“First thing I would do on the offensive side, it’s just going to be a 500 km [range], may be even sea-based missile,” former director of the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Competitiveness Daniel Gouré told Sputnik. “If you really want to get ugly about it, it would be a missile capable of being deployed… on the next batch of Virginia class attack submarines.”
The United States could build an “INF compliant” missile, "bigger than torpedo tube, bigger than Tomahawks," Gouré added.
“And now I can put it in the North Sea, I can put it in the Arctic, if I was dealing with the Russians, I can even put it on a modified surface ship in the Black Sea,” he said.
Gouré claimed that another response might be deployment of aerial detection systems in Europe capable to detect and track missiles, manned and unmanned aircraft up to 340 miles away.
“In fact, you can start with sensors, you don’t even have to start with weapons,” he said. “Take the JLENS [Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System], send it to Europe, just send it to Europe and deploy it.”
JLENS, currently being tested at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in northeast Maryland, is a system of two aerostats that float 10,000 feet in the air. The helium-filled aerostats, each nearly as long as a football field, carry powerful radars, according to the system developer Raytheon.
“With the new ruling, how about selling advanced drones, big ones, and the sensor packages to allies,” he said.
The United States military and defense industry have on the shelf technology “to do all kinds of nasty things that would unnerve them [the Russians] without ever having to violate the [INF] Treaty,” the former official concluded.
On Friday, a US House Armed Services committee staffer told Sputnik that Congress would actively consider Pentagon recommendations for a possible military response to Russia’s alleged violations of the INF.
The United States and the Soviet Union signed the INF Treaty in 1987.
