WEST CARTHAGE, N.Y. _ Mayor Scott Burto recalls the days of good-paying jobs, plenty of them, at the paper mills along the Black River.
Today, the mills and the jobs are nearly all gone, casualties of foreign competition. But hope for a new boom is teasing the locals, and it has nothing to do with paper. The nation's troubled but well-funded homeland missile defense program just might be the region's salvation.
Nearby Fort Drum is one of three sites under consideration for an installation of anti-missile interceptors _ the latest phase of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD. Construction is expected to cost as much as $4 billion, potentially generating thousands of jobs directly and indirectly.
"The big positive is the effect it will have on our economy _ on jobs," said Burto, 41, a grants administrator who is in his 13th year as mayor. "Locally, there's a large amount of support for it. Our job growth is behind the rest of the state."
The GMD system, which was declared operational in 2004, is designed to thwart a sneak nuclear attack by North Korea or Iran. It has performed poorly in test flights, failing to destroy mock enemy warheads about half the time _ prompting many government and independent analysts to conclude that it cannot be relied on.
But in bucolic northern New York state and the two other areas under study _ military facilities in Ohio and Michigan _ the issue is not whether GMD works. The issue is jobs.
All three regions are competing furiously for the prize and the economic stimulus it would deliver. Members of Congress have formed rare bipartisan coalitions to press the case for their constituents. The spectacle shows how economic considerations, as much as strategic military ones, can keep money flowing to flawed defense programs.
GMD's existing interceptors are at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base and Fort Greely, Alaska. Pentagon officials say they intend to announce their preferred site for a third installation in early 2017. The Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress are expected to approve the expansion.
Senior military officials, including the director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, have said they do not believe a new installation is necessary and that the money would be better spent improving the existing system, which has cost taxpayers more than $40 billion to date.
Yet fear of what America's adversaries might be up to has helped protect GMD. Another factor is the muscle wielded in Washington by major defense contractors, which have billions of dollars of revenue at stake.
Three of them _ Boeing Co., Raytheon Co. and Northrop Grumman _ donated a total of $40.5 million to congressional campaign funds from 2003 through October of this year, according to federal election records.
The economic desperation in Rust Belt areas of New York, Ohio and Michigan _ discontent that helped power Donald Trump to the presidency _ has also lent momentum to the push to expand the system.
U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, a California Democrat and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said GMD's track record showed that the goal of intercepting and destroying long-range ballistic missiles in flight _ a feat likened to hitting one speeding bullet with another _ was impractical.
"I think the answer is absolutely clear: It will not work," Garamendi said in an interview. "Nevertheless, the momentum of the fear, the momentum of the investments, the momentum of the industry _ it carries forward.
"We represent the interests of our district. So if the district is building rockets that don't work, and the jobs are at stake, what's a representative to do?"
