'Son of Star Wars' may use British silos
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Your support makes all the difference.Ministers raised the possibility of missile silos being sited on British soil as part of an American-led "Son of Star Wars" project yesterday.
A discussion document released by Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, warned that "interceptor sites" in northern Europe may be needed to extend protection from a national missile defence programme to Europe.
Further missile sites in eastern Europe would be needed to extend cover to the whole of the EU, the document said. Any plan to site silos in Britain as part of a missile defence programme would be resisted, with left-wing Labour backbenchers already warning that involvement in the programme could made Britain a target for attack.
The report insisted the West faced an increasing threat from "rogue" states, arguing that North Korea could start testing a missile capable of hitting Britain within two weeks if it breached a moratorium on ballistic missile tests. It warned that North Korea was already an active exporter of missile technology, and the "biggest supplier of ballistic missiles and related technology to countries of concern".
The document claimed Iraq was holding up to 20 Scud missiles of the type fired at Israel during the Gulf War, and was developing short-range ballistic missile technology.
But the document acknowledged that terrorist groups were "unlikely" to acquire missile technology, despite Tony Blair's insistence that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction were linked.
Other proposals included in the document include a system of lasers based on Boeing 747 jets that would shoot incoming missiles out of the sky. Such a system could be operational by 2007. The document warned: "The potential threat of most concern both to national populations and to deployed forces is not from the strategic arsenals of Russia and China but from the increasing proliferation of ballistic missiles, not least owing to the potential for their combinations with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction."
Mr Hoon said Britain had received no formal request from the United States to use Fylingdales radar base in North Yorkshire as part of the defence programme but said that the Government would consider any such a request "very seriously".
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