Air Force won’t land rockets on a Pacific island as part of its program to test point-to-point rocket cargo delivery
Faced with loud opposition from activists groups, the Air Force has decided it will not land rockets on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific island as part of its program to test point-to-point rocket cargo delivery.
The service had chosen Johnston Atoll, an unincorporated U.S. territory about 700 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu, for testing a program using rockets to rapidly deliver tons of cargo around the globe. The Air Force had announced in the Federal Register in March that it was undertaking an environmental assessment for the construction of two rocket landing pads on the atoll. It anticipated issuing a draft assessment by April, but publication was delayed as opposition to the plan by environmental groups surged. A petition calling for the Air Force to abandon the plan had garnered 3,884 signatures as of Wednesday.
…The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition, which launched the change.org petition, said in a March 13 news release that building the launch pads on Johnston “only continues decades of harm and abuse to a place that is culturally and biologically tied to us as Pacific people.”
I wonder if this coalition included many local residents. I have doubts. This complaint sounds like something that comes out of the racist anti-white DEI offices in many American colleges.
This decision doesn’t kill this program, but eliminates this island as a test landing site, which means its residents won’t benefit from the development the program would have brought them.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Faced with loud opposition from activists groups, the Air Force has decided it will not land rockets on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific island as part of its program to test point-to-point rocket cargo delivery.
The service had chosen Johnston Atoll, an unincorporated U.S. territory about 700 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu, for testing a program using rockets to rapidly deliver tons of cargo around the globe. The Air Force had announced in the Federal Register in March that it was undertaking an environmental assessment for the construction of two rocket landing pads on the atoll. It anticipated issuing a draft assessment by April, but publication was delayed as opposition to the plan by environmental groups surged. A petition calling for the Air Force to abandon the plan had garnered 3,884 signatures as of Wednesday.
…The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition, which launched the change.org petition, said in a March 13 news release that building the launch pads on Johnston “only continues decades of harm and abuse to a place that is culturally and biologically tied to us as Pacific people.”
I wonder if this coalition included many local residents. I have doubts. This complaint sounds like something that comes out of the racist anti-white DEI offices in many American colleges.
This decision doesn’t kill this program, but eliminates this island as a test landing site, which means its residents won’t benefit from the development the program would have brought them.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Sounds more like these people are a front for the Chinese Communist Party. The last thing they want to see is U.S. Marines being re-supplied on some 1st island chain during a war.
Steve H: And why can’t these people be both Chinese communists agents and DEI academics? Considering how our universities in the past decade seem more loyal to China than America and take a lot of Chinese cash, the two go together very well.
“I wonder if this coalition included many local residents.”
Johnston atoll is uninhabited.
Ray Van Dune: This fact makes the opposition even more ridiculous. If the island is uninhabited, then who is getting harmed by the Air Force using it? No one. The opposition is merely a power play by people who know nothing and accomplish nothing and want every one else to know as little and accomplish less.
To Robert.
Chinese might pretend to be all DEI –but secretly chafe at requirements by colleges who want a handful of gangstas who probably can’t sign their name.
Not only uninhabited but a prohibited area and AFAIK used to store some rather dangerous waste. This decision makes no sense at all.
Ok, looking this up, so no one else has to….
-The United States claimed Johnston under the 1856 Guano Act and the atoll was designated a bird and wildlife refuge in 1926. Yet from 1934 onward it was under U.S. military control. During and after World War II the Navy greatly enlarged the islands (by dredging coral reefs), built airfields, and used the atoll as a forward refueling and radar base.
…..
1957-1962; the Coast Guard installs a tracking station (Baker-Nunn camera) for satellites and missiles at Sand Island. Johnston becomes a launch site for high-altitude nuclear tests.
–Most bombs are detonated over Christmas Island or in outer space, but from Johnston Atoll the U.S. conducts several high-altitude missile tests (the Operation Fishbowl series). Notably: the Starfish Prime test on 9 July 1962. –Other tests (Starfish Prime abort on 20 June; Bluegill Prime abort on 25 July) end in missile failures and on-island plutonium contamination. In total, four high-altitude launches from Johnston Atoll fail, scattering radioactive debris on the launch pad, islands and lagoon.
1965–68 – Johnston Atoll becomes a covert biological warfare test site under Project 112/SHAD. U.S. Army and Navy tests release live agents (simulants and pathogens) from ships and aircraft in the Pacific about 100–200 miles southwest of the atoll.
–For example, Operation Shady Grove (Feb–Apr 1965) sprays bacteria near Johnston (including tularemia and Q fever agents) and uses barges of rhesus monkeys as test subjects. (Half the monkeys inoculated with weaponized tularemia/Q-fever died after being taken to Johnston Island.)
……..
The atoll has no native population. It is an unincorporated territory of the U.S., administered from Washington, D.C. by the U.S. Air Force and managed cooperatively by the Air Force, Army, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a National Wildlife Refuge. Over the past half century, Johnston Atoll has served as a site for nuclear testing (prior to the 1963 Atmospheric Nuclear Test Ban Treaty) and storage of chemical weapons.
These weapons contained the nerve agents GB or VX and blister agent HD, commonly known as mustard-gas.
In 1969, an accidental leak of the deadly nerve agent VX on Okinawa injured 23 U.S. servicemen and one civilian. As a result, the governments of Japan and Ryukyu (the island chain that includes Okinawa) asked the U.S. to remove all chemical weapons from Okinawa.
In 1971, the U.S. military moved the entire stockpile to one-square-mile Johnston Island, the largest island of Johnston Atoll.
–All these munitions were stored in bunkers in the farthest downwind corner of Johnston Island. As the weapons continued to age in storage, there was an increasing likelihood that some of them would leak. The risk of leaks underscored the need to destroy the weapons as quickly and safely as possible.
–The purpose of the “Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System” (JACADS) was to accomplish this task by dismantling each weapon and incinerating the deadly nerve and blister agents.
1972 – Under Operation Pacer Ivy, approximately 1.8 million gallons of Agent Orange (and other Vietnam War era herbicides) are shipped to Johnston for storage and eventual disposal. The herbicide barrels are placed in a designated area (“Agent Orange Yard”), but leaking drums and spills contaminate the soil and lagoon with dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD) during storage.
Between 1990 and 2000, the JACADS facility destroyed more than 72,300 rockets, 43,600 mortars, 5,600 bombs, 13,300 land mines and 277,800 projectiles which carried nerve agent or mustard. In addition, JACADS incinerated 200 bulk containers which each held about one ton of nerve or blister agent.
2009 – A presidential proclamation designates Johnston Atoll (along with nearby islands and reefs) as part of the new Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (later renamed the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument).
–This gives the atoll strong environmental protections (co-managed by NOAA and FWS), although DOD still manages Wake and Johnston Atolls themselves.
Guys, there is nothing there and portions of it are still “hot”. Lots of Ham Radio operators have been there to activate the island (KH3), but it has been harder and harder to get a DXPedition (Ham Radio slang for a expedition) to that island. Past requests have been blocked by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and authorization from the Air Force. It is #8 on the most wanted list as a Ham Radio contact (#1 is the North Korea).
I think the last DXpedition there was in 2016
Mike Borgelt
They hauled chemical weapon munitions there and built a plant to incinerate the chemicals. That was completed and they tore the whole thing down. According to wiki there is one gutted building that has all the doors welded shut expect one to the outside. There’s effectively nothing left on it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230326030333/http://www.travelbughawaii.com/Ioke.htm is a story about a boat crew that was delivering some contractors to the island that test the waters for chemical residues. They had the privilege one experiencing a direct hit by a class 3 hurricane.
Who are The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition?
https://protectpih.com/who-we-are/
Why, it looks like majority busybody older White people, including some guy apparently being eaten by a tree; the same people making up nearly any group claiming to speak for others.
“A petition calling for the Air Force to abandon the plan had garnered 3,884 signatures as of Wednesday.”
O.M.G. There have probably been more Ham Radio Contacts off the Atoll. If I stood on a corner in downtown Portland saying the Trump military wants to crash rockets onto an uninhabited (= ‘pristine’) South Pacific island, I’d get more signatures in under a week.
“only continues decades of harm and abuse to a place that is culturally and biologically tied to us as Pacific people.”
Someone should explain to The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition that they are extraordinarily immature and provincial in their view that only certain peoples are ‘culturally and biologically’ connected to the region, or has any particular claim. What happened to One Planet One People? Where are the ‘Citizens of the World’ decrying this selfish gatekeeping? Should not The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition be eager and willing to share their resources for the Greater Good? The more so, as this particular Good may well aid them if China decides to add a few islands to it’s collection.
Wow Wayne, A nuclear, chemical, biological, munitions dumping ground.
I wonder why no one lives there?
Actually your description sounds a lot like Utah, the Dugway proving grounds west of Salt Lake by the salt flats (rumored to be the new area 51) incinerated the nations stock pile of agents that you described, only a few sheep herds died but they claim 100% success.
Just last week they disposed of a stock pile of munitions and rockets that set off a blast heard 50 miles away, Felt and sounded like an earthquake. (Thank goodness the wind was blowing south at the time)
The above ground testing at the mercury site in Nevada dumped 50 times the radiation of Chernobyl on the community I grew up in near St. George, Utah. (Downwinders) and now it’s the hottest place to live in the entire country! (see what I did there?)
Johnston Atoll has an airport… expect Trump to to sign an executive order to build a private executive getaway at “Trump Island” with golf course and condos… (A Guantánamo like facility like alligator Alcatraz)
All: The more I learn (from my readers) about the actual state and isolation of this island, the more I think the military didn’t give one hoot about the environmental objections. It simply decided the cost of developing the infrastructure to land rockets there was simply not worth it.
Operation Fishbowl
High Altitude Weapons Effects Tests
https://youtu.be/ezrhY4AUGhY
(27:00)