{"id":13604,"date":"2017-01-15T09:02:19","date_gmt":"2017-01-15T17:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/arizona-senator-criticizes-alaska-missile-launch-complex\/"},"modified":"2017-01-15T09:02:19","modified_gmt":"2017-01-15T17:02:19","slug":"arizona-senator-criticizes-alaska-missile-launch-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/arizona-senator-criticizes-alaska-missile-launch-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona senator criticizes Alaska missile launch complex"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ANCHORAGE \u2014 <\/strong>An Arizona senator says the federal government is wasting money by awarding an $80 million contract for work at a missile launch facility on a southern Alaska island.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake put the Pacific Spaceport Complex project in first place on his annual hit list of wasteful federal projects, The Alaska Public Radio Network reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter sitting unused for several years, the Pentagon is now sinking another $80 million into the spaceport,\u201d Flake told fellow lawmakers Tuesday. \u201cThis is despite the fact that it\u2019s not even equipped with the type of missiles that (the Department of Defense) plans to launch for the site.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Missile Defense Agency awarded the contract last year to Alaska Aerospace Corp. to test weapons for the U.S. Army. The contract, which would pay as much as $80 million over six years, covers an indefinite number of launches as well as range support services.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, questioned Flake\u2019s knowledge of U.S. missile defense.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s what happens when senators who don\u2019t know anything about missile defense take to the floor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In legislation last year, Sullivan called Alaska \u201cthe cornerstone of missile defense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANCHORAGE \u2014 An Arizona senator says the federal government is wasting money by awarding an $80 million contract for work at a missile launch facility on a southern Alaska island. U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake put the Pacific Spaceport Complex project in first place on his annual hit list of wasteful federal projects, The Alaska Public [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13604"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}