WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Earlier on Thursday, the US Aegis Ashore missile defense system was officially inaugurated at a military base in Romania, and the construction of a similar complex will begin in Poland on Friday due to be completed by 2018.
"It will mostly make the United States, and to a lesser extent the European Union, poorer, as the missile defense systems are wildly cost-inefficient, of dubious effectiveness, and unlikely to ever be actually used," Antiwar.com senior analyst Jason Ditz said.
Far from defending Poland, the Aegis battery would put the country in greater danger in the event of any outbreak of war, because alarmed Russian military planners would respond to the perceived threat by countering the move with more missiles of their own, Ditz predicted.
"The only real security impact will be to provoke a reaction from Russia, which will likely deploy more missiles into Kaliningrad to negate any putative shift in strategic balance the system might create."
Russia could counter the Aegis strategic buildup cost-effectively at far less effort than Pentagon planners had exerted to deploy it in the first place, Ditz explained.
"This will likely cost Russia considerably less than the missile defense system designed to target those missiles."
The deployment will be a waste for Moscow as well because war between NATO and Russia is still so unthinkable that these systems are likely to sit unused on the frontier, he added.
Historian and leading US military tactician, retired Army Colonel Doug Macgregor said the deployment of the Aegis system, while infuriating Russian leaders, was unlikely to improve any kind of effective deterrent at all because it was unlikely to prove effective against Russian systems.
