US fighter planes will conduct patrols with the Bulgarian air force in September.The
mission will begin on September 9 and last until September 16. US Air
Force officials said the F-15Cs would operate out of Graf Ignatievo Air
Base in Bulgaria to fly alongside Bulgarian MiG 29s.It was a controversial decision for Bulgaria. General Rumen Radev, the Air Force commander, resigned in protest against the Defence Ministry’s plans to have foreign aircraft share in air policing missions.
At
the recent summit in Warsaw NATO approved further efforts to strengthen
the Alliance’s might, including a tailored presence in the south-east,
based on a multinational brigade in Romania and steps to improve
cyber-defence, civil preparedness and the ability to defend against
ballistic missile attacks.
NATO has three members with Black Sea ports in Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, as well as two more aspiring members in Ukraine and Georgia.
Sofia
has an important role to play in NATO’s plans to bolster its military
presence in the region. Novo Selo, a US military base in Bulgaria, is
expected to host more American and NATO troops in the coming year as the
United States seeks to increase military cooperation with its Bulgarian
partners. The first of three six-month rotations of about 150 Marines,
part of the Black Sea Rotational Force, is due at Novo Selo in
September. Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division are set to arrive
this fall for a 90-day rotation with plans to train with the Bulgarians.
The 2006 defense cooperation agreement gave the US access to and
shared-use of the three Bulgarian military bases, two years after
Bulgaria joined NATO. The agreement marked the first time foreign forces
were authorized to use Bulgarian military facilities. A similar
agreement was signed a year earlier between the US and Romania. Under
the agreement, the US can deploy up to 2,500 troops at Novo Selo; the
base can hold as many as 5,000 during joint-nation exercises with NATO
allies. The facility’s construction is mostly finished; the plans are on
the way to upgrade the training ranges this year and in 2017. There are
also plans to add a helicopter landing zone and an air operations
building. The base is expected to host US heavy tanks. A NATO
maintenance support area is to be built in Sliven or Plovdiv.
In July Bulgaria hosted «Thracian Star 2016» NATO multinational air exercise with the California Air National Guard taking part.
No
matter the NATO Warsaw summit failed to come up with a coherent plan to
bolster presence and intensify activities in the Black Sea, the issue
remains on the agenda. NATO’s summit communiqué and a post-summit
statement by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg indicated that the
Alliance’s next meeting of defense ministers will reconsider Romania’s
initiative to establish a framework for joint naval exercises by
riparian and non-riparian NATO allies in the Black Sea. Romanian
President Klaus Iohannis has announced that Romania will persist with
this initiative. The project of flotilla would suit Ukraine’s and
Georgia’s aspirations to join the Alliance by offering them a new space
for a cooperation within NATO framework, while echoing Washington’s
«leading from behind» approach. It is therefore no surprise that both
Kiev and Tbilisi have already demonstrated a certain appetite for such
an initiative.
Turkey’s
participation is more than key to the success of this naval task group
because of the legal constraints imposed by the Montreux Convention
(1936) to cross the Straits and access the Black Sea basin. So far,
Turkey was reluctant to accept NATO in its collective capacity to be
present in the area. Instead, Turkey allowed warships of individual NATO
member countries (including the United States) to enter the Black Sea,
more or less regularly, for port calls and joint exercises with riparian
navies. At the same time, Ankara blocked NATO’s proposals to allow
Operation Active Endeavor (2001-2016), an Allied naval operation, to be
extended from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea. Ankara saw this
operation as a collective one. The Montreux Convention has been complied
with until now. In August 2008, Turkey cited the document to justify
its decision to block the passage of an unarmed US transport and
hospital ship en route to Georgia. But the Convention does not encompass
the activities of air forces and land based weapons systems.
With
the idea of «NATO Black Sea fleet» hanging in the air, permanent air
presence of the alliance is taking shape. Bulgaria is to host US F-15Es –
the aircraft designed to hit high-value targets.
During the war in Iraq F-15Es attacked various heavily defended targets
throughout Iraq. The planes were used for the missions with the
objective of killing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
US destroyers and cruisers with long range strike capable ships visit
the Black Sea from time to time, it provides NATO with long range first
strike capability. In mid-May 2016 a ballistic missile defense system
known as Aegis Ashore – the land-based version of the Aegis Ballistic
Missile Defense onboard the United States Navy’s four forward-deployed
Aegis ballistic missile defense vessels – was operationally certified.
Located near Caracal in south central Romania, Aegis Ashore is part of
the second phase of the so-called «European Phased Adaptive Approach»
(EPAA) to an overall NATO missile defense architecture. The ground and
naval versions of the system use the very same launcher-Mk-41 – capable
of firing long range precision guided Tomahawk missiles against land
assets. An idea is floated to reflag some NATO naval assets under the three Black Sea members’ flags to boost permanent naval capabilities in the theater.
Somehow, this fact has gone largely unnoticed by media.
The news comes at the time NATO has increased its existing air-policing efforts in the Baltic countries.
The
alliance is undertaking a military buildup that aims to surround
Russia, converting the Baltic and the Black seas into «NATO lakes».
The
deployment of US aircraft in the region is a very worrisome move. The
patrolling mission greatly increases the risk of an accident – a spark
that may light a big fire. The refusal of Bulgaria to join the surface
ships flotilla to avoid worsening relations with Russia does not mean
much now. The newly announced decision of the Bulgarian government is
evidently a hostile action to make the country a target in case
hostilities ensue. Those who take part in the mission should remember
that Russian S-400 cutting edge long range systems are stationed in Crimea.
Russian
aircraft deployed in the Northern Caucasus and Rostov Region are
capable of controlling the whole territory of the Black Sea.
The
decision by Bulgaria and the US shows there is a clear intention to
broach the issue of turning the Black Sea into a «NATO lake» permanently
patrolled by a naval task flotilla with air cover at the upcoming
ministerial meeting of the alliance in October. NATO is definitely
shifting to a Cold War-era security framework.
For
the US, the Black Sea is a far away region where it has no interest
except to move its military assets closer to the Russian shore. It’s
different for Bulgaria as 80 percent of Bulgarian exports and imports
transit the Black Sea and tourism contributes heavily to the country’s
economy, increased maritime militarization could have a widespread
negative economic impact in case of accidents or clashes. It would be
expedient for the Bulgarian government to take into consideration the
opinion of its Bulgarian people – Bulgarians favor good relations with
Russia. According to the polls, 54%
of the interviewees say their attitude towards Russia is positive and
7% claim that they support Russia more today than before Crimea joined
the Russian Federation.
«I do not need a war in the Black Sea», Bulgaria’s
Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said this June ruling out the country’s
participation in a permanent NATO naval force in the Black Sea. A bit
more than two months later he took a decision to greatly increase the
risk of a military conflict. The implications will be grave, but there
is still time to turn the tide, for instance to make the announced
September operation a one-time mission or just cancel it. And there is
still time to assess all the pros and cons of the idea to bolster the
alliance’s military presence in the region till the NATO ministerial
meeting takes a provocative decision fraught with implications that
clearly run contrary to Bulgaria’s interests
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