The Defense Department is moving ahead this year with construction of test facilities in Alaska related to a national missile defense system.
Work will be under way at Fort Greely, near Delta, and at Eareckson Air Force Base on Shemya, in the Aleutian Islands, according to U.S. Army Major Gen. Willie B. Nance Jr., executive officer for the National Missile Defense Program.
Rocket launch facilities on Kodiak Island are also being considered for the test program, but a final decision hasn't been made, he said.
Nance and Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, commander of the Alaskan Command, briefed the Legislature's Joint Armed Services Committee on missile defense and other military issues Feb. 5 in Juneau.
About $198 million will be spent at Fort Greely this year, $48 million at Shemya and possibly $8 million in Kodiak, Nance said.
The work at Fort Greely and Shemya has been approved. At Fort Greely, it will include construction of two missile silos, facilities for launch control and power generation, and support facilities. On Shemya, an upgrade to radar facilities, data control facilities, warehouse and other support infrastructure is planned.
Construction of two missile launch silos and related support facilities are being considered at the Kodiak Launch Facility operated by the Alaska Aerospace Development Corp., a state agency.
A federal environmental impact statement permit process on the Kodiak project will begin in March, which is expected to take a year. The Alaska test facilities are to be ready by 2004, Nance said.
If Kodiak is approved, the plan calls for test missiles to be launched at Kodiak but the tests would be controlled from Fort Greely, he said.
There are also plans to do test launches from Fort Greely but more planning has to be done on safety and other issues before this moves ahead, Nance said.
On Jan. 27 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a request for proposals for a construction contractor for part of the planned work at Fort Greely and on Shemya. Companies from California, Washington and Alaska are responding to the request, Nance said.
"The current project is to build a missile test bed, but the tests are to be robust. The prototype system is a surrogate for the real thing, involving realistic trajectories and as near-operational conditions as we can make it," Lance said.
The test facilities would also become part of the operation missile defense program if that moves ahead, he said.
On other issues, Schwartz said Alaska's military bases are of tremendous strategic importance and not only in support of national missile defense.
The availability of land and air space for training is significant, particularly in integrated air and ground training, Schwartz said. The Army's transfer of a medium-weight mobile response unit to Alaska, planned for this summer, is indicative of the importance being given Alaska in defense planning.
In recent months the military has placed more emphasis on planning and coordination with state and municipal emergency-response agencies, against the possibility of a terrorist attack or even emergencies caused by natural events, like an earthquake.
Considerable attention is also now focused on protection of the Valdez marine oil terminal as a strategic asset, Schwartz told the committee.
