Gates: Intel can be wrong
Photo: AP
US: Missile plan can adapt to intel
Defense secretary says missile plan will change if Iran develops 'capability' sooner than reports say
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday that US missile defense plans for Europe could be altered if intelligence about Iran posing a less immediate long-range missile threat proved wrong.
"I probably am more familiar with the risks of over-reliance on intelligence than anybody because I've seen how often it's been wrong," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.
He said research and development on ground-based interceptors would continue as a fall-back.
Obama and Iran
Associated Press
Missile system to have been built in Eastern Europe, amid Russian protest, found unsuitable for defense against Iranian threat, says US president
President Barack Obama said on Thursday he would scrap former President George W. Bush's missile shield plans, which focused on long-range Iranian missiles and would have stationed larger land-based interceptors and radar in Eastern Europe.
"If the intelligence is wrong and the Iranians develop a capability sooner than the intelligence is saying, this architecture gives us a better chance of being able to cope with it," said Gates, who also served as defense secretary in Bush's administration.
Gates said the new technologies that would be used "give us more flexibility."
Russian generals said the Bush system could have been used to neutralize Russia's vast nuclear deterrent. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday hailed Obama's overhaul of the missile system as "correct and brave."
Critics have viewed the decision as a sign of weakness by Obama that could be exploited by Moscow, and questioned the intelligence driving the decision.
Gates said intelligence had shown the Iranians were producing and deploying significant numbers of short- and medium-range missiles, instead of longer-range missiles.
"The ground-based interceptors were really designed primarily to deal ... with no more than five targets. And we were assuming those would be longer-range (missiles)," he said.
"What we have seen with the Iranians is that they are producing and deploying significant numbers of short- and medium-range missiles, and so they could overwhelm" the Bush administration's proposed system, he said.
