Tom JacobsThe other day my boss, this paper’s editor and publisher, Linda Seyler, sent me an announcement for a community briefing on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) concerning the Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii (HDR-H) by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). From the collection of jaw-breaking acronyms I knew it was a U. S. Government brief, and when the boss says “go” I go. After 30 years in the Navy, I have learned that when the Captain says, “Dance,” I say, “Waltz or Boogie?”
So last Tuesday found me at Sunset Beach Elementary School’s cafeteria, milling about with a dozen or so bureaucrats from the MDA (forgotten already, dummy? Look up MDA in the previous paragraph.) and with three or four dozen or so curious North Shore citizens. When our Washington friends found out that I represented the press (Clever fellow that I am, I didn’t mention that the North Shore News only appears every two weeks) I was introduced to Navy Rear Admiral Jon Hill, MDA’s Deputy Director. Admiral Hill told me that his team had traveled to Hawaii as the first stage of the EIS (First paragraph. Look again at the first paragraph.) The government planned to put its anti-ballistic missile detection and targeting radar somewhere on Oahu.
Ballistic missiles? Didn’t our President, after meeting with Kim Jong-un, declare that North Korea was no longer a missile/nuclear threat? Well, the admiral and his troops seemed to take them seriously, and besides, how about Russia and China and maybe, someday, Iran?
So, back to the EIS. The MDA team had winnowed 46 potential radar sites on Oahu down to three: one at the satellite tracking station at Kua‘okala Ridge (those spheres we can see on top of Mt. Ka‘ala) and two sites at the Army’s Kahuku Training Area … that’s a large government area mauka of Kam Highway between Kahuku and Pupukea. You know … when you see those soldiers with green-painted faces in Hum-V’s and trucks on Kam Highway, that’s where they’re going. A final single site will be chosen from one of these three remaining candidates. Admiral Hill estimates that the radar itself will cost $1 billion (!) and that the radar site will consume about 60 – 80 acres.
So … what’s the time-line look like? Well, the radar itself is not yet designed, so say the admiral’s team. Frequency? “Maybe S-band, maybe X-band.” (Also maybe the design is complete but highly classified.) How many personnel will the facility require? Not yet known. How about the intercept missiles that shoot down the incoming ICBMs? Those, with their own acronym (GBI, for Ground-based Interceptor) are in inventory: 40 or so in Alaska with 20 more on order, and a handful at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Hard to imagine, but the radar in Hawaii could guide an intercept missile from Alaska to kill an incoming ICBM well outside the earth’s atmosphere. A picture of a GBI makes them look like the size of a missile silo itself.
The EIS itself is estimated to complete in draft form in about 12 months, as a final version in 2020 to 2021. Review and approval is multi-step between Washington and Hawaii’s government. And that’s just the EIS. Then the MDA has to survey the site, build an access road (maybe), clear land, put in an emergency power plant, support buildings, command and control, and the radar itself. Have I left anything out? Sure.
Is the project needed for defense of the islands? Sounds like it. An ICBM attack on Hawaii seems remote,
but then the prospect of nuclear missiles in the hands of the North Koreans … or the Iranians … once seemed far-fetched. And, the Chinese and Russians have a bag full. So … geev’um.