Navy says missile flights over Nevada nothing new

Thursday, Dec. 10, 1998 | 3:02 a.m.

"The Navy has been working on an environmental assessment to update our routing for the cruise missile flights on the West Coast. It's not increasing or changing anything from what we have been doing over the last nine or ten years," Cathy Partusch said on Thursday.

Grace Potorti, director of the Rural Alliance for Military Accountability, sounded an alarm on Wednesday saying the overflights were taking place without public notice or testimony.

"The first we've heard about the missiles is a final environmental assessment report," she told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "No public input, no public process, just a notice that it's going to happen."

Ms. Partusch, public information officer for the cruise missile program executive office in Patuxment River, Md., disagreed with that. She said most of the shots would go from San Nicholas Island off the Southern California coast, to the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the Mojave Desert north of Barstow.

Tom Laux, deputy program executive officer for cruise missiles at Patuxment River, said the Tomahawk program tests between six and 12 missiles a year at all test ranges in the country with China Lake and Florida's Eglin Air Force Base the most frequent targets.

"We average one every other year either into or over Nevada," he said. The Tonopah Test Range is used for some secret maneuvers and the Fallon Naval Air Station is an alternate target.

He said some of the cruise missiles use depleted uranium in their simulated warheads because of its density. No other material could fit in the same space and still weigh the same amount.

The warheads are inert so they can't explode and are released to parachute to earth if the missile has to be destroyed.

"We have an outstanding safety record," Laux said. "We've had flights going back 20 years across all our ranges and we've had zero mishaps, zero injuries."

Each flight is controlled by chase aircraft which can override the missile's program and all are cleared with the Federal Aviation Administration.