The Navy is trying to mitigate concerns of some Puget Sound residents about so-called “war games” to occur in the Western Olympics.
“Generally speaking, there are some misconceptions,” said John Mosher, Northwest environmental program manager, U.S. Pacific Fleet.
The Navy is constructing three vehicles equipped with radio wave emitters that will be used to train crews of the EA-18G Growler, based at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, to locate and identify the source of the radio waves.
A concern expressed by opponents of the training is that the Navy would be emitting a signal that would be hazardous, which is untrue, Mosher said.
“There’s going to be absolutely no threat to the public or wildlife,” Mosher said.
Radio wave levels emitted from the Navy vehicles will be on par with that of a television news truck or marine radars used on some boats, he said.
“The phrase ‘electromagnetic radiation’ has been used to describe the emitters’ output,” according to a press release issued earlier this month by the Navy.
“Electromagnetic radiation is not the same thing as nuclear radiation. There is no nuclear radiation associated with these electronic emissions,” the Navy said in the release.
“In this case, ‘radiation’ is simply electronic energy, and the emitters use frequencies similar to those used for satellite communications, some Wi-Fi devices, cordless phones, Bluetooth devices and weather radar systems,” the Navy said.
The training vehicles will be positioned in areas along the Western coast of the Olympic mountains.
While this type of training has been routine in other locations including Eastern Washington, Mosher said, the ability to move a mobile emitter vehicle to different types of terrain will increase the quality of the training.
In particular, the ability to locate and identify a signal coming off the water is particularly good training for operations underway in Iraq and Syria, he said.
An environmental assessment conducted by the Navy earlier this year concluded that the training would have no significant impacts to the area.
The earliest the training would begin would be September 2015, Mosher said.
