Poland and the U.S. have jointly announced that their ballistic missile defense agreement entered into force Thursday. The pact will see the deployment of land-based anti-missile batteries in the European country by 2018.
The land-based SM-3 system of the U.S. to be based in northern Poland's Redzikowo Base aims to protect Europe against possible missile attack by Iran and other rogue countries. Similar missile defense shields will be deployed in Romania, Turkey and the Mediterranean.
Russia has staunchly opposed the missile defense shield regarding it as a security threat to the country, which is a neighbor to Poland.
The SM-3 or Standard Missile-3 system, originally mounted on U.S. naval ships, is designed to destroy short, medium, intermediate and long-range ballistic missiles before they reach their targets, according to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) under the U.S. Department of Defense.
It is composed of networked sensors and ground- and sea-based radars for target detection and tracking, missiles that will collide with ballistic missiles or explode to destroy it, and a control and communications system to operate the defense shield.
The U.S. has existing missile defense system agreements with the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Israel, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Poland, Italy and many other countries.