Guam gets a Standoff Missile Complex in $42M contract award

Feb. 26 (UPI) -- A Standoff Weapons Complex will be built at U.S. Joint Region Marianas-Andersen base on Guam under a $42 million contract announced by the Defense Department.

Granite-Obayashi JV of Watsonville, Calif., will construct the complex for the U.S. Air Force at Yigo, the southernmost point of Guam, the U.S. island territory in the western Pacific Ocean.

A completion date of March 2023 on the 400-scare site was announced on Thursday. The company is currently contracted to build a Marine Corps base on the island, part of a planned drawdown of troops on Okinawa.

"The work to be performed provides for construction of an adequately sized and configured missile maintenance and assembly complex for loading, unloading, transferring, storing, testing and preparing missiles for operational use," the announcement said.

The contract includes road construction and facilities to store standoff weapons and pre-loaded strategic rotary launchers.

Standoff weapons include cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles and bombs with flight control surfaces offering a flatter flightpath known as glide bombs.

Rotary launchers are typically carried in the bomb bay of a bomber aircraft, allowing precise positioning of the weapon.

The Guam base does not currently include a permanent bomber squadron, but hosts regular visits by B-52 and B-1 bomber task forces.

Andersen Air Force Base's 36th Wing offers a staging and supply platform for missions in the Indo-Pacific theater of operations, and also has the Pacific Air Forces' largest stockpile of munitions.

The Pentagon statement noted that the contract was awarded ahead of schedule and under budget, and the first Air Force military construction project of the new fiscal year.