More Polish courage

Yesterday Poland spat in Putin’s face.

They announced the acceptance of an American missile defense system on their soil at a time of Russian aggression in Georgia. They totally turned the tables on him. Putin expected a harsh reaction from the US, but he didn’t expect it from the Poles. Once again the gutsy Poles stood their ground against the bear. This missile system is designed to intercept ballistic missiles from a rogue power (currently Iran and N. Korea) aimed at our European allies. The system has no offensive capabilities at all and is not a threat to Russia. The missile’s warhead is a non-explosive kinetic kill vehicle. It destroys an incoming missile with small tungsten cubes on an umbrella shaped net that’s deployed in flight.

When these cubes, on the 3-4,000 mph interceptor, collide with a 5,000+ mph incoming missile they penetrate the warhead and prevent a successful nuclear detonation. The limited number (10) of interceptor missiles can be “war gamed” to death by the Russians if they want. If they launch 11 missiles against the 10, the eleventh and any others that follow will get through. Russia has plenty of missiles to play this game, the rogue states do not. Russia’s greatest fear is they and their rogue friends will lose the ability to intimidate Europe with nuclear blackmail. Likewise the radar system presents no threat to the Russians.

The FBX-T system is “soft,” meaning it cannot survive a nuclear near miss or even a well directed conventional one. But it is mobile which makes targeting it very difficult for a nation without real time intelligence capabilities, meaning the rogue states. Only 4 of these radars are being built. The first is already deployed to Japan (to defend against N.Korea), one probably for Turkey, one for Israel and one for the Czech Republic.

The Poles were the first to successfully challenge the established communist order in Eastern Europe. Their resistance to Soviet Communism springs from the well of their Catholic faith and the courage of a few leaders, especially Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa. Lech Walesa led the Solidarity movement in the early 1980’s. He carried out a strike at the Gdansk Shipyard and backed the communist authorities down. Strikes spread to the rest of the country and demonstrated the impotence of Russian rule and eventually emasculated it.

The Poles don’t play dead. God bless the Poles.