Category: Kaua’i & Ni’ihau

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Soldier Arrested for flashing girls in Mililani

Suspected Flasher Arrested

By: Mari-Ela David

MILILANI (KHNL) – There’s been a recent rash of crime near Mililani High School, but Honolulu police say they’ve made at least one arrest to keep the area safe.

Officers arrested a man at Schofield Tuesday morning. 23-year-old Kenneth Stanley is suspected of flashing females ages 12 to 16.

He faces charges of sexual assault and attempted sexual assault. Stanley was wearing fatigues, but Schofield could not confirm Tuesday that he is a soldier.

Although police have nabbed a suspected flasher, two men who tried to kidnap two girls on separate occasions are still on the loose.

In light of the recent crime, school leaders urge all students to stay on alert.

Within the last five months near Mililani High School, men have targeted female students. One man tried to kidnap a teen last week. Another attempted kidnapping happened in April. Now, a man is in custody for alledgedly flashing girls near Mililani and Aiea schools.

“You don’t hear about stuff like that happening in Mililani so it’s just kind of scary,” says Mililani High School graduate Jessica Dodd.

In light of the crimes, staff issued letters warning students not to walk alone.

“Even though they’re in high school and they think that they’re safe, they need to be with buddies all the time. We told them to carry whistles and different things to attract attention if they need it,” says Mililani High School Principal Dr. John Brummel.

“I’ve been able to walk the streets at 12:00 in the night and nobody has ever bothered me and something like this happens, it makes me think a lot about walking by myself,” says Dodd.

Dr. Brummel says the community has also stepped in to help protect students.

“We’ve had parents that wanted to come in and do self-defense classes for kids and they knew of contacts and so we’ve had all kinds of support from the community since this has happened,” he says.

That support is what staff says students still need, judging by the handful of students who continue to walk to and from school by themselves.

Police aren’t sure if the man they nabbed Tuesday is the same person who flashed two female students two weeks ago.

Stanley is being held on $7000 bail.

Source: http://www.khnl.com/Global/story.asp?s=7129399

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Airborne – depleted uranium in Hawai’i

Airborne

The lowdown on depleted uranium in Hawai’i

Keith Bettinger
Jun 13, 2007

‘Damage control’ has taken on a new meaning over the past year as military officials grapple with episode after episode of discarded and forgotten munitions. In addition to the tons of chemical weapons dumped offshore and conventional weapons of unknown origin resting on the sea floor at Wai’anae’s Ordnance Reef, the U.S. Army is now confronted with the remnants of depleted uranium at the site of at least one of its installations.

Adding fuel to the fire is a recent visit by globetrotting depleted uranium enfant terrible Leuren Moret and a subsequent television news story describing elevated radiation readings on the Big Island. While the readings, which were obtained in an uncontrolled environment and have not been replicated, are by no means a smoking gun, they illustrate how the military and state officials respond to signals of a possible contamination threat.

Military officials insist the recent findings pose no danger, but many residents are demanding independent verification that everything is in fact OK. According to some, the recent findings are just more evidence that the Army is irresponsibly polluting the Islands.

In light of this, we have endeavored to sort out what is known and unknown, and what is truth and speculation, about depleted uranium across the archipelago.

Depleted uranium (DU) is a byproduct of the enriching process that creates fuel for nuclear reactors, and it is used because it is able to penetrate armor. According to the World Health Organization, depleted uranium emits about 60 percent of the radiation as natural uranium. In its natural state it is not especially dangerous; it is described as weakly radioactive, comparable to some naturally occurring materials. However, DU burns when heated to 170 degrees Celsius and aerosolizes, forming microscopic particles that are easily dispersed by the wind. When inhaled these particles make their way into the blood stream and cause health problems.

Some researchers believe that DU exposure is responsible for Gulf War Syndrome, which has afflicted thousands of combat veterans since the first Gulf War, but there is no conclusive evidence indicating a link.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says that elevated doses of DU can lead to cancer and that aerosolized DU from training ranges can make its way into the food chain. Although there seems to be no conclusive evidence as to the health effects of DU, health experts advise caution since no one really understands the potential for harm.

Cold War relic

The most concrete finding is the recent discovery of spotting rounds for ‘Davy Crocket’ tactical nuclear weapons at Schofield Barracks. Davy Crockets are a relic of the Cold War and were used between 1961 and 1968. The spotting rounds contained depleted uranium because its weight is similar to that of the actual nuclear weapons (which were never fired in Hawai’i) and were used to estimate trajectories.

Several tail assemblies were unearthed at Schofield by contractors working on Stryker brigade construction, causing work to slow as special safety procedures were put in place. There is some suspicion that these munitions were also used at Makua Military Reservation and at Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island. As of yet there has been no evidence to support this, but perhaps more importantly there has been no testing.

Maj. Gen. Robert Lee, state adjutant general and highest homeland security official, says that DU munitions have never been used in training where armor piercing is required in Hawai’i and that there is no reason to be concerned about DU contamination.

‘Leuren turned the counter on, and it started out at 30, and soon was up to 40, then 50. Over a two hour period the high was 93.’-Big Island resident Doug Fox

‘People don’t know the whole story. It’s only used to blow up enemy tanks and armor. Once that is done DU munitions are not used. None of my troops that were called up even handled DU,’ he says, referring to National Guard troops that had been deployed to Iraq.

DU is currently used in tank ammunition, rounds for the A-10 and Harrier aircraft, Bradley Fighting Vehicle rounds and ammunition for the Navy’s Phalanx CIWS defense system. In 1994, two rounds containing DU were accidentally fired into the Ko’olau Mountains north of ‘Aiea from the Phalanx. Though no damage or injuries were reported, the rounds were never recovered.

The Army also says that depleted uranium munitions are not and have never been used on the Hawaiian Islands. Though the recent discovery of the tail assemblies would seem to contradict the official statement, the Army maintains that the Davy Crocket spotting rounds are a different class of munitions. It is a subtle semantic separation, but a significant one. It suggests that while things are clear now, there is no way to know what is buried beneath the ground. Currently a special license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is required to fire and store DU munitions in the United States. There are no such permits for any of the military facilities on the Hawaiian Islands except for the Naval storage magazine at Lualualei. However, it is unclear whether there was any permit for the Davy Crocket spotting rounds.

Kamoa Quiteis, the field director of the cultural monitors who supervised clearance for Styrker Brigade construction and transformation at Schofield Barracks, was on hand when the first of the tail assemblies were discovered. (The presence of Cultural Monitors is required by law; they safeguard relics and sites of special significance.)

‘They initially found 15 tail assemblies, but recently they have found more,’ he says.

Quiteis explains that while widely circulated rumors of open burning of the tail assembles are not true, there is regular open burning on the ranges at Schofield to maintain a clear line of sight. These fires often cause unexploded ordnance on the range to detonate.

‘Our concern is, are the fires aerosolizing these fin assemblies?’ Quiteis says. ‘And how much DU gets kicked into the air when they do live-fire exercises?’

Quiteis was also concerned about contamination of streams that feed into Kaukonahua stream, which flows through taro and other agricultural fields in Waialua.

A foul wind

In addition to the findings at Schofield, concern has been increasing recently among residents of the Big Island over possible depleted uranium contamination. These concerns stem from some elevated radiation readings obtained on a hand-held Geiger counter. ‘We had a strange windy day with winds coming from the direction of Pohakuloa. Leuren (Moret) turned the counter on, and it started out at 30, and soon was up to 40, then 50. Over a two hour period the high was 93,’ said Doug Fox, a Kona resident who was present when the readings were taken.

Normal readings for Kona, according to Fox, are between two and 15 counts per minute. ‘We were quite shocked.’

Fox and visiting activist Moret conducted an informal survey from Cape Kumukahi up through the Saddle Road and the Mauna Loa access measuring soil and collecting samples. Fox indicated that the elevated readings were obtained during Stryker maneuvers at Pohakuloa. Findings were broadcast by a local television news station, but official comment has treated these findings as an unreliable artifact.

‘Something is being released and is impacting a number of people,’ says Fox. ‘We do know that the military said it didn’t use DU here, but we know that it did,’ referring to the spotting rounds found at Schofield.

In the wake of these findings a citizens’ monitoring movement is taking shape on the Big Island. ‘I’ve been running a Geiger counter all the time for the past two and half weeks. I download all the data×We are trying to put information out because there is a lot of bogus stuff,’ says Kona resident Gunther Monkowski. ‘I don’t want to put out false information×so far I think [my readings] are still in the natural radiation scope.’

Fox also says that he has not been able to replicate the elevated reading. ‘It is an anomaly, but when you have an anomaly, you have to investigate it. I’ve satisfied myself that it is reality,’ he says.

The group is working on compiling the results into a database and making them available to the public. Results should be available soon at [www.world-peace-society.org].

Monkowski says that his meter had the highest possible accuracy and was used frequently by professionals. Fox told Honolulu Weekly that a number of people have ordered counters, and so they should soon have five to 12 monitoring stations up and running around Pohakuloa.

The silent treatment

A perceived failure to address the issue does not help the Army’s credibility. Despite a promised interview with Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Environment, Safety and Occupational Health Tad Davis, the Army refused to comment for this story.

Davis recently made several appearances in Hawai’i to discuss discarded munitions at Wai’anae and World War II-era chemical weapons dumps and expressed a willingness to discuss DU on the record. However, Davis ultimately did not respond to our requests for an interview.

Previous media accounts indicate that the Army will conduct radiological testing this summer at Schofield, Makua military reservation and Pohakuloa, but when this will happen and who will be involved is a mystery. Nor are there any answers to questions regarding the extent of the Davy Crocket firings on the Islands or records of these firings. Difficulty in obtaining information from the military is not an isolated phenomenon, as local NGOs frequently complain of obscurantism and obstructionism.
‘Our concern is, are the fires aerosolizing these fin assemblies? And how much DU gets kicked into the air when they do live-fire exercises?’ -Kamoa Quiteis

Kyle Kajihiro, program director of the American Friends Service Committee says the military in Hawai’i has a history of not quite telling the whole truth. ‘The problem of something like DU for example comes from the fact that the military is so pervasive and no one has held them accountable,’ he says. ‘They have too much power, and they tend to abuse it.’

Citizens concerned about their health report similar difficulties. ‘We were trying to get information about the hazards from the Army, but we never really got the information,’ says Quiteis.

Transparency now

If the Army isn’t saying anything, though, state officials and local representatives are taking notice. State Rep. Josh Green (6th District Kailua-Kona) introduced a bill (HB 1452) during the recently ended legislative session calling for testing around military reservations in response to the findings at Schofield.

‘We felt very strongly that we ought to know if there is depleted uranium in the state,’ Green says.

The bill was subsequently scaled down in committee but was passed by both the House and Senate before stalling in conference committee due to a lack of funding. ‘I encountered no one who was against the bill in principle,’ the state representative adds. ‘My understanding is that we just ran out of funds.’

Green, a medical doctor and legislator known for environment-friendly bills, says that he would try to get the bill passed next year.

Before HB 1452 stalled out, it ran into opposition from the military and the state. ‘The bill wanted to have a state incursion onto federal property, which we can’t do,’ says Lee, who testified against the bill. ‘Our intention was not to kill the bill, but to have the state [Department of Health] work with the army.’

Department of Health (DOH) Program Manager for Noise, Radiation and Indoor Air Quality Branch Russell Takata explained that the DOH’s opposition was procedural. ‘It’s a legal obstacle for DOH to test on federal property.’

‘It’s really a shame that the Legislature let it die,’ says Kajihiro, who testified in support of the bill. ‘It was a minimal step×but it has helped to raise the public awareness and stimulate discussion on the issue.’

The Health Department has also looked into alleged elevated readings on the Big Island. Takata says that his department took readings but found nothing out of the ordinary. ‘We did go down there, and we will do this periodically,’ he says.

Takata welcomes the monitoring efforts of citizens, but urges them to be aware that their reading my be inaccurate. ‘It’s good in that when there is some type of emergency there is always an insufficient number of meters,’ he says. ‘However, for precise background measurements they should buy better equipment.’

According to Takata, many hand-held Geiger counters are not considered by experts to be accurate in the lower ranges, because they cannot precisely pick up the energies of hundreds of different radio isotopes that are naturally occurring. He adds that meters should be calibrated once a year.

Takata’s department provides training for first responders and emergency workers. This includes six hours of classroom instruction and hands-on training for specific meters, tailored to the types of equipment participants have. There is no charge for the training, and Takata says the department would be willing to work with Big Island residents to better utilize their equipment.

‘There have been a lot of claims lately, and a lot is unscientific.’ Lee indicated that more testing was required before any action was taken. ‘Remnants are still out there,’ he says of Schofield. ‘That’s why the Army is coming: to get the information to prepare a remediation strategy.’

In response to the readings on the Big Island, the 93rd Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team was deployed to take readings and check the air filters of Humvees. ‘I’m in charge of homeland security, and so it’s of enormous concern to me,’ says Lee. ‘They have the best equipment on the Islands and could find nothing above background radiation.’

Local groups want the military to be more forthcoming and to cooperate in testing. They say at the very least the state should be involved. ‘A suitable solution would be for the state to participate in every level and to be a partner at every step of the way,’ says Marti Townsend of KAHEA, The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance, a coalition of environmental and native Hawaiian advocates throughout the Islands.

‘We’re having to take health protection efforts into our own hands,’ says Townsend of the Geiger counter movement.

However, for many citizens, nothing short of completely independent testing and monitoring will suffice. Lorrin Pang, a consultant with the World Health Organization, is suspicious of official statements. ‘You really have to pin [the Army] down,’ Pang says. ‘What are they really saying? It’s always vague.’

Pang echoes the sentiment of many on the Big Island, calling for independent, unannounced testing.

‘There must be transparency,’ he says. ‘Give us references. Don’t tell us what you think.’

Pang served for 24 years in the Army Medical Corp and says he is familiar with the bureaucracy. He says, ‘I’ve seen how this system works. I don’t love it, and I don’t hate it. I just know how it can be.’

So, it’s clear that DU has been used on the Islands. It will probably continue to pop up from time to time. The danger of the old assemblies is debatable. It’s also likely that radiation readings on the Big Island can be attributed to calibration or user errors, rather than surreptitious and illegal use of DU munitions. Likely is by no means certainly, though. DU is just the latest chapter in a long saga, and it is telling that Hawai’i has learned to keep one eye on its military tenants. 

Keith Bettinger can be reached at [email: kisu1492]‘

Source: http://honoluluweekly.com/cover/2007/06/airborne/

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Hawaiian Star Wars

Hawaiian Star Wars

John Lasker / Mar 7, 2007

In January, a Chinese missile snarled and flashed its fangs 500-miles above the earth’s surface. China, in a show of its space war-fighting capabilities, had obliterated one its own weather satellites with a ground-based missile interceptor. Later that month, while still in the fall-out of China’s provocative action, the United State’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) shot down a dummy ballistic missile as it skirted the edge of space, 70-miles above the Pacific and not far from Kaua’i.

The dummy missile had been launched from a mobile platform floating off the coast of Kaua’i. Traveling at more than 10,000 feet per second as it closed in on the dummy, the interceptor missile had been fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) at Barking Sands on Kaua’i’s western shore.

For the MDA and many of its private contractors from the aerospace industry, it was reason to stand up and cheer. This was the first time the Pacific Range had showcased the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system since Missile Defense had moved it from a New Mexico desert in October. THAAD is, in military parlance, a mobile ballistic missile interceptor.

But while the invading MDA unit and their peers at PMRF celebrated, it was more bleak news for island peace activists and those worried about the militarization of Hawai’i.

There is no doubt that missile defense tests or ‘Star Wars’ tests are on the upswing in the Pacific and Hawai’i. Some peace activists and arms control experts believe this is a sign that beginnings of a new arms race, a chess match of space-combat prowess between China and the United States, is brewing in the Pacific.

This potential arms race has far greater implications than which nation can build the more powerful laser or the first to launch a ‘killer satellite’ constellation. It is a race that signals to the international community that a future war between China and the U.S. may be inevitable. A war between an emerging superpower and the current champion that could be sparked by the skyrocketing demand for energy resources. A war fought on traditional battlescapes such as land, water and air, and not-so-traditional-cyberspace and outer space. It is a conflict where the frontlines could easily engulf the Islands.

‘If you think about it,’ says a Naval officer from the Islands who spoke on the condition of anonymity, ‘the threats we’re facing are going to be coming from space.’

In the mean time, some are speculating on what China was trying to accomplish by turning a satellite no bigger than a refrigerator into a 1,000 little floating pieces.

‘The [anti-satellite] test could have been a strategic move by the Chinese to bully the United States into actually discussing (a space weapons) treaty,’ states space-weapons expert Theresa Hitchens. The current White House is telling the world there’s no need for a treaty, says Hitchens, who directs the left-leaning Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based think tank.

‘There certainly are many in U.S. policy and military circles who believe that China is the new threat, and that the United States must ready itself for an eventual military conflict in the Pacific,’ she says.

Son of Star Wars

Maine resident Bruce Gagnon is the coordinator for Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. He has traveled the world warning peace activists and university crowds about the MDA, which he calls the ‘son of Star Wars.’

Since President Ronald Reagan called for a space shield in the early 1980s, the Pentagon and its space hawks have spent more than $100 billion on research. More than 20 years later, former-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised to revive missile defense. And though he’s gone, he and others managed to double funding for missile defense and make it the premier research quest of the Pentagon.

All U.S. missile defensive capabilities, however, have an offensive application as well, says Gagnon. That is why he calls Star Wars a ruse, a Trojan horse.

‘It has always been my contention that the Missile Defense Agency is in fact creating an offensive program that includes anti-satellite weapons and other first-strike space weapons programs,’ he says.

Gagnon, a veteran of the Air Force, has kept a close eye on the Pacific. He has traveled to Japan to rally peace activists there as that nation spends more and more on U.S. missile defense. Citing Pentagon documents and major newspaper reports, the Global Network coordinator says the Pentagon is slowly doubling its military presence in the Asian-Pacific region. Pentagon officials say over 50 percent of their ‘forward looking’ war games took place in Asia during the last decade.

Like other observers, Gagnon agrees a Sino-American war could erupt over the global competition for oil. But he also believes this: The U.S. may try to manage China’s development before it even comes to this. ‘China, if left alone, will become a major economic competitor with the U.S.,’ he says. ‘The U.S. wants to control the keys to China’s development.’

To do so, the U.S. will arm the Pacific with a high-tech arsenal, such as space weapons, which can, among other things, knock out satellites and thus blind a modern war force. ‘China imports much of its oil through the Taiwan Strait and thus if the U.S. can militarily dominate that region, then the Pentagon would have the ability to choke off China’s ability to import oil,’ he says. ‘The U.S. could then theoretically hold them hostage to various political demands.’

Some of Gagnon’s peers in the arms-control field have labeled him a chicken little and his theories too far out there. But after what the national office of the ACLU uncovered, he’s being criticized less and less these days. Two years ago, the ACLU discovered that ‘agents’ from NASA and the Air Force were secretly monitoring him and his family.

Full Spectrum Dominance

Just hours after China blew up its own weather satellite, calls were made on Capital Hill to ramp up the U.S. space warfighting arsenal.

Peace activists and arms-control experts could only shake their heads.

They know the Pentagon has quietly been making the case for ‘full-spectrum dominance’ for the last 10 years. Besides rising missile defense budgets, numerous defense papers have called for the U.S. to militarize the ultimate high ground, even the moon.

Why the Pentagon desires to weaponize space while also shifting much of their global warfighting focus and missile-defense research from Europe to Asia-Pacific is the subject of a contentious debate. China does have a small cache of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the U.S. The world’s fastest growing economy has also made overtures to regain its lost province-Taiwan.

But China isn’t the only Asian nation keeping the Pentagon on edge. North Korea has threatened to strike Hawai’i with ballistic missiles and in the late 1990s fired a ballistic missile over Japan. Last year the regime detonated a nuclear weapon underneath a mountain and test-fired several ballistic missiles-on July 4 no less.

‘Our stance is the increasing missile defense tests are a destabilizing factor. The tests are provoking an arms race in the region between nuclear powers’

-Kyle Kajihiro
local peace activist,
DMZ Hawai’i

Kyle Kajihiro is one of Hawai’i’s most notable peace activists. He directs the Honolulu-based DMZ Hawai’i and believes there may be a simpler reason as to why missile defense research is on the rise around the Islands.

As if mirroring the resurgence of Star Wars, the increasing militarization of Hawai’i has coincided with two significant events, the National Missile Defense Act of 1999 and the election of President Bush in 2001. What’s too easy, Kajihiro adds, is targeting the current wave of Republican leadership in Washington for allowing defense funding to pour into the islands. You also have to blame the gatekeeper who has the keys to the federal safe that houses the Pentagon’s money, the peace activist says.

‘Sen. Daniel Inouye wants the money to pour in. They (Inouye and allies) want defense contractors to set up shop here,’ Kajihiro says. ‘The Congressional earmarks are not necessary. That’s my gut feeling. The North Korean threat has been completely exaggerated.’

There’s no debate that Sen. Inouye is a war hero and his contribution during World War II a story of legendary proportions. Sixty years later, however, Inouye’s influence and power as one of Washington’s veteran senators has allowed Hawai’i to become a ‘destabilizing’ factor in the Pacific, Kajihiro says.

Fifteen years ago the Navy’s Pacific Missile facility at Barking Sands was on the Pentagon’s list for downsizing and possible closure. In 1999, Kajihiro claims that Inouye sought to rejuvenate the facility by co-sponsoring the National Missile Defense Act.

The Clinton administration, which significantly cut missile defense funding during the 1990s, criticized the bill. But it passed anyway and Inouye secured nearly $50 million to upgrade the missile range. ‘It was the beginning of the flood gates opening for a lot of these missile defense projects around Hawai’i,’ says Kajihiro.

Sen. Inouye is the third most senior senator. He also chairs the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee and has declared many times his position has helped Hawai’i economically. Indeed, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan think tank, 60 to 65 percent of all military-related earmarks during the last several years went to the states of senators who sit on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

As Christmas neared in 2001, a time Congress worked furiously in the wake of 9/11 to beef up 2002’s defense budget, Sen. Inouye’s committee quietly doubled Hawai’i’s defense budget for that year. The Islands would receive a total of $850 million, which doesn’t include payroll or day-to-day expenses.

Of the $400-million plus in new 2002 appropriations, $75 million was allocated for cleaning up unexploded ordinance at Kaho’olawe. But $150 million went to missile defense research. Other funds were added to ambiguous projects that peace activists claim could someday contribute to space weapons.

For instance, $6 million was given to the Silicon Thick Film Mirror Coating program, an ongoing research project on Kaua’i. Peace activists say the coating will someday be applied to space-based mirrors that will relay ground-based or space-based lasers around the globe.

Twenty million also went to the Air Force’s Maui Space Surveillance System, located on the summit of Haleakala Mountain. There, the U.S. military operates its largest telescope-the Advanced Electro-Optical System. One of its responsibilities is to monitor asteroids that may strike earth.

‘I’m not buying any of it,’ says Kajihiro, who believes he telescope will be used for missile defense and space combat. The military says the telescope can also track satellites; it also admits that laser-beam research continues at the site.

During this decade, Hawai’i has annually ranked in the top five for states receiving defense funding. According to Kajihiro, the militarization of Hawai’i ‘is really driven by the appropriations.’ He adds, ‘Sen. Inouye says it’s about defending Hawai’i. Our stance is the increasing missile defense tests are a destabilizing factor. The tests are provoking an arms race in the region between nuclear powers.’

The millions of dollars that are being spent on missile defense research around Hawai’i do not entirely go to military personnel. Take for example the THAAD system, which was moved from New Mexico to Kaua’i. THAAD is managed by the MDA, but its primary contractor and researcher is aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.

Between the years 2001 and 2006, five of Inouye’s 20 top campaign finance contributors were defense contractors, says Kajihiro, citing information received from [Opensecrets.org]. Inouye’s biggest contributor from defense contractors was Lockheed Martin.

‘Sen. Inouye has said he’s anti-war, but at the same time he’s pro-military build-up, pro-military pork. It’s kind of weird. It’s hypocritical,’ says Kajihiro.

Sen. Inouye’s office failed to return phone calls for this story.

Terminal Fury

When asked about the Joint Space Control Operations-Negation program and their field tests during classified ‘Terminal Fury’ exercises, Major David Griesmer, a public information officer for U.S. Pacific Command, said, ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

Griesmer’s statement is revealing when trying to gauge the entire picture of missile defense research ongoing around the Islands. Millions of unclassified military funding is being pumped into the Islands to test missile defense. But what about classified or secret missile defense research?

Terminal Fury is a ‘command post exercise,’ says Griesmer, ‘involving multiple bases, a naval component, air component and army component.’

‘Some involved don’t even come to Hawai’i,’ he adds.

Yet for the last three Terminal Fury’s, reports the civilian-owned CS4ISR Journal, the Joint Space Control Operations-Negation (JSCON) conducted field tests. The tests would be the first known anti-satellite tests conducted by the U.S. military since 1985 when a F-15 destroyed a satellite with a missile. ‘[The JSCON] program will help the Pentagon figure out which satellite-killers to buy,’ states the C4ISR Journal.

The journal would not say what satellite killer technology was used, but suggested it was probably the Counter Communications System or CounterCom. The $75 million ground-based device is classified, but it was declared operational by the Pentagon several years back. While not an actual killer, the device allegedly can make a satellite go dead.

Here’s a partial list of missile defense and space weapons research ongoing around the Islands and in the Pacific.

Sea-based X-Band Radar

At the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kaua’i, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is testing THAAD, a ground-based missile-to-space interceptor system. But at sea and at Pearl Harbor, the MDA is testing the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. Named after the shield of Zeus, the Aegis technology fires an interceptor missile that simply slams into a ballistic missile and destroys it. The technology has been applied to only a handful of ships, including Pearl Harbor’s USS Lake Erie, but many other ships from the Pacific fleet are slated to acquire it. Since the late 1990s, the Erie has shot down nearly a dozen dummy missiles, some of which were 200 miles above the earth’s surface.

The floating Sea-based X-Band Radar platform is perhaps the strangest looking craft to have ever sailed the Pacific. Built on a modified oil-drilling platform, the X-Band’s gigantic white dome could easily be mistaken for some alien craft. The distance from the water to the top of the radar dome is roughly 250 feet. The MDA has said the radar has enough detection and target resolution power that it can distinguish a warhead from a decoy or a piece of space debris. The X-band arrived in Pearl Harbor early in 2006, took part in several ballistic missile tests and then headed to its current home in Alaska. The X-band cost between $900 million and $1 billion to build.

Maui Space Surveillance System

Since calling for Star Wars, the U.S. military envisioned high-powered lasers or directed-energy weapons shooting down ballistic missiles in the earth’s atmosphere or in space. But since then, the Pentagon is leaning more toward a missile-to-missile strategy not only because the technology is more feasible but because it is also cheaper. Nevertheless, the U.S. has spent hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars on combat energy beam weapons. Again, just days after the Chinese satellite incident, the U.S. Air Force launched its ‘ABL’ or Air Borne Laser aircraft from Vanderberg Air Force Base north of Los Angeles. For the first time the aircraft test fired in flight. The aircraft is a Boeing 747-sized airplane that has been gutted and turned into a flying laser canon. On the Islands, the Air Force is researching space-related lasers at Maui Space Surveillance System (MSSS) on Haleakala mountain. Two laser beam director/trackers are in use at MSSS but experts say they are not powerful enough to be deemed weapons. These same experts say nearly all astronomical sites across the U.S. don’t project lasers into space.

While they have no connection to Hawai’i as of yet, the most controversial missile defense tests on the horizon are the Space-based test bed maneuvers, activists claim. Space-based test beds are killer satellites that are loaded with missiles or high-powered lasers. When such a satellite constellation may launch is unknown; the U.S. military has targeted the middle of next decade. What is certain is the money the MDA wants for the space-based test bed: The agency as submitted to Congress a request or $675 million to develop this experimental constellation for the years 2008 through 2011, according to Space News.

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DU Exposed!

Posted on: Friday, January 6, 2006

Schofield uranium find prompts call for probe

By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

A coalition of environmental and Native Hawaiian rights groups are calling for an independent investigation and disclosure by the Army of depleted uranium munitions use in Hawai’i based on recently obtained information confirming its presence at Schofield.

The Army said yesterday that the depleted uranium in question poses no threat.

The coalition DMZ Hawai’i/ Aloha ‘Aina cited a Sept. 19 e-mail message from Samuel P. McManus of the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center in Huntsville, Ala., to Ronald Borne, an Army employee involved with preparations for the Stryker brigade at Schofield Barracks. The e-mail involved the high cost of unexploded ordnance removal in preparation for the construction of a new Stryker brigade battle area complex at Schofield. In the e-mail, McManus noted, “We have found much that we did not expect, including the recent find of depleted uranium.”

DMZ Hawai’i/Aloha ‘Aina believes the e-mail obtained with a Freedom of Information Act request is reason for concern since “it means either the records are inaccurate or the U.S. Army’s representatives misled the public” in repeatedly denying depleted uranium use here, most recently in the March 2005 draft environmental impact statement for Makua and at a public hearing for the Stryker brigade EIS in 2004.

The Army confirmed yesterday that in August, 15 tail assemblies from spotting rounds made of D-38 uranium alloy, also called depleted uranium, were found by Zapata Engineering while the contractor was clearing a range area of unexploded ordnance and scrap metal. The tail assemblies are remnants from training rounds associated with an obsolete weapon system that was on O’ahu in the 1960s, and their low-level radioactivity represents no danger, the Army said.

The Army also stated that other than the armor-piercing rounds for the Abrams tank and Bradley fighting vehicle, there are no other weapons in its current stockpile that use depleted uranium. “There is no record of the Abrams and Bradley DU rounds ever being stockpiled in Hawai’i or being fired on Army ranges in Hawai’i,” the statement said.

The 15 tail assemblies recovered have been triple-bagged, stored in metal containers and secured pending disposition instructions, the Army said.

The Army statement was issued several hours after a DMZ Hawai’i/Aloha ‘Aina news conference announcing the e-mail findings, which was attended by representatives of six groups and concerned residents.

Depleted uranium munitions have raised concerns because they generate aerosolized particles on impact that can lead to lung cancer, kidney damage and other health problems.

Ann Wright, a retired diplomat and retired Army colonel, said she supports passage of a bill before the Legislature that calls for helping Hawai’i National Guard troops returning from Iraq and the Persian Gulf in obtaining federal treatment services that include health screenings capable of detecting low levels of depleted uranium.

Gail Hunter, a registered nurse, cancer survivor and Makaha resident for more than 20 years, wants more proof that there’s no depleted uranium at training sites in Makua, Kahuku, Schofield and Pohakuloa that could be threatening drinking water, land and air.

“We’re downwind of the (brush) fires in Wai’anae so I want to know if we’re breathing it in,” Hunter said.

Kyle Kajihiro, program director for American Friends Service Committee, called on the state Health Department to begin investigating and testing for military toxins. He said the revelation about depleted uranium being found in Hawai’i “is very disturbing because it may just be the tip of the iceberg. This is a smoking gun in a sense that there has been depleted uranium expended in our environment. We don’t know how much, we don’t know where and we don’t know what its effects are.”

Of the Health Department, he said: “We are asking them to be more aggressive in protecting public health. There are methods of testing but they require resources and some commitment. There should be testing of the environment and health screenings in the community (for military toxins) to determine if people have been exposed.”

Reach Rod Ohira at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Source: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Jan/06/ln/FP601060367.html/?print=on

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Army lied about DU in Hawai’i

Uranium revelation upsets isle activists

Army e-mails detailing the presence of spent metal at Schofield are troubling, critics say

By Rosemarie Bernardo
rbernardo@starbulletin.com

SEVERAL environmental and native Hawaiian groups are accusing the Army of misleading the public after the groups discovered that a heavy metal known as depleted uranium was recovered at Schofield Barracks’ range complex.

During a news conference yesterday, the groups said the Army has repeatedly assured the public that the heavy metal was never used in Hawaii.

“These recent revelations, then, indicate that the Army is either unaware of its DU (depleted uranium) and chemical weapons use or has intentionally misled the public. Both possibilities are deeply troubling,” said Kyle Kajihiro, program director of the American Friends Service Committee and member of DMZ-Hawaii/Aloha Aina.

Some members of the various groups read about the depleted uranium in e-mails detailing documents submitted in federal court in December, showing that heavy metals were found at Schofield Barracks’ range complex area during clearing efforts.

The e-mail was submitted as part of an ongoing discovery process. At the end of November, attorneys representing the 25th Infantry Division filed a motion in federal court to amend a 2001 settlement so soldiers can resume live-fire training at Makua Valley. The motion is scheduled to be heard Monday.

URANIUM AT SCHOFIELD
art
U.S. ARMY PHOTO VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Depleted uranium tail assemblies have been found in a Schofield Barracks range impact area, prompting some to question the Army’s forthrightness. See story, Page A3.

The clearing was being done to prepare for the expansion of additional training space and the construction of a rifle and pistol range for a new Stryker brigade combat team.

Depleted uranium is a byproduct of radioactive enriched uranium and has been used by the U.S. military in bullets and other weapons designed to pierce armor. Some researchers suspect exposure to depleted uranium might have caused chronic fatigue and other symptoms in veterans of the first Gulf War, but there is no conclusive evidence it has.

In a letter sent yesterday to Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commanding general of the 25th Infantry Division, Kajihiro wrote that several groups were outraged by the use of the uranium, which they say poses a public health hazard even in small amounts.

During community discussion on the Stryker Brigade environmental impact statement in 2004, Army officials assured the public that depleted uranium was never used in Hawaii, Kajihiro said.

Fifteen tail assemblies from spotting rounds made of D-38 uranium alloy, also called depleted uranium, were recovered in August by Zapata Engineering, a contractor hired by the military to clear the Schofield Barracks’ range impact area of unexploded ordnance and scrap metal, according to a news release from the 25th Infantry Division.

In an e-mail dated Sept. 19, a contractor told an Army official at Schofield: “We have found much that we did not expect, including recent find of depleted uranium. We are pulling tons of frag and scrap out of the craters in the western area to the point where it has basically turned into a manual sifting operation. Had this not been a CWM site, we would have moved mechanical sifters in about 5 weeks ago but the danger is just too high.”

Dr. Fred Dodge, Waianae resident and member of Malama Makua, said, “DU is a heavy metal similar to lead. It can be toxic particularly to the kidneys,” and could cause lung cancer if the metal in dust form is inhaled.

But U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii officials said the recovered depleted uranium has low-level radioactivity and does not pose a threat to the public.

The tail assemblies are about 4 inches in length and an inch in diameter. Army officials said they are from subcomponent remnants from training rounds associated with an obsolete weapon system that was on Oahu in the 1960s.

“The Army has never intentionally misled the public concerning the presence of DU on Army installations in Hawaii. This is an isolated incident and should not be considered as an attempt to misinform the public,” Col. Howard Killian, commander of the U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii, said in a written statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2006/01/06/news/story06.html

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University vulnerable to pitfalls of secret experiments

http://archives.starbulletin.com/2005/03/27/editorial/special2.html

Sunday, March 27, 2005

University vulnerable to pitfalls of secret experiments

By Beverly Deepe Keever

Special to the Star-Bulletin

It was 37 years ago that James Oshita and William Fraticelli were regularly drenched with the cancer-causing Agent Orange on the Kauai Agriculture Research Station.

They performed the core part of the University of Hawaii’s contract with the U.S. Army to test the effectiveness of the herbicide laden with dioxin, one of deadliest of chemicals, that was then being sprayed in South Vietnam to defoliate its wartime jungles.

Their saga and the Agent Orange experiment are now being recounted amid the controversial question of whether Hawaii’s only public university should enter into a new kind of contract for military research, this time with the U.S. Navy, specifically to establish a University Affiliated Research Center, to which the Board of Regents has already given its preliminary approval. It’s a watershed, which-way question for UH — and, as UH goes, so goes the state.

Oshita and Fraticelli marked their bulldozers with flags to serve as targets and stayed there while the planes swooped down to spray the defoliants. “When the plane came to spray, someone had to guide him,” Oshita told a reporter in a Page 1 report in the campus newspaper, Ka Leo O Hawaii, on Feb. 3, 1986. “We were the ones.”

Testing was done without warning UH employees or the nearby Kapaa community even though in 1962, just months before being assassinated, President Kennedy was told that Agent Orange could cause adverse health effects, U.S. court documents show. And a 1968 test report written by four UH agronomists said that on Kauai Agent Orange, alone or combined with Agent Pink, Purple or Blue, was effective and “obviously may also be lethal.”

When the testing finished in 1968, five 55-gallon steel drums and a dozen gallon cans partially filled with the toxic chemicals were buried on a hilltop overlooking a reservoir. There they remained until the mid-1980s when the Ka Leo reporter’s questions led to their being excavated, supposedly for shipment to a licensed hazardous waste facility. They left behind levels of dioxin in some soil samples of more than five times normal cleanup standards.

The barrels were then placed in a Matson shipping container. There, instead of being shipped out of state as promised, they sat for another decade. Then, in 1997, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Health discovered that UH had failed to dispose properly of the hazardous materials and included this infraction along with a Big Island one in a $1.8 million fine against the institution. In April 2000, the barrels were finally shipped out of state.

Oshita and Fraticelli have since died. A year after his Agent Orange work, Oshita was diagnosed with liver dysfunction, bladder cancer, diabetes, chronic hepatitis and a severe skin disease called chloracne. Fraticelli died in April 1981 from lung and kidney cancer; he also had bladder cancer and a brain tumor, court documents indicate.

Since 1984, with the settlement of a $180 million class- action lawsuit, 10,000-plus Vietnam veterans receive disability benefits related to Agent Orange, which has been linked to various cancers, diabetes and birth defects. Earlier this month, a federal judge, citing insufficient research data, dismissed a case filed on behalf of 4 million-plus Vietnamese claiming that Agent Orange had caused their ailments.

The legacy of the Agent Orange experiment and its aftermath exemplifies how UH was duped into conducting military research that the U.S. government knew could create adverse health effects, how the costs and risks of such research were latent for years and how UH demonstrated decades-long disregard for environmental and health hazards.

UH’s Agent Orange experiment was not secret. The student journalist found a thick report about it in Hamilton Library. But some of the Navy’s research now being debated at UH would be secret, a condition that the Faculty Senate on the Manoa campus voted down in terms of withholding publication of scholarly discoveries.

But even the Navy’s unclassified, non-secret work within the UARC has raised two broad concerns among faculty: the anti-business restrictions governing privileged information accessible to researchers, and murky legal issues.

Those favoring the Navy contract note that it proposes a ceiling for UH-M over five years, the normal duration of a UARC, of a sum of up to $50 million. This amount of about $10 million annually is small compared to the $54 million received by UH this fiscal year alone from Pentagon research and is but a fraction of the $160 million the Penn State University UARC received in one year.

Another advantage cited on the Manoa chancellor’s Web site is “our faculty will not have to write specific proposals for funding.” Instead, faculty will pick and choose — or opt out of — work on “task orders” from the Navy or other Pentagon sponsors. Others argue, however, that working only on this military-initiated to-do list will squelch faculty initiative and innovation.

Several faculty have noted that the “research” performed by the UARC through Navy “task orders” is distinctly different from the faculty-directed research that UH researchers currently pursue in an open academic environment. UARC activities must be aligned with the Navy’s war-fighting mission through the approved core competencies, and because the UARC acts as a trusted agent of the government, are also subject to extremely restrictive regulations managing conflict of interest.

The UARC would give rise to a whole new bureaucracy, according to a posting on the Manoa chancellor’s Web site (see box on F5). The UARC would be an organized research unit that reported to the vice chancellor for research and graduate education and would be managed by an executive director to be selected from a national search. A director would head each of UH’s four research specialities in ocean science; astronomy; advanced electro-optics and sensing; and senors, communications and information technology. Another director of business and admini- stration would oversee UARC operations. These administrators would work in leased space at the Manoa Innovation Center.

Unclassified research would be conducted on the Manoa campus but classified research would be performed on military facilities in the state or on the mainland. More bureaucracy will be needed to screen personnel for security clearances required for classified research.

Instead of providing an economic stimulus for the state, some faculty delving into operations of the proposed UARC find a restrictive, anti-business environment.

In scanning conflict-of-interest and other regulations, they found in effect a firewall circumscribes the UARC. Those accepting UARC funding are barred from working with local industry in ventures outside the UARC or in licensing their intellectual property in work outside the UARC in areas in which they may have gained information giving them a competitive advantage, regardless of whether that information is classified.

Researchers accepting UARC funding also are barred from submitting new proposals, entering collaborative relationships, undertaking consult- ing work or continuing work outside the UARC in their specialties that might benefit from their access to information within the UARC that is generally unavailable to the public. Moreover, they found, these restrictions will continue for three years after they leave the UARC.

None of these restrictions is explained on the chancellor’s Web posting, although Vassilis Syrmos, technical officer for the UARC proposal, spoke at length in an interview published March 2 in Ka Leo that certain conflict-of-interest restrictions would apply to those who accept UARC funding.

“Trying to predict the effect of the UARC on potential licensing income is almost fruitless,” Richard F. Cox Jr. of UH’s Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development said in an e-mail last week. He estimated UH would bring in about $900,000 in licensing income for the year ending June 30.

Others raise murky legal issues. Some question whether the Navy met the legal requirements of open announcement in approving the UARC at UH-M and thus in providing adequately fair competition to other qualified universities. For example, the Army, NASA and the Department of Homeland Security have all recently established new UARCs and federal research centers through open announcements and national competition. And the same statutory authority cited to establish UH-M’s UARC was found as insufficient justification for awarding a UARC contract to Johns Hopkins University by NASA without full and open competition, that agency’s inspector general found.

Such broad agency announcements serve not only a legal requirement. They also contain critical information on the purpose of the UARC, a description of the mission and type of research, the constraints and restrictions on qualified and successful applicants, and important evaluation and selection criteria to be included in the proposal. Thus, the UH-M UARC omitted critical information on the actual faculty and staff who would perform the research and important industrial affiliations that is normally required in such proposals. Without such a broad agency announcement for the Navy UARC, neither the public nor the UH faculty have the guidance needed to determine exactly what their participation would involve, what they will be asked to do for the Navy or what the Navy will be doing, perhaps near their own neighborhood.

In addition, the Navy is conducting a potentially criminal investigation into allegations of mismanagement of classified military contracts by UH and its affiliated Research Corporation, Ka Leo O Hawaii reported on March 2.

Mismanagement of federally funded research and misstatements in applying for that funding is viewed seriously. A federal judge took the unusual step of sentencing to three months in jail a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and fining him $10,000 for lying on a grant application he made to the National Science Foundation.

In handing down that sentence, as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education on Jan. 25, 1999, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker said, “Within the academic community, those who follow the rules must be assured they are not chumps, fools, or suckers.”

As important as these issues are, many faculty have expressed as their greatest concern the absence of a forum for the community and campus and the general lack of faculty consultation to examine these questions in detail. In a meeting with faculty on March 16, Chancellor Peter Englert apologized “for not having come forward or having made this particular presentation a little bit sooner.” But the stipulation that full consultation take place with concerned stakeholders was directed by the Board of Regents in its November 2004 meeting, and efforts to establish a UARC at UH-M date from September 2002. Given the history surrounding Agent Orange, many faculty feel that UH should be very careful to examine all such questions with complete openness and good faith.

Beverly Deepe Keever is a University of Hawaii-Manoa professor of journalism. She discusses federal information policies related to U.S. Pacific nuclear weapons tests (1946-62) in her newly published book, “News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb.”

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Kauai at odds over missile tests

missile

U.S. Navy photo
A Vandal, which simulates a supersonic cruise missile, is launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Nohili.

Kauai at odds over missile tests

Officials like the economic contributions,but protesters have a bevy of concerns

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

BARKING SANDS, Kauai — The sand-swept dunes and vast ocean waters of the Pacific Missile Range Facility are in a crossfire as a new round of hearings begins next week on the Navy’s proposal to test its newest defense against ballistic missiles beginning in 1999.

The battle lines once more are drawn:

  • The Navy maintains that the 42,000-square-mile ocean and aerial test facility northwest of Kauai is best suited for this type of operation. Officials say the new tests will add only a half-dozen launchings to a facility that averages 80 a year.
  • Environmentalists say the proposal “is just continuation of the typical greed of the military, industrial and scientific complex” to invent new enemies to fight. They worry not only about the environment of the Garden Island, but also the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands breeding grounds for the green sea turtle and monk seals.
  • State and county officials view the new phase as not only bringing more civilian jobs to the base, which is the island’s third largest government employer, but also as a key to its survival.
  • Hawaiian activists consider the Nohili dunes — which lie within the area — to be sacred burial grounds. In the past, protests and arrests occurred as groups demanded access to the dunes. The Navy maintains access is forbidden only during a missile launch.

Navy says system is needed

Several years ago when the Army’s Strategic Target System, or STARS, missile program, was planned, Kauai protesters unsuccessfully tried to block it through lawsuits, charging that it was illegal and wasteful and improperly used Hawaiian lands. The first launch took place in August 1993. But only four of the planned 40 payloads materialized.

Under the current proposal, the Navy is eyeing Barking Sands to test its primary weapon system against short-range ballistic missiles. The Theater Ballistic Missile Defense, located on Aegis cruisers and destroyers, would provide umbrella protection for a flotilla of amphibious landing ships and accompanying Marine Corps beachhead forces.

The system is needed, Navy planners say, because of the proliferation of short-range missiles capable of nuclear, chemical and biological destruction by more than 30 countries.

The Navy wants to launch and track target drones fired from the air, land and sea, following them them until they are intercepted over the ocean.

Cayetano backs project

Gov. Ben Cayetano supports the plans to enhance Barking Sands testing capabilities.

“The people on Kauai will benefit economically because of the federal money and jobs resulting from this project,” Cayetano said.

Kauai County officials see the range as the largest and most stable economic element on the island. Last year Barking Sands contributed $45 million in wages and salaries, $8.2 million in construction spending, $41 million in contracts, $12 million in purchases and $3.1 million in utility payments. Visits by military and civilian contractors added $4 million.

The base has a labor force of 900, only 113 of whom wear Navy blues.

Bob Mullins, Mayor Maryanne Kusaka’s administrative assistant, said: “The real value also is what goes on outside the fence and outside the gate and the base does so much for people of the island, especially on the west side.”

Mullins said that in 1992 after Hurricane Iniki devastated Kauai, Barking Sands personnel “did a lot to get the west side of the island back up and on its feet.”

missileart

Hawaiians say site sacred

But Raymond Chuan, spokesman for the Kauai Friends of the Environment, said, “It is absolutely ridiculous to think that we are facing such a bigger threat with the demise of the Soviet empire to require the massive new developments of missile systems.

“Like the ultimate chameleon, the military changes color to suit every change in the geopolitical scene to justify its insatiable appetite to continue feeding billions into the military-industrial-scientific complex, while cutting the red meat out of the nation’s defense strength by continually reducing troop strength,” Chuan said.

He added that “the bait as always is jobs.”

“But are a few dozen extra jobs — mainly held by imported technicians — enough to sacrifice the still pristine state of Kauai and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands?”

The Rev. Kaleo Paterson, spokesman for the Hawaii Ecumenical Coalition, pointed out that the STARS missile launch site was “built at the foot of the dunes,” which Hawaiians consider to be a sacred site.

“Hawaiians believe that the northern- and westernmost part of any island was sacred. It was where spirits of a dead person leaped off into the other world. Many Hawaiians buried their dead there.”

Threat of base closure

Mullins said Barking Sands has been lucky to survive the last four base closure commissions, which since 1988 have shut down 97 facilities. It beats its mainland competition because of its expansive ocean and air space that isn’t constricted by airline and shipping traffic.

Mullins, who was commander of the Pacific Missile Range Facility from 1991-94, said: “We always made it known that the future of the base was to market itself for test and evaluation programs” like the one being proposed now.

Because Congress now seems to support the development and testing of a defensive missile designed to knock down missiles with less than a 1,000-mile range, Mullins said, “then you need a place where you can test those weapons systems safely.”

“The perfect test environment is what they have west of Kauai at Barking Sands range and beyond.”

Mullins predicted that if Barking Sands doesn’t get the missile testing program, there will be major cutbacks that could result in closing the range and the base.

“Like any business,” Mullins said, “to stay in business you have to grow and change with the times. That is what Barking Sands is trying to do by bringing in the missile defense business.”

missileb
By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin

JIM BOWLIN:The commanding officer of the Pacific Missile Range Facility says the Navy would like to build a 6,000-foot runway on the southern end of Niihau

Niihau is an important part of Navy’s plans

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

BARKING SANDS, Kauai — The privately owned island of Niihau would play a crucial role in the proposed test of the Navy’s new missile defense system.

The sparsely inhabited 72-square-mile island, located about 19.5 miles southwest of Kauai, is owned by the Robinson family and houses an unmanned Navy radar site. Visitors are rarely allowed on the island.

Niihau is being eyed as one of three sites that would launch drone target missiles to be intercepted by Aegis cruisers or destroyers sitting offshore.

The other two launch sites would be the Pacific Missile Range Facility and Kure Atoll, located 1,350 miles northwest of Honolulu in the Northwestern Hawaiian chain. Future launch sites could be built on Johnston Atoll, Tern Island in the French Frigate Shoals, Wake Island and Midway Island.

More than one launch site is needed to test the capability of a Navy warship to shoot down missiles coming from all directions at different altitudes and at different times.

On the southern end of Niihau, the Navy also would like to build a 6,000-foot runway that would be used to bring materials needed for a missile launch, said Capt. Jim Bowlin, Pacific Missile Range Facility commanding officer.

The Navy also is proposing to:

Build two new ordnance storage magazines at Kamokala Caves located three miles east of Barking Sands.

Refurbish an existing radar site on Makaha Ridge overlooking the test range.

Construct an additional radar site on Kokee.

On Kure Atoll, the Navy wants to build a launch site on 321-acre Green Island, one of three in the group, located 56 miles southeast of Midway Island.

Averiet Soto, operations officer for the range, said future missile tests may not involve Johnston Atoll, Tern Island, Midway Island and Wake Island if the Navy can come up with suitable substitute mobile air and sea launching systems.

Soto does not believe that the Kauai missile intercepts will be “visible to the naked eye” since he estimates that the ships firing the interceptor missiles would be at least 100 miles off the island.

Bowlin said no financial arrangements have been worked out with the owner of Niihau, Bruce Robinson, although Bowlin believes it would be “a mutually beneficial relationship.”

Eight potential launch sites — five on the northern portion of Niihau and three on the southern end — are being contemplated, Soto said.

The Navy would like to have one or two sites, each sitting on a concrete pad measuring 150 feet by 150 feet.

Bowlin said Robinson has told the Navy any facility on Niihau must have some “economic benefit and cannot disrupt the lifestyle” of the more than 200 native Hawaiians living there, the majority of whom speak only Hawaiian.

There are no utility systems on the island. Each household has water catchment and septic systems and portable generators.

The Navy has been paying Robinson $1 a year since 1984 to lease the land where the radar unit is now located and $275,000 for logistic and other maintenance services.

Four hearings on Kauai, Oahu

The Navy will conduct four informational sessions on Pacific Missile Range Facility for testing of the Navy’s Theater Ballistic Missile Defense program.

The Navy wants feedback on issues that should be addressed in the environmental impact statement on the project.

Three hearings will be held on Kauai:

Tuesday, at Waimea Neighborhood Center beginning at 4 p.m.
Thursday at Kilauea Neighborhood Center at 4 p.m.
June 21 at 1 p.m. in the Wilcox Elementary School cafeteria.
The last hearing will be held at 4 p.m. June 23 at the U.S. Army Reserve Center in Fort Shafter Flats.

Navy took over in 1964

World’s largest instrumented and multidimensional testing and training range

  • 1921: Acquired by Kekaha Sugar Co. from the Knudsen family. Private planes used the grassy field as a landing strip.
  • 1932: Australian Kingsford Smith made a historic flight from Barking Sands to Australia in a Ford Trimotor.
  • 1940: First acquired by the Army, 549 acres including the grassy landing field through executive order. The installation became known as Mana Airport and the Army paved the runway.
  • 1954: Named changed to Bonham Air Force Base
  • 1962: Pacific Missile Range Facility officially commissioned
  • 1964: Barking Sands and 1,885 acres transferred to Navy

Barking Sands: Hawaiian legend

BARKING SANDS, Kauai — The legend of Barking Sands deals with an old Hawaiian fisherman who lived in a hut near the beach with his nine dogs. When he went fishing, the man would stake his dogs in the sand, three to a stake.

After one exhausting fishing expedition involving a bad storm, the fisherman forgot to untie the dogs after returning to the beach.

When he awoke the next morning, the dogs were gone. In their place were three small mounds of sand. As he stepped on a mound, he heard a low bark.

Believing that the dogs had been buried in the sand because of the storm, the fisherman began to dig.

The digging was futile. Each shovelful just meant more sand. The fisherman finally gave up and every day after that when he crossed the beach, he could hear the low barking.

To this day the sands of Mana have been known as Barking Sands.

Source: http://archives.starbulletin.com/97/06/13/news/story1.html

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