Decision expected on missile-defense site
WASHINGTON — The wait to find out if Camp Ravenna will land a much-coveted East Coast missile- defense site may soon end.
The Missile Defense Review — a document determining if the Department of Defense should move forward to build an East Coast missile defense site — has long been pending. But a delegation from Ohio was told during a recent visit to Washington, D.C. that the announcement could come within three weeks.
State Sen. Sean O’Brien, D-Bazetta, who made the trip to D. C., said multiple federal lawmakers told the delegation that the military had assured them it would decide whether to create a missile- defense system on the East Coast “in three weeks.”
The lawmakers, he said, “believe they will announce which site it will be of the three.” Camp Ravenna is competing for the site with spots in New York and Michigan.
Most spokesmen for Ohio members of Congress demurred when asked if they knew whether the review is to be released within three weeks. However, a spokesman for Rep. Bill Johnson, R- Marietta, said the office has been told it should be coming within that period of time.
O’Brien said he’s optimistic about Ravenna’s chances. “With the snowfall New York and Michigan get, we have some really good reasons for it to come here to Camp Ravenna,” he said. “We have the land. It’s just the perfect location.”
The Missile Defense Agency itself has been noncommittal on the timing, with a spokeswoman saying Friday that she did not have any information to pass along but, “once the ( Missile Defense Review) is released we hope to have additional information.”
The state’s delegation and business leaders long have lobbied to land the site, which would be capable of fending off long- and intermediate- range missiles, presumably launched from Iran or North Korea. That site, along with bases in California and Alaska, would cumulatively work to intercept any incoming missiles.
In order to make an East Coast site happen, the Trump administration would have to invest $3.6 billion. The administration could also opt not to add a site at all, choosing instead to beef up current technology.
Camp Ravenna Joint Military Training Center is competing with Fort Custer Training Center near Battle Creek, Michigan, and Fort Drum in upstate New York, north of Syracuse.
The polluted Ravenna site was once home to the Ravenna Army Ammunition Plant, commonly known as the Ravenna Arsenal. It opened in 1942 and supplied ammunition for U.S. troops in World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam before closing in 1992.
In a 2016 letter to the Missile Defense Agency, the Ohio delegation said landing the project would bring 2,300 construction jobs and as many as 850 full-time workers once the system is operational.