[CPEO-MEF] Alaska SCUD Launches Scrubbed

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Army scrubs secret testing
POKER FLAT: 20 missile launches canceled; Alaska logistics blamed. 

By Richard Mauer 
Anchorage Daily News 

(Published: January 24, 2002) 

Even before they were officially announced, the Army canceled a series
of 20 missile launches targeting state lands in the Brooks Range with
hazardous liquid-fueled rockets and clusters of 40-pound dummy payloads
screaming like bullets at 1,000 feet per second.

The five-year test program, based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks'
Poker Flat Research Range, was to be part of the Army's efforts to
improve its battlefield missile defenses, according to a still-secret
environmental assessment obtained by Fairbanks author Dan O'Neill, a
critic of the tests and of the use of Poker Flat for classified military research.

The first two tests were to have been flown in daylight in April or May,
according to the launch schedule.

Neither Army nor Poker Flat officials would disclose what missiles were
to be launched. But O'Neill discovered that the dimensions, fuel,
design, range and portable launcher that are described and drawn in the
environmental assessment fit the Russian-designed SS-1c, known in the
West as the Scud B.

. . .

For the entire story, see
http://www.adn.com/front/story/754734p-804915c.html
-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 222B View St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
lsiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org