions to see what does that really mean, and this is an ongoing debate and of course the… my personal view is most people don't expect any technical system, you know, realistically to be able to say you have 100 percent of anything with a complex matter like that, but I think that kind of misses the point.  I think when you look at the role of a system providing, obviously you want it to provide as much defence as possible but there's a policy question about what, you know, at what point is enough, enough?  And then you have to consider, what are the implications, not just for defence against an actual attack but also, for example, for deterrence?

This is one of the parts of missile defence that doesn't always get talked about, but the role of missile defence in potentially A, dissuading countries from developing missile capabilities in the first place, secondly in deterring an adversary who might think well, we've got missiles we potentially could use them but we can't be sure that we're going to have the intended effect and, you know, does it still make sense from our perspective, the adversary's perspective, to launch an attack.  So it's a complex question and I think it's more than just a mathematical formula but these are the kind of discussions that will have to be dealt with by NATO ministers and heads of state of government before making a final decision.

APPATHURAI: That's two, one, two, three… right across.

Q: (Inaudible)… if I could just fill up on that and perhaps try and push a little bit further on this cost question because it does seem strange that a few weeks before NATO leaders are going to have a substantive discussion on this that you can't give us some kind of ballpark figure on how much the, you know, the Bolton(?) option would cost, if it came to that.  I mean, I certainly remember that over a year or%2ScriptVersionEditor=6.147