MANA — Even though the tents were the Navy colors of Blue and Gold, Army Green was the order of the day at the Pacific Missile Range Facility yesterday. Along with a blessing of the five new facilities built in
MANA — Even though the tents were the Navy colors of Blue and Gold, Army Green was the order of the day at the Pacific Missile Range Facility yesterday.
Along with a blessing of the five new facilities built in the past 18 months, PMRF Commander, Capt. Robert Jeff Connelly welcomed Army Col. Charles H. Driessnack and his Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program to the PMRF community.
“This ceremony marks the advent of THAAD activities at PMRF… (and) a significant increase in (PMRF’s) role in our nation’s defense,” said Connelly. “Welcome to PMRF. Welcome to our Kaua‘i ‘ohana. Welcome aboard.”
PMRF will now be the home to two parts of the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Program, as the Navy’s Aegis sea-based system already has been testing ballistic defense missiles at the Westside base.
Testing for THAAD has begun at White Sands, New Mexico.
And, although missile launches from the THAAD program will not be taking place until 2006, Col. Driessnack is ready to start the first THAAD work on Kaua‘i.
“I’m really excited about bringing THAAD to PMRF,” said Driessnack. After touring PMRF and Kaua‘i, “I am even more excited than I was initially. You have an outstanding location and outstanding facilities.
“We’ve been planning this since 2001,” he added. “We now have the facilities to house the best and the brightest of our folks.”
Both Connelly and Driessnack, though, were quick to point out that the new facilities will also mean the creation of perhaps 70 new jobs on the base. “It’s difficult to gauge how many,” said Connelly during the ceremony, but “we have a strong commitment to do what we need to do to hire locally.”
“We are here for the long haul,” Driessnack said after the ceremony, adding that funding has already been allocated for parts of the program until 2011. “And we are already impacting the local community.”
While THAAD missiles won’t be firing off the Westside until 2006, “we are beginning to ramp up people out here,” the colonel said.
And the Army has five new facilities in which to work.
The blessing, which was performed by Aletha Ka‘ohi of the West Kaua‘i Visitor’s Technology Center, took place outside the support facilities building. After the ceremony, visitors were encouraged to tour both the support building, which resembles a typical office building, and the blockhouse, a large, metal barn-like structure that housed a replica of a THAAD missile.
The two were part of five structures built as part of the project, which was coordinated by Bodell Construction of Utah. Launch pads and hard radar stands were also built.
