The Kodiak launch complex has some repeat business from a big customer: the Missile Defense Agency. MDA announced yesterday it’s awarding a contract worth up to $80 million to the Alaska Aerospace Corporation to test its THAAD interceptors at Kodiak.
The agency launched missile targets from Kodiak a decade ago, but Alaska Aerospace CEO Craig Campbell said this work will be very different.
“That was done all by contractors. They’d stay at the Narrow Cape Lodge. They’d stay at hotels,” said Campbell. “This is much more of a mobile system, so we’re going to put in a life support area where soldiers can actually live and operate as if they were deployed into real life conditions to utilize the system.”
Campbell said the state-owned corporation will have to extend a gravel road and install new gravel pads, but MDA will bring in its own launch vehicles for the THAAD missiles.
“So we’re not going to use the launch structure that we have out there,” Campbell said. “Their system is designed very differently than what we would use out of the launch facility.”
The work under the contract will be done in a series of task orders over several years and Campbell said the eventual total may not reach the $80 million maximum.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
