Kauai missile BARKING SANDS, Kauai >> STARS, a long dormant missile program that pitted the military against environmentalists and native Hawaiians on Kauai in the early 1990s, is back.
tests return
A new target could be the
waters off the islandBy Anthony Sommer
tsommer@starbulletin.comAnd the military has done a good job of hushing it up, says one of the program's harshest critics, University of Hawaii physics professor Michael Jones. There has been no public announcement regarding a revived STARS program.
After years of controversy, only four Strategic Targets -- STARS -- missiles ever were fired, the last in 1996. But, with renewed interest in developing missiles that can shoot down other missiles, a rebirth and major expansion of STARS has been proposed as a component of the testing programs.
An environmental assessment was published April 11 for public comment, which closes Friday.
Only five copies were sent to Hawaii. Three went to public libraries and never have been read by anyone, according to librarians. One went to the National Marine Fisheries Service, and one went to the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai where the public affairs officer said she has not seen it. Jones requested and received a sixth copy only last week.
The environmental assessment is available online at www.huntsville.edaw.com/northpacific. It must be downloaded in order to be read and is a lengthy document. ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT
Most important, notes Jones, no copies went to the Hawaii Office of Environmental Quality Control, which publishes a monthly newsletter listing all environmental assessments and environmental impact statements statewide that are open for public comment.
By way of contrast, the new incarnation of STARS will include missile launches from Kodiak Island, Alaska, as well as from Kauai. Last November, the military conducted a public informational meeting on Kodiak Island. When the environmental assessment was published in April, copies went to 81 addressees, including the governor of Alaska, both U.S. senators from the state and the mayor of Kodiak.
STARS is one of several programs that provide targets for the anti-missile missiles.
Among those being tested are the National Missile Defense system, which has had a spotty record in test flights so far in attempts to knock down Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from California to Kwajalein Atoll.
The Navy has two anti-missile missiles under development. The first of these is being tested at the Pacific Missile Range on Kauai. The Army has two others in the works, a beefed-up version of the Patriot and a new rocket called the Theater High Altitude Air Defense missile.
All of the new defense missiles are designed for "kinetic kills": hitting a bullet with another bullet.
To test them the military needs target missiles to shoot at, and that is where STARS comes in. The STARS missile consists of a surplus Polaris missile -- the first generation of long-range missiles to be fired from submarines -- mated to a new Orbus third stage that can make the rocket mimic a wide variety of hostile rockets. It has a maximum range of 3,400 miles.
Even though Polaris is a Navy missile and the Pacific Missile Range on Kauai is a Navy base, the STARS program belongs to the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala. It is fired by technicians working for Sandia National Laboratory. And they all come under the Ballistic Missile Defense Office, a joint service program.
Currently, STARS has authority only to fire target missiles from Kauai to the Army's missile test site on Kwajalein. The authority expires in 2003.
The proposal would add the Kodiak Launch Center, a privately owned rocket test site in Alaska. Four launches a year would be allowed at each site "for the foreseeable future."
The new STARS also adds four new "launch corridors" comprising the "North Pacific Targets" program. STARS missiles would be fired from the Pacific Missile Range on Kauai to an impact area in the ocean west of Seattle. They also would be launched from Kodiak to Kwajalein, to the ocean off of Kauai and to an impact area off the west coast of Mexico.
Thomas Craven, the program manager for the new STARS environmental assessment, was not available for comment. A message on his voice mail said he would not be back in his office until after Friday, when the public comment period ends.
A public affairs officer at Huntsville said he was not aware of the STARS program.
But everyone who was on Kauai a decade ago and involved in the conflict over STARS remembers. It has left scars that have not entirely healed.
"It was an ugly thing. I don't think anyone involved wants to go through it again," said Sue Dixon, former managing editor of the Kauai Times and outspoken critic of STARS.
"There were a lot of angry public hearings. I got shoved to the ground at one of them," Dixon said. "It was dramatic, emotional and changed everything in the relationship between the Navy and the public on Kauai."
Dixon added that if STARS is being reborn and changed so that missiles will be fired toward Kauai instead of only away from it, it ought to be the subject of public debate.
Retired Navy Capt. Bob Mullins looks at it somewhat differently.
Mullins was base commander at the Pacific Missile Range during much of the dispute. He currently is Kauai manager of Textron, a major defense contractor that is providing the optical tracking equipment for the missile base.
"The only impact on Kauai is that missiles will be coming down hundreds of miles west of Kauai. So what? It's way the hell out at sea," Mullins said.