THE United States has formally asked for an RAF ballistic missile early warning station in Yorkshire to be part of America’s planned “Son of Star Wars” defence system.

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, acknowledged the request in the House of Commons as President Bush announced in Washington that he had ordered the American military to begin deploying the first elements of a national missile defence system in the United States.

Ten interceptor missiles, capable of knocking out hostile ballistic systems in space, are to be installed at Fort Greeley in Alaska by 2004. Another ten will be deployed in 2005 or 2006.

For that limited shield to be effective, America needs key radars to track incoming hostile missiles. With rogue states such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea developing longer-range missiles, the US has turned to Britain to provide early warning and tracking for the Alaska interceptors. In return, Britain would receive missile defence protection from America.

Mr Hoon said that the US had asked the Government for permission to use the early warning station at RAF Fylingdales in North Yorkshire. The Americans want to upgrade the hardware and software for the radars to provide an improved missile-tracking capability.

Mr Hoon, who only recently published a consultation document on the Government’s views on missile defence, said that the request would be considered “very seriously” and an answer would be given in the new year. The Government has indicated already that it fully supports Mr Bush’s plans to deploy a defensive shield against rogue-nation missile attacks and approval is expected to be given for the work to be carried out at RAF Fylingdales.

Defence sources said that the pyramid-shaped buildings housing the radars at the facility would not need to be altered. They replaced the landmark golf ball domes several years ago.

Mr Bush’s announcement that he was authorising an initial deployment of missile interceptors in Alaska follows years of research and development that have been beset with technical failures. The last interceptor launch a week ago against a dummy warhead over the Pacific failed. It was the third failure in eight tests.

However, Mr Bush said that missile defence could play a key role in fulfilling his promise to “protect our citizens against what is perhaps the gravest danger of all — the catastrophic harm that may result from hostile states or terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them”. The new system was a “modest” step towards countering threats and a starting-point for wider capabilities as research progressed.

For each of the past two fiscal years alone, Congress approved presidential requests for $7.8 billion in research, development and testing funds. Actual deployment of the missile defence shield is likely to cost hundreds of billions of dollars over coming decades and will be easily the most expensive project in the Pentagon’s budget.

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