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Show Officials impressed with Air Force proposals on MX project Five area officials attended a two day background meeting last week at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska and came home with the impression that the proposed MX project is necessary for national defense and that the Air Force strongly favors having it deployed in Utah and Nevada. State Senator Ivan Matheson, State Representative Garth Jones, Cedar City Mayor S. Jack Sawyers, City Manager Joe Melling, Iron County Commission chairman Grant Seaman attended the session with 39 other Utahns which included aides to the governor, mayors and county commissioners com-missioners from aother areas and members of the state press. "There is no question in the Air Force's mind that MX is needed, that it should be deployed in Utah-Nevada, and that the way to deploy it is the racetrack system," said Jones. Seaman agreed that the "educational tour" of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) base had definitely convinced him that MX is necessary for national defense. "The Air Force convinced me that we are lagging behind-in ourdefense and that we need to do something about.it." "The general theme of tne-meeting was that the missile program has been in the planning stage for the past 13 years, and been actively developed for the past six years and has already cost over a billion dollars. The Air Force feels that we are nine years away from total completion of the project and that if we stop n ow. our defense will be pushed back 13 years." stated Sawyers. The representatives said that Air Force officials firmly denied that other alternatives to the local site or racetrack plan exist. "Officials . said that 45 different deployment methods which included horizontal and vertical shelters, airplane and submarine possibilities had been explored,"-stated Jones. "When you get away from Uti h and Nevada, I'm not sure that MX is a big issue. Utah's Congressional delegation is fighting this issue to have other launching modes and sites considered all by itself. I don't think that the Air Force is in a very good mood for flexibility because of this lack of national concern even though this is a national security issue," continued Jones. All of these officials said that a site in Wyoming which could possibly contain up to a third of the proposed system is being investigated by the Air Force. Jones said that the branch is very positive about devleoping the project in one adjoining site and were not keen on breaking up the installation in-stallation with' part in Wyoming. Seaman said that Air Force of- Iicials pledged support to minimize local impacts but made no specific commitments. Sawyers felt that Air Force officials were made more aware of local concerns as a result of the meeting. "It was an excellent opportunity for me to talk about the problems Cedar City would face with such a development. Cedar City is only one small part of their study which includes in-cludes 10,000 square miles. I made some good contacts and am hopeful that they are more aware of how we feel," said the mayor. Jones said that the original figure of an influx of 25,000 workers during the peak construction period might in fact be only half that number during the peak period from recent information that the military branch has obtained from a large construction company expected to bid on the project if it is developed. Jones reported that Air Force Major General Kelly Burke felt that the development would need six base construction camps located intermittently in-termittently throughout the area and that two back up Air Force bases would be needed to support the missile deployment. Sawyers quipped a recent Johnny Carson jftke, "I think the missiles ought to be put on Amtrack because no one would know where or when they were anywhere." |