By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
The U.S. military’s proposed missile defense system for Guam is courting more threats to the civilian community with no guarantee of full protection, the
Pacific Center for Island Security said, noting that the "proposal for
'weaponizing' the island does not include basic civilian security infrastructure."
Commenting on the Missile Defense Agency’s draft environment impact assessment of the enhanced integrated air and missile defense system, the PCIS said the agency’s own study failed to quantify the proposed project’s “significant impact” on the local population.
“The MDA’s proposal for an EIAMDS in Guam is overstated in its effectiveness and understated in the real and potential damaging repercussions to the Guam community,” said Robert Underwood, chairman of the Guam-based think tank.
“While the anticipated threat of conflict may ebb and flow due to diplomatic and military policies, the damaging repercussions to Guam will be manifest
on the island for decades,” he added.
The proposed missile defense system, with multiple mobile components to be installed on 16 sites around the island, is touted to provide 360-degree protection for Guam. The Indo-Pacific Command has stamped the $1.8 billion a top priority amid the growing threats in the Pacific region, where China and North Korea recently launched missile tests.
The PCIS said the MDA’s study ignored “the fact that no missile defense system can defend any area in its entirety, much less from yet developed,
unknown, and evolving threats.”
“The MDA’s description of the system’s intent and effectiveness, to 'raise the threshold for conflict by reducing adversary incentives to conduct small-scale, coercive attacks' is materially different than the DEIS foundational claim that
the proposed action will ‘defend the entirety of Guam," it said.
While military officials have repeatedly said the missile defense system is designed as a "deterrence," the PCIS said, “it is clear that the U.S. Department of Defense is planning for a much larger conflict.”
The department's strategy to designate other areas in the region as alternate launch pads in the event installations on Guam became incapacitated “indicates that even DoD planners do not anticipate the EIAMDS will ‘defend the entirety of Guam.’”
Even without installing a new missile defense system, the PCIS noted that “deterrence" infrastructure already exists around Guam including a THAAD battery, which has been deployed on island since 2013 and Navy-operated Aegis vessels currently providing a level of layered defense.
"These existing capabilities are already sufficient to reduce an adversary’s incentives to conduct a small-scale coercive attack on Guam," the PCIS said. "What the proposed action entails is to move some of these (e.g. Aegis, radars and interceptors (SM-3, SM-6)) from Navy vessels and distribute them around Guam."
The MDA’s proposal for an EIAMDS is to respond to long- medium- and short-range precision weapons expected to target Guam in conflict. The DEIS, however, does not address how the impact of the EIAMDS would impact the community in a conflict situation,” the PCIS said. “That Guam would be targeted by precision weapons (hundreds, if not thousands in coordinated attacks) is understood.”
The PCIS noted the lack of contingency plans for civilian shelters and food security, which the think tank said “contradicts the MDA’s claim that proposed action is to ‘defend the entirety of Guam.’”
The PCIS also said the DEIS did not adequately address the project’s socioeconomic impact including the housing requirements to accommodate additional military personnel, civilian support workers, contractors and foreign workers.
“The proposed action acknowledged the housing problem in Guam without providing a directed solution. Housing construction is a long lead process,” the think tank said. “By not directly addressing the housing requirement as a function of the operational plan, the proposal adds to existing and cumulative socioeconomic impacts that are directly related to the U.S. military’s
failure to properly plan for its activities in Guam.”
The group urged the MDA to further examine the cumulative effects of military pressures on the Guam housing market.
“ An assumption that off-base (off-post) housing availability is the prerogative of military utilization needs to be reframed in relation to Guam’s civilian community’s housing requirements and a recognition that Guam is a homeland of an indigenous (CHamoru) people,” the PCIS said.
Subscribe to
our digital
monthly edition
Comments