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U.S. Announces $21M Cutback At Kwajalein Missile Range

By Giff Johnson on Majuro
Friday: March 07, 2008

The Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll announced budget cuts this week that will impact both the Marshallese and American workforces at the base in the Marshall Islands.

“The global war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan costs money and it has to come from somewhere,” Reagan Test Site Commander Col. Stevenson Reed said following a briefing Thursday for Marshall Islands President Litokwa Tomeing about the cuts.

The U.S. Army must chop more than $21 million from its budget over a four-year period, with a $6 million reduction in fiscal year 2008 that will result in more than eight percent of the Marshallese workforce losing their jobs, and more than half taking a reduction in their working hours.

Army vessels barge the 1,125 Marshallese workers to and from Ebeye Island to the missile range three miles away. Workers are shown disembarking after a day's work at the base. Close to 10 percent of the workforce will be laid off this year as part of a four-year cutback by the Army. Photo Ben Chutaro.

Reed¹s briefing sparked concern from the Marshall Islands leaders, with Minister in Assistance to the President Christopher Loeak saying the news of layoffs “was a surprise.” Foreign Minister Tony deBrum expressed “dismay” at the “abrupt U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll reduction in force.”

“The elements of our special and strategic relationship embodied in the Compact of Free Association should have been enough to trigger an earlier consultation between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands governments,” Loeak said.

About 12,000 islanders who live crowded on Ebeye, an island next to the base that has been described as the “slum of the Pacific,” depend heavily on the salaries of the 1,125 Marshall Islands who work at the Army base. Up to 99 are expected to lose their jobs this year, while 64 American personnel are being fired as part the reductions. Kwajalein’s annual budget is about $250 million.

DeBrum said he is “particularly dismayed” about the latest announcement by Reed because he was told last year there would be no reduction in force when he’d asked U.S. Defense Department officials at an annual government consultation.

“The footprint of the Reagan Test Site is being reduced as we move toward a future way of doing business in a transformed way,” Reed said.

The missile range at Kwajalein has been the testing ground for every U.S. missile and anti-missile defense system since it was first established in the mid-1960s.

“If a customer sees it is cheaper and more efficient (to test missiles) at White Sands (missile range in New Mexico) or Kauai (Hawaii), where will he go?” Reed asked.

The range is going through a four-year transformation period, he said. Starting last year, the Army has been shifting some range operations and personnel to its Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Alabama.

With the planned installation of a deep sea fiber optic communications cable by 2010, additional range operations will be run at long-distance, cutting costs for Defense Department contractors and other branches of the military that use Kwajalein and other U.S. test ranges.

The cutbacks combined with the new fiber cable will make Kwajalein more competitive with other test ranges, bringing new business to the test range, Reed said.

“We want to be the premier test and evaluation center (for the Defense Department,” Reed said, adding there is a “bright future” for the range.