[CPEO-MEF] Oahu may get giant radar

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Hawai'i
HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN
Oahu may get giant radar
The military assesses the potential impact of a missile defense dome off
Kalaeloa
Associated Press
July 16, 2003

Mooring a 25-story-tall radar dome and platform a few miles off Kalaeloa
in West Oahu would impose only a minor visual impact "comparable to
ships passing along the horizon," according to a military report.

That assessment of the proposed Sea-Based X-Band Radar being developed
as part of the nation's ballistic missile intercept system was included
in an environmental impact statement released by the U.S. Missile
Defense Agency last week.

The mooring site off Oahu is one of six locations around the Pacific
being considered as a home port for the huge radar device that would be
towed to various sites during the testing program. The radar is part of
a project from the Missile Defense Agency to target and intercept
ballistic missiles in flight as a ship- and ground-based defensive
shield.

If it is home-ported in Hawaii, the Sea-Based Test X-Band (SBX) radar
platform, about the length of a Navy frigate, would spend up to nine
months moored either in the Pearl Harbor area or three miles off the old
Barbers Point Naval Air Station at Kalaeloa, and would be moved to one
of three operational areas in the northern Pacific. It would have a crew
of 50 and about another dozen shore-based personnel.

The radar platform and recent tests at the Pacific Missile Range
Facility on Kauai are part of plans outlined in December by the Bush
administration to have a rudimentary missile defense system ready for
use by 2005.

This article can be viewed at:
http://starbulletin.com/2003/07/16/news/story1.html

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