[Grzegorz 246]

This system will protect US, not Poland. There probably wouldn't be enough time to shoot down missiles launched from the middle east, which would be going to hit Europe. This is not against Russia either because the whole system will be able (maybe) to shoot down only a few missiles. Russians have thousands.

[Freelance Warrior]

In this case a possible Middle East attacker would strike Poland first to hit the facility and would send a nuke to hit the USA secondly.

The time factor make such move look successful. And Poland doesn't benefit from this.

[Sender]

Twenty bucks says Russia will think any such base is against Russia, and will goose the arms race up again. Not that I'm against building the base, just an observation. It will definitely be received badly by the cold war dinosaurs.

[Sender]

I predict that the moment this base is confirmed, the Russians will demonstrate how easily they could pick off our carriers and stealth aircraft with their new toys. This could even revive the ultranationalist parades of military hardware through Red Square. I'm not sure such a base is worth all that.

[Joe Boucher]

I don't think a missle base in poland would accomplish anything other then being a bur in russias ass.

[dervish]

"This system will protect US, not Poland. There probably wouldn't be enough time to shoot down missiles launched from the middle east, which would be going to hit Europe."

How will it protect US if the missiles "would be going to hit Europe?"

[GOP_1900AD]

Actually, if I might correct you a bit here, anytime prior to full reentry, a missile can be shot down without too much trouble occurring. IRBMs and SRBMs still take ballastic trajectories and may be exoatmospheric for part of the trajectory. So even Iranian and Russian missiles impinging upon Europe could possibly be shot down by such a system.