Navy awards
$283 million contract
for Kauai base

ITT Industries will
support operations at the
missile test site

Star-Bulletin staff

The Navy has awarded ITT Industries Inc. a contract worth $283.5 million for operations and maintenance support over the next 10 years at the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai.

The Navy facility at Barking Sands on Kauai is the world's largest testing range of its type, blending underwater, surface, air and space missile capability with electronic warfare technology to create a training ground for the latest warfare methods, White Plains, N.Y.-based ITT Industries said.

The work will be handled by the company's systems division, based in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The division provides management and technical services in a range of government contracts to the defense, labor and state departments and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

ITT Industries said the new contract is a combination of two previous contracts to operate and maintain communications, radar and other base operations. The company said there will be no jobs added from the new contract.

The Navy has a plan to upgrade and expand weapons testing and training at Barking Sands, in its "Theater Ballistic Missile Defense" program, learning how best to defend against missiles such as the SCUDs that were used against American forces in Operation Desert Storm.

The Pacific Missile Range Facility launches 70 to 80 target missiles a year and the training expansion will add six or eight a year, the Navy has said.

Questions have been raised about the possible environmental impact of increased testing on Kauai and Navy plans to launch missiles from Niihau and in the French Frigate Shoals but the Navy said its activities will have no appreciable effect on the environment of wildlife habitats.

ITT Industries, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, was spun off from ITT Corp. in 1995.