Three Hawai'i sites possible for missile defense tests

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer

A major missile defense testing program could involve expanded military facilities at three Hawai'i sites.

The Missile Defense Agency has released information on a massive radar ship, too big to enter any Hawai'i harbor, that could be moored off southern O'ahu as part of missile defense.

According to a draft environmental impact statement, the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense testing system also could involve basing a rocket-launching ship at Pearl Harbor, establishing a target rocket launch program at the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kaua'i, establishing new radar systems at the missile range, and installing communications equipment at Midway Atoll.

Potential impacts at Pearl Harbor include the homeporting of a supply ship for the radar vessel, along with housing for 25 to 50 people. It also could mean a 250-foot-tall ship at anchor three miles off Kalaeloa.

Pacific Missile Range Facility impacts are comparatively minor.

Midway Atoll is a full-time National Wildlife Refuge. The re-establishment of military facilities could assist the Fish and Wildlife Service with a problematic issue: maintaining the remote atoll's facilities in a time of tight federal budgets.

The missile defense system is aimed at knocking enemy rockets out of the air during their mid-course phase, when they are flying above most of the Earth's atmosphere.

Preliminary test firings already have taken place, but the agency says it needs a "realistic" training field, which amounts to the entire eastern and central North Pacific Ocean. Proposed sites are identified in the draft environmental impact statement for the project.

President George W. Bush in December said he hopes to have preliminary missile defense systems in place by 2004, which puts it on a fast track. Defense officials in Washington recently said they might seek a presidential exemption from environmental regulations for some defense projects, but no specific projects were identified.

The public comment period on the missile program's draft environmental impact statement ends tomorrow, and a final environmental impact statement is expected to be released in August.

Copies of the study are available at the Hawai'i State Library and the University of Hawai'i's Hamilton Library.

The draft report and related documents are available on the Web.