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Data Base

A small atoll in the Pacific Ocean is playing a big role in the defense of the United States.

By Amy Doan
Photographs by Jim Paquin, Raytheon, and L. Allen, KRS/US Army Photo

During World War II, Japanese and American forces fought several major battles at Kwajalein Atoll. The ships and planes that were lost have rested on the floor of Kwajalein’s bright turquoise lagoon for more than 50 years. But Kwajalein’s role in the military activity of the United States is not limited to the past. Today, the Ronald Reagan National Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll gives the United States a cutting edge on missile and missile-interceptor development, space surveillance, and satellite tracking. The Kwajalein site, which conducted the first successful space intercept of an intercontinental ballistic missile (icbm), could someday become part of an active defense network strung across the Pacific. Kwajalein also plays a key role in space object identification, tracking, and imaging.

Bechtel and Lockheed Martin forged a promising new relationship with the U.S. Army in September 2002, when the companies’ limited liability company, Kwajalein Range Services (KRS), was chosen to support operations on Kwajalein Atoll and nearby Wake Island. The four-year, $626 million contract has the potential to expand to a 15-year, $2.5 billion agreement. The Kwajalein project represents Bechtel’s first entry into the Department of Defense range services market. “The key to our success was the obvious quality of the Bechtel-Lockheed relationship and our experience with enormous logistical challenges like those involved in managing [the base’s] operations and running a city,” says Carmen Spencer, president of KRS. Spencer is a retired army colonel who was a vice president at Bechtel National. KRS took over operations at Kwajalein in March 2003.

The challenges his team faces are as vast as the Reagan test site itself, which stretches across an area of approximately 1.9 million square kilometers. In addition to deep-space and near-earth surveillance, satellite tracking, and foreign missile launch coverage, the base conducts about 10 ballistic missile intercept tests each year. The ICBMs are launched from sites in California and Alaska. Wake Island, 1,100 kilometers north of Kwajalein, serves as a launch site for intermediate-range target missiles.

The collection of radar installations, instrumentation, and test support facilities at the Reagan test site is unmatched. Its geographical location also makes it valuable for U.S. security. The vast coral ring of Kwajalein is part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, which lies just west of the International Date Line between the Philippines and Hawaii. It’s the only place in the world from which the United States can test its ability to intercept long-range missiles, due to the extended flight distances required.

On March 12, 2003, for example, an ICBM Peacekeeper with eight unarmed reentry vehicles was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It took the missile about 24 minutes to travel 8,000 kilometers and reach its target—the center of Kwajalein’s lagoon. It was successfully pinpointed and tracked all the way to the target by Mission Control on the atoll. All of Kwajalein’s state-of-the-art radar systems, optical systems, and telemetry assets were dedicated to this near-perfect mission.

“A test like that is every bit as complex as a NASA space shot,” says Tom Smith, vice president of Kwajalein Range Services and head of Mission Control. Smith worked for Lockheed Martin for more than 26 years, including a decade designing many of the radar installations at Kwajalein.

The Reagan test site has a 100 percent rate of success in intercepting test missiles. During a test, vector and meteorological information is gathered from sea, air, and mobile radar sensors positioned throughout the atoll. The numbers are shared in real time via an encrypted, submarine fiber-optic network and analyzed at Mission Control. The data is later distributed to other U.S. test sites and simulation centers within the Air Force and Missile Defense Agency via satellite.

A recently completed modernization program will make data collection, analysis, and dissemination more efficient and less expensive. “Ultimately, our success will be measured in the quality of the data gathered,” says Smith. Simply put, good data will help improve the nation’s missile defenses and reduce the cost of defense programs.

To provide the military services with that wealth of data, KRS must create a comfortable life for those who gather and analyze it. There are 2,500 permanent residents of Kwajalein, including 1,200 KRS employees and more than 800 dependents. KRS also has offices in Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, and Alabama to provide logistical and technical planning support to island operations. The community at Kwajalein comprises a mixture of U.S. civilians, Department of Defense and Army personnel, and Marshallese citizens. When a big mission comes up, KRS moves 400 additional people to the island temporarily.

KRS has taken over every aspect of the atoll’s infrastructure, including procurement and supply, utilities, recreation, retail, post office, hospital, school system, marine operations, and air transportation. Bechtel’s experience managing infrastructure and logistics was one of the major reasons that KRS won the contract.

Norm Black, the project’s environmental, safety, and health manager, says, “One of our greater challenges is instilling in an internationally and culturally diverse workforce the Bechtel philosophy of ‘zero accidents.’”

Improving recruitment and retention will be one of KRS’s major goals going forward. The atoll is isolated, which has made staff turnover a challenge in the past. But for the right person, Kwajalein provides a lifestyle that can’t be found anywhere else. “A traffic jam is three bicycles at a stop sign,” says Spencer. The absence of U.S. federal income tax and the low cost of living also help draw talented people from the U.S. mainland. There aren’t many places where an employee can combine an island lifestyle and a family-friendly community with the energy of a big-city job, 21st century technology—and the best engineers and scientists in the industry.