Military facility on Kauai touted to defend isles against N. Korea

The head of U.S. Pacific Command said Wednesday that the U.S. military should consider enabling an Aegis Ashore facility on Kauai to protect against North Korean missile threats.

The facility, which uses a land-based SPY-1 radar and SM-3 missiles like those on Navy ships, was installed at the Pacific Missile Range Facility as a test site for Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense in Romania and Poland.

The pluses and minuses have to be weighed, “but when we’re talking about defense of the homeland, I think that we should look at all opportunities,” Navy Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “And the site in Hawaii may be a good opportunity,”

It was the first time Harris spoke publicly about the possible added defense. Aegis ballistic missile defense is intended to defeat short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

The Missile Defense Agency said in 2013 when the Kauai site was first powered up that the “Aegis Ashore facility is a test facility, and is not planned as an operational site.”

But advances in North Korean warhead miniaturization and rocket technology have some reconsidering Aegis Ashore use. The Missile Defense Agency briefed members of Congress in 2014 on the possibility of making the Hawaii site operational.

“Certainly they (North Korea) have a missile that can reach Hawaii or U.S. facilities in the Pacific, so that’s what we’re most worried about,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told the Air Force Times in August.

Harris, whose headquarters is in Hawaii, also said Wednesday he believes a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system on rotational deployment to Guam should be there all the time — whether rotationally or permanently.

The nonprofit Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance said Jan. 15 that the “time is now” to operationalize the Aegis Ashore site “in order to best defend and best protect the 1.4 million American citizens in the state of Hawaii from North Korea and its impending nuclear ballistic missile capability.”

The military defends Hawaii with a “one-shot capability with its very limited number of ground-based interceptors in California and Alaska, having no opportunity due to distances and time to have a second-shot capability,” the alliance said. Hawaii “deserves to have a second and third shot opportunity like the other 49 American states to increase its percentages of success and have the confidence and reliability of a layered defense.”

An operational Aegis Ashore site in Hawaii could provide at least two more shot opportunities in the terminal phase of an incoming North Korean nuclear ballistic missile, according to the organization.