ALASKA MISSILE DEFENSE EARLY BIRD WEEKLY

SEA-BASED RADAR TO BE BUILT, Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2002. A $900 million floating X-Band Radar (XBR) is to be built off the coast of Alaska. The sea-based radar is to be linked to up to ten ground-based interceptors based in Alaska and is planned to be part of MDA's initial "test bed" missile facility. An initial contract of $31 million has been awarded to Boeing for the preliminary design effort. MDA hopes that the maritime XBR will be in place by 2005 and that the radar will improve the quality of its ground-based missile defense testing.

MISSILE DEFENSE ACTIVITY ENERGIZES DELTA JUNCTION, Fairbanks News Miner, August 18, 2002. About five miles north of the swirling dust of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense test bed site, the community is abuzz with activity. Delta schools are making way for about 50 more students, though school officials won't know the exact numbers until after school starts on Wednesday, said Delta/Greely Schools Superintendent Dan Beck. "Missile defense has made an impact as far as kids coming in," he said. While many of the workers coming to Fort Greely are living in the new construction camp, others are bringing families. Some of the positions are permanent jobs . . . The parking lot at the Delta IGA is often full to overflowing. Gayle Larson said the influx of workers has made business brisk . . . For other businesses, the impact has been less obvious. Vera Marchuk, manager at Pizza Bella, is looking for the missile defense workers to fill the gap as the tourists go home . . . Officials from Operating Engineers Local 302 in Fairbanks estimate 40 to 50 workers have been sent to the Fort Greely work site, with about one-quarter of those identified as Delta Junction residents. Laborers Union Local 942 has dispatched about 45 workers, with 22 of those Deltans.

'RIGHT ON SCHEDULE,' Fairbanks News Miner, August 18, 2002. Despite the 75,000 gallons of water sprinkled on the access roads each day, the dust never quite settles at this former Army post. Construction of the missile defense site is a round-the-clock operation as summer wanes . . . All across a 260-acre area and beyond, subcontractors concentrate on their pieces of the puzzle that will become the basis of the nation's missile defense system. In military language, it is the Ground-based Midcourse Defense Validation of Operational Concept test bed site. On Thursday, Boeing and Bechtel's work on the missile silos reached a milestone as the first corrugated metal liner was lowered into a concrete shaft at the same site on which ground was broken on June 15. Also Thursday, the countdown clock at Site Activation Command's headquarters in an old Fort Greely building read 776 days until completion . . . "It's been a good summer all the way around," [Tom York, engineer with the Site Activation Command] said. "Our objective is mid-October, but we're doing very well in our schedule, so we expect it will be earlier than that" . . . As the weather turns cold, some of the workers will go home, but others will be working to finish buildings. When work