WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th November, 2019) US information and surveillance in the Black Sea region will receive improved access to undersea communications offering access and influence over the energy network in the area, retired Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik on Friday.
"US information and surveillance needs will be served ... with improved access to the undersea lines of communications in the Black Sea, as well as US access to and influence over the energy network in the Black Sea," Kwiatkowski, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, explained.�
The United States is eager to provide Bulgaria broader access to its high-end military technologies and eyes a 10-year road map for defense cooperation in the Black Sea region, US President Donald Trump and visiting Bulgaria Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said in joint statements on Monday.
Bulgaria offered to host a coordination center for NATO maritime presence in the Black Sea, the joint statement on US-Bulgaria strategic partnership said.
"Viewing with concern the security situation in the Black Sea, the United States welcomes Bulgaria's offer to provide a maritime coordination function at Varna in support of NATO's Tailored Forward Presence initiative," the statement said.
Kwiatkowski observed that Varna was also a key communications center in the region which it made a natural location for the United States to boost its military presence.
"Varna is also one of three landing points of the Black Sea Fiber Optic Cable system, providing undersea submarine communications. The Caucasus Cable System, built by Georgian state-owned internet company and laid by US ships in 2008, connects Georgia to Balchik, just north of Varna," she said.
The new NATO coordination center in Varna as a subsidiary logistics site to the NATO Command Center in Romania would help isolate Bulgaria from Russian influence, while continuing to build military, energy and surveillance capabilities, Kwiatkowski pointed out.�
"The purpose of the NATO Coordination Center in Varna is to help bring NATO (with NATO, EU and US development and military fund and loans and personnel) into an additional and strategically located port on the western side of the Black Sea, north of the Bosporus," she said.
Surveillance and intelligence services, contracting assistance, and a wide variety of maintenance and communications technologies could all be deployed there, Kwiatkowski noted.
The Russian Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) pipeline program South Stream considered Varna as part of the project, but eventually sent Russian LNG to Turkey instead, Kwiatkowski recalled.
However, with the building of the new US and NATO facilities, "Bulgaria's hope of having an LNG terminal in Varna has been revitalized, as work on a Bulgaria-Greece LNG inter-connector has begun this year, after many delays," she commented.
The new facility would will bring Azeri gas from the Southern Gas Corridor and also bring US LNG from Greece to the Balkan gas hub, yet to be built near the port of Varna, Kwiatkowski predicted.
Following the sale of eight US-built F-16s to Bulgaria over the summer, Washington, F-16 producer Lockheed-Martin and its partners would offer a full range of NATO compatible communications and armaments to Sofia over the next decade, Kwiatkowski said.
These would include "possible upgrades of the aircraft, its internal and communications systems, as well as systems and technology required on the ground in Varna for full connectivity into the larger NATO command and control apparatus," she said.
The Varna Coordination Center would also become the nexus for US and NATO training programs and personnel, exercise design and implementation, and will serve to increase integration of Bulgaria into NATO, Kwiatkowski advised.
Varna was also an ideal location to expand CIA and other US intelligence gathering activities in the Black Sea region, Kwiatkowski suggested.
"The port city of Varna does not yet have a US consulate, and the US embassy is on the other side of the country.� It does, however, have Ukraine, Israeli and Turkish consulates, as well as consulates of other NATO countries," she said.
A joint statement on the strategic partnership framework between the two countries envisaged a road map to advance bilateral defense cooperation to counter maritime, cyber and hybrid threats in the Black Sea region over the next decade
