The US Navy will formally commission its new missile defence base in southern Romania on Friday, according to media sources.

The base in Deveselu is one of the two European land-based interceptor sites for a NATO missile shield, a scheme which is viewed with deep suspicion by Russia.

“The base represents a rare expansion of the US footprint in Europe, and the even rarer construction of a new Navy base from the ground up,” the US military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, noted.

The base in Deveselu will be the first to feature the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile system, a land-based version of the radar tracking system installed on US warships since 2004.

Scheduled to become operational by the end of 2015, the base will be staffed by 200 to 500 US military, civilian and contract employees. A second site, in Poland, is scheduled to become operational by 2018.

The work at Deveselu involves an estimated investment of $400 million in the base, which ironically was originally built by the Soviet Union in 1952.

NATO member Romania is one of Washington’s strongest supporters among the ex-Communist countries of Eastern Europe. Mihail Kogalniceanu airport, near the Black Sea, became a major US military base in 2007.