JBLM announces schedule for March rocket tests, adds one more town hall

South Sound residents have one more opportunity to get answers from the Army about a kind of rocket training that soldiers this month will practice at Joint Base Lewis-McChord for the first time.

The Army scheduled an open house for residents to ask about plans for its High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), a weapon that the military wants to practice firing at JBLM.

That meeting is to take place at 6 p.m. on Tuesday at the Eagles Pride Golf Course in DuPont off of Exit 116 on Interstate 5.

The Army’s request to train with the HIMARS at JBLM has been controversial because it is a louder weapon than the kinds of artillery that normally are used on local military training grounds.

Practice rounds from the weapon have the potential to create a sonic boom and they likely will sound louder than an indoor rock concert for brief moments in DuPont, Roy and the Nisqually tribal reservation.

JBLM has two HIMARS battalions that tend to fire practice rounds twice a year at the Yakima Training Center to stay current with standards for their weapons. The Army would like to save money — about $227,000 for each trip to Yakima — and keep soldiers closer to home by moving some of those training events to JBLM.

This month’s event is a test of whether HIMARS training can occur in the South Sound or whether it must remain in Yakima. About 100 people wrote letters to the Army in August and September when it declared that it wanted to test the weapon here, with most of the letters scolding the military for proposing potentially loud training in the South Sound area.

The Army this week also announced when it plans to fire its test rounds. They are expected to be fired at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on March 15, 16 and 17.

In each firing window, the Army would launch three training rounds. The rockets would be fired about 10 to 15 minutes apart.

The Army often uses the HIMARS in coordination with Special Operations units. It looks like a rocket launcher attached to the back of a truck, and it allows soldiers to fire rockets and then quickly move to a hiding place to avoid an enemy’s returning fire.

HIMARS units are reported to be on the ground in Iraq, where the Army has been using them to attack militants in the Islamic State. One of JBLM’s HIMARS batteries deployed there in January.

At JBLM, the test rounds are expected to be fired from a hill north of Lacey that sits on the opposite side of Interstate 5 from the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. The 675-pound test rounds will land in a designated artillery impact area west of Roy.

This story was originally published March 3, 2016 at 3:11 PM with the headline "JBLM announces schedule for March rocket tests, adds one more town hall."