These same Army Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) systems are going to be deployed in Taiwan as the U.S. continues its military encirclement of China. U.S. PAC-3 systems have already been deployed in Japan and South Korea.

 Army Ground-based "missile defense" interceptors

The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), already in the Persian Gulf and soon to be permanently based on Navy Aegis destroyers in the Baltic, South China, Mediterranean and Black Seas, has a range of 500 kilometers but can be enhanced for longer distances. The missile was used by the U.S. Navy to destroy a satellite 130 miles above the Pacific Ocean in February of 2008 in a test viewed by Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. "The satellite was unlike any target the system was designed to go after....The satellite was in orbit rather than on a ballistic trajectory. Also, the satellite was traveling at incredible speeds," Mullen said.

Aegis destroyers launching SM-3 "missile defense" systems

Translation: the SM-3 also has "anti-satellite" (ASAT) weapons capability. That means the Pentagon can use the Aegis-based missile to knock out Russian or Chinese satellites as part of a first-strike attack.

News that the U.S. is about to deploy a PAC-3 missile battery in Poland led Russias ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, to recently state: "Do they really think that we will calmly watch the location of a rocket system, at a distance of 60 km from Kaliningrad?"

The official authorization of Patriot transfers to Taiwan - the missiles are produced by Raytheon Company headquartered in Massachusetts, whose former vice president of Government Operations and Strategy William Lynn is now Obamas Deputy Secretary of Defense - resulted in Chinas vice foreign minister, He Yafei, saying "We believe this move endangers Chinas national security." Luo Yuan, senior researcher with the Chinese Academy of Military Science, added "The U.S. action gives China a justified cause to increase its national defense expenditure, to enhance the development and purchase of weapons, and to accelerate its modernization process in national defense....China did nothing to threaten the U.S., why should the US challenge our core strategic interests?"

William Lynn delivered a speech in Washington, DC on January 21, where he demanded that Congress "put the Defense Department on a permanent footing to fight both low-intensity conflicts to maintaining air dominance and the ability to strike any target on Earth at any time....The next air warfare priority for the Pentagon is developing a next-generation, deep-penetrating strike capability that can overcome advanced air defenses."

So the strategy is clear. Surround Russia and China with mobile "missile defense" systems whose job is to take out their retaliatory capability after a U.S. first-strike against their nuclear weapons. Russia and China then build counter-measures to the U.S. missile defense systems and then the Pentagon in return counters with the new "global strike" systems that are today under development.