The missile launches that require evacuation of surrounding state-owned land will occur at an area known as the Kaua`i Test Facility, which is at the northern end of the Pacific Missile Range Facility, just inland of the famous Barking Sands beach.
The Kaua`i Test Facility is run by Sandia National Laboratories under contract to the Department of Energy. It is, technically speaking, not a Department of Defense installation at all, even though it occupies land under Executive Order to the Navy. The KTF began operations in the late 1950s, when the Atomic Energy Commission was looking for sites it could use to monitor atmospheric nuclear testing. The Department of Energy, successor the AEC, has occupied the site ever since. In addition to the northern end of the PMRF, the Kaua`i Test Facility has a launch pad on the southernmost end of the PMRF, at Kokole Point.
Atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons ceased in 1963, with signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. However, treaty provisions allow the United States to maintain certain facilities in the Pacific (including the Kaua`i Test Facility) to support resumption of nuclear testing should that ever be required. According to the environmental assessment prepared for the Kaua`i Test Facility in 1992 (covering continued and expanded operations at the facility), “If atmospheric or exoatmospheric [above the atmosphere] nuclear testing were to resume, high altitude instrumentation probes which gather data during nuclear events would once again be launched from KTF. No nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices have ever been launched from KTF and none are proposed.”
Stepped-Up Activity
Until the STARS program, most of the launches from the KTF involved smaller, rail-launched missiles. Documents in the 11-volume Administrative Record accompanying the federal environmental impact statement for the STARS project show launch activity at the site dates back to at least 1963. In the early years, almost all the missiles were Nike class. A missile developed by Sandia, called Strypi, was first launched at Kaua`i in 1966.
From 1963 through September 1991, almost 300 launches were made from KTF. The 1960s saw the highest levels of activity, peaking in 1964, when 38 launches occurred. The Carter years marked the facility’s nadir. No launches appear to have occurred in 1977 and 1978; three occurred in 1979, and two in 1980. The Reagan-Bush era saw a moderate upswing, with about five launches a year on average from 1983 through September 1991.
STARS and other SDI-related launches will increase that pace substantially. Annually, 19 vertical launches, involving closure of parts of Polihale State Park, are anticipated, beginning this year. It is impossible to know how many launches of smaller missiles, involving no closure of public land, are scheduled.
Code Words
The purpose of most of the early launches is not well described, although the record suggests that many of them were in support of Navy training exercises in the area off-shore. The list of launches from 1963 to September 1991 does provide indications of the missions of most of the more recent launches. Although the explanations are cryptic at times, it does appear as though many of them were in support of experiments undertaken by private contractors to the military and to the Department of Energy: Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, Los Alamos, MIT, Aerospace, to name a few. Occasionally, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration appears on the list.
Many of the experiments would seem to involve development of detecting technologies: X-rays, ultraviolet photometers, spectrometers, tracking devices, and the like. Some would appear to involve experiments in zero gravity and with cryogenic (super-cold) instruments. Several missions seem to have tested the performance of re-entry vehicles or improvements in their design: whether shrouds drop off as designed, responsiveness to swerve commands, and the like.
At times the stated purposes are impossibly obscure to all but the initiate: “Thorny Merit, Gold,” “Thorny Merit, Blue,” “Have List” 1-4, ZEST 1 and 2.
STARS and Beyond
The STARS missiles are but one aspect of Strategic Defense Initiative operations planned for or already undertaken at the Kaua`i Test Facility. Here is a sampling:
STRYPI/LACE
As indicated above, STRYPI is the name of a Sandia-designed rocket. LACE stands for Low-Altitude Compensation Experiment. This one-time launch, made in spring of 1991, was designed to determine the optical and ultraviolet characteristics of rocket plumes, as observed in space by an orbiting Navy satellite. LACE was part of a larger program being conducted by the Naval Research Laboratory under the sponsorship of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. The cost of the observational satellite was given at $108 million and had an expected useful life of barely more than one year. Cost of launching STRYPI/LACE was reported to be $4.39 million.
RAP-501
RAP stands for Rocket-Accelerated Penetrator. This experiment was launched on a NIKE rocket, which delivered the payload to the Navy’s Barking Sands Tactical Underwater Range, offshore of the PMRF. According to a description of this project, Sandia National Laboratories “has been developing a new weapon design suitable for high speed water or ice entry. The use of a pointed penetrator configuration for water entry is a departure from the more traditional blunt nose body, but this vehicle has characteristics that can reduce the cost and complexity while enhancing the overall performance. … This flight marks the 11th flight to water impact of the vehicle.” Cost of the RAP-501 exercise was $500,000. Total cost of the weapon development program stood at $5 million in mid-1991.
CDX
CDX probably stands for chemical deployment experiment. A two-stage Terrier/Malamute rocket was launched in mid-1992, carrying a payload having four experiments designed to “produce radar and other signatures of various decoys of ballistic missiles in space.”1
Quoting from the environmental assessment: “The payload consists of four mylar-lined balloons and less than 16 kg of chemicals: titanium, boron, cesium nitrate, and aluminum, mostly in powder form. The balloons would be released between 290 and 211 km altitude. The chemicals would be reacted and released in two controlled emissions during the descent phase of the trajectory.”
The KTF launch site was used because of the proximity of the Air Force’s Maui Optical Station, on Haleakala, which has extremely high-resolution optical systems used to observe the experiments.
Delta-180
This mission was carried out in 1986, resulting in the closure of the beach at Barking Sands for 40 days. The experiment was described as “the most complex command and control mission the United States has ever conducted” (in a 1986 article in Aviation Week and Space Technology). A Delta rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral in September 1986. When it was in orbit, the two upper stages separated, with one stage simulating a thrusting missile while sensors on the other stage observed its plume. “After orbiting the earth, the second stage was commanded to home in on the simulated ‘missile.’ Impact occurred over Kwajalein at a closing speed of 12,000 km an hour.”2 Kaua`i’s role in this was apparently to collect data.
ZEST
Try as we might, Environment Hawai`i was never able to track down the meaning of this acronym. The project involved two launches of a two-stage Talos/Castor missile in 1991. The payload on each launch was a high-energy explosive, to be detonated in space. The detonation was to release a cloud of high energy, observable by ground-based sensors on Maui, by sensors on specially equipped planes, and satellite sensors. The data gathered were to be used in the development of space-based sensors.
EDX
The Exoatmospheric Discrimination Experiment will be vertically launched from Kaua`i using an ARIES rocket. Three flights per year are planned from Kaua`i over the next three years.
The rocket will carry optical sensors and position them so that they will be able to observe “target vehicles” in the mid-course (exoatmospheric) phase of their flight from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, to, presumably, Kwajalein.
Data would be gathered through optical sensors as well as radar imaging.
STARS-related Missions
The Army is planning to conduct at least 40 launches of the STARS rocket. To date, missions and payloads appear to have been developed for no more than the first dozen or so. Here is a summation of the STARS missions described in information obtained to date. By no means is this a complete list, however. Almost all of the payloads are to splash down in Kwajalein lagoon or in the open ocean area to the north of Roi-Namur, the northernmost of the 11 islands in Kwajalein Atoll.
FTU-1
This is the initial flight (Flight Test Unit-1), whose chief purpose is to make sure the STARS rocket works. The payload on board is a dummy (see below). Some documents indicate that there will be two test flights; at other times, the claim is made that there will be just one.
ARE
All the Aerothermal Re-entry Experiments (there are several) involve what the Army calls “pre-damaged threat RVs” (re-entry vehicles). Their purpose is to test technologies designed to take out (“kill”) these re-entry vehicles. The ARE-2N mission is the payload on the FTU-1. ARE-2N is a scale-model re-entry vehicle, but carries no instruments. ARE-2H (one of the two test objects on M-1) will be a sub-scale re-entry vehicle. ARE-3 will be launched in conjunction with a LEAP experiment (see below). A fourth ARE mission is planned, but no details are available on that.
M-1
Mission-1 of STARS involves two payloads, called test objects (or TOs): one developed in the United Kingdom under sponsorship of the SDIO, the second called the Aerothermal Re-entry Experiment-2H (ARE-2H). The objective appears to be to compare the manner in which the two test objects perform at re-entry into the atmosphere. Little information is available on test object 1 (the British payload) in the public record. Re-entry data on both test objects will be gathered by optical, radar, and infrared sensors on the ground and in specially designed planes.
ODES
This isn’t properly a mission at all but rather a “payload plate,” or Post-Boost Vehicle (PBV) on which many planned STARS missions will be carried. ODES stands for Operation and Deployment Experiments Simulator and was designed by NASA for use with the STARS rockets. Maneuvering thrusters on ODES will be propelled by unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UMDH) as the fuel and nitrogen tetroxide as the oxidizer. Both chemicals can be lethal at low concentrations. About 15 gallons of each will be used in the ODES vehicle. The ODES platform is designed to mimic that used in a multiple, independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV).
ODF
This is the ODES Demonstration Flight, designed to test the performance of the ODES. Apart from demonstrating that the STARS/ODES system works, it is intended also to deploy up to 15 test objects that will be used in support of the development of what are called penetration aids (penaids, for short — to help re-entry vehicles “penetrate” opponent defenses) and other projects.
Nine of the test objects are classified. Object No. 10 is a Light Exoatmospheric Projectile (see below). It is intended to view the ODES post-boost vehicle after separating from it. Object No. 11 is an experiment designed by Lawrence Livermore and MIT labs, involving release of what is called a reference sphere. Objects 12-15 are “bubble machines,” which will be inflated and released. Only the last one will carry instruments.
MSX
The Midcourse Space Experiment will entail at least three launches from Kaua`i. Two will employ the STARS/ODES system. The third will use STARS alone. Two later MSX missions will be launched on Minuteman I rockets.
The payloads will consist of a variety of sensors (long-wave infrared, ultraviolet, visual band, among others). They are supposed to view targets against the background of space (as opposed to viewing them against the Earth, which is a far simpler task). Data from the MSX experiments are deemed to be vital to the development of the Brilliant Eyes and Brilliant Pebbles elements in the Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) system, the latest Star Wars system.
The first MSX test from Kaua`i (MSX II) will probably be launched at night. A total of 26 objects will be released in midcourse for observation in the dark by instruments on the MSX. The observations will be cross-checked by sensors on aircraft, ship, and ground. MSX III will entail the venting of UMDH (a liquid rocket fuel) in space, once in darkness and again in sunlight. Other test objects and reference spheres will be deployed in between the fuel venting. MSX IV will deploy 26 objects for observation, this time in full sunlight.
The MSX missions will not occur earlier than late 1994.
LEAP
This stands for Light Exoatmospheric Projectile. A series of LEAP missions are planned. Most appear to be launched by ARIES boosters from Wake Island, although at least one seems to be scheduled for firing from the ODF (see above). Additional STARS involvement comes with the launch of at least one of the target objects that the projectile is supposed to hit beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. Two LEAPs (Nos. 5 and 6) will be launched by Advanced Liquid Axial Stage (or ALAS) engines. As many as 10 LEAP experiments are planned.
HEDI
This stands for High Endo-Atmospheric Interceptor. This will consist of the launch of a STARS missile carrying a non-nuclear “kill vehicle,” intended to hit an incoming re-entry vehicle in the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere.
1Although the launch was made in May 1992, notice of availability of an Environmental Assessment for the project was not published in the OEQC Bulletin until November 23, 1992.
2 Reference to the 40-day closure is found in a record of meetings held by Advanced Science, Inc., a preparer of the federal environmental impact statement, with PMRF and Kaua`i County officials over several days in the spring of 1990. The description of the Delta 180 project comes from Chasing Gravity’s Rainbow (Canberra, 1991).
Volume 3, Number 9 March 1993
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