A location may already have been chosen for the planned East Coast Missile Defense site, and Camp James A. Garfield east of Ravenna may very well be that site, according to Riki Ellison, chairman and founder of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.
“The last time the MDA [Missile Defense Agency] came out to look at your site was in 2016,” he told a crowd of more than 100 attendees at a Youngstown Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Newton Falls on Wednesday. “The [Missile Defense Review] required the decision. That was supposed to be released a year ago, and it was released a month ago. There’s no more information that can be input, and the decision has been made, clearly.”
The question for the federal government isn’t whether the money would be rerouted to pay for a border wall, but a matter of competing priorities within the MDA, Ellison said.
“There are other means that they are working on to defeat the enemy by doing directive energy laser technology where you can burn a hole through the skin of the missile in its first 300 seconds and blow the missile up, as many as you want, for the cost of a gallon of diesel fuel. We haven’t got that technology yet, but that’s where they want to put that money to invest it.”
