Senators briefed on Guam missile defense system progress

It's full steam ahead for the 360-degree missile defense system for Guam defense.

Top Pentagon officials testified before a senate armed services sub-committee meeting this week.

The defense department has asked for $1.5 billion to start the massive project.

The program took a major step forward as the Missile Defense Agency announced it was preparing an environmental impact survey.

MDA director, Vice Admiral Jon Hill told senators the potential locations have been identified.

"One of the hardest things we're doing right now this year in 2023 is site selection and the start of the environmental impact surveys," he said. "You have to do that. We have the sites selected. We know that once we go to those sites and do more work that we may not be able to land on all those sites, there's a dozen or so sites, about half of those are for MDA and the other half are for army. That's a real challenge."

So it's a tough engineering challenge just because of the physical lay-down, and the land use and the environmental impact surveys are definitely a challenge but we're gonna come through those in the next couple of years and you'll start to see the capability land on the island progressively and I owe Admiral Aquilino a year by year status update."

Admiral John Aquilino is the commander of Indo-Pacom and the top military official in the Pacific region.

Meanwhile, public comments are being sought now that the EIS notice has been published.

Several scoping meetings are scheduled for early next month at three different locations around the island.

The deadline to submit comments is June 27.