Team exploring potential sites for missile defense facility visits Maine

[unhappycamper]

http://www.pressherald.com/2014/08/11/team-exploring-potential-sites-for-missile-defense-facility-visits-maine/

U.S. officials are gathering views on the local impact in case the Rangeley area is chosen to host an East Coast interceptor system.

Team exploring potential sites for missile defense facility visits Maine
By Kevin Miller
Posted 12:01 AM Updated at 12:25 AM

Federal officials will be in western Maine this week to discuss a proposal that could bring hundreds of jobs and 60 interceptor missiles to the remote mountains near Rangeley in the name of protecting the East Coast from nuclear attack.

The Pentagon is conducting environmental studies of four potential sites in the eastern U.S. for an intercontinental ballistic missile defense system that has been pushed by Congress but may never be built because of tight budgets and performance issues with the interceptors.

One of those sites is a little-known Navy training camp in Redington Township nestled between the Saddleback and Sugarloaf ski resorts. The “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape” School is where Navy SEALs, pilots and other select personnel go to learn how to survive in extreme conditions, avoid being captured, resist interrogation and escape their captors. The 12-day SERE School program features classroom instruction at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery and field training in Redington.

Whether the SERE School might have to share its space with silos housing 55-foot-long interceptor missiles – or could be displaced entirely – won’t be known for several more years. But representatives from the Missile Defense Agency will hold meetings in Rangeley on Tuesday and Wednesday, plus two more meetings in Farmington on Thursday, to gather feedback from the public about the environmental suitability of locating a facility in Redington Township.